The Secret to Writing Great Scenes

Over the past several years, I’ve read a lot of television scripts of both the sold and the unsold variety and I’ve come across one feature that I think is the most common differentiator between the two.

It’s missing in most unsold scripts I read and it’s often missing in even my own writing, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a scene in a critically acclaimed TV show that doesn’t have it.

It’s not about formatting. It’s not about whitespace. It’s not about voiceovers or scene description or how many pages long it is.

It’s about reversals.

The Wire (2002), “Middle Ground”

When I say “reversal” I’m talking about a power shift that results in a reversal of fortune for a character. The best scenes often have several reversals but pretty much any scene of substance needs at least one.

It’s impossible to completely avoid spoilers while discussing this topic so while I avoid sharing unnecessary information, there are mild spoilers below for:

  • Game of Thrones (2011), Season 7, Episode 5, “Eastwatch”
  • The Sopranos (1999), Season 4, Episode 12, “Eloise”
  • The Wire (2002), Season 3, Episode 11, “Middle Ground”

I’ve included Youtube embeds below, but the full episodes are available from HBO. If you have Amazon Prime and you’ve never subscribed to HBO through Amazon before, you can get a one-week free trial.

Reversals aren’t only for big, meaty, important scenes. The scenes below aren’t climactic scenes in their respective episodes. They didn’t win anyone an Emmy1. In fact, the scene I chose from The Sopranos didn’t even merit a mention in the A.V. Club review of the episode.

These scenes are table-setting for more substantial meals to come, but even so, the writers took the time to craft real drama, moving the story forward by reversing the fortunes of its characters, sometimes multiple times in a single 2-3 minute scene.

I sometimes use terms like “act three” and “midpoint” and “inciting incident” to describe the structure of the scenes below, but it’s very unlikely the writers outlined these scenes with act breaks when writing them.

I note these structural beats because most great scenes have a beginning, middle, and end — a setup, a rising action (complication), and a climax/resolution (payoff). That’s a helpful thing to keep in mind.

The goal is not to pull out a calculator and make the setup exactly 25%, the rising action exactly 50%, and the climax/resolution the last 25%. You might find that a well-paced scene ends up close to that naturally, but the scenes below don’t match up perfectly to those percentages, nor should they.

Instead, the concept of a beginning, middle, and end to a scene is something to consider if a scene you wrote feels weak. Weak scenes often lack a real setup, complication, or payoff. Is there a power shift in the scene? Does a character experience a reversal of fortune, however small and subtle?

Game of Thrones (2011)

Season 7, Episode 5, “Eastwatch”
Written by: Dave Hill

Watch the full episode here for context.

Premise: Davos and Tyrion have secretly come to King’s Landing. Davos is attempting to sneak Gendry (a man he doesn’t think can fight but who he’d like to protect) back to Dragonstone with them. Tyrion is a wanted man in King’s Landing but he’s there for a secret meeting.

Goal: Davos, Gendry, and Tyrion want to escape King’s Landing unnoticed and unharmed. At the start of this scene, they’re very close to achieving this goal.

Intro/Setup: This part is cut out of the Youtube embed above, but the first ten seconds or so of the scene is Davos and Gendry preparing to sail as Davos tells Gendry not to tell anyone back on Dragonstone who his real father is.

First Reversal: The first reversal, which acts as the inciting incident of the scene, is when two guards happen upon Davos and Gendry and wonder why they’re boarding a boat on a hidden beach instead of at the docks.

Davos immediately launches his first tactic, which is to pretend that he and Gendry are traders trying to avoid high tariffs at the dock. He gives the guards a bribe. This seems like it’s going to work.

The guards demand a higher bribe. Davos pretends to be annoyed by this, but it’s actually part of his plan to make the guards feel like they won so they’ll leave them alone.

Second Reversal: It seems like Davos and Gendry are going to be able to escape, but then at almost exactly the 25% mark (the beginning of “act two” of the scene) one of the guards asks: “What’s in the boat?” They’re not going to let Davos and Gendry leave that easily.

