Like it or loathe it, structure is really important in screenwriting. Not only is it an integral part of telling your story, it’s an integral part of telling others about your story. Those reading or commissioning screenplays want to know what happens – and so you need to let them know how your story’s going to be told. They want to know why it happens, too – the themes you’re trying to convey – but it’s no exaggeration to say that those in the industry are driven to know how exactly this film’s going to be played out. They want to see the action themselves so they can imagine an audience watching – and hopefully enjoying – it.
Although some screenwriters have a bad relationship with structure, good screenwriters know how to use it well. They’re not bound by it, nor are they afraid of it. Instead, they use it to get to the heart of their story, and then freely play with it when their gut tells them it’s not working properly. It’s easy to see why some of the structural terminology used in screenwriting – inciting incident, act turning point, midpoint, climax, etc – can be off-putting and seem formulaic. But when you think about it, it’s only a way of expressing what we already know and do anyway. We all experience moments where something big happens that calls into question our actions, views or beliefs – the inciting incident. And we all experience times when we suddenly find ourselves doubting our actions, and reconsider what we’re doing – the midpoint. Our characters experience these, too. And so giving these moments a name isn’t about enforcing rules or rigidity – it’s about creating a language that we can all understand and enjoy.
The word journey is used a lot in screenwriting. It’s a way of expressing the arc that the character undergoes, emotionally as well as physically. And because a screenplay’s a progression of time – characters advancing in the narrative, even if the narrative’s told in non-chronological order – we use the word journey to capture the idea of characters moving forward, undertaking action and learning things about themselves and the world as a result. Some films have obvious journeys, like adventure stories and road movies. Think of Big Fish (scr. John August, 2003) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (scr. Stephan Elliott, 1994), for example. But other films have more subtle journeys, such as redemption plots and personal dramas. Think of The Lives of Others (scr. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) and Girl, Interrupted (scr. James Mangold, Lisa Loomer & Anna Hamilton Phelan, 1999), for example. Whatever the genre or form, all films are about journeys – and it’s that journey that connects with the audience, to ensure they keep watching.
Journeys are made up of two parts – the physical journey and the emotional journey. Like strands of DNA, they’re part of the fabric of screenplay structure, continually intertwining to create the whole. It’s another way of saying that a screenplay is comprised of story and plot – the story is what it’s about, and the plot is how it’s told, through action. You can’t have one without the other, not really. A story without a plot isn’t a screenplay – it’s an idea. A plot without a story is directionless and meaningless – a waste of time, actually. Prometheus (scr. Jon Spaihts & Damon Lindelof, 2012) is a good example of this – a film that had lots of special effects, fast-paced action and even a vivid story world, but no story. What was that film really about? Whose journey was it? Apart from wondering what these paranormal entities were, why did we care about this film? There was potential to use the character of Elizabeth as an emotional guide through the story, but the screenplay was so under-developed that all we could do was write it off as a bad experience. It felt more like a set-up for a sequel than it did a film in its own right, this first instalment working as the equivalent of an Act 1 – with no emotional arc at all. Another film that fails miserably because of this type of approach is The Golden Compass (scr. Chris Weitz, 2007) – again, a film where nothing really happens and nobody arcs, leaving a feeling of narrative hollowness. Therefore, it’s always useful to think of your screenplay as a physical representation of an emotional arc – a plot used to tell a story, one that, through the telling, releases at least one but usually a series of themes. This is what makes a good screenplay. And you want to write good screenplays, right?
Physical journeys, in essence, are about what the character wants. As an audience, we see them trying to achieve something physical. It’s a tangible goal that we literally see them in pursuit of, driven by a motivation that’s usually brought about by the inciting incident. Examples might include:
Emotional journeys are about what happens to the character as a result of pursuing their want. As an audience, we see them undergoing an emotional arc. It’s understood as what the character needs – the subconscious thing that’s been driving them all along. It might be something that lurks in their past, but has been stirred up early on in the screenplay. Or it might be something that they, unlike the other characters and the audience, were totally oblivious of. Examples might include:
Choose a film and write about the relationship between the protagonist’s physical and emotional journeys. What’s the story at the heart of the screenplay? How has it been plotted? Where you can, identify key plot turning points that serve the protagonist’s emotional arc.
The most understood and widely used base for a screenplay narrative is the three-act structure. In fact, it’s the base for understanding all other structural models, from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1993) to Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey (2007), and Paul Joseph Gulino’s Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach (2004) to Linda Aronson’s The 21st-Century Screenplay: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Tomorrow’s Films (2011). Although some are sceptical about it, seeing it as rigid and formulaic, it’s actually flexible and expandable. It’s so broad and sweeping that it acts more as a ‘container’ for a story to occur in – a frame that your unique story can be composed within. The three-act structure sees a story divided into a beginning (Act 1), a middle (Act 2) and an end (Act 3), with key turning points between the acts. Syd Field is often seen as the pioneer for the three-act structure in screenwriting – see, for example, The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting (2003) – but it actually goes as far back as Aristotle, who also saw that drama was composed of a beginning, middle and end, and that the circular feel to a story – coming back to the beginning again, but in a different way – was both practical and appealing. Ari Hiltunen’s Aristotle in Hollywood: The Anatomy of Successful Storytelling (2002) is a useful book here. As the title suggests, what we see here is a practical application of Aristotle’s theories to contemporary cinema.
Three-act structure, then, helps the screenwriter to start structuring their story from its basic building blocks, and can be broken down as follows:
Here’s a summary of the three-act structure, drawn from above:
The disturbance in a character’s life sets them on a journey to achieve a goal, which incorporates a physical want and an emotional need. Obstacles stand in their way, creating a series of rising conflicts that need to be overcome before the goal can be achieved and resolution found.
Referred to above, the inciting incident is an important moment – or series of moments – in a screenplay. Occurring during Act 1 – usually 10 or 15 minutes in – it’s the key disturbance of the story that sets everything in motion. It’s the moment of disequilibrium in the protagonist’s world. It’s their call to adventure. The inciting incident propels the protagonist on their journey, more often than not appearing in the form of a problem posed or a challenge set. Motivation is crucial in screenwriting, and this is where the inciting incident comes in. Essentially, if the protagonist doesn’t have an impetus to undertake the challenge that’s been set, then the story can lack conviction and the audience won’t care if they achieve their goal or not. So, the inciting incident offers a dilemma or crisis where the protagonist must decide whether to undertake the challenge or not – for better or for worse.
The inciting incident comes in many forms, but here are some common ones:
Even today, The Wizard of Oz (scr. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf, 1939) remains a fantastic case study to show how structure can be used effectively to tell a great story.
Dorothy Gale is living an unhappy life on the family farm. She craves a better life, somewhere ‘over the rainbow’. She feels unwanted, and that others see her as a silly girl who just gets in the way. So she decides to run away. We see clearly here Dorothy’s dramatic want – to run away – and also her need – to feel wanted and useful. This plan is scuppered, though, when fake fortune teller Professor Marvel tells her she must go back home to tend to her sick and worried Aunt Em. As she gets back, though, the inciting incident literally spins the action in another direction when a storm tears Dorothy’s house from the ground and blows it away. The reason that Dorothy’s in the house on her own is because she missed the chance of going into the storm shelter with her family – which reinforces the journey that she’ll go on to feel reconnected with her family and home.
Now ‘over the rainbow’, Dorothy leaves the house and finds herself in the land of Oz. Here she’s faced with a world starkly different to the one she left behind – it’s full of colour, strange objects, and little people called Munchkins. Clearly, Dorothy’s in a new world that will give her new experiences. Glinda, the good witch, tells her that, to get back to Kansas, she must find the Wizard of Oz. But that’s going to take a long journey down the yellow brick road. And so the idea is clearly set up that Dorothy’s going to travel a physical journey, and that, on this journey, she’ll also experience emotional transformation.
The journey is not useful, of course, unless it’s got conflict and obstacles. What Dorothy doesn’t know is that the house landed on and killed the Wicked Witch of the East – and now her sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, is out to get her. Even worse, Dorothy’s got the magical ruby slippers the Wicked Witch desperately wants, which gives her a physical motivation, too. And so, the Wicked Witch is the antagonist who’ll do whatever she can to destroy an innocent Dorothy.
The Act 1 turning point occurs when Dorothy steps onto the yellow brick road to start her journey. Encouraged by the Munchkins’ song, she commits to the journey – her goal to find the Wizard of Oz. Along the long journey – Act 2 – she meets her new friends, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion. They’re instrumental in helping her along, and later help her to physically achieve her goal. Emotionally, too, they develop Dorothy’s character, each representing something that Dorothy lacks and needs – a brain, a heart and courage.
Conflict is encountered along the journey, much of it initiated by the Wicked Witch – apple-throwing trees, scary woods, poisonous poppies, flying monkeys, etc. These obstacles are essential to the story because they stall the happy ending Dorothy’s looking for and teach her valuable life lessons – without them, meeting the Wizard would be all too easy, and Dorothy wouldn’t earn her reward.
The reward itself is stalled even further when the Wizard is revealed to be a fake. Dorothy is distressed, feeling that she’ll never get home, but the Wizard sets her one final test – to kill the Wicked Witch and bring back her broom. This is the Act 2 turning point, where all seems lost and the stakes are raised.
The Wicked Witch captures Dorothy, who has to be rescued by her friends. During this time, she sees a vision of her Aunt Em, and realises she shouldn’t have run away in the first place. This is Dorothy’s ‘lowest point’, fearing that she’ll die – and die alone. Regretting leaving Kansas, we sense her emotional arc – to value her family and be happy in Kansas. Dorothy is finally saved, but the chase isn’t over yet. The Wicked Witch throws a fireball to kill Dorothy and her friends, which sets the Scarecrow alight. Dorothy quickly throws water over him to put out the fire. Unbeknownst to her, however, the Wicked Witch cannot touch water – and so melts. This is a key moment in the story because Dorothy hasn’t purposely killed the witch – she’s inadvertently killed her through trying to save her friend. This shows Dorothy’s emotional growth – thinking of others first – and is the true turning point of her character development.
Dorothy returns to the Wizard, who promises to get her home by balloon. She says goodbye to her friends, who remind her what she’s done for them. The balloon’s about to go up when her dog, Toto, climbs out, and, as she retrieves him, the balloon sails off. Dorothy’s really upset, but Glinda comes back and tells her that she’s been able to go home all along – she just didn’t realise it. She tells her to click her heels together and repeat the line, ‘There’s no place like home’, and she’ll get there – and she does.
Dorothy wakes up from this ‘dream’ to find herself back in Kansas. She relays the story to her family, who just laugh. She looks at them and tells them she loves them, and that she’ll never run away again – after all, ‘There’s no place like home.’ And so, as the story ends, we see that Dorothy’s undertaken a journey that’s not only developed her physically, but emotionally. She’s arced – from unhappy girl who wants to run away, to happy, more mature girl who’s learnt the value of family and home.
A simple but effective way to find the key beats of your story is by identifying its tentpoles. In other words, the key turning points that will prop your story up. It’s moments like these that screenplay readers are often looking for – the big action, the dramatic twists – so, although you’ll develop a much more detailed overview of your story, it’s good for you to know the tentpole moments early on. After all, not only will they drive and direct the story – before and after each tentpole – they give you something to aim towards if you’re crafting the screenplay in sections.
The eight tentpoles of a screenplay are:
If you want to use these tentpoles to help develop your story, you should summarise each one in no more than a sentence or two. You can refer back to them again and again, to remind yourself of what it is you’re trying to achieve. Or, to use the tent analogy once more, to help you stop your story from collapsing.
Here are two examples of the tent poles in action:
There’s Something About Mary (scr. Ed Decter, John J Strauss, Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly, 1998)
Leap Year (scr. Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont, 2010)
Another way to approach screenplay structure, moving on from tentpoles, is to think about using sequences. This idea works on the notion that every screenplay is built up of a number of sequences – usually eight – that each have a beginning, middle and end. You usually find two sequences in Act 1, four in Act 2, and two in Act 3 – but this isn’t always the case, as you’ll see below. In a way, each sequence is like a short film – with its own catalyst, complications and climax – and together they come together to form the full story. Likewise, each sequence has its own set of dramatic questions and answers, giving direction and dimensionality. We can see how sequences relate well to tentpoles, and so you should consider them in partnership.
Paul Joseph Gulino’s book, Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, goes into great detail about using sequences, and uses a variety of film examples to illuminate the points being made. But, for the purposes of this book, here’s a short summary of how sequences work in a screenplay.
To show the sequences in action, here’s a breakdown of the film Misery (scr. William Goldman, 1990). Notice how each act also has its own driving question – something that the sequences in each act combine to fulfil.
Act 1 – Will Paul get better?
Act 2 – Will Paul get away?
Act 3 – Will Paul get away alive?
Write a sequence breakdown of your own, for a film that you admire. What do you learn about how it works from doing this? Has it helped you understand how any of your own screenplays are – or aren’t – working?
Screenwriters might want to divert from traditional three-act structures and use more experimental, complex ways of telling a story. I say complex, but in fact these days they’re not that complex – audiences are beginning to understand how non-linear films work and, because more people are writing about them from a practical point of view, screenwriters, too, are learning how to use them. There’s not enough space here to delve into the barrage of alternative structures in use in contemporary screenwriting, so I just want to focus on two – the multiple protagonist story and the parallel story. For a fuller exploration of alternative structures, Linda Aronson’s The 21st-Century Screenplay: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Tomorrow’s Films is pretty much a bible. It gives structure to what some people call anti-structure, proving that alternative structures are governed by their own principles – they’re not just random.
For me, the key principle of a multiple protagonist story is that the protagonists each have their own emotional arc, but by and large share the physical journey. They belong to the same story world. And, crucially – and this is what separates it from the parallel story – the protagonists are brought together by the same inciting incident. They wouldn’t arc if it didn’t happen. This multiple reaction to the same event (or series of events) then allows a screenwriter to explore how different people respond to the same catalytic event. As such, it’s an effective way of representing how we, as a culture and a society, react differently to shared events. And, because the multiple protagonist story is about individual character arcs, how our reactions have different emotional nuances.
A lot of people assume that, just because a film has more than one protagonist, it’s a multiple protagonist story. I don’t think this is true. Like I say above, what makes it a multiple story is individual reactions to the same inciting incident. This is the appeal – how one thing can trigger a range of responses in a variety of protagonists, responses that wouldn’t have come about if it weren’t for the inciting incident. And films like this aren’t always easy to find. Multiple protagonist stories aren’t as common as you might think. How many films do you know that have one catalytic event that sparks off a series of individual character arcs?
The Kids Are All Right is a good example of a multiple protagonist film. Its protagonists – Nic, Jules and Joni – are all affected by Laser and Joni contacting their birth father, Paul. These three protagonists all undergo an emotional arc – an individual emotional arc – that’s brought about by Paul’s arrival. Jules sleeps with Paul and realises that she’s lost her identity. Nic, in temporarily losing Jules, realises that she’s overbearing and partly to blame for Jules’ feelings. And Joni grows up, learning that life isn’t all a bed of roses. Interestingly, there’s a clear suggestion at the end of the film that this is a multiple protagonist film. When Joni leaves for university, she, Nic, and Jules hug and say goodbye. Laser stands to one side, observing. He’s been a central character in this film – as has Paul – but he’s not fulfilled the role of a protagonist. Although he does undergo a small character arc himself, he’s been more of an instigator of action for the other characters’ arcs. What makes this film special, then, is how the arrival of one pivotal figure in three women’s lives can function to change them all for ever. Clearly, it’s this arrival – this inciting incident – that drives all of these emotional arcs. They wouldn’t have happened without it.
Other examples of the multiple protagonist narrative structure include:
Screenplays using parallel story structure are similar to multiple protagonist stories, but differ in that they usually aim to explore the same theme or emotion through different character perspectives, ones that don’t necessarily have to be from the same story world. By seeing a series of interwoven stories, some of them even taking place in different eras, an audience is forced to connect to the narrative by considering the thematic or emotional driver. Key to a parallel story – again, the crucial difference between this and the multiple protagonist story – is that these protagonists don’t react to the same inciting incident. They each experience their own catalytic event, either before they all come together if it’s a parallel group story, or within their own narrative if it’s a story that jumps between time frames and worlds. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (scr. Ol Parker, 2011) is a good example of the former, and The Hours (scr. David Hare, 2002) the latter.
For the screenwriter, it’s really important to find interesting, original and complementary protagonists through whom a universal theme or emotion can be explored. As per any screenplay, the core of the story lies in theme or emotion portrayed, but, in the parallel story, its real unique texture is in its structural execution – the notion of one idea told through juxtaposing or complementary parallel characters and worlds.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is an example of a parallel story film that could easily be misconceived as a multiple protagonist film. Yes, it’s about a group of people who come together in a so-called luxury retirement village in India. But is it about the group or the individual characters? Although they function as a group, structurally there’s nothing that the group as a whole strives towards. It’d be easy to think that the revelation of the retirement village not being what it was advertised as is the film’s inciting incident – but that would mean that the rest of the film would need to be about their abilities to cope with that, which it isn’t. It acts as a backdrop, and by the end of the film everyone does pull together and the retirement village is saved, but that’s not what drives it. What drives the film is each character’s individual goal – which is linked to individual inciting incidents that we see at the very start of the film. These include widow Evelyn’s discovery that she’s been left in debt, housekeeper Muriel losing her job, and high court judge Graham biting the bullet and leaving his profession. Therefore, the best way to understand this film is as a parallel story, where the multiple protagonists experience their own inciting incidents that propel them into joining the group situation – the retirement village community – but who actually follow their own individual physical journeys, albeit with help from one other.
Mysterious Skin (scr. Gregg Araki, 2004) is another film that could be seen as a multiple protagonist story, but that depends on what’s deemed as the inciting incident. On the face of it, it’s the sexual abuse in the past that looks like Neil and Brian’s shared inciting incident. But this is problematic, not only because we don’t know for sure from the start that this is the case – especially regarding Brian – but because this event doesn’t drive each of the protagonists’ physical journeys in the film. Rather, it’s a reason that we understand more fully later. It’s what we actually see in the present day that drives each of the protagonists, and so, because each has their own inciting incident, it’s a parallel story. For Neil, it’s his first act of prostitution, and how that triggers him to go on a dark journey of further prostitution, eventually leading him to New York. For Brian, it’s seeing Avalyn in the TV show, which then leads to him piecing the past together and finding out what happened to him ‘that night’.
As with all parallel films that take place in a different story world, we see various points of connection between the protagonists throughout this film, leading us to believe that they will come together at some point – and give us the meaning we’ve been looking for. These points of connection, feeding both our curiosity and our understanding, include: the picture of the baseball team (both boys are in it, and Brian comes into possession of it later, from the library); memories (or, in Brian’s case, nightmares) of what happened with the coach; the figure of the coach himself (for Neil, idolising him, and for Brian, because he never understood what happened to him, projecting him as the figure of an alien); and, in the last third of the film, the character of Eric who, after Neil’s departure for New York, becomes good friends with Brian. In fact, it is through Eric that Brian eventually comes to meet Neil, and the climactic – and final – point of connection comes when Neil reveals the truth to Brian, who then cradles himself into Neil. In this quite frankly beautiful scene, Brian needs to feel a connection to the absolute tragedy of the situation, and show to Neil that it’s affected both of their lives forever.
Other examples of the parallel story narrative structure include:
Of course, we could argue that it doesn’t matter how we classify such films. That a screenwriter should just write, and let the theorists worry about how to understand them. This isn’t a bad argument at all. However, because many screenwriters learn through understanding how other people’s stories work – as well as just writing and experimenting with their own material – I think it’s important to offer such definitions and distinctions so that we might share knowledge and ideas for the benefit of others. And, of course, if we weren’t interested in craft then books like this wouldn’t exist!
The final word of advice from me is that you should only use an alternative structure for your screenplay if the story demands it. If you use it as a gimmick, it’ll show. And it’ll probably not work. But if your story needs a different kind of frame – whether it’s related to theme or character – then you should explore using an alternative structure. Sometimes forcing yourself to expand your thinking – to experiment with structure – can open up possibilities that you’d never have thought of, giving you an engaging and refreshing screenplay. And that, of course, can only be a good thing.
Dr Christina Kallas is an award-winning writer-producer for film and television, and author of Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure (2010). Currently teaching at Columbia University and founder of the Writers Improv Studio in New York (www.writersimprovstudio.com), she has this to say:
Non-linear immersive storytelling
Cinema has the ability to represent multiple versions of reality simultaneously, and to challenge the frameworks of familiar ways of seeing and feeling. Why do we, then, continue to tell stories we’ve been told before, and in the most predictable and simplistic ways?
The hierarchical organisation reflected in classic storytelling’s privileging of one character and his point of view over the rest has led to concepts such as one protagonist, one perspective, causality and linearity, which are taught and practised as if they were the Bible. In screenwriting, of course, it all goes back to Aristotle. And it’s important to remember that Aristotelian ‘pleasure’ by no means signifies superficial entertainment in the sense of scattering attention, escapism, relaxation, temporary distraction or diversion. Quite the contrary: it expresses satisfaction on the rational as well as the emotional level. This presupposes stories that challenge and interest the audience, that shake up their everyday lives – stories that broaden the spectrum of our experience since they intrinsically represent an experience themselves.
Cinematic narrative structures, which break our perception of the linear direction of time, create a world of quantum ‘strangeness’ where story time, story space and the audience’s consciousness (mirroring the writer’s consciousness) are intimately interrelated and inseparable. And there exists a higher dimension in which everything is interconnected. This is what I call emotional structure, because it goes beyond the classic one-dimensional cognitive perception. It approaches structure from the perspective of a more comprehensive perception than rational thinking, and goes beyond Aristotle’s causality.
In non-linear storytelling, because there isn’t one single character to follow, no main plot and no cause and effect, we as an audience are put in the centre of the action. We stop being observers and become participants. Whatever’s happening, it’s happening to us. We make an emotional journey, and that emotional journey – which mirrors the emotional journey of the storyteller – is the only thing that makes this a unity. A story. The story thus becomes an experience – an immersive experience.
There’s an idea connected to this, which is why I think the term immersive storytelling – of which non-linearity, participation and emotion are intrinsic elements – is a happy one. This is the idea of going deeper. And it’s in these depths that emotional truth lies. Surely, a writer’s goal is to transfer the human experience as truthfully as humanly possible? Isn’t that the reason we became writers in the first place?
© Christina Kallas, 2012