They say there's two types of writers: there's architects and there's gardeners. I think George RR Martin says that. I think TikTok says "planners" and "pantsers," because you're either a planner, or you're going by the seat of your pants.

This class is a very architectural class. This is like making sure that the bones of the story are all there, so that the thing can stand upright. And then you decorate it with all the fun writing & world building & creative stuff that you're good at.

Whereas a gardener just starts writing, and sees where the story takes them. And then afterwards they read back through it, and keep the stuff that they like, and then they grow some more stuff out of it.

I am much more of an architect than a gardener, when it comes to story structure. So that's why this class is what it is. I hope it suits your styles okay! But I do feel justified being very architectural in this class at you, because scriptwriting is a really, really architectural form of writing.  It's very regimented!

Because when you write a screenplay, it's a collaborative document. You're not just publishing your script and sharing it with the world, anybody who wants to read it. You're basically writing a letter to the director, the actors, everyone in the crew. So in a sense, a screenplay is a story, but in another sense, it's also a set of instructions, a set of instructions from the writers to other creative people (who are not writers). And you have to work with these people from these other fields, every day. So it's important that you all speak the same language!

And as a result, script writing has become a very very very barebones form of writing. You've got time to hit the big scenes in the story & whatever connective tissue you need between the big scenes, and that's it. In a novel, when something interesting happens, we could spend the rest of the book just inside the character's mind processing it. And if it was a movie, nothing would be happening on screen, but in a novel, that's perfectly okay.

But when you're writing a movie or a play, you are writing by the minute, literally. It's supposed to be 1 page of your script is equal to 1 minute of time in the movie or the play. And so the scripts for most movies are between 90 pages and 120 pages. If your script is 121 pages and you send it to an agent or somebody important who can get you a connection-- and it's 121 pages long-- they're going to ask themselves, "Really? They couldn't cut 1 page out of that??"

Fundamentally, scriptwriting is about writing for an audience who doesn't super-love reading. So the quicker you can get to the point, the more likely you are to connect with the directors, the actors, the crew… possibly even the producers!

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120 pages of script is a lot of writing. How exactly do you fill that?

Well, the classic way is to break it up into three acts.  Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.  Usually Act 1 is the exposition, Act 2 is the culmination, and Act 3 is the resolution.  But that's always been a confusing system to me, because Act 2 is supposed to be 50% of the story!  Act 1 is 25%, Act 2 is 50%, and then Act 3 is 25%.

Why is Act 2 twice as long??  And it's the hardest part of the story to write!  It's the gradual change.  Act 1 is introducing everything, that's a lot of fun.  And Act 3 is blowing up the Death Star, that's fun.  But Act 2 is like the boring stuff that happens in the middle... and it's twice as long!  I had a professor who called it a vast tundra. "How will you fill the vast tundra of the second act?"

So I think the easiest way to figure out how to fill your 120 pages is with sequences. A sequence is a chapter. You're breaking your story down into chapters, into eight chapters, eight sequences, and they're all the same length, somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes long.

Each sequence is made up of a collection of scenes, maybe 3-5 scenes.  The average scene is 3-5 pages long.  So that's the easel that you're gonna work with: 3-5 pages to tell a complete scene, one minute at a time.

Now, each sequence is shaped by the major scenes that surround it.  So for example, your first impression of the protagonist, that's a major scene. Your last impression of the protagonist, that's a major scene. The protagonist's midpoint, where they figure out how to change-- they don't know how to stop doing the wrong thing, and they haven't started doing the right thing, but they're at that crossroads-- the midpoint is a major scene.

And the midpoint is halfway through the movie, so it'll probably be around page 45 or page 60.  The next time you're watching a movie, pause, see if it's in the middle, see if you can find the midpoint!  Or just skip straight to the middle.  That scene can tell you what the arc is about, and what the theme is about.  What kind of lightbulb is clicking above the protagonist's head, in this scene?

Well, besides the audience's first impression & their last impression & the protagonist's midpoint, there are 4 other scenes-- seven major scenes altogether-- spaced out evenly throughout the plot.  And the sequences (the chapters) are the scenes that connect the major scenes to each other.

And when you attach the audience's first impression & their last impression & the protagonist's midpoint to the idea of a character arc?  To the idea of a protagonist who self-sabotages, and then learns how to change their behaviors in some meaningful way?  There's a common way to take the emotional journey that a person goes through when they're forced to change some aspect of their behavior or personality... to take that emotional experience & split it up into major scenes, which can conveniently happen at the beginning of the movie, 15 minutes into the movie, 30 minutes into the movie, 45 minutes in, 60 minutes in, 90 minutes in, 105 minutes in, and at the end of the movie.