Midpoint Reversal: Fortunately, Davos is an experienced smuggler so he has a backup plan for this too. He has fermented crab stowed in the boat under blankets and tells the guards it’s an aphrodisiac. He gives them a sample and encourages them to go to a brothel.

Third Act Reversal: The guards are leaving and it looks like everything’s going to work out, but at about the 75% mark, the beginning of act three, Tyrion returns from his meeting just in time for the guards to see him. They recognize him. Davos tries to offer them more gold but they refuse.

Final Reversal: In a final twist, Gendry kills both guards with the hammer he packed earlier that Davos was skeptical he’d be able to fight with, thus proving his value as a fighter and securing their freedom from King’s Landing.

Total Reversals: There are at least five reversals in this three-minute scene.

  1. Davos and Gendry think they’re going to easily escape, but then guards happen upon them. Davos offers them a bribe. They demand a higher bribe and he agrees.
  2. Davos and Gendry once again think they’re safe, but then the guards want to see what’s in the boat.
  3. It seems like Davos and Gendry are done for, but then Davos shows the guards some decoy fermented crab and convinces them that it’s an aphrodisiac, sending them off to the brothels.
  4. Davos and Gendry once again think they’re going to escape, but then the guards see Tyrion and recognize him from his description as a wanted man.
  5. It for sure seems like they’re toast this time, but then Gendry kills both guards with his hammer. They are finally able to escape.

Change of Fortune: This scene begins with the characters thinking they’re going to successfully escape and it ends with them successfully escaping, so from that perspective, there’s no change at all. But the larger change is that Davos and Tyrion now see that Gendry is a worthy fighter.

The Sopranos (1999)

Season 4, Episode 12, “Eloise”
Written by: Terence Winter

Watch the full episode here for context.

Premise: Little Carmine has come back to New Jersey from Miami to meet with his mob boss father and underboss Johnny Sack over a game of golf. At Johnny’s request, Little Carmine has come to convince his father to back down on a dispute he’s having with Tony Soprano over a HUD scam.

Goal: Our point of view character in this scene is Johnny Sack (we open and close on his emotional state), who’s done a lot of political maneuvering to make this conversation happen and whose goal is for Little Carmine to stay on script and convince his father to back off the conflict with Tony.

Intro/Setup: The first 25% of this scene is a friendly chat between Johnny and Little Carmine that drops a little exposition and setup. They seem to be on the same page about this upcoming conversation and Johnny is relieved that it’s all so close to being resolved.

Johnny: “Anything you can do to change your father’s mind.”
Little Carmine: “I’m going to try, John. I came all the way up here for that.”

First Reversal: The first reversal, which kicks off “act two” of the scene, is that Carmine Sr. immediately takes power in the conversation, belittling his son in small ways (“You put your sunblock on?” “I’m taking a mulligan.”).

For the first half of act two (approximately the next 25% of the scene), Little Carmine is staying on script, but Carmine Sr.’s bullying makes Johnny nervous. Johnny likes to be in control, but his tactic here is to hang back and give Little Carmine space to do what he promised to do, but he can’t resist overstepping a bit when he says, “Even from the beginning I thought forty was a tad steep,” which leads to —

Midpoint Reversal: The big reversal comes at the midpoint when Carmine Sr. says of Tony Soprano: “I’d have been proud to call him my own son.” Little Carmine is desperate for his father’s approval so this line is a blow to his ego and Johnny knows it.

In the second half of act two of this scene, Johnny sees what’s happened and quickly changes tactics, taking over the conversation to try to smooth things over himself with Carmine Sr. (“Maybe there’s a compromise here then.”) It seems like this might work. (“There’s always a compromise.”)

Third Act Reversal: But at the 75% mark (the beginning of “act three” of this scene), Little Carmine can’t resist the urge to take a dig at Tony, though he came all the way from Miami to advocate for him. “He’s a bit of a poseur, you ask me.” Now he’s aligning himself with his father, sucking up to him and throwing Tony under the bus.

At this point, Johnny has to change tactics yet again, dropping the charm and stating his feelings baldly. “Whatever they are, Carmine, the Sopranos bring in a lot of cash. I’ve been close with Tony for a lot of years.”

Now Little Carmine turns on Johnny too. “Maybe… