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In all good movies, comedies, thrillers, action pieces, westerns, sci-fi, animation, drama, romantic comedies, etc., the third act of the screenplay requires the climax of the story, the black moment, the epiphany, the denouement and wrapping up loose ends.

The climax of the story is the culmination of what has taken place during Acts 1 and 2. A point in the story should be reached here which should be the highest point of tension
in the story. If you can imagine climbing a mountain where the trail goes steadily up, with short flat breaks on the trail before it goes up again until it reaches the peak, which is the highest point on the mountain, then, this is where you story should be in the third act of the screenplay.

In other words, you’ve gotten your main character to the top of the mountain. Now it is time for your main character to show what he is really made up of. This should be based on his transformation as he evolves throughout the story. Then, when you get him up on
the peak of your story, someone, or something, more threatening than ever before in your
story, is present to knock him off the peak. It is his job to defeat whatever or whoever it is so that he can accomplish the goal you had him set out on at about page 10 of your story where you established the dramatic premise for your story.

In fiction, this is called the black moment. The black moment occurs to challenge your main character to win or to lose his efforts to achieve his goal. A terrible fight (literally or figuratively) should ensue, where your main character is left hanging on the edge of the peak by his fingers. The antagonist or villain (in fiction, villains represent evil, while antagonists can represent any number of things including evil) stomps on your main character’s fingers. At just about the time your main character can no longer hold on to save himself, he has to overcome what has been hindering him from reaching his goal throughout your story.

It is at this time your main character should experience an epiphany. An epiphany is symbolic moment of revelation and insight. Your main character must make a decision now that will change his life forever. Win or lose? It is his choice to make. And in most movies, since most audiences want happy endings, your main character usually makes the right choice. Win. So, he grabs the antagonist’s foot. He pulls the antagonist off the peak and saves himself, something he has been unable to do throughout your story until
now.

The denouement is the final resolution of your story. Your main character must tie up all loose ends in the story. Say, he met someone with whom he’s fallen in love, but the question throughout the story has always been, will they, or will they not get together. You must show the resolution of this now. If a character was left hanging, so to speak, in Act I, without a resolution, then you must bring that character forward here, and show the audience how he ends up. If you foreshadowed something in Act 2, now is the time to show the audience what that was and how it helped the main character achieve his goal in the story. You know what I mean. Simply, don’t leave any loose end, or you will disappoint your audience. They want to know how everyone and everything ends up. And it is your job to show that to them in Act 3.

 

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by
Donald L. Vasicek

Want to kick ass with your screenwriting? Do you know what I mean? For those of you who might have questions about it, then, let me explain.

Having acted as a writer/consultant for a studio movie (I will not mention the movie to protect myself from pissing someone off), I was in a room with 8 other writers, and three producers. The producers posed questions to all of us about how the script should be written. I offered the idea about having a beginning, a middle, and an end with a main theme, main character, and villain (The protagonist in fiction can represent anything, but pure evil. Pure evil is reserved for the villain.).

I also suggested that a transformational arc should take place with the main character, and with at least one periphery character.

And I suggested that, since the producers wanted this movie to be an action flick, then, the pace of the film must be accelerated, and that could only happen through swift and short writing, and particularly, with action scenes, the sentences must be short and choppy, punctuated by action verbs.

So, the producers assigned each one of us the job of writing the first ten pages of the script. We accomplished that in one day because that is what they wanted us to do (and the pay was very good). So, we did it.

Then, enough copies were made of each writer’s first ten pages so that all of the other writers and producers could read each writer’s pages. The goal was to find a consensus of the best ten pages, and go with that writer for the script.

As it turned out, the consensus was for my ten pages. As it turned out, we got into a discussion about that because two of the producers liked another draft better than mine.
That draft was written by a team of two writers.

The producers who liked their ten pages better than mine cited the depth of the writing as opposed to my more cut-to-the-chase version. Their descriptions were long paragraphs utilizing a host of passive verbs and flowery adjectives. My descriptions were short, choppy paragraphs that utilized active verbs with sparse adjectives.

Which ten pages would you have chosen for an action thriller, the two writers, or mine? Read on to see if your answer matches the ultimate choice of the producers.

In the end, the team of two writers’ were chosen to write the script. About 9 months later, the producers called me. They wanted a meeting. I met with them. They wanted me to rewrite the script the team of two writers wrote. They said, “The script just doesn’t feel right.” They gave me two weeks to accomplish this.

After reading the script, I knew exactly what to do. Actually, I begin the rewrite on each page as I read it. I managed to rewrite the script in two weeks. I took the flowery, adjective-heavy, long and boring paragraphs where passive verbs were utilized and cut it up into a fast-moving action thriller utilizing action verbs.

After meetings with the producers, the two who opposed my ten page draft, opposed my rewrite. The other producer loved my rewrite. There were heated arguments amongst all of us. Finally, it was decided that the final vote would be left up to the man who was forking over the most money for the $156 million film. He voted for the script with the
flowery, long paragraphed, adjective-heavy script with passive verbs.

The movie was a family-oriented action thriller. It was aimed directly at kids for its core audience. Guess what, the movie flopped at the box office. Do you know why? It’s the
same reason I argued all along. Although their script of choice was written beautifully, translating it to the screen, would translate into a film for adults with a kid theme, and would result in being boring for kids because of the exaggerated sets, the lengthy dialogue scenes, and the one-dimensionality of the characters.

So, if you still want to know how to kick ass with your screenwriting, know your core audience. Know your genre. Know that flowery writing in scripts will always lead to disaster, always, because it will bore the audience to death, even if you aren’t writing an action thriller. The use of adjectives, in any kind of writing, let alone screenwriting, must be used judiciously.

Film is a visual medium. It exists to tell stories in pictures. It exists to entertain. The only way this can be successfully accomplished is to write visually. And the only way to write visually, is to utilize action verbs. If you do this, mark my word, your writing will take you to the level you want to be with it.

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
“The Zen of Writing”
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.net