inciting incident RSS

Most everyone is familiar with the standard three-act structure. We’ve got our first-10; inciting incident on pg 17; plot point one on pg 30; midpoint turn on pg 50; plot point two on ppg 70-75; climax, and denouement. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat offers a slightly different model, but it’s pretty much in the same ballpark. There is another structural model. It has no name, so I’ve just been calling it the “20/80” because, simply put, plot point lands on pg 20, and plot point two is on pg 80. It’s the minor key of screenplay structure. The other hallmark...

Script structure is an essential part of screenwriting. But there is no greater sin in screenwriting than writing a dull story. That’s the danger of dogmatically following screenplay structure. This seems obvious – no one sets out to write a dull script. But sometimes, in plotting out the mathematical structure of a screenplay, it can happen unintentionally.