Sunday, November 14, 2010
Thoughts on first act structure
Howling Pictures blog has done everyone a huge favor by transcribing Michael Arndt’s treatise on first act structure from the Blu Ray edition of Toy Story 3. OK, maybe not a treatise, but you get the idea. It’s a lot of useful information.
My favorite is the first one:
1. INTRODUCE YOUR CHARACTER BY SHOWING THEIR WORLD & GRAND PASSION
The thing you do when introducing your character is to show their world and show them doing the thing they love most. Show their grand passion / defining trait. The one thing that’s the centre of their whole universe.
Reading through all of Michael Arndt’s thoughts one realizes that it is much easier said than done. The thing that is interesting to me, however, is that I think that many writers of great scripts probably achieve a close facsimile without even realizing it. Think about it, pick up any good script and read the first act. I bet that it very closely achieves most of the six points if not all of them. Hell, to all of you “non professionals” out there (me included), pick up one of your scripts that you feel is sub par. It’s probably one of your very earliest attempts. Chances are that it fails on at least four or five of the points. Now, pick up one that you think to yourself, “Man, this isn’t half bad”. I bet in that first act you can see where you’ve hit at least three or four of the points and you weren’t even aware of it. Sure, the hits may have been glancing, but at least contact was made.
I don’t know what the point is that I’m trying to make. I don’t think I’m making a point so much as making an observation. That observation being that it is as important to be able to identify why something works as it is to identify why it doesn’t work. I mean, it’s kind of two doors into the same room, right?
Right.
