Stop building castles in the sand

People who have worked with me, know I'm often using the sandpile-metaphor in relation to the creative process or to the script or performance itself. Especially as a correction of perception when people get stuck, get anxious or get too eager to determine the outcome. This metaphor comes from the scientific experiment made by Per Bak in 1987, which was the first discovery of self-organizing criticality in a complex system. In my eyes this is one of the later years major breakthroughs in science, as it has far greater implications on our perception of reality than most are aware of. When I encountered this research in 2004 through two books, Per Bak's "How Nature Works" and the more popular scientific "Ubiquity" by Mark Buchanan, it radically changed my approach to my work in the dramatic arts. Or it gave me the solid foundation to implement, what I had already been toiling with the last four years. It delivered the framework of understanding, which confirmed many of my own notions about dramaturgy, drama and the creative process.

Ordinary physics and much of our modern way of thinking rely on a Newtonian understanding of the world. The cause and effect; the idea, that if we know enough about a system, we can control it. The sandpile experiment was an extremely simple experiment, which would undermine the Newtonian paradigm. Under the Newtonian world view, the world, and within it, the human beings, are all like a machine. Know enough about the machine, and you can master it. This realisation freed us from religion and superstition; allowed our culture to find belief in ourselves to shape our destiny, instead of a remote God. That was great and much needed, but the other truth, the part of the world, which doesn't operate like a machine, has been left to superstition and the irrational.

In dramaturgy the Newtonian outlook gradually helped us develop the many models for how a play or film script works. They are all linear, they all rely on a cause-and-effect-thinking. They're all driven by the idea of a perfect form. And they fitted perfectly with the Hollywood-movie-making-machine's control-freak-mind-set.
As I read the two books about our complex world, mentioned above, I had reached a point where I understood the models, but was beginning to doubt they could be anything but a superficial truth. I was looking for the DNA behind the outer forms, thinking that the dramaturgic models had to be like the drawings the early biology-researchers, who went out into the world and drew pictures of how an oak leaf looked, or should look, ignoring the fact, that all leafs look very different, even though there are basic similarities. Later with the discovery of DNA biology found the simple code, which gives rise the multitude of forms.

So back in 1987 Per Bak, Chao Tang and Kurt Wiesenfeld made the sandpile experiment, which is a computer simulation of the creation of a sandpile. One by one grains of sand fall from above to a flat surface. In the beginning everything that happens can be predicted (by laws of gravity etc), but eventually as a pile forms, and the slopes of the pile becomes so steep, that avalanches can occur, what was a predictable, newtonian system changes into an unpredictable, complex system. All the grains of sand in the pile are in essence connected. A new grain of sand landing on the slopes can send a multiplying chain reaction throughout the pile and trigger avalanches – but if, when, how many or how big is impossible to predict. A Newtonian mind might say; "Well, it's only a matter of knowing all the interactions in the pile", but it isn't – what Per Bak proved that day in '87, was that when a system becomes complex, it is also unpredictable and thereby uncontrollable.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone who lives in reality. We know inherently that life is unpredictable, we see the meteorologists get it wrong again and again, we see the stock markets crash, revolutions spring up when least expected, earth quakes happen – all events that not only seem unpredictable, but which Per Bak proved actually are so. And so is the human system in itself, and so is the creative process.

This is what I want you to take away from the lesson of the sandpile – you can't control it, so stop trying – you can't predict the outcome, so stop trying – instead what you can do, is to make sure the grains of sand land in a pile – where they'll pile up, and eventually avalanches will occur – which in this metaphor is the ideas or even the great idea. And if you stop worrying about predicting and controlling, you'll be much better able to catch that idea, when it breaks loose from the pile.

So stop building castles in the sand and just pile on instead.

Synopsis, Outline, Treatment? Part 2

This time about the outline. This tool doesn't get mistaken and is virtually never used as a sales tool. It is pretty simple and straight forward. In my own process this is the tool I use consistently throughout. From beginning to end.

It is a short description of each and every scene. The basics. Where, who, action, conflict, essential information. As brief and to the point as possible. Sometimes I throw in a single line of dialogue, I find crucial.

