ah, crap, and damnit!....

preyer · Jan 18, 2008

i'm just getting my head around what the hell is 'supposed' to happen in a three act structure, now, according to someone on another thread (in novel writing), that's old hat. now, so the person claims, screenwriters are all about five acts.

wtf is a five act structure? and does that only apply to television shows or mainstream movies as well?

Plot Device · Jan 18, 2008

The only film I can think of with a true blue, bona-fide, certifiable 5-act structure is Four Weddings and a Funeral (do the math and the title will tell you that to be the case). I'm sure there are others, but my understanding is that they're rare for feature films.

icerose · Jan 18, 2008

Don't worry about it Preyer.

I have been writing scripts for over 2 years now and I have never heard from any pro EVER anything about 5 acts.

Stick to the 3 acts.

krano · Jan 18, 2008

the way i've understood it, a five act script is just the further division of a three act script. the second act is divided into three parts to provide more "plot points" or however you call it.

i don't know for sure, but that's my impression. basically, it's the same structure as a three act story, but more specifically tuned.

Plot Device · Jan 18, 2008

I am a huge fan of the "sequencing" method. Sequecing is an additional dimension of the 3-act structure. According to sequencing, a 3-act film of 2 hours in length will have 8 sequences of 15 minutes each. You can overlay all 8 sequences on top of all three acts and they will line up nicely and will not interfere with your understanding of each other, but instead will help crystalize and reinforce your understanding of them both.

Here is the 3-act structure, spread over 2 hours:

MINUTES: . 0-----15-----30-----45-----60-----75-----90-----105-----120
ACTS: .... <-- ACT 1 ---> <--------- ACT 2 ---------> <---- ACT 3 --->

And here is the sequencing structure:

MINUTES: . 0-----15-----30-----45-----60-----75-----90-----105-----120
SEQUENCES: < SQ 1> <SQ 2> <SQ 3> <SQ 4> <SQ 5> <SQ 6> <SQ 7 > < SQ 8 >

And here's what it looks like when you overlap them:

MINUTES: . 0-----15-----30-----45-----60-----75-----90-----105-----120
SEQUENCES: < SQ 1> <SQ 2> <SQ 3> <SQ 4> <SQ 5> <SQ 6> <SQ 7 > < SQ 8 >
ACTS: .... <-- ACT 1 ---> <--------- ACT 2 ---------> <---- ACT 3 --->

Utilizing this method helped me get a firm handle on my pacing and my page count.

FinbarReilly · Jan 18, 2008

Yep...A five act is just a three act with just two more acts. Keep in mind that novel writing is a different beast entirely than script writing, and so the rules are entirely different; it's not that uncommon to see novels with as many as seven or nine acts.

FR

Plot Device · Jan 18, 2008

The best way I was able to grasp sequencing was when it was explained to me that the movie Alien is a perfect specimen of this approach. There are 7 characters in Alien, and they each get picked off one by one until there's only one of them left. So every fifteen minutes somebody dies.

Most contemporary horror films--especially the "dead teenager movies"-- follow this formula. So anytime you see a horror film start off with 7 or 8 characters, you know that by film's end only one of them will be left alive. Check you wrist watch every time someone dies, and it should clock out to roughly 15 minutes between each casualty.

preyer · Jan 18, 2008

that's interesting, plot. i'll have to research sequencing. as you probably know, i'm just getting into screenwriting.

fin, this poster had avered that screenwriters are doing the five acts now. their position, not mine, lol. true, it was in the novels forum, but it'd slipping into screenwriting for a minute, that's where it came from.

i can see four acts if you divide act II in half, but i'm at a loss as to where you'd get five acts and what they're supposed to do better than three acts.

Plot Device · Jan 18, 2008

One more set of guidelines that helped me grasp of it all:

Your "set up" or you delima should be amde perfectly clear some time around Page 15.

Your hero's getting forced (and I do mean forced!) to make a decision to swing into action in a no-turning-back scenario should fall no later than Page 30.

Your mid-point is also typically your low-point, where things look really really grim and we are all feeling really sad about things. And THAT is Page 60.

