“The Sequence what??”
Edit: A couple of people in the comments section have told me that someone (Chris Soth) already uses the term the “mini-movie method,” so I’m changing the terminology back to the original “Sequence Approach.”
Why is writing a script so difficult? I can answer that easily. Because there are a lot of damn pages to fill! Specifically, it’s that second act that kills everyone. That’s where the enormity of the story hits you, and when a lot of writers realize they don’t have enough to fill up all that space. I mean when you think about it, writing a first act isn’t that hard. You set up your characters, introduce your concept, get the plot rolling. Anybody can do that. But as soon as you get past those first 30 pages, you find it harder and harder to move on. All of a sudden filling up even five pages feels impossible. You just want to get to the damn end so you can resolve the story.
I recently got to thinking, “What’s the problem here? What is it about that vast amount of white space that trips people up so much?” And I realized it’s the lack of structure within that space. It’s a little like wanting to be a doctor and thinking about all that schooling you need. 10 years. 10 YEARS! How the hell are you supposed to get through that?
But when you start breaking it down into years and then semesters and then classes – in other words, into MANAGEABLE CHUNKS – it starts to feel doable. And it’s the same thing with screenwriting. You need to find a way to break those 120 screenplay pages down into manageable chunks.
This brought me back to a screenwriting philosophy I keep gaining more and more respect for as time goes by: “The Sequence Approach.” This is not my creation. I learned about it through Paul Gulino’s book, “The Sequence Approach,” (the only book I link to on the site besides my own) and he learned it because it’s how pre-1960 Hollywood used to format their screenplays. Now I never liked that name: “The Sequence Approach.” It sounds too mathematical for a craft that’s supposed to be creative. But it is what it is so it will have to do!
Now like I said, our big problem here is the fact that when we look at a screenplay as a whole, it’s too big. Even if we break it down into 3 acts, that’s still 50-60 unstructured pages we have to fill up in that second act. It’s too daunting! We need a way to create manageable chunks within that framework, portions small enough that they don’t intimidate us.
The Sequence Approach basically states that instead of writing one giant 110 page story, we write eight 12-15 page smaller stories. Think about it. Everyone can write a 15 page short, right? That’s easy. And if you can write one 15-page short, you can write eight 15-page shorts.
All you have to do is come up with a movie concept that features a protagonist with a goal, then write 8 mini-scripts with that protagonist (or in some cases, supporting characters) pursuing 8 linked mini-goals. The pursuit of these mini-goals will last 12-15 pages each, and be little mini-scripts in themselves, with their own setup, conflict, and resolution. Let me show you how it works in action.
I thought up a movie idea not long ago that I kinda dig. It’s not great, but it will serve our purposes for this article. Here it is:
TITLE: Trust Fund Dan
GENRE: Comedy
PREMISE: A 40 year old trust fund baby who’s been living off his dead parents’ money for the past 20 years, is informed that an overlooked banking error from 1990 has resulted in the termination of his trust fund. For the first time in his life, he’ll have to get a job and learn to live in the real world.
So before you write your script, you want to lay out all eight of your sequences and write out the objective of your protagonist within each. Each of these eight objectives will drive the story forward until the next sequence arrives. In addition to listing the goal of your character in each sequence, list the purpose of the sequence itself (a general breakdown of where you want it to go) along with any other ideas you may have. So this is how the sequence outline for Trust Fund Dan might look like:
Sequence 1
Goal: Dan tries to put together the ultimate party.
Purpose: Establish that Dan is rich and lives off his trust fund. The purpose of this sequence is to show how easy Dan’s life is and how out of touch he is with the real world. Sleeping in, getting his next stash of pot, and attending parties are really his only three obligations. Establish, as he calls people and puts together this lavish party, that he’s a moron who’s never worked a day in his life and doesn’t even understand the concept of money. At the end of the sequence, he’ll get the call from his lawyer and learn that all of his money has been taken away.
Sequence 2
Goal: Dan tries to get his money back.
Purpose: Now that it’s gone, Dan desperately tries to figure out what happened and how to get his money back. He goes to the Trust Fund lawyers, the banks, everyone associated with his money, to figure out what happened. But because he’s so stupid and knows nothing about the real world, he fails to understand any of what they’re telling him. But the consensus is clear: He’s broke. He asks his friends for money, but finds out that none of them were his real friends. They were just leeching off him. At the end of the sequence, he doesn’t even have enough money to buy food. He realizes he needs to get a job.
Sequence 3
Goal: Dan tries to get a job.