In the beginning I sketch this out in a notebook. I separate the notebook into four acts and then I begin to fill in scenes. At first I'm looking for the important scenes. The plot-point-scenes, any scenes that have given me the inspiration in the first place and scenes that are essential in linking those together. From there on it becomes about filling in the blanks - creating the smaller stepping stones. Often I separate the acts themselves into smaller units - sequences each driven by one question, task or idea. I give everything - scenes, sequences and acts - titles to re-inforce what they are about. Some use the much beloved index-cards for the whole re-shuffling thing. This doesn't speak to me, but I see why it works. For me, when the re-shuffling becomes the main job, I move from notebook to computer, because its often the same time I want to expand my notes on each scene into something more concise and clearly written.

This process form the basis for the two other short-forms - the treatment and the synopsis. The treatment being the natural expansion of the outline and the synopsis being the condensation. I do the synopsis to demand of myself the discipline to focus on the drama's most essential plot movements, conflict and narrative strategy - and not getting lost in detail and darlings. To be able to later on verbally narrate the story within half an hour and below, without missing the key elements, but making it sound like a movie. Late in the process, working with a director, it will easily become the reference tool and your common road-map to the full treatment/script. So it's a real handy thing.

The outline is the spine of the development process in many ways. It lets you develop your whole script without actually writing it - and contrary to belief and our job title, we are really not writers in the, you know, author sense. We are more like composers, I think. The outline also lets you remain flexible, able to play and goof around with your drama (notice how I keep saying drama, instead of story - again because we are not story-writers, but composers of drama). The moment you have actually written those scenes as scenes with dialogue and all the stuff, you get bogged down by them. It becomes more difficult to change, to play and goof. I know it's tempting to get into the writing of scenes. I feel the urge. I see it all the time when I am a teacher or consultant, how people want to skip the development and just write those scenes. If you have not already become accustomed to the development through outline, synopsis and treatment - start getting there and save yourself some trouble.

Synopsis, outline, treatment? Part 1.

Before ever writing a single scene or a single line of dialogue the scriptwriter should go through intermediary stages of sketching the drama. I don't know how it is in other corners of the world, but in many of the places I have been there seem to be some confusion about the different 'sketching'-formats. Fx. I hear producers, directors and writers use synopsis and treatment interchangeably. So I figured, I would describe my idea of them, their different incarnations and purpose. Here is my take on the synopsis.

The Synopsis
There are shorter formats - like a pitch or something in that neighborhood - but the synopsis is the shortest format, which is a real tool for the writer. The others tend to serve only the purpose of selling the story to producers.
The synopsis is short. But how short? In general I would say between 2-5 pages for a feature film. The synopsis of 2-3 pages is a presentation form and bordering on the verge of a sales tool, but can be useful in honing in on what your story is really about.
Being brought up in the Danish tradition I have been taught the 5-page synopsis, which has a really simple logic and formula. It goes like this:

Page 1: The first half page is used to describe the opening of the film, the hook or pitch, or what you want to call it, with some degree of detail. Then you spend the rest of the page on summarizing the action for the rest of the 1st act.

Page 2: The next half page is spend on what I call the initiating plot point - again with some detail. Rest of 2nd act is summarized on the remainder of the page.

Page 3: You guessed it, the next plot point - what I call the turning point - is again covered over a half page in detail - and then summary of the 3rd act.

Page 4: Do I really have to say it? Next plot point - I (and many others) call it the Point of No Return - in whatever detail you can fit in on half a page - and then a half page with the rest of 4th act (or almost the rest of it -- wait--wait...)

Page 5: The conclusion/climax - also a plot point - described in detail over a half page. That's it. Wait, it only tallies 4 and a half page? Well, it sounds awkward to say the 4-and-a-half-page synopsis - and anyway, the last half page, you are most probably going to use it up anyway, as you can't contain yourself to the strict half-page per plot point/act.

The obvious purpose of writing the 5-page synopsis is to flesh out the basic structure, get a feel for the rhythm and focus on the main story. Sometimes I start out with doing an outline and a rough treatment, and then I return to synopsis, to distill and purify the drama. Focus myself, before writing the first full treatment.

Later on in the process a sales synopsis might be written, either a short 2-pager or a full 5-page synopsis. Then it is the time to get obsessive about language. It really has to flow seamlessly. I often try to use some verbal language to soften up the highly condensed sentences. Especially when you find the exact right phrase, you can also reflect something about the tone of the film/situation.

Even if you don't use a 4 act model, you can figure out a similar way of writing a synopsis that fits your structure, where you detail the plot point and summarize the main body of action. Its all about rhythm.

My exact words

OK. So at the time being I'm trying to do my take on the structure of dramatic composition. After the intro and after the 4 act model, I had planned to write something more on how the structure of drama is very much like the structure of music. Been scribbling on it on and off during this week in between treatment writing for a feature and rehearsal for a theater production.

Then today I read this post over at The Rouge Wave. Of course it is not my exact words, but it expresses precisely my understanding and experience with structure. So instead of tiring myself out at this moment with a piece on the same subject - I want you to go and see what Julie L. Gray has to say.

The only major aspect that she doesn't touch upon in her well-written and well-supported piece is how the tonality of comedy and tragedy also plays into the musical understanding of dramatic structure. So there will be a bit left for me to expound on. Later.

A Four Act Structure

An entrance prayer: There are no golden standards and this model is by no means 'final'.
It is presented as a fairly basic model, from which variations can be extrapolated. It establishes a reference for talking and thinking about structure. It draws upon elements from Syd Field, The Danish Film School, Ingolf Gabold and Joseph Campbell.
Each act has a general purpose to play in the drama. As beginning and ending of acts, we have the major plot points, which creates essential developments for the main conflict and character(s) and the structural foundation of the drama, in terms of both rhythm and narrative logic. Each major plot point has a specific function to perform in the transition from act to act, propelling the drama towards its conclusion. The descriptions of these functions are approximations and you should feel free to re-think your perception of these functions for every drama. First a graphic representation:



Act One
The initial act serves to introduce conflicts, characters, locations and thematic elements. As a rule of thumb, by the end of first act all relevant components of the drama need to have been introduced in one way or the other. This act sets up the game and the basic rules of the drama and in the following acts you cannot change these or introduce new elements. Unless you have a very clever way to circumvent the rule, take it very literal. It can even become an extremely creative limitation and lead you to some real innovative plotting. The first act should build up, step by step, to the Initiating Plot Point, which is the 'real' beginning of the drama.

The Pitch
This plot point is also sometimes called The Hook and takes place in the very opening of a drama. The purpose is to pitch the whole drama in one scene or short sequence and to plant a hook of curiosity in the audience. 'To pitch' means to strike the basic tones (comedy/tragedy) of the drama, to lightly touch your main conflict, but in a discreet way so it doesn't come off as being forced upon the audience. Rather it should sneak in below the radar of consciousness. Really elegantly structured dramas are also able to hint at the eventual conclusion of the main conflict. There are countless ways to pitch your whole drama in one scene. In the opening of Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' the main character, Max von Sydow's religious knight, is confronted with Death, who has come to take his life, but the knight tempts Death into a game of chess - and if the knight wins, Death will let him free. At it's core the film is about faith and the search for a meaning in a life where the plague, religious zealots and the baser instincts rule. The use of Death personified as an unsentimental figure and the chess game as a central metaphor and plot device pitches this main conflict elegantly.
The hooking is perhaps of lesser importance, because, as the drama has just begun, the audience are naturally curious, but applying a hook further strengthens this. 'To hook' can be achieved by the surprising and unexpected nature of the opening. It could simply be the novelty of what we are seeing, like an odd pair of lovers sitting in a diner, with him reassuring his wide-eyed, nervous lover of the simplicity and brilliance of his plan to rob both customers and the diner, and just as they spring into action, we cut away from the scene - leaving the audience with the question of what the outcome will be - a prologue with a cliffhanger, brilliant plotting. An example of a very standardized 'hook' is the usual opening of a Bond movie, which always features an over-the-top action sequence, but exactly because we know what to expect, it doesn't really work properly as a hook.

The Call
The Call to Adventure is a concept from Joseph Campbell, who describes it as an early moment in countless myths and fairy-tales, where the hero has not yet begun his or her proper quest. An event takes places that eventually will make the hero leave the safety of home. It is an event that will lead more or less directly to the Initiating Plot Point. In 'Silence of the Lambs' the FBI-student Clarice Starling is sent on a small errant by her future FBI-boss, to conduct a standardized interview and observation of the jailed serial killer Hannibal Lecter. It seems no more than an interesting school-assignment for a talented student, but it leads to the Initiating Plot Point, when Clarice finds a clue to hunt for Buffalo Bill, the present serial killer at large. The Call can also more directly lead into the real drama, like in fairy-tales when a young man sets out to marry the princess early on, but then again, more often than not, there is a deeper mystery or challenge to be overcome, which is not revealed at the time of The Call. Nine minutes into Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' Jof, the traveling actor, has a vision of Virgin Mary with the Jesus child, and he hurries to tell his wife the good news, but she hardly believes him, but Jof nevertheless maintains an almost naive belief in the promise of a better future for their own son. This event is the film's Call to Adventure, in an almost classic mythical form, as it has the form of a vision - something which is not the adventure itself, but a promise of things to come.

After The Call the main character(s) will be involved with the activities set in motion by it. Often it takes the form of a new opportunity - a new job, a new person (to hate or fall in love with), a journey - something which alters the usual balance of things in the main character(s) world. Before The Call we might have been at 'Home', the initial location of the main character(s), but now we meet the real arena of the drama. Clarice Starling leaves the FBI-academy to seek out the truth about serial killers - and the prison dungeon where Hannibal Lecter is held, is just the first of such 'gothic' arenas in which she will confront him and later on, Buffalo Bill. In 'The Seventh Seal' the knight and his squire sets of on a journey through a swedish landscape plagued by death and religious madness - and we sense that this is 'the location' for the remainder of the drama - it is a 'road movie' and so we have an expectation of ever changing locations, but which are all essential the same: On the road in an existential emptiness.

The Initiating Plot Point
This is the transition between act one and two and initiates the real objective of the main character(s). Thelma and Louise left home for a road trip without any irritating men, but when they kill a man to prevent a rape, their real object becomes finding an escape from the punishment and tyranny of men, In this way the drama is transformed from being an ordinary story of two women looking for a little time off and into an existential struggle for freedom and survival. Campbell would call this plot point 'the threshold' because it leads the 'hero' from the world of the mundane and initiates them to the more mystical, unpredictable and dangerous regions of reality.
In 'The Seventh Seal' The Knight opens his heart to a robed figure, he believes to be a priest, and reveals that he is playing chess with Death, but with the only purpose of gaining enough time to do at least one single meaningful action in his otherwise meaningless life, and just as he has explained how he is planning his chess moves, the robed figure reveals himself to be Death. Cheated in this way, it becomes clear that The Knight is in for a very difficult game, but instead of losing faith, he realizes the miracle of being alive and able to challenge the meaningless of Death. This happens 21 minutes into the film and reveals the deeper level of the plot, not to cheat Death in a game of chess, but to defy Death by doing a meaningful action. In 'Silence of the Lambs' FBI-student Clarice Starling finds a clue to the identity of serial killer Buffalo Bill and becomes a part of the investigating team. In 'Thelma and Louise' the two women avert a rape by killing the man and now has to flee the law to find freedom.
So The Pitch and The Call hints at, or sets up a superficial version of the real plot, which will be revealed in the Initiating Plot Point, where the real objective has to be established.
This plot point sets the course directly for the conclusion of the drama - when the object has been obtained or lost, we know the drama has reached its end. It might sound simplistic, and it truly is, but simple is the greater art. Complexity is the multitude of simple things interconnected.

Act Two
In the second act we get into the conflicts of the drama, as well as nuances and new aspects of the elements presented in the first act. Because the main character(s) have found, realized and begun a quest for the true objective, they will now enter into conflicts with the forces standing in their way. Often they will work dedicated towards the objective, only meeting moderate opposition and making good progress - but only seemingly as they are only touching the surface of the real conflict, and hence the opposition is not strong, yet. We have left act one's introductions, but we might still be able to sneak in some additional introduction of elements, as we are still exploring the universe of the drama.
Especially throughout act two and three it can be useful to sequence the action and establish minor plot point as transitions for the sequences - depending on the type of drama. The idea is to establish a structural logic which work with the genre and content of your drama. For an externally plot driven crime mystery, the easy way to sequence and add additional plot points is to work along the lines of 'secrets' or 'clues' to be discovered. A fairy-tale-type of drama, the typical lay-out of act two could use the traditional series of tests to be passed - there would typically be three tests, so one could perhaps be the entrance to the Initiating Plot Point, one could fall midway through second act and the last would be give access to the Turning Point. Are we dealing with a theme-driven plot, like in The Seventh Seal, the plot points should relate more to the theme, than to strictly following the characters' external plot - although we still need the plot points for those, emphasis should be on the thematic conflict. Often a theme driven drama will have a broader circle of characters - and even though we want to follow all of them throughout the drama, the important plot points might be associated with different characters at different times.