The realization of an ultra-critical crisis and the need to address it should fall no later than Page 90.

The revelation of the existence of a conspiracy ("two characters previously thought unrelated are found to be related by alliance") should fall on or before Page 105. In Alien this is when it was learned that one of the crew members was really an android and that he was was programmed to protect the alien, even at the expense of the crew.

And from there, your showdown and/or chase and final resolution.

Plot Device · Jan 18, 2008

preyer said:
that's interesting, plot. i'll have to research sequencing. as you probably know, i'm just getting into screenwriting.

fin, this poster had avered that screenwriters are doing the five acts now. their position, not mine, lol. true, it was in the novels forum, but it'd slipping into screenwriting for a minute, that's where it came from.

i can see four acts if you divide act II in half, but i'm at a loss as to where you'd get five acts and what they're supposed to do better than three acts.

Ignore him.

Plot Device · Jan 18, 2008

I just thought of three more very very rare films with 5-act structures: Being Human,
Creepshow, and The Twilight Zone.

But my general observation is that only one film in a thousand will have a TRUE 5-act structure. So don't even worry about it unless you're just so fascinated that you MUST study it and try to emmulate it.

FinbarReilly · Jan 18, 2008

Just realized: He could be arguing five acts if he broke them down as follows:

1) Set up the problem.
2) Hero realizes that he has to deal with it.
3) Hero tries to deal with it, but has setbacks (and each attempt is it's own act).
4) Problem dealt with.
5) Denoument.

Although that works in novel writing, screen writers would combine 1 and 2 into Act 1, and 4 and 5 into Act 3.

If it helps....
FR

Diana W. · Jan 18, 2008

Plot Device said:
One more set of guidelines that helped me grasp of it all:

Your "set up" or you delima should be amde perfectly clear some time around Page 15.

Your hero's getting forced (and I do mean forced!) to make a decision to swing into action in a no-turning-back scenario should fall no later than Page 30.

Your mid-point is also typically your low-point, where things look really really grim and we are all feeling really sad about things. And THAT is Page 60.

The realization of an ultra-critical crisis and the need to address it should fall no later than Page 90.

The revelation of the existence of a conspiracy ("two characters previously thought unrelated are found to be related by alliance") should fall on or before Page 105. In Alien this is when it was learned that one of the crew members was really an android and that he was was programmed to protect the alien, even at the expense of the crew.

And from there, your showdown and/or chase and final resolution.

Thanks Plot Device that's great advice and is going to be very helpful to me as I am prepping my first screenplay. I am going to make a good note of this.

LIVIN · Jan 18, 2008

I've learned five act structure... surprised some people have never heard of it... then again, ...

NikeeGoddess · Jan 18, 2008

preyer, why are you taking advice from a novel writer in regards to screenwriting?!!! and taking it so serious that it deserves your frustration?!!!

anyhoo - the details of the acts matter less than the content. if your story is intriguing and engrossing then no one will care about the acts, how many they are, and how long they are, etc... the content of your story is more important than anything else.

nmstevens · Jan 18, 2008

Plot Device said:
One more set of guidelines that helped me grasp of it all:

Your "set up" or you delima should be amde perfectly clear some time around Page 15.

Your hero's getting forced (and I do mean forced!) to make a decision to swing into action in a no-turning-back scenario should fall no later than Page 30.

Your mid-point is also typically your low-point, where things look really really grim and we are all feeling really sad about things. And THAT is Page 60.

The realization of an ultra-critical crisis and the need to address it should fall no later than Page 90.

The revelation of the existence of a conspiracy ("two characters previously thought unrelated are found to be related by alliance") should fall on or before Page 105. In Alien this is when it was learned that one of the crew members was really an android and that he was was programmed to protect the alien, even at the expense of the crew.

And from there, your showdown and/or chase and final resolution.

The number of movies of which this "two characters/conspiracy" beat is untrue or of which you'd have to so twist its meaning to make it true is so overwhelmingly vast I can't even begin to imagine how one would even go about even pretending that it's a rule.

Who are the two "unrelated characters" found to be related by alliance in, say, the last act of Star Wars?

Jaws?

