THE 3 ACT HIT LIST:

Movie moguls, TV hacks and comic book gurus story-crunching methods:

• HAVE AN IDEA OF HOW MANY PAGES YOU’LL NEED to cover the duration of the entire story, usually timed at about one minute per page in script terms (using a double spaced, feature film format), with 90/120 pages equaling a 90/120 minute feature film. Use Courier font at 12 pt double space, and get a sample from somewhere, or download some software.

• START YOUR STORY WITH THE STATUS QUO, an example of your hero’s normal state.

• STORY STRUCTURE 1: Basically, the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' have a series of encounters that end indecisively until the forces of righteousness prevail. The form of what they’re fighting over (McGuffin) changes, but the conflict never does. The two antagonists punch it out until the nobler one wins. This PREMISE is the essence of what makes your story unique, or a cliché.

• STORY STRUCTURE 2: The three acts. Set up Act I with the HOOK, that special something that happens on the first page that makes us stay for the second page. Think of the pre-credit sequence in 007 movies, or in Star Wars when the battle cruiser chases the rebel vessel.

Hook 1: Open on action! Big and dramatic, preferably posing a question.

Hook 2: A question about what the user can’t see. A character opens a box – what’s inside?

Hook 3: Present danger! Some deadly threat is lying in wait for the happily unaware hero.

Hook 4: An image so striking the user must continue. You need an extraordinarily gifted artist.

Hook 5: At least have a character who is about to stand up or open a door.

• DON’T OPEN ON AN INANIMATE OBJECT, unless it’s about to do something. People are usually interested in other people, not things.

• START SCENES AS LATE AS POSSIBLE, just before we’re about to be intrigued. Forget about coming in off the street and climbing up the stairs, just kick down the door. The essence of drama, and especially melodrama, is compression. Show us only what’s important to the story.

• GRAB THE AUDIENCES ATTENTION AND GET THE STORY GOING AT THE SAME TIME, then always keep the story moving forward. Don’t write anything that doesn’t contribute to your story. Don’t peek in at your characters when they’re shaving, show them doing something important. If you really want to capture someone’s attention, work out what everybody would expect the hero to do, then do the opposite. Write around formula, cast against type, try to find that magical something.

“What the French call, a certain… I don’t know what.”
Doctor Evil, The Spy Who Shagged Me.

• By the end of the first act, you should have introduced the four major character groups; e.g.

The HERO/the supporting protagonists: Luke Skywalker, C3PO and R2D2.

The NEMESIS/a hierarchy of antagonists: Darth Vader, and by association the Emperor.

The ROMANCE: Princess Leia (part of R2D2’s secret message/McGuffin).

The MENTORS & PARTNERS: Obi Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Yoda, etc.

• STORIES ARE ABOUT CHANGE, an alteration in some ordinary state. Show the change to whatever situation provides the story’s conflicts. Luke’s life is changed by "the McGuffin".

• INTRODUCE THE McGUFFIN as early as possible. You’ll naturally do this to get your story going. Director Alfred Hitchcock contributed many amazing ideas to the art of visual storytelling, and intensively storyboarded all his scripts, based on photographs taken of actual locations. In his interview with Francoise Truffaut, Hitchcock explains two important elements of screenwriting:

THE McGUFFIN: Whatever the hero and villain are fighting over. As defined by Hitchcock, it is of vital importance to all of the main characters; the secret code, the treasure map, the glass slipper, but of little importance to the audience - its purpose is to galvanize the characters into action. The McGuffin should seem credible to avoid belittling the hero’s concern, unless you’re being purposefully funny. The Star Wars McGuffin: Princess Leia plants a secret message for the Rebel Alliance inside R2D2. She’s also a tantalizing romance for Luke and Han Solo.

THE TIME BOMB: Another Hitchcock idea; the audience is aware of crucial facts that the hero doesn’t know; e.g.

A couple talking in a bar, unaware a bomb is set to explode under their table. There is a clock on the wall. We anticipate the explosion, and long to warn them of the danger.

• Devise the INCITING INCIDENT, an event that causes the hero to react, providing the task or puzzle that galvanizes the hero into action. Upset the balance in your hero’s life; e.g. Luke finds the (McGuffin) message carried inside R2D2, but his Uncle won’t let him act upon it – when the evil Empire’s troops kill Luke’s family, he decides to join Obi Wan and become a Jedi. Big stuff!

• ACT II: Take the story in a new direction, make something unexpected happen. Complicate your hero’s life by adding an exhibition of their powers, adding other problems/obstacles. Obi Wan takes Luke to a spaceport to meet Han Solo; will Luke survive this strange encounter?

• SUSPENSE VERSUS SURPRISE : Suspense is a state of mental uncertainty and excitement; awaiting an outcome, accompanied by apprehension and anxiety. SURPRISE has little entertainment value – bang, it’s over. Hitchcock explained how SUSPENSE CAN keep an audience enthralled for hours, and how it's almost the opposite of surprise.

The Star Wars alien bar scene is filled with suspense; shadows, strange languages and hidden threats, climaxing in an exhibition of Obi Wan’s expertise with a light saber (severing his opponent's hand, a foreshadowing device), and Han Solo's exchange with an alien mercenary (Luke's partners both prove themselves worthy in this scene). Will they get away from the approaching storm troopers?

After the Millennium Falcon blasts the hero into space in the middle of the Act II, Obi Wan begins to teach Luke about the Force. Obi feels the terrible power of the Death Star as it destroys a planet and we experience RISING TENSION through his pain, due to the acting of Alec Guinness. The heroes rally themselves, Luke and Han fighting off an attack by Darth Vader’s forces. THE BATTLE IS ON; Will Chewbacca fix the machine and make the jump to hyperspace in time?

IT’S A RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK, OR A... tick tick tick
TIME BOMB! Relay audience suspense by:

• We know the hero will survive, but will the lesser characters live through it?

• How will the hero accomplish something extremely difficult? We know he’ll escape, but how?

• We know Detective Columbo will best the villain, but the bad guy's so clever, how will he do it?

• Add more perils to overcome, let your hero fail occasionally. Heroic failure is great drama.

• Use RISING ACTION: Make each scene in the plot more intense; each action bigger, each obstacle more complex or dangerous. Then provide a CATHARSIS - a relief, usually sudden, from the tension you’ve created. This RISING TENSION ensures that you won’t bore anybody.

• DEVISE MORE SITUATIONS AND CONFLICTS, and answer some questions. Where are we, what are we doing, who’s the good guy fighting, what’s at stake? What is the conflict/McGuffin all about?

• GET THE HERO INTO TROUBLE. Put them out on a limb and start sawing it off. Luke, Obi and Han go aboard the Death Star to rescue Princess Leia – remember the Garbage Compactor scene. Then Obi Wan is killed by Darth Vader as Luke and the others escape to fight another day.

ACT III: The race to the finish, the hero overcomes more threats and obstacles. Adhere to the principle of RISING ACTION and you’ll naturally reach a final moment of confrontation, or CLIMAX.

• Another trick of rising action, especially in Act III – is the FINAL COUNTDOWN; e.g. the story of the first Star Wars film is about two robots taking a secret message to the Rebel Alliance. The message eventually reaches the right hands, allowing the Rebels to mount an attack on the Empire. As the Rebels attack, the Death Star is preparing to destroy another planet, but the giant weapon must wait until it’s target clears the orbit of a circling moon.

Will Luke drop a bomb down the rat-hole before the bad guys blow up the planet? This is a classic TIME BOMB situation.

• AT THE LAST MOMENT, add another action scene or some plot development, preferably both, highlighting the fact that the hero can’t possibly win. Luke loses confidence after battling Darth Vader in space, but Obi Wan speaks from the grave to urge his disciple to “Use the force Luke!”

• RESOLUTION AND DENOUEMENT: A kind of post-script, easing the viewer out of your world.

• DELIVER A SENSE OF COMPLETION, even if there are many episodes to come.

• ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS. Never leave them wondering how or why something happened.

• DON’T TWIST YOUR STORY OUT OF SHAPE to meet the requirements of a formula outline like this.

• KNOW WHAT THE END OF THE STORY IS BEFORE YOU WRITE THE START. It’s a good idea to know what you’re working towards. Sometimes you can even work backwards, letting the story structure emerge organically from the incidents that are needed to arrive at your big finish. This way writing has a job to do, and the story is always guaranteed to be going somewhere.

An exponent of this was the choreographer Ballanchine, who would establish the tempo of a dance by listening carefully to the music, finding the final climax of the piece first. He'd give his dancers directions for the pose they must strike at that climax, and then he worked backward, finding the second last climax and indicating his dancers’ pose for that, and so on until he had reached the start. He would then choreograph the piece, joining all the dots to the end.

“We always tried to get a good, interesting, climactic situation and then find a reason for that situation. It was a good way of making stories… to find a big, climactic gag… a very interesting situation – then build everything up to that point.”
Carl Barks,
creator of the Disney character Scrooge McDuck