Wow, I can’t believe it. We’re only three weeks away from finishing a first draft!

As a reminder, you should’ve completed somewhere between 70-80 pages of your screenplay by this point, or, if you break your script into 8 sequences (each sequence lasting 10–15 pages), you should’ve just completed sequence number 5. That means we have 3 more sequences to go.

WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5

This is another little-talked about section of the screenplay, but I consider it a little easier than last week’s section, since we’re writing towards a clear story beat: the end of the second act. Any time you’re writing towards something definitive, it’s easier to figure out how to get there.

So what happens at the end of the second act?

THE LOWEST POINT

This is the point in the script where your heroes, in that big final push to achieve their goal, will definitively fail. While you, the reader, will know this isn’t true, the idea is to convince the audience that the movie is effectively over. They’ve lost, they’ve given up, they have no options left.

The trick here, like any creative choice, is to make it specific to your own movie. For Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s when Indy and Marion get captured by the Nazis. In Deadpool, it’s when Ajax kidnaps Deadpool’s girlfriend. In Room, it’s when Ma is taken to a mental institution.

The operative word here is: DOUBT

This moment in the script should be the moment when the audience has the MOST DOUBT that the hero is going to achieve their goal than at any other time in the movie.

Now that you know what that plot beat is (and many of you should already know from completing your outline six weeks ago!), you can write towards it. If you know, for example, that you’re going to have Indy and Marion get captured at the end of the second act, you can construct an 8-scene sequence to get them to that point.

This is why movies with goals are so advantageous when it comes to structuring. If your hero is actively trying to achieve something, it’s easy to come up with ways to get them there. You just write another sequence with them trying to achieve that goal and have them fail.

When you’re writing a character piece, however, it’s trickier. The goals will be more abstract. But for the script to work, SOME sort of “this is what needs to happen” directive must be put in place by the writer so that he can work against it.

Again, let’s take character piece “Room” as an example. Once Ma and Jack get out of room, the abstract goal “for mother and son to survive in this new world” is what drives the story. That’s why we’re still reading – to see if these two are going to be okay.

Once you’ve established that, you can play against it, by infusing a major event that creates DOUBT (the end of the second act!). So what do they do? Ma has a mental breakdown and is forced to go to a mental institution. Our goal (for mother and son to survive in this new world) is now put into serious doubt. So of course we’re going to stick around to see if Ma’s going to make it out of the institution and reunite with her son.

The only way to understand how important that plot choice was, is to imagine the movie without it. If Ma stays on an even keel at this point in the story, or even gets better, we’re feeling GOOD going into the final act, and as counterintuitive as it may sound, if you make the audience feel good (or “safe”) for too long, they get bored. They need that doubt. They need that uncertainty. Which leads me to my next point. This moment in the script must feel like the pinnacle of uncertainty.

You should’ve been raising the stakes throughout the script. At this moment, we should feel like it’s all or nothing. Whereas in that first journey out into the world (sequence 3 – right after the first act), there’s still a feeling that they could somehow salvage their lives if this doesn’t work out, at this point it should feel like if they don’t achieve their goal, they lose everything, whether that be their literal life or their figurative life (their job, their family, their home, their reputation). If we’re not feeling that kind of pressure moving into the end of the second act, you’re not doing it right. Because then when they do fail (and reach their “lowest point”), it won’t really feel like they’ve failed.

That’s what’s happening on the surface. But if you really want to make this section sing, you want to be exploring the same low point BETWEEN your characters and WITHIN your characters.

So remember how we were talking about your hero’s flaw? Well, this is the moment in the script where overcoming that flaw must be at its lowest point as well. In essence, this is the moment when your protagonist should doubt himself the most. Are they good enough? Do they believe in themselves? Has their selfishness finally doomed them? In When Harry Met Sally, Harry’s flaw (his fear of commitment) has left him alone and depressed.

And finally, you want to do the same with your relationships. Every one of them should be on the ropes. In romantic comedies or dramas, this is easy. You just split the main couple up. But you should be doing this in every script. Friends, family members, lovers – almost every one of them should be at odds with your hero. Every relationship should be in jeopardy.

Again, remember what this is: THE LOWEST POINT.

That means your hero should be at his lowest point in every facet of the story: plot, relationships, himself.