Casablanca

Gone With the Wind

Citizen Kane

Silence of the Lambs

I mean, I'm not saying that there aren't *any* movies that have this beat -- but it is so far removed from an essential story element that I shudder to think that people are including it, imagining that it actually is.

NMS

Plot Device · Jan 18, 2008

Sorry, NMS, the correct wording by me should have been "a good place to reveal the existence of a conspiracy" (if there even is one).

This is Soth's method, BTW, from his book "The Mini-Movie Method."

And in Star Wars, they hid the tracking device on the Milennium Falcon Not a "conspiracy" per se, but it still qualifies as a sneakiness/sleight of hand/blind-sided kind of thing.

xhouseboy · Jan 19, 2008

Plot Device said:
The realization of an ultra-critical crisis and the need to address it should fall no later than Page 90.

The revelation of the existence of a conspiracy ("two characters previously thought unrelated are found to be related by alliance") should fall on or before Page 105. In Alien this is when it was learned that one of the crew members was really an android and that he was was programmed to protect the alien, even at the expense of the crew.

Man, and here's me thinking all this time that this was called a 'twist'.

preyer · Jan 19, 2008

i was going to question the 'conspiracy' thing to, but you explained it nicely, plot.

me? take advice from a novelist? pshaw! not that i'm officially qualified, but i'm one of guys who gives advice, lol. what threw me was the poster's assuredness. the novel discussion was about structure, and i think it's a cinch that screenwriting will get mentioned, usually in a misleading way (as has been my experience, at any rate). suddenly 'all' screenwriters do the five act thing? since when? since i'm just learning these things, i felt the need to investigate.

it's nice to hear of other 'methods,' too. for example, plot says the midpoint is page 60, blake snyder would say page 55. (i reference snyder because his is the only book i've read so far. i find it odd, too, that i've never read a 'how to' on novel writing, though i think i'd be a bad screenwriter if i didn't read some 'how to's and see how they compare. plus, it's a helluva lot easier seeing if these methods really work in a film as opposed to a scattershot of novels.) snyder also says that your midpoint can be either a false victory/peak or a false defeat/nadir, but at the 'all is lost' beat (his terminology) at page 75 it needs to be the opposite. bear in mind that snyder is all about the high concept movie, purely mainstream stuff. art house flicks ain't his bag. he bases his numbers on a 110 page script with 40 scenes at most (though he suggests four sections, act I, IIa, IIb, and II) have nine scenes and, if you feel the need to, the last four for your own excess/gratification.

livin, that's why i asked about the five acts. sure, i think we've all heard of them, but i just don't know what they're supposed to be. i guess technically those episodic movies are five acts (or however many 'episodes' there are), but within that each story has its own three (?) act structure, no?

icerose · Jan 19, 2008

And everyone approaches it a little differently. I think in time blocks, something has to happen every five minutes at least. Keep the story moving, pushing forward. I also think in story arc and character arc vs act structure and it comes out with everything in place, I guess I subconsciously just put it in that way now that I've written so many scripts, but it takes some getting used to.

Just find your way that works and run with it.

NikeeGoddess · Jan 19, 2008

i find it odd, too, that i've never read a 'how to' on novel writing

i believe it's because it's the narrative style of writing that we learn in school. they don't teach scriptwriting style or format.

if you purchase Snyder's next book, something about the Cat going to the Movies - then you'll see how his method applies directly to several films.

honestly, i don't know how people map out their story and select what page something will happen in their story. i prefer to write the story and hope that the strength of the storytelling will put the "uh ohs" and "oh shits" in the right place. if it doesn't, for example - i think people tend to put in filler stuff to make it hit that page at the right spot. to me that means the story itself isn't strong enough.

ah, crap, and damnit!....

preyer

excessively spartan

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

icerose

Lost in School Work

krano

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

FinbarReilly

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

preyer

excessively spartan

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

FinbarReilly

Diana W.

I'm evolving

LIVIN

NikeeGoddess

nmstevens

What happened?

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

xhouseboy

In the Yellow Woods

preyer

excessively spartan

icerose

Lost in School Work

NikeeGoddess