Turning Point
This plot point has to make things drastically worse and more difficult for the main character(s). Often this is achieved by some kind of reversal (thus the name, turning point). In The Sixth Sense we learn that the child is really haunted by ghosts - they are real and not just his imagination. The world as we know it is turned upside down. Thelma and Louise gets robbed of all their money (by young and seemingly innocent Brad Pitt) and their plans of escaping to Mexico suffers a huge blow - but more importantly the event also reverses the balance between Thelma and Louise, where the older and more mature Louise so far has taken charge and responsibility, she now breaks down, and Thelma, realizing her responsibility for the theft, steps up and for the first time takes charge of her own (and Louise's) life.
The technical purpose of The Turning Point is to set the stage for the third act, which is characterized by serious complications to reaching the objective. The plot point can have a number of functions apart from introducing a new level of danger to the main objective. In general it is a good practice to examine in how many ways relations, perspectives, themes or any other element can be 'turned 180 degrees'.
Beyond the 'turn' there are other ways to think of this mid point of a drama. Personally I like to think of it as the beating heart of the drama. Even though the later climax and resolution is the most intense and important moment of the drama, at this mid point we could be closest to the emotional core. 'Silence of the Lambs' has a strong emotional moment right at the middle, when Clarice interviews Hannibal the last time, in secret, under time pressure, as she and her team has been taken of the case. In order to get the information from him, she so desperately needs, she has to subject to his psychoanalytic questioning, which leads her to reveal her inner, driving motive, a childhood experience of a deep existential nature: How she was not able to save a single lamb from the slaughter, the confrontation as an innocent child with the brutal realities of life. Hannibal savors her honesty and innocence, rewards her with a clue by handing her back the case file, and then, most importantly, for a moment their hands touch and his finger caress her hand, in a gesture bestowed with conflicting emotion - the love and approval of the father, the forbidden erotic love and innocence touched by corruption. This is a huge pay-off for which the drama has made a lot of set-ups - all the warnings against letting her guard down around Hannibal ("He'll get inside your head"), all the shots establishing Clarice as a lonely, single woman up against a world of men, the constant focus on sexual desire as the prime motivator for all behavior and her own childhood story of loosing her father.
Joseph Campbell refers to this moment as either 'world navel' or 'the belly of the beast', the place where the hero finds 'the elixir', the object which can restore balance to the world.

Act Three
The purpose of act three is to complicate the conflict to a point where it appears almost unsolvable. And that point is of course called Point of No Return. In act three there is absolutely no room and time for introduction or exploration. The pace has to pick up, the intensity must rise.
Going along with Campbell the job of the hero is to find the way of applying the elixir to restore balance to the world. This effort will be met by obstacles.
Usual this happens because the world around the main character(s) reacts. Things have been set in motion in the previous acts and are now being released into a re-action. Thelma and Louise are now not only wanted by the police, they are being hunted. Hannibal escapes captivity in an orgy of violence and the new serial killer, Buffalo Bill, is getting ready to skin his new victim - time is running out for Clarice.
As with act two, it can be a good idea to break down this act in shorter sequences, often two or three, each with their own mini-objective - a problem or conflict to be solved.
In conjunction with The Point of No Return there might often be one of two things happening. The False Harmony, in which something happens that makes things appear to be resolved without too much of a struggle. In 'Silence of the Lambs' a lucky break in the hunt for Buffalo Bill has given the FBI the identity and address of the killer - Clarice is not needed for the take down and is assigned to some routine task - everything seems back to normal. Or the opposite can happen, The Moment of Absolute Despair, in which it seems there is no way out of the mess and the hero might as well give up. In "The Sixth Sense" the child therapist has no luck in reaching the boy and he questions his own ability to the point where he is ready to give up.

The Point of No Return
Named so because this is when the main character(s) finally get it - they have to confront the dragon, there is no way around it - from now on everything leads directly towards the end. No time for deroutes, second-thoughts or anything but staying focused on the reaching the conclusion. In 'Last Tango in Paris' the Marlon Brando-character confronts his dead wife, which opens up the possibility for him to go after his real objective - a new love (and life). In the Sixth Sense, the therapist confronts his past in the form of audio tapes from the sessions with the boy he couldn't save and he finds a clue which convinces him that ghosts are real - and so now he can go after his real objective - to redeem himself by saving the haunted boy.