You may be noticing a pattern here. In many ways, this sounds like what we did with the midpoint. The heroes hit a major speed-bump, fell into a mini-depression, had to regroup and go back after their goal. We’re doing the same thing here, just more intensely. Well, the reason these sections feel similar is because that’s what storytelling is. It’s a rollercoaster. You bring the audience up to a high (yay! everything’s great!) then pull them back down to a low (oh no, we’re screwed!). And as the story goes on, each high will get higher and each low will get lower. This moment in the script – the end of the second act – will be the lowest. Orrrrr…. maybe it won’t. More on that in a couple of weeks!

Minimum page number to meet: 90 (that’s 15 pages this week guys, less than 3 pages a day!)

Genre: Crime Drama/Thriller
Premise: When a pair of criminal brothers kill four cops during a robbery, the city orders all 17 bridges in Manhattan shut down until the men are caught.
About: This spec just sold last week to new studio STX, becoming well known for their good relationship with China. It’s being produced by Marvel’s new golden boys, the Russo Brothers (Captain America: Civil War). The writer, Adam Mervis, started as a playwright and, in addition to this sale, is currently developing a TV show for USA.
Writer: Adam Mervis
Details: 112 pages (4/21/16 draft)

This was clearly written for Denzel. Wouldn’t be surprised if he signs on soon.

The summer of shitty sequels continues. Turtles 2 made half of what the first movie made opening weekend. It joins X-Men, Divergent, Neighbors, Huntsmen, and Alice in Wonderland as movies whose sequels are dying at the box office (with potential catastrophes Star Trek and Ghostbusters still on the way). Could consumers finally be sending Hollywood a message? Will Tinsletown be forced to do the one thing it’s most afraid of? Come up with original ideas? And is Seventeen Bridges, the town’s most recently acquired spec, the answer to this problem? Let’s find out!

34 year-old Ray Fernandez is in deep to the type of folks who you don’t want to be “in deep” to. And when I say, “in deep,” I mean 200,000 dollars deep. So Ray visits his older brother Felix in Manhattan to ask for his help. Felix used to be a thug but is now on the straight and narrow, and normally he’d tell someone offering him a job to schlep off. But this is his bro, yo.

Ray’s got an idea. He knows of a cocaine delivery center nearby that fronts as a pizza joint. If they could rob that place after a shipment, they could clear 2 million bucks easy and go live on a Mexican beach somewhere for the rest of their lives. Felix finally says ‘fuck it,’ and we cut to the robbery going all sorts of wrong. Not only do they get stuck with a bunch of coke as opposed to hard cash, but they end up killing four New York cops.

Cut to Detective Spevack, a former top-level detective who lost it all after a bad decision. Well, lucky for Spevack, he’s being given a second chance and is named point on this case. The catch? He’s got to find these guys before morning.

So what is Spevack’s first order of business? He shuts down every single bridge in Manhattan. He makes sure these guys aren’t going ANYWHERE. And the manhunt begins.

Meanwhile, the Fernandez’s need to offload that coke they grabbed before they leave the island, since… well, I don’t know why, they just do. So the race begins. Bad guys try to sell coke and run before good guys are forced to open the bridges back up to an increasingly annoyed city. Who will win??

Look, we can’t all be the Golden Gate Bridge.

Some of us have to be that rickety old wood-and-rope bridge that a couple of sherpas threw together five decades ago to connect two mountain peaks.

Which bridge is 17 Bridges? Somewhere in between. But closer to the mountain bridge than the Golden Gate.

My first hesitation with 17 Bridges came via its first monologue. Spevack is telling some entitled dick that he needs to play by his rules if he wants to survive. The monologue is two pages long and covers a lot of shit. How Spevack lost his badge, how his father died of cancer, how he doesn’t drink anymore, how he met the guy who now holds the key to his life, what this dude can expect if he doesn’t cooperate.

And it’s not that you can’t make a monologue like that work. But monologues, like scripts, need a theme. If you’re going to talk forever, there needs to be a point, a feeling that it all connects. And this didn’t feel that way at all. Rather, it felt like a not-so-well-disguised attempt to pump out as much backstory about our hero as possible. In laymen’s terms? The monologue was all the hell over the place.

A good monologue, just like good dialogue, feels effortless. It definitely doesn’t feel like the writer is trying to stuff a bunch of information inside of it. That’s something you need to be aware of. If it ever feels like you’re trying to stuff a lot of shit into any part of your script, whether it be a sequence, a scene, a monologue… STOP. Cut out the 50% you know you don’t need, and then cut more.