So scroll down and I'll walk you through how to build an eight-sequence structure for a traditional character arc.

So let's start with Act 1 because that's where the audience is going to start. It's Act 1, but it has two sequences in it: Sequence 1, Sequence 2.

The beginning of Sequence 1 is the audience's first impression of your story. In this scene, you're demonstrating the protagonist's Before, or the setting's Before... before the conflict disrupts everything. What's the clearest way to illustrate that in a scene?

In As Good As It Gets, our first impression of Jack Nicholson's character is taking his neighbor's sweet (but ugly) little dog & throwing him down a garbage chute. That protagonist is a monster!

In Star Wars, our first impression is the droids, saucily walking down a hallway... in the middle of a space battle. Wow, what an interesting place! What an interesting status quo!

So you start with the first impression. The next major scene happens about 15 (pages / minutes) in. This scene is called the Inciting Incident. And I'll tell you about the Inciting Incident in just a moment.

But between the first scene (the audience's first impression) and the inciting incident, your challenge is to write 2-4 scenes that connect the two major scenes. Again, each scene is usually 3-5 pages long. And I like to use a 4-sentence summary to plan each scene (conflict, exposition, culmination, resolution).

I should mention while we're talking about Sequence 1: I can also use a 4-sentence summary to plan a sequence. I can use it at every level of the plot! What's the conflict, exposition, culmination, and resolution of the story overall? And then what's the conflict, exposition, culmination, and resolution of this sequence, Sequence 1? And then once I've broken Sequence 1 down into 3-5 scenes... what's the conflict, exposition, culmination, and resolution of Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, and so on, until the script is done?

So if I was doing this lesson, if I was doing this assignment, that would be my goal: to write a 4-sentence summary for each prompt. Which would take a long time! In an 8-Sequence Structure, you've got 7 major scenes & 8 sequences. So that's 15 four-sentence summaries, to make a complete outline of the major scenes & chapters in your script. I don't expect you to turn in that much work. But if this planning device is useful to you, then that's how you'll know when you're done outlining the sequences!

Okay, the audience has a first impression of the protagonist, or the status quo that the protagonist lives in. The next few scenes usually demonstrate what the status quo is, how that works. Because the protagonist has this behavior that they're going to be changing as they arc. But in Sequence 1, we're really demonstrating what the world of their Before is, because it has allowed the protagonist to keep behaving this way. The protag can have a toxic relationship with their status quo before. They're probably not thriving, but they haven't been forced out of the behavior yet. They are lacking the necessary antagonism to push them outside of their comfort zone. So in Sequence 1, you're demonstrating what the protagonist's comfort zone is... and what's right outside their comfort zone, lurking over them in their everyday life. So you write 2-4 scenes about that.

And then at page 15, you hit the Inciting Incident!  Which is such a dorky term. It sounds like Stan Lee, writing for Marvel in the 70's. In the Inciting Incident, the protagonist's status quo gets disrupted in some meaningful way for the first time. It's the crack in the foundry. It's the protagonist's first wake-up call that they're going to be forced to change. So ~15 (minutes / pages) into the script, the protagonist gets their first taste of the power of the antagonism. Maybe it's the antagonism's introduction? And the audience gets a taste of what the protagonist's after will be. They get a taste of how the protag is going to arc. You can start to see the trajectory.

So the Inciting Incident is 3-5 pages long, somewhere around the 15-minute mark. And it marks the end of Sequence 1, and the beginning of Sequence 2. After the Inciting Incident, you write 2-4 scenes that demonstrate how the protagonist's status quo is starting to fall apart. Because of the Inciting Incident, things are starting to topple. And the protagonist's comfort zone is starting to shrink. And they're gradually realizing that this could kind of get serious. And that leads to the next major scene, the Act 1 Closer.

In the Act 1 Closer, the protagonist realizes that their old status quo is gone. They can't rely on the world to support them and keep their life the way that they wish they could keep it, even if they didn't love it. Their life has changed in some significant way, and they can't go back to the way things were. And so they're going to be forced to change their behaviors in some meaningful way. Oy!

And that's Act 1.

So in Act 1, the protagonist has this status quo that enables them to have a behavior, and they're going to be forced to change this behavior over the course of their arc, over the course of the plot. By the end of Act 1, the protag loses that status quo. The other characters, the setting, their own internal conflict is forcing them to go outside of their comfort zone, and they can't get back.

