Week 14 of the “2 Scripts in 2024” Challenge
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
Week 12 – Lead Up To the “Scene of Death”
Week 13 – Moment of Death
Okay, so, just to remind you, this entire surgical procedure we’re calling “writing a screenplay,” is approaching the endpoint. We’ve opted for the 110-page version. Which means that, after this week, we only have 10 pages left.
Where that leaves us is in the sweet spot of the climax.
It took me a long time to figure out how to approach the climax of a screenplay. Then, one day, it became as clear as the springs from which Evian gets its water.
A climax IS ITS OWN SCREENPLAY.
For that reason, it has its own beginning, middle, and end.
For those of you who don’t know what each of these sections stands for, let me remind you:
Beginning – Setup
Middle – Conflict
End – Resolution
For anyone who’s intimidated by this information, think of it this way. Almost every story you’ve ever told anyone – even if it was just a story to your husband about what happened to you at work – chances are you SET IT UP for them (“My boss called me into his office”), you then explained THE CONFLICT (“He said that Karen had accused me of stealing her work and taking credit for it”), before finally giving them the RESOLUTION (“I told him that Karen was a lying psycho who’s been trying to make me look bad to everyone. He apologized and said he’d have a long talk with her.”).
It’s the easiest way to tell a story. So it makes sense that we’re depending on this formula for our climax as well.
Therefore, almost everything you used to map out your 110 page screenplay, you’re going to use to map out your climax.
The first thing you have to do is figure out how long your climax is going to be. Since your third act in a 110 page screenplay is around 27 pages, the climax has to be less than that.
Because, before you get to the climax, you have three main beats that you’re trying to hit.
First beat: “Stop Crying and Get Up Off Your Keister”
Remember, at the end of the second act, your hero had fallen to his lowest point. Some level of death, either literal or metaphorical, had occurred. So, it wouldn’t make sense to jump from that to a big flashy climax.
You need a beat where they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and shift their internal momentum from “defeated” to “I’m going to give this one more shot.”
Second beat: “I Love It When A Plan Comes Together”
After they’ve defeated their whiney b**ching and are ready to fight again, they need to come up with an actual plan. You don’t roll up on the Death Star hoping to figure it out on the way. You need that moment where everyone sits down and they explain how to destroy the Death Star.
Third beat: “The Calm Before The Storm”
Most good stories give the audience one final beat before the climax that works as the “calm before the storm.” For example, in Avatar, before the Na’Vi go off and fight the humans, they convene at the big tree of life. They have a little pow-wow where they mentally prepare for what’s about to come and then off they go.
How long should these scenes be? Pretty short, but it will all depend on the movie and the story you’re telling. But I would say 2 pages tops each. So 6 pages in total.
Cause the way you gotta look at it is, you need a few beats after the climax as well, which is going to add pages to your third act. Maybe we have 6 pages AFTER the climax is over.
So let’s do our math = 27 pages – 6 pages (lead up to climax) – 6 pages (post climax).
That leaves us with about 15 pages for our climax. Which is optimal in my opinion. 15 pages gives us an adequate amount of time for a great climactic sequence.
I know some of you hate math but we gotta use it in order to understand how to set up our climax. Remember, like I said, the climax is its own miniature movie. It has a setup, a conflict, and a resolution. Since we now know our climax is 15 pages, we can divide that in the same way we divided our script = 25% for the setup, 50% for the conflict, and 25% for the resolution.
While this is a good guide, I’ve found that setups and resolutions in climaxes tend to be shorter, percentage-wise, than their full-script counterparts. So instead of being 25% in setup, it might be 15%. Instead of 25% for the resolution, it might be 10%.
That’s because the climax is really about the showdown between the protagonist and the antagonist. So that middle section of your climax — the CONFLICT – is the meat.
With that in mind, here’s what we get…
Climax Setup – 3 pages
Climax Conflict – 10 pages
Climax Resolution – 2 pages
I’m already hearing some of you groan. Carson! You can’t possibly distill art down into such a mathematical formula. You’re right. I’m not saying you have to follow this to a T. What I’m saying is, this is the way it’s done in most movies. Therefore, you should use it as a template. How much you want to stretch or condense or twist the template is up to you. But there’s one constant here I can promise you that you need: Which is that your climax needs form. It needs shape. And this is the best way to shape it.
In all the internet hype about an upcoming Happy Gilmore sequel, I watched the original movie recently and the climax follows this formula very closely. The final tournament day between Happy and Shooter is roughly 17 minutes, so a couple of minutes extra.
And that’s why I say these page-counts do have some flexibility to them. I mean, Titanic has a 45 minute climax. The film itself is also twice as long as a regular movie but, the point is, each movie will have its own needs.
The only other thing I want to highlight is that, within your climax, it needs to look like your hero LOST. Just like at the end of your second act, your hero had a “lowest point,” the same thing is going to happen at the end of your climax’s second act.
For example, in Happy Gilmore, as he lines up his final putt, which he needs to win the tournament, one of Shooter’s minions forces a giant TV stand to fall directly in the way of his shot, making an already difficult shot impossible.
In that moment, we think Happy Gilmore is dead. There’s nothing he can do to win this tournament anymore. You need that same moment in your climax.
Okay, we’re almost there, people! We conclude the writing of our first draft next week! Congrats to everyone who’s made it this far! :)