One of the basic tenets of screenwriting is: Say as much as possible in as few words as possible. That applies across the board. The only people who can get away with more are geniuses. The Aaron Sorkins, the Woody Allens, the Quentin Tarantinos. And until you’ve come out with a film where everyone praises you as a genius? Assume you aren’t. And write the way that’s proven to work: Less is more.

What about the plot?

Unfortunately, I had problems with this too.

Why is New York being shut down to the tune of several hundred million dollars worth of inconvenience for two hack criminals? These guys are nobodies. And they’re worthy of shutting a city down? I know they killed four cops but within an hour, Spevack has the Fernandez’s names and faces. So if they make it out of Manhattan, is it really going to be that hard to find them?

This is a case of liking one’s concept so much (and it is a cool concept!) that the writer isn’t able to see the logic through the trees. The logic here being: Would New York City really do this? For a terrorist who blew up a bank? Maybe. For a man who shot up 30 people at a school? Maybe. But for a couple of losers? I don’t know, man. That doesn’t sound very realistic to me. And if there’s a lack of realism in the logline, there’s a good chance that the writer won’t establish a suspension of disbelief. If that’s never established, THE MOVIE DOESN’T WORK.

What did the script do right? Well, for starters this is a contained easy to understand high-pressure high-conflict situation, which is an ideal setup for a movie. Everybody’s goals are clear. Our cop-in-charge has to catch the baddies. The baddies have to escape the island. The writer even added a goal for the Fernandez’s – to sell the drugs they found before they leave the island. I tend to like choices like this because if all your characters do is run away, they’re passive. By giving them a goal to achieve, it makes them active.

The problem was, that choice brought up all sorts of questions. Like would they really be trying to sell drugs during the first time in history that Manhattan has closed down all their bridges to catch someone!? And that was my big problem with 17 Bridges. You could never just enjoy the story because you were constantly questioning it.

You’re probably wondering, then, why did it sell?

Easy answer. It’s a cool concept!

Cool concepts are the rose-colored glasses of the screenwriting world. They make all those mistakes look so much prettier!

I believe this project can be saved, much like the abysmal early draft of The Town turned into a solid heist flick when Ben Affleck rewrote it. But in its current form, it doesn’t live up to the promise of its premise.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Like I always say, a cool concept is the one area of screenwriting where you have a chance of selling something that’s not well-written. If someone loves your concept enough that they can imagine the poster, imagine the trailer, and imagine people paying to see it? They can forgive the writing, since all it means is hiring a new screenwriter for $200k-700k to fix the execution. And in the grand scheme of a 50 million dollar movie, that’s not that much.

This is why it kills me to see writers writing about characters traveling across the Sahara Desert on a journey of self-discovery. The execution for that kind of market-less concept has to be Oscar-worthy to even get looked at, much less purchased. It’s much smarter to start with a buzzy concept.

Guess what time it is? It’s time to venture into the SECOND ACT!

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! you say.

Don’t worry, my screenwriting salsolitos. Just like The Beatles, I’m going to hold your hand.

For those of you new to the site or you infrequent visitors, I’m doing a 13 week “Write a Screenplay” Challenge, where I guide you through the process of writing a screenplay step by step. If you missed the first few weeks, you can find them here:

WEEK 0
WEEK 1
WEEK 2

As of today, you should have written 21 pages. That means you’ve completed your inciting incident (located near page 12-15) but are not quite at the end of your first act (page 25). So today, we’ll be covering the break into Act 2, as well as the first sequence of Act 2.

Now I heard some grumbling last week about 3 pages a day being too difficult. Come on, guys. Seriously? That’s one scene. You only have to write a single scene. You’re telling me you can’t write a scene in a day??

Maybe this will help. Brendan O’Brien and Andrew Jay Cohen said that when they were trying to figure out their script, “Neighbors” with director Nicholas Stoller, they’d pitch him a bunch of directions they could go, thinking he’d pick one and let them go write it.

Instead, Stoller would say, “Well let’s try that version right now.” “What do you mean right now?” they’d ask. “Let’s sit down and write it and see if it works?” “You mean write the script… now??” “Yeah.” And they’d sit down and write the whole thing over a few days. If it didn’t work, they’d try a different take.

The point is, you’re capable of one scene a day. Don’t be a perfectionist. Just write.