Act Four
The general purpose of act four is to quickly escalate the conflict until it reaches the fullest possible climax. This escalation often falls in a succession of quick steps of the protagonist(s) moves and the antagonist's counter-moves until they face each other. In Silence of the Lambs Clarice Starling stumbles upon Buffalo Bill at his house, she tries to arrest him, but he escapes into his underground dungeon, where she has to follow alone and without back-up. She finds the abducted woman, but he cuts the lights. In the darkness, he closes in on her using his night-vision goggles, toys with her, decides to shoot her, but the sound of his gun cocking alerts her and she shoots him. In Last Tango in Paris the Brando-character spends a night wooing his lover into embracing a real relationship with him, to which she is tempted, but as the morning breaks, so does her courage and she runs away from him. He gives chase and catches up with her in her parent's apartment. Just as he thinks everything is OK, she turns on him with her father's gun and convincing herself of a story that he came to rape her, she shoots him dead.

The Main Scene.
This is the scene leading directly up to the conclusion of the drama. In this scene the basic conflict of the drama is exposed most clearly and strongly. In Last Tango we see how the Brandon-character reaches out for love without fear and how fear of love makes her invent a story of rape. In Silence of the Lambs Clarice Starling fully becomes the object of a man's twisted desire, as Buffalo Bill toys with her in the dungeon, she is the lamb ready to be slaughtered, but exactly because the man believes himself to be superior and takes his time cocking his gun, she, not giving in to fear, has the time to shoot him. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest McMurphy, the Jack Nicholson character, confronts Sister Ratched as she shows her full demonic and manipulative powers over the patients, and he ends up trying to strangle her. The main scene often take the appearance of the major climax, but doesn't necessarily involve the real resolution of the conflict.

Resolution.
Here we get the consequences of the main scene, both relating to the fundamental conflict of the dramatic universe and the main character's conflict. McMurphy gets the electro-shock and is turned into a vegetable (tragedy), but Chief inspired by his example and sacrifice flees the institution to gain his freedom (comedy). Oh, and remember when I refer to tragedy it means disharmony and comedy means harmony, not necessarily funny. In Silence of the Lambs the girl is saved and Clarice graduates as an FBI-agent (comedy) ready to work for her mentor, but Hannibal is still free (tragedy) although he promises never to hurt Clarice (comedy), he will kill and eat Chilton, the obnoxious/narcissistic psychiatrist (comedy? Tragicomedy?).

Connecting the dots

Introduction to structure

David Mamet likens the well structured script to an airplane. If it has been constructed well, it will fly under the guidance of a pilot. If it hasn't, it will at one point or the other crash. This is what happens when we halfway through a film or play begin to loose interest, because the plot logic and/or emotional logic doesn't lead us on towards a satisfying conclusion. Because we get confused, irritated or in other words, we are simply not persuaded by the universe of the drama. This has a lot to do with structure.

There is no single way to structure your drama. Although Mamet's airplane metaphor is not wrong, it points too much in the direction of an exact science. Rather than linear engineering the structure of drama is more of an organic thing. It should change according to the purpose and material. Any idea of 'the ideal model' for structuring scripts is nonsenses. It is like in nature, where there is vast variety of living creatures, yet there are general principles and formative patterns which always apply. And as the first principle for life is the existence of carbon-oxide, the first principle for drama is the existence of conflict.

One of the reasons to work with structure is to have a way to simplify the complex universe of your drama. The most simple thing we can say about structure is: A drama has a beginning, a middle and an end. These three parts should be connected, so one leads to the next. It is like a fish, it has a head, body and tail. As with the fishes, you can find them in many different proportions and colours, yet like the fishes, if they don't fit well together, the drama will not swim well.

This leads us intuitively to a three-act structure. An opening act to introduce characters, conflicts, locations and themes. A middle act to further develop these with complications, nuances and additional layers to the point where everything is such as mess, that something needs to be done. The final act do exactly that: it cleans up the mess (more or less) and conclude the drama's fundamental conflict. The idea of the three-act structure is very strong and widely used, both in theater and film.