Purpose: Much like the scenes in Step-Brothers, these scenes will show just how clueless Dan is about “jobs” and how the real world works. Have fun with these scenes. He goes through a montage of job interviews and makes a complete fool out of himself. He finally gets stuck as a part-time janitor at a local community college.
Sequence 4
Goal: To figure a way out of this mess.
Purpose: When Dan realizes just how shitty real work is and how little he gets paid, he starts plotting a way back to his life of luxury and invests in every get-rich quick scheme he can find. From spending his entire month’s pay on scratch-off lottery tickets to starting up sketchy internet businesses that rely exclusively on porn advertising. His scary co-janitor, a former gang-member, even enlists him in a vague business venture that involves something about “credit cards.” He fails at everything because he doesn’t know anything. He also occasionally runs into a very pretty teacher there who he instantly falls in love with.
Sequence 5
Goal: To ask the teacher out (or find a way to spend more time with her).
Purpose: Because Dan has no idea how to manage money, he’s unable to pay rent and is kicked out of his apartment. He is now officially homeless and starts secretly living at the college. In his pursuit of the teacher, he starts hanging out in her lectures and, for the first time, starts to actually learn something. Because he’s also the worst janitor ever, he’s always in danger of being fired. But he eventually convinces the teacher to go out with him on a date (which should be a funny scene, since he won’t be able to pay for it).
Sequence 6
Goal: To get back on his feet.
Purpose: Despite the teacher starting to affect how Dan sees the world (she helps him see the value of hard work), Dan finds out that his little co-venture with his fellow ex-con janitor buddy has panned out! They’re bringing in the dough! Dan quits his janitor job and starts spending money like crazy again, taking the teacher on an extravagant date of the likes he used to experience all the time. Dan’s on top of the world again and he couldn’t be happier. But alas, he has no idea that his “business” involves stealing people’s credits cards, and at the end of the sequence, he’s arrested and thrown in jail. Mortified at what he was doing, the teacher leaves him.
Sequence 7
Goal: To figure himself out.
Purpose: After a short stint in jail, Dan’s mysteriously bailed out. It’s his lawyer, who informs him that he was able to pull off a miracle and retain half the money from the original trust fund, enough for Dan to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Dan should be excited, but he isn’t. For the first time, he wants to know what he really wants out of life. He finds out more about how his parents earned their money, how hard they worked for it, and again that theme of “the value of hard work” is hit upon.
Sequence 8
Goal: Get the girl back.
Purpose: Dan decides that instead of wasting money on a bunch of stupid boring shit, he’s going to invest it in a degree and pursue a real career. So he enrolls at the college he was a janitor at. He enrolls in all of the teacher’s classes, but she ignores and rebuffs all his advances. In the end, he pulls out of all of her classes and focuses on getting a degree. Finally, he’s learned to appreciate the “value of hard work.” By chance, one day after school, he sees her in the parking lot and her car won’t start (Her car not starting will be set up multiple times throughout the script. This will be the big payoff). He smiles. Walks towards her. Cut to black.
So this is obviously a rough and tumble outline of the story. But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s a first run-through. The idea is to get your 8 sequences down so you have a game plan in place. As you get started on the script, you’ll add more detail to each sequence, move things around, and add scenes and characters. I might make Dan’s Trust Fund lawyer a bigger character, for example. I might have him befriend a few of the kids at the college and give those characters some arcs of their own. I might make some of these sequence goals more concrete (Number 7, “To figure himself out,” feels a little vague. I’d like to improve upon that). I’d try to introduce the love interest earlier somehow. All of that will be added as you either write your script or do successive drafts of your outline.
Now it’s not always going to be this simple. Each script is different. Things get tricky when there isn’t a clear goal for a sequence, which is the case, for example, with a lot of romantic comedies. I don’t recall any sequence goals in When Harry Met Sally. But in that case, you’d still divide your script into 8 smaller scripts. You just need to work harder to figure out what each of those smaller stories will focus on. A story is easiest to tell when the main character is trying to achieve something. But since you don’t always have that, you might instead say, “The opening sequence in When Harry Met Sally is about Harry and Sally getting to know each other.” In other words the “goal” is transferred over to you the writer. You write the 15-page sequence where Harry and Sally ride to New York together with a strong emphasis on getting to know each other. The idea here is that by breaking everything down into these manageable chunks, it’ll be easier to create some element of focus for each “chunk,” and therefore you should be able to get through the entire script more easily.
There ya have it, an easy-peasy way to write a script. Try it out. You may be surprised at how simple it is!