Okay, on to this week’s challenge. You’ve got between 4-8 pages before the end of your first act. If your hero is in a refusal of the call situation (Luke Skywalker claims he can’t join Obi-Wan because he must stay and help his Uncle on the farm), this will be the last bit of resistance your character experiences before accepting that they have to go on their journey (pursue their goal).

If your hero isn’t refusing the call, this is the last few pages of logistics before they pursue their objective. Indiana Jones don’t refuse no call. He just packs his bags and prepares for the fun. If your character doesn’t have any say in the matter, the forces of the story will simply kick them out on their journey, much like a bird kicks its babies out of the nest to see if they can fly. Tough love, amirite?

Now in some cases, a journey is literal. Rey’s journey in The Force Awakens takes her across the galaxy. Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman take a road trip to Vegas in Rain Man. Joy has to travel deep into the recesses of Riley’s mind in Inside Out.

Other times, it’s more symbolic. As long as your character is constantly pursuing something, even if they’re stationary, it’s considered a journey. To use the aforementioned Neighbors as an example, our heroes may be inside the same house the whole movie, but their “journey” consists of trying to get the frat next door kicked out.

So the first 15 pages of the second act are a unique time in a script. Your heroes are going off on their journey, but since we can’t throw the kitchen sink at the audience right away, this section tends to be more of a “feeling out” period for the characters. Maybe they’re feeling out each other (“Bad Grandpa”) or feeling out the situation (In a heist flick, the characters might scout out the bank they’re planning to rob, or the team they’re trying to recruit).

The late Blake Snyder, whose book “Save The Cat!” is somehow still the best selling screenwriting book out there despite Scriptshadow Secrets being available, famously termed this section, “Fun and Games.” Since Blake mainly wrote comedies, this was meant to define the period in the script where you showed off the promise of your premise.

The best example of this is probably super-hero origin stories. This is the moment when Spider-Man or Ant-Man first get their powers and play around with them. But it can also be applied to other genres. In Jurassic Park, it’s seeing the dinosaurs for the first time. In The Equalizer, it’s when Denzel starts administering justice on the locals.

If all of this is confusing, however, or it doesn’t feel like it applies to your movie, don’t worry. There’s a backup. What’s that backup?

SEQUENCES

Divide your script into a series of eight 12-15 page sequences. You’ve already finished the first two sequences. That was your first act. Now you’re on your third. You have to fill up 15 more pages. The easiest way to do this is to give your characters an objective they have to meet by those 15 pages. That way, you don’t have to worry about this giant chasm-filled void of a second act. You only have to write 5-7 scenes getting your hero to the end of that sequence goal.

A good example is the Mos Eisley sequence in Star Wars. We’re officially on our journey into the second act. What’s the goal here? The goal is to get a pilot and get the fuck off this planet, since the Empire is chasing us. We experience a series of scenes where our characters come to Mos Eisley, enter a bar, look for a pilot, get a pilot, head to the ship’s hanger, get chased by stormtroopers, then leave. That’s a sequence right there, folks. That’s all you have to do.

You can even use this for non-traditional scripts. Room is a movie that’s basically two long acts. It’s divided in half. But if you look closer, you’ll notice that there are sequences to give the story structure. For example, the fourth sequence of that movie (which would roughly be page 40/45 to page 52/60) is Ma (Brie Larson) planning the escape. That’s a sequence folks. It’s got a goal. It consists of a series of scenes. This stuff isn’t rocket science.

Gravity is a great movie to study for sequencing. It’s evenly broken down into a series of sequences where Sandra Bullock constantly has to get to the next destination, which usually takes between 10-15 pages (no, that is not an excuse to procrastinate!).

So that’s this week’s challenge, guys. You have to get 15 pages into Act 2. Seeing as we finished on page 21 last week, that means you only have to write 19 pages this week, which is LESS than 3 pages a day. Which means no more complaining. I’ll see you next week, with 40 total pages completed. And that’s when we head into the HEART of the second act. Ooh, I can’t wait for that. And by “can’t wait,” I mean, “Shit, that’s going to be terrifying.” Seeya then!

Genre: Drama
Premise: After a priest stumbles across the execution of a Mexican family who were trying to cross the border, he finds himself hunted by the killers.
About: This script sold two years ago in a mid-six-figure deal. The writer, Mike Maples, has been at the game for awhile, with his first and only feature credit, Miracle Run, being made back in 2004. Padre was pitched as being in the vein of No Country for Old Men and A History of Violence. Like I always say, guys, find those buzz-worthy movie titles to compare your script to. Whether it be “Fargo on the moon” or just, “This is the next Seven.”
Writer: Mike Maples
Details: 100 pages – undated

I honestly think Matt Damon would be perfect for this part.

