Introducing charcters in Act Two

Han Solo.

Seems very late to be introducing the femme fatale, doesn't it? Are you sure you can't get her in earlier?

try this

Pryce said:

Hello all,

I have a structural question: can you introduce a few major characters in Act Two? In my case this is the femme fatale and the not-so-big villain, the underboss.
The femme fatale deceives the hero during Act Two, disappears near the end of the Act, and then resurfaces as a goodie in Act Three, working with the hero against the big villain.
The not-so-big villain is the hero's primary antagonist in Act Two, but his death at the end of the Act leads to the Plot Point and the escalating action of Act Three.
I've managed to introduce the most important good guys and bad guys in Act One, but these two just don't seem to fit. Any ideas?

Thanks

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remove a few baddies who won't make it to act 3. then you'll have some psace fro your femme fatale.

good luck

The general rule is that the only characters who need to be introduced by the end of the first act are protagonist and the antagonist. Otherwise, anything goes. I would advise introducing any other main characters by the halfway point of the movie at the latest, even if it's just through rumor.

The femme fatale is sort of an interesting exception. It depends on what definition you are using: If you are referring to the protagonist's love interest, then you need to introduce her within a few pages of the protagonist's intro (just to establish the tightness of their connection).

If you're talking about a woman that's really pretty and is going to betray him, then you get away with introducing as late as the first few pages of the second act. Any later, and you won't be able to show the effects of her betrayal, or set up her return.

FR

Do whatever tells the story best, and don't worry about the right or wrong time to introduce characters.

Consider how you want people to feel about the character. For the most part, the longer a character is on screen, the more time an audience has to invest in him or her - whether you want them to love 'em or hate 'em. The less time you have to "sell" a character to an audience, the harder you have to work at it. But, you should be working hard already.

If you want the late introduction of your characters to have particular impact, consider ways to make the audience anticipate meeting those characters - either directly, like the other characters know about them and talk about them ("He's the biggest crime boss in Prince Edward County, dude. If everything goes to plan, and he agrees to meet with you, watch your back or he'll watch it for you... with a bullet.") or indirectly, through foreshadowing or having an earlier version of the character set the stakes ("I tried to save her and I couldn't, Sammy. If I get a second chance at a woman like that, this here whole town's gonna burn.")

Telling a story is always more important than following someone else's formula. I guarantee you the writers you respect and admire most don't allow structure to get in the way of the story they want to tell.

I think that in balance, the best template to use in this case is to find some scripts that were written on spec by first-time writers which actually got bought and made into movies...success in screenwriting is a damned daunting thing, and one's product would have to be extra-special to have the main adversary introduced so late in the game. That should be where the primary conflict lies, and delaying it likely does no good.

Of course, free advice is usually worth whatever was paid for it.

Pryce said:

PS I'm afraid I don't get the Han Solo reference -it's been a long time since I saw Star Wars. I'm guessing he appears late in the film?

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Han Solo doesn't appear until a few scenes after the first act break, when Luke is ready to go on his adventure.

FR

Do whatever works: as long as you don't keep introducing big new characters all the way through, which might make a reader and/or audience lose focus. You're going to be re-written anyway so just make sure the story fits and Bob's your uncle. Or in my case my dog.