Famous script gurus like Syd Field have made their models based upon the classic three act-model, inspired especially by Henrik Ibsen, the grandfather of modern dramatic structure. I don't believe these structural models are artificial inventions per se. They try to sum up our experience of how the human mind understands and interprets events unfolding in time. As all attempts at summing up experience, they are however never complete. When you examine some of these contemporary film models, like Syd Fields, they are actually four-act models, because the middle act takes up double as much time as the first and last act. So it makes more sense to call it a four act model, at least to me.

The sense is that each act, as a unit of the drama, should be similar to the others in respect to length and the basic purpose of moving us from one point and to the next. The sense is not only logical, but has to do with a sense of rhythm. Drama is in its form strongly related to music, much more than it is to literature, because as with music, drama is played out in real time. It takes place in front of us, moment by moment. I cannot stress how important it is to grasp this difference, to understand the importance of structure.

Another way to think of structure is to compare it to the structure of language. When we form sentences, our language has structural rules which helps us understand the meaning of the sentence. These rules are more or less flexible. Even though it is normal in English to begin a sentence with a personal pronoun, followed by a verb and conclude with a noun, like He walked home, we can play around with these rules, using a poetic license, like Home he walked. Exactly because the last sentence varies from the standard rules, it gives us a different impression. The first sentence seems to simply state the fact. In the second, the words home and walked are lend more significance and could for example carry a meaning that he longed for home and it was a very long walk.

We also know from language that rhythm and length plays a vital role in conveying the sense of what is being said. Urgent or commanding communication needs short staccato-like sentences. Pleasant conversation relies on harmonic structure with longer, developed sentences and a mellow rhythm.
In the structure of a drama, these basic insights from language applies. The sequence, the lenght and the rhythm are as important for the perception of the drama, as the actions taking place are in themselves.

The point is to structure your drama in a way confluent with its nature. To select a number of acts by which you separate different parts of the drama. Depending on the length and nature of your material it can be any reasonable number of acts. A short film of 10-15 minutes or a short theater play of 20-30 minutes normally consist of only one act. Most feature films running 90 minutes or more usually have four acts. Each act should be like a drama unto itself, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

The end of each act functions as the transition into the following act. The transition between acts should be major plot points, which reveal crucial new information, raise new questions and add another level of pressure to the main character(s) situation. The major plot points are of the greatest importance, as they give us the push forward, deeper into the drama, and they should always be integral with the drama's and the characters' main conflict.

Acts can also be broken down into separate units. If an act has a length of, say, 30 pages, then it could consist of three sequences of scenes. The sequences should more or less be of equal length and also have a beginning middle and an end, working as a mini-act in themselves. Scenes are the smallest dramatic unit and are of course also structured in the same way, beginning, middle and end, but unlike the act and the sequence, we get to play around with the length of the scenes. Normally they can be from just below half a page and up to around seven pages in an ordinary film script - with the standard lenght being around one to three pages for contemporary films.

The number of pages are crucial to the process of structuring a script and this is one of the reasons why the film industry is almost religious about using a standard lay-out format for scripts, making the page count reliable - and close to one minute of film per page. Before actually writing your script, when planning the acts and major plot points, as well as making an outline for the sequence of scenes within the acts, you can't be sure of the exact length, but you can, surprisingly well, make an estimate of how long each scene should be, giving you a total count that lets you affirm your structural ideas.

Some writers begin to feel mightily uncreative with all this talk of structure and page counting. That's perfectly understandable, but it is a very necessary discipline to master to create scripts, especially for a feature film script. The longer, the more need for structure. This is for example why comedians, making their first feature film, often fail as they don't haven't acquired the grasp of the feature films need for over-arching dramatic structure. A few writers have an innate sense of structure and need not think too much about it - the structure emerges by itself from their writing. Others need to do the math from the ground up, while most of us are somewhere in between, switching between the intuitive and planned.

In my experience, many writers of drama that have shortcomings, have them exactly because they haven't learned to love to play around with structure. We easily become too focused on the story itself, and forget the equally important part: How we tell it. Anyone who has ever failed in telling a joke knows exactly how important the 'how' is. The sequence of the information given, the tone and the timing. To master the structure of drama is not unlike mastering the structure of a joke. Its all about knowing what the joke is, how to build up expectation and then play against it. In postings to come, we'll take a look at the specifics of script structure.