The Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script - David Trottier

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I.1 How stories work

• Always look for opportunities to make the abstract visual and the internal external
• Because a screenplay is about 90–110 pages (120 pages at the most):
  • The beginning is usually the first 15 to 25 pages.
  • The middle is the next 50 pages or so
  • The end is the last 10–25 pages
• Steven Spielberg said that, in the best movies, someone “loses control [of his/her life] and then somehow has to regain it”
• The Crisis in this film is not just a low point, but an event that forces the central character to make a crucial decision.
• In terms of dramatic tension and conflict, your story also needs peaks and valleys. Remember that the peaks (the turning points) should get generally higher as the story progresses.

I.2 Situation, conflict, resolution - the flow of the story

• Communicate something about the rules, parameters, nature, and culture of the special world you have created in the first ten pages or so. You set the tone.
• Somewhere in the first 10 or 15 pages of your script (or earlier), something should happen to give your central character a goal, a desire, a mission, a need, or a problem. I like to call this event the Catalyst, although it’s often referred to by others as the Inciting Incident
• Pretty Woman Viv (Julia Roberts) and Edward (Richard Gere) meet: the Catalyst. He pays her to stay with him at the hotel: the Big Event.
• Much of screenwriting is setting things up for a later payoff.
• A word of caution on the first act taken as a whole: Don’t provide too much background information or exposition at once. Only give the audience what they need to understand the story and its special world without confusing them
• In Titanic, the Midpoint comes when Rose decides to jilt her fiancé and go with Jack. Once she makes this decision to leave her social world, there is no turning back. She has reached the Point of No Return
• From the Midpoint on, the central character takes stronger actions, perhaps even desperate actions that threaten to compromise her values.
• Now the final result must be revealed to the audience and understood by the central character. This is a story’s moment of realization
• In summary, the Magnificent 7 Plot Points are:
  • 1. The Backstory usually happens before the story begins. It motivates or haunts the central character.
  • 2. The Catalyst kicks things off. It’s part of your story’s setup.
  • 3. The Big Event changes your character’s life. We move to Act 2.
  • 4. The Midpoint is a major moment in your story’s middle; it’s often a point of no return or moment of deep motivation for your central character.
  • 5. The Crisis is the low point, or a moment that forces a decision that leads to your story’s end. We move to Act 3 (the end).
  • 6. The Showdown/Climax is the final face-off between your central character and the opposition.
  • 7. The Realization occurs when your character and/or the audience sees that the character has changed. The Realization is usually part of the denouement.

I.3 The lowdown on high concept

• The title you choose for your completed work should be short enough to fit on the marquee. Ideally, it conveys something about the concept (Cast Away), character (Mall Cop), genre (Star Wars), event (Date Night), theme (To Kill a Mockingbird), location (Monsters University), or main action of the story (Finding Nemo).