Week 12 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge
We are writing a screenplay! And, believe it or not, we are almost done with our second act. You deserve a ribbon for that alone. Cause most writers never make it out of the second act.
If you missed out on previous articles in this series, I’ve listed them below.
Week 1 – Concept
Week 2 – Solidifying Your Concept
Week 3 – Building Your Characters
Week 4 – Outlining
Week 5 – The First 10 Pages
Week 6 – Inciting Incident
Week 7 – Turn Into 2nd Act
Week 8 – Fun and Games
Week 9 – Using Sequences to Tackle Your Second Act
Week 10 – The Midpoint
Week 11 – Chill Out or Ramp Up
If you’re at page 70 and are new to this screenwriting game, you’re probably intimidated as F&%$. I don’t blame you. It’s scary. We’re in no man’s land right now. But don’t worry. Based on our 110 page screenplay length, we’ve got only 15 pages left before we segue into our third act.
We’ve been covering the second act for a while now so it’s a good time to remind you what the five major components of the second act are.
- Hero should be moving towards their goal.
- You need to throw many obstacles at your hero to make pursuing that goal difficult.
- Explore unresolved relationships.
- Explore how your hero’s primary flaw is getting in their way.
- Move secondary character subplots forward (if you have them).
As long as you’re doing one of those five things, you’re moving in the right direction. The only difference between how you address those things NOW, towards the END of the second act, as opposed to the beginning of it, is that now everything is more intense.
Achieving the goal seems to get harder every second.
The obstacles only get bigger.
The relationships feel like they’re on the brink of extermination.
Your hero’s flaw is eating them alive, getting in the way of everything.
The subplots are all coming to a head.
But let’s get more specific.
What we know about the end of the second act is that it’s where our “DEATH SCENE” is. Not literally (although it can be). But the idea with the end of the second act is that our hero will have tried EVERYTHING to achieve his goal. And yet, he’ll have unequivocally failed. This is when both the protagonist and the audience should feel like “WE’VE LOST.”
So if we back up fifteen pages from that moment, we have to ask ourselves, “What leads up to that lowest point?” And usually, it’s when your hero has put in their BIGGEST PUSH. Or, at least, the biggest push they believe they’re capable of in this moment in time.
Due to them not yet overcoming their flaw, this late push doesn’t have the full force that our hero is capable of once they do overcome their flaw (which will happen in the climax).
The easiest genre to use to figure out how this works is the Romantic Comedy. We know that the boy is going to lose the girl at the end of the second act. That breakup is the equivalent of death. We see this in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Andy gets in a fight with Trish because she’s frustrated that he keeps avoiding sex. So she storms out, effectively ending their relationship.
So, how do we ramp up to that? We ramp up to that by writing scenes where Andy has opportunities to have sex with Trish but keeps backing out of them. They go on a date. The chemistry is off the charts. They get back to her place. It gets hot and heavy. But then Andy freaks out (cause he’s never had sex before) and makes up an excuse to leave. This makes Trish self-conscious and now she’s starting to doubt whether Andy is attracted to her.
Whenever you’re unsure what scene to write in a script, always go back to the character goal. The character goal will give you your answer. Because, chances are, you need to write a scene that brings you closer to that goal being achieved.
By the way, The 40 Year Old Virgin has a TON of secondary characters. So, much of its late second act is dedicated to covering those storylines. This option is available to you during this segment of the script if you have lots of subplots.
Let’s switch up the genre. In one of the best action movies ever, Predator, the end of the second act is everybody dead except for Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger). So, if you back up 20 pages, how do we get to that point?
We get to that point because Dutch and the three remaining survivors are making a run for it. That’s one of the interesting things about the goal in this movie. The goal isn’t to beat the Predator. It’s to escape it. But the Predator tracks the final four and kills them off one by one. So those are the scenes you would write in this section.
In the movie, Life of Pi, which follows a boy and a tiger stuck on a boat together, the end of the second act is them finally getting to land and the tiger jumps out of the boat and runs off.
Although the tiger doesn’t die, it is the equivalent of death for the boy because that tiger is who helped him get through this nightmare of being stranded at sea. And now it’s as if he was never there in the first place.
So you need to ask, what gets us to that point? Well, what’s the goal? The goal is to find land. The scenes that David Magee writes are the boy, Pi, trying to stay motivated. He’s stuck out in the ocean. His sails are busted. He literally can’t move. So the scenes are about looking for meaning in order to keep going.
One of those scenes has a major storm come (A GIANT OBSTACLE!) and essentially kill the tiger. The tiger is lifeless the next morning. Pi then nurses him back to health. It’s not as clear as Predator where our characters are physically moving towards their goal (escape the Predator). But because getting to land requires staying motivated, the goal is simply to find a reason to keep going. For Pi, that motivation is his tiger (Richard Parker).
The big lesson here is that you’re moving towards that DEATH at the end of the second act. So you want to go full-throttle towards that death. Whether it’s characters running away from a killer alien, a giant storm that nearly wipes out your hero and his tiger buddy, or your romantic interest pushing your hero towards something they’re terrified of doing.
Put your foot on the gas. Because in 15 pages, you’re going to hurl your hero into a spectacular crash you masochist!
:)
