Structure

I'm on a quest. A mission. A purpose - find the structure behind a screenplay. Not just any screenplay, but great screenplays that make great movies. All the analysis and people that have researched scripts talk about the structure behind the story, the step by step journey of the character that makes a compelling, interesting, fascinating journey that we are willing to go along for the ride.

It really hit me last week, that writing a feature length script without a guide, a roadmap, is screenplay suicide. Now certainly, there are very strange movies that have been made, the oddballs that you watch and go "what the fuck is happening here?" and those movies get made. That's just not my style. I like things to be right, and just winging it and putting random scenes in a script won't get the job done. I want to know that I've just written a great fucking story that's going to make a great fucking movie. So that's where story structure has come into it.

It's been said if you're going to build a house, better have a plan. And that plan is the structure that holds the details of the house. If you want a house that looks mediterranean, or dutch, or southwest, those are themes built ON TOP of structure - not the structure itself. You can take any old house and redecorate it to look like a beach house in Brazil. The STRUCTURE of the interior just needs to be stable and hold up the details. That's how I'm looking at a script. Get the structure built, then it can be all the sci-fi, action, romance, adventure or drama movie you want.

In my previous efforts at writing, I could feel that I just didn't know what I was doing. Where is the story? What are the characters up to? What the hell should I write here, now, at this point in the story?

Syd Field. Everyone has read his book, or was told to read his book if you're in screenwriting. I loved reading and see the beginning structures of a movie script, but it only took me so far. First act, second act, third act. Great there's three parts to write, but I've got 25 scenes in Act I, 58 in Act II, and 19 in Act III. What the hell should happen in those scenes? My dillema.

I have some books that supposedly crack the code and have a structure to create a script on. I'll report back when I find some answers and what the results are. I've been doing some research this week, and I feel the beginnings of seeing the matrix and what a script can be if you know the secret.

If anybody has intimate secret society knowledge of these scriptwriting secrets, email me.