Act 2 is about how the protagonist copes with losing this status quo. And Act 2 is really, really long. It's supposed to be 50% of the story. Act 1 is 25%, Act 2 is 50%, Act 3 is 25%. How will you fill the vast tundra of the second act??

In Creating Character Arcs, KM Weiland recommends taking the second act & splitting it into 2 smaller acts. She says that in the first half of Act 2, the character is just reacting to the circumstances around them. And then the midpoint happens, and in the second half of Act 2, the character becomes proactive. So let's go through the major scenes and sequences of Act 2!

In the Act 1 Closer, the protagonist lost their status quo. So Sequence 3 (the next couple of scenes) is about the protagonist's immediate reaction to losing the status quo. Even if they didn't love the way things were... they haven't achieved their objective yet, they haven't arced yet, they haven't figured stuff out. They're in a state of chaos. So they have to grieve the loss of the old status quo, and Sequence 3 is the first stage of that grief. They try to keep behaving the way that they always behave, and it's just not being accepted. They can't get away with it anymore. The easy solutions are not working. They are struggling in this new status quo. So you write 3-5 scenes about that.

That brings us to Sequence 4! And by Sequence 4, usually the character understands on some level that they need to try to change. So it's their first attempt to change. But changing a behavior, a belief, a thought, a feeling... that's really really tough for people to do. So Sequence 4 is usually about trial & error (but mostly error). So you write 3-5 scenes of the protagonist getting knocked around. Because even though they're trying to embrace things the new way, they're still grieving the old status quo. They're still connected to the old way. That's still their muscle memory.

And at the end of Sequence 4, we have a major scene: the Midpoint. Often in the Midpoint, the protagonist has been kicked around long enough-- they have failed long enough-- that they start to notice the pattern. They start to figure out what they've been doing wrong (and / or) what they should be doing instead. They make a meaningful step forward. They figure out how to start exorcising the ghost of their old status quo.

Once the Midpoint happens, the protag stops being reactive & they start being proactive. The midpoint gave them 1 tool that they can use, and when you have at least 1 tool that's actually helpful? You can make a lot of progress!

So in the second half of Act 2, in Sequences 5 & 6, the protagonist goes back to trial & error. But this time? They succeed more than they fail! The way that they're supposed to behave in the after starts becoming their muscle memory. So that's what the protagonist is up to in Sequences 5 & 6. And at the end of Sequence 6 we have a major scene: the Act 2 Closer.

In the Act 2 Closer, the protag gets sucker-punched by their Before. Because even though the protag's made a ton of progress getting to their After, they're still not done grieving the loss of their old status quo. Some big emotional part of them is still clinging to the Before. So whatever the protagonist is going to miss most about the Before-- whatever means the most to them-- the antagonism hits the protag with that, in the Act 2 Closer. And that sucker-punch pulls the plug on the protag. They're demoralized. They're incapacitated. Everything they've worked for up to this point isn't enough to help them when confronted with the Before.

What else can the protagonist possibly do? Should they give up, and abandon the objective?? You can find out in Act 3! ...in the next video.

But before you scroll down, you may have noticed that when I described the second half of Act 2 (the part where the protag becomes proactive), I kinda lumped Sequences 5 & 6 together. This is because Sequence 6 is really really hard to define. Usually what happens is a story has at least 1 subplot (but probably a few). And the closer you get to the end of Act 2, the more you want all of the characters in the same place. You want all of the plotlines to be escalating so that when you get to Act 3, all the characters can be together & interacting & paying off everything you set up & blowing up the Death Star & resolving the story together.

So in the first half of the script (Sequences 1-4, from the audience's first impression to the midpoint), most of the scenes are probably going to be about your protagonist, unless you're writing an ensemble piece. But by Sequence 5 & especially Sequence 6, often you see less of the protagonist & more of the supporting cast. The scenes get chopped up more evenly.

So if you're trying to build an 8-Sequence Structure for your script, and you get to Sequence 6 and you're like, "I don't know what else to put in here!" Don't worry. Once you start developing subplots, you're going to need that real estate. And by the time you've designed the subplots, you're going to know your protagonist better & what their storyline is, so you'll figure out what to do with them in Sequence 6.

You don't want to know how long I've been researching Sequence 6, only to come up with, "It's real estate, you'll use it later." They can't all be winners!