There are two types of screenwriters trying to break into the business. There are the ones who grew up on big fun movies who want to bring those same good vibes to the masses, and there are the ones who want to say something important with their work, who want to make “serious” films.

Take a guess which ones have an easier time getting into Hollywood.

That’s one of the first pieces of advice I’d give to anyone getting into screenwriting. Write something marketable. Yet when I run into one of these serious types, the suggestion of marketability is akin to asking them to copulate with a rhinoceros. They feel like they’re “selling out” if they even consider the masses while writing in their vintage 1982 moleskin notebook. It’s almost as if they’d prefer wallowing in obscurity for the rest of their lives, attempting to push that Afghani coming-of-age story, than break through with a strong horror premise AND THEN write their anti-Hollywood film.

Well if today’s script tells us anything, it’s that it IS possible to sell a thoughtful more serious spec. It doesn’t happen often. But it can happen. Let’s figure out what today’s writer did that was so special.

40 year-old Gideon Moss is a priest who lives just north of the Mexican border. While everyone else in the area is furious about illegal immigrants crossing into their country, Gideon regularly delivers water and food to those at the end of their journey.

One day, while on a run, he stumbles across a recently murdered family of Mexican immigrants. A quick look around and he spots, in the distance, a couple of locals staring at him. Doesn’t take much to add 2 and 2 together.

Figuring they’ve been made, the men, a part of a bigger militia, barge into Gideon’s church later that week during a sermon, round up him and all the Mexicans, take them to the desert, bury them alive, then crucify Gideon on a cross. Gotta give it to these guys for creativity.

Left to bleed out, Gideon escapes, and starts hunting the gang down one by one. Oh, there’s one last problem I forgot to mention. The militia? They’re all cops. So it’s not like our pal Gideon can ask for a helping hand. Lucky for him, and unlucky for the baddies, he has a very military-friendly past.

Okay, so this isn’t exactly an Afghani coming-of-age story, but it fits a rule that I push on writers attempting to write “serious” films. Make sure there’s at least one dead body. While there may be a temptation to mirror real life and call your script ‘realistic,’ the reality is that film is larger than life. You have to have at least one larger-than-life element in your story. A dead body fits that criteria.

Also, if you’re going to write one of these serious scripts, you need to be descriptive. You need to have the power of picture-painting. Your world is decidedly less exciting than 12 superheroes battling each other on an airport tarmac. So you have to make up for that in your ability to place your reader inside your world. A truck can’t just drive. It has to exist, as Maples shows us here: “A rooster tail of dust billows behind the truck and hangs in the still scorched air.”

It should also be mentioned that if you’re going to write this type of script, you have to have the skill to actually pull it off. The most painful scripts to read are the ones where writers without any skill try and weave their way through complex descriptive sentences. For example, they’d re-word the above into… “The truck lampoons the stretch of road with forest trees all around it and shifts into gear like a rocket out of hell.” Honestly, I read a lot of lines like that.

Also, you have to have dialogue skills for these scripts. When someone offers to help Gideon, despite the risks involved, he doesn’t reply, “No, your life is too valuable,” he replies, “Leave it be. Your box is thirty years down the line. No use taking a short cut.” That’s a professional line of dialogue right there. Or later we get this exchange, which takes place between the badass villain and one of his dim-witted minions: “What the fuck is this?” “You just squandered five of the ten words in your vocabulary, son. Keep the rest for later.”

Padre also utilizes two tropes that tend to work well in film. The first is the priest who’s not so priestly, and the second is the cop who’s not so friendly. As we like to preach around these parts, always look for irony in your story. Corrupt cops are as ironic as it gets. So are murdering priests. Usually, you only see one of these in a movie. It was fun to read a script where we got both.

And there were just little professional spikes that set this apart from the average amateur script. For example, a little girl is killed in that scene where the bad guys round up everyone in the church and bury them alive. Now normally, a writer would think that was enough. Nobody likes to see a little girl die. We’ll hate the bad guys even more and want to see them go down.

But Maples makes sure that we SET UP A SCENE WITH THIS GIRL EARLIER. So one of the first scenes is Gideon visiting a nurse friend at the hospital. The nurse gives him drugs to pass to the little girl, who’s sick at home because she’s illegal and can’t afford hospital care. Gideon delivers the medicine to the girl, so that we know her and care about her (not to mention doubles as a Save The Cat moment!). That makes her later death a thousand times more impactful. Amateur writers rarely think to do this sort of thing.

If there’s a knock against the script, it’s that it feels a little familiar. There are usually 3-4 of these kinds of scripts on the Black List each year. And I wasn’t a fan (spoiler) of the revelation that Gideon used to be a Black Ops soldier. It seemed like a lazy choice, and honestly, I don’t think it was necessary. Gideon comes off as badass enough that you don’t need to make him even more badass with some backstory title. But outside of that, this was a strong script.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you’re going to write a script like this, be honest with yourself and make sure your writing is at the level required to pull it off. I’m not saying you don’t have to know how to write to write “Neighbors.” But the skill level of putting words together is decidedly less important with scripts like Neighbors or Deeper. With drama, you will be judged more harshly on your writing ability, because your job is to set a mood and a tone with your writing, something that takes a lot of time and practice to master.

Well duh, you’re going to need brain food for this challenge!

Welcome to Week 2 of the 13 Week “Write a F#&%ING Screenplay” challenge. Here’s a link to Week 1. If you’re coming into this late, you might be able to catch up. But once we get past this week, I recommend you follow the proper time frame. Give each assignment 7 days. We’re already going fast as it is, so I don’t want you going any faster.

Last week was all about the character bios and the outline. This week, you’re going to be drawing on both, but mainly your outline. Your outline is going to work as a series of checkpoints. You now always have a checkpoint 15 pages away or less.

That’s how I want you to start seeing your script. Not as a giant void of empty space, but a series of manageable sequences, each no more than 15 pages. Each scene averages 2 to 2 and a half pages. So every 15 pages, you’ll be writing 5-8 scenes.

Okay, now let’s get to the nitty gritty. You will be writing THREE PAGES A DAY MINIMUM. It is CRITICAL that you write at least these three pages a day. And that shouldn’t be difficult. You have an outline so a lot of the guess-work of “Where do I go next?” is taken care of. And writing three pages of double-spaced non-paragraph-intense script takes most people between 30 minutes and an hour.

If writing that many pages is hard for you, it usually means you’re being too hard on your writing. One of the most common mistakes new screenwriters make is they become obsessed with the actual written word and want to make every sentence something their English professor would be proud of.

You don’t need to worry about that. Your scene will be rewritten so many times, it won’t resemble what it was when you first wrote it. Therefore, all those extra hours you put into making your sentences perfect will have been a waste. Since nobody saw them anyway.

Perfecting your presentation is something you only want to worry about when you’re putting the finishing touches on a script you’re sending out. That stuff means nothing when you’re the only one reading it. Just write clearly and have fun doing it. The first draft should be the draft that’s the most exciting to write. Because it’s the draft where you’ll discover the most about your story. Don’t stifle that because you can’t decide if you should use a comma or a semicolon.

Three pages a day at 7 days a week means that next week, you will have finished 21 pages, which is kind of a weird place to stop since it’s right between the inciting incident and the end of the first act. But whatever. We’ll work with what we’ve got.

Our main concern is your inciting incident, and since every story is different, I can’t give you a one-size-fits-all solution for this. A script someone just sent me had the inciting incident on the very first page. And they did the same thing with my favorite script, Source Code. Our hero wakes up in the middle of his problem – he’s on a train that has a bomb about to blow and he must figure out who the bomber is.

There are also movies that need to establish multiple characters, like The Force Awakens, so it’s harder for that movie to set up its main character (Rey) and hit her inciting incident right at page 15. I’m guessing the inciting incident there is when Finn shows up at her doorstep with the bad guys in pursuit, and that happens on page 30. Others may say that Rey’s inciting incident is when BB-8 shows up on page 15, though I don’t think that’s a big enough problem to be considered an inciting incident.

The point is, the definitions for these screenwriting terms are fluid and dependent on the unique circumstances of your story. So don’t get too caught up in them if they’re confusing. Just make sure that you have those checkpoints marked. And between now and next week, the only checkpoint we’re worried about is between page 12-15. Something needs to happen there to kickstart your movie or we’ll get bored.

So what do you do in the meantime? Well, the first 15 pages are about setup. You’re setting up your characters. In the old screenwriting books, they’d say we want to meet our hero in their everyday lives. If we don’t see who they are to begin with, we won’t appreciate who they have to become when the shit hits the fan. So again, you saw this with Rey in The Force Awakens. We see her everyday life of scrapping and trying to survive.

If you’re like me, you like movies that start in motion. And in those cases, we won’t always be able to see who your character is in their everyday life. They may not even be in their environment when we meet them. Jason Bourne doesn’t start off in a cozy house in the suburbs making breakfast for his kids. He wakes up in unfamiliar territory.

Regardless of where we meet your character, you have to tell us as much as possible about them in a very short amount of time. If they’re in their environment, that’s easy. By seeing their everyday lives, we’ll get a sense of who they are and what their weaknesses are. If you start them in an unfamiliar environment, go back to that character bio I asked you to write, figure out what their flaw is, and write a scene that exposes that flaw, if not in their introductory scene, then soonafter. So in Trainwreck, we immediately establish that Amy Schumer is…. you guessed it, a trainwreck.

And again, don’t get too caught up in your beats. Every screenplay is like a snowflake. It’s different. It has its own quirks and needs. Okay, maybe that’s not like a snowflake at all but you get what I’m saying. Sometimes you want to start your script with a flashy teaser that has nothing to do with your hero. If that feels right for your script, DO IT! Don’t resist creativity because you’re trying to meet technical checkpoints. Those are there as a guide. And since this is the first draft, it’s okay to color outside the lines a bit.

After you write your inciting incident scene (the scene where a big problem alters your main character’s life forever and forces them to make a choice whether they’re going to fight that battle or throw in the towel), we have 6-7 pages left until next week’s assignment.

The Hero’s Journey, which is a template a lot of professional screenwriters use, identifies this section as “The Refusal of the Call.” Preferably, the problem that your hero is faced with is a big scary one. If it isn’t, you probably don’t have a movie. Because it’s big and scary, your main character will resist it. And that’s what this section of scenes is for. The hero wants to go hide, get away from this, not deal with it. But in the end, of course, they have to. Because otherwise we wouldn’t have a story to tell.

Each genre tends to have its own blueprint for this section, and there’s no way I can cover them all here. But think of this section as a push-pull situation. Write scenes that pull him, “You need to do this,” a mentor might say. Then scenes that push. Another character says, “You need to stay here and help with the farm.” It doesn’t have to be dialogue-based. These can be action scenes – in a sci-fi film, someone’s base can get attacked. Point is, this is a turbulent time where your hero’s every fiber is being tested.

Eventually, something will happen to push your character towards his adventure, sometimes by choice, sometimes by force. In The Hunger Games, Katniss chooses to swap herself for her sister. In Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise never chooses anything. They MAKE HIM go. So just know that you have options and there’s no such thing as ONE WAY to do it.

Finally, writing is a fluid thing. Your best stuff comes when you’re inspired, and you can’t always predict when that’s going to happen. So don’t limit yourself to 3 pages if you’re on a roll. If you write 10 straight pages, GREAT! If you pull a Max Landis and write all 21 in a single day, GREAT!

But if you get to 21 before next Thursday, you don’t get to chill. You have to work on your script for at least 3 pages or 2 hours every day. Part of what I’m trying to instill in you here is discipline. The more writing becomes a daily thing, the more you’ll keep up with it. If you write 20 pages one day and take the next 5 off, it’s harder to come back.

So if you get to 21, go back and start rewriting your earlier scenes. Specifically, ask if your choice of scene is original. Have you seen that scene before in other movies? If the answer is yes, try to come up with a new angle into the scene – a more original choice.

I’ll give you an example. In yesterday’s script, two assistants trying to make their bosses fall in love trap them in an elevator together, hoping they’ll connect. The writer added a THIRD PERSON, a UPS delivery guy, in the elevator as well, who flipped out once the elevator stopped. It added another layer to the scene to make it feel more original. That’s what I want you to do if you have time to rewrite scenes.

If you have gobs of time or your parents are supporting your career, use the rest of your free time to KEEP FILLING IN YOUR OUTLINE. The more scenes you can figure out, the easier future writing sessions are going to be. And you know now that 15 pages is roughly 5-8 scenes. So you know how many scenes you need to fit in between each checkpoint.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Time to get some writing done. 21 pages, people. Good luck!!!