At the end of Act 2, the antagonism forces the protagonist to realize that they're still not done grieving the loss of their old status quo. They can make as much progress as they want with their arc, but they'll never be finished with it until they can make peace with what their life was like before they started arcing. So usually at the end of Act 2, the protagonist suffers a major demoralizing setback. The antagonism sucker-punches them right in the rawest point of their Achilles heel. Can they come back from it?? Well, in Act 3 we find out!

In Act 3, we're building up to the final confrontation between protagonism & antagonism. We're approaching the finish line-- the objective-- the main big objective that we've been fighting for the whole story.

So Act 3 starts with Sequence 7-- 2-4 scenes-- where the protagonist goes through the steps of making peace with the Before. They've probably saved the hardest changes for last, the biggest, most emotional challenges. So even though they start out the sequence demoralized in a place of powerlessness, they psych themselves into it and take the necessary steps as best they can. Which leads to the Climax, the first major scene of the third act.

In the Climax, the protagonist permanently changes from Before to After. It's the last step, the biggest step of the process. They have to take an action. They have to perform something, behave a certain way, feel something, think something, believe something that they absolutely would not have in their first scene, in the audience's first impression. So what is the most meaningfully different action that your protagonist can take in the climax than the way that they're behaving during the audience's first impression of the character? They muster up the strength to do it and they defeat their antagonism. Or they try and they fail and it's a tragedy, a decisive loss. Or it's a tie in a meaningful way. So in the Climax, the protagonist permanently changes to After. You demonstrate it in that scene.

And that scene is followed by Sequence 8, the last sequence, 2-4 scenes. Although often shorter. Often the whole third act is shorter than the other two. Because once you blow up the Death Star, how many more scenes can you have? But in Sequence 8, in a couple of scenes, you're demonstrating the protagonist's new status quo. The status quo of their After. They have this new behavior and the world they live in encourages them to use it. The status quo might allow the protagonist to return to their old behaviors that they had at the beginning of the arc. But the protagonist doesn't need to do it anymore. So what is this status quo? What does the rest of their life look like?

And then the last scene of (Sequence 8 / Act 3 / the whole story) is the audience's last impression, wherein you demonstrate in the clearest way, down to the clearest action, what the protagonist's After is like. Which action demonstrates their new behavior? And how does the storyteller feel about it? And how is the audience supposed to feel about it?

And that is an 8-Sequence Structure!

I do want to stress this is just one example of a character arc. It's a common one, it's an archetypal one. But you can change it up! The important thing to remember is that the audience is conditioned to expect 7 major scenes & 8 sequences. You can't get around the beginning being the audience's first impression & the ending being the audience's last impression. And I do think it's a good idea to take the milestones of the protagonist's arc & use those to create the 7 major scenes. And then the 8 sequences are the connective tissue. But that's just the common approach. If you can think of a way to play with it that works better for your story, then you should absolutely try it!

I'd like to tell you a little bit about the history of sequences. It's kind of a strict form of chaptering, 15 minutes is very specific!

Well, in the olden days of filmmaking, when they shot their movies on film, one full reel of film gave you 15 minutes of footage. So, when you went to the movies, it wasn't just the projectionist in the booth pressing play. If the projectionist in the booth pressed play, you wouldn't see the full movie from the beginning to the end of the credits. You would only see the first reel, the first 15 minutes.

The projectionist in the booth has to pay attention to when the 15-minute mark is coming up. And a little bit before that 15-minute mark, they gotta get the second reel out & feed it into the machine.

Now, if the projectionist's timing is good, then the audience won't notice. They'll watch the first 15 minutes of the movie, and then 15 minutes & 1 second happens, and they think nothing of it.

But if the projectionist isn't fast enough? Then the audience might watch the first 15 minutes, and then the screen goes black, and they're just sitting in the dark, listening to the sounds of people chewing popcorn around them. You gotta wait for the projectionist to put the second reel in!

So, once screenwriters understood that their stories could be disrupted at the 15-minute mark, at the 30-minute mark, the 45-minute mark... they realized that the technology had imposed upon them a natural way to chapter their stories. I don't know how we ended up with the term "sequences" instead of "reels."

But as far as I know, the first person to start teaching sequences was Frank Daniel, my professor's professor. Your professor's professor's professor. The guy who came up with "Someone wants something badly, but they have trouble getting it." Frank was teaching screenwriting, and he noticed that students really struggled to figure out what to put in Act 2. So he looked at a million movies by the reel & figured out how to start teaching them as chapters. So, shoutout to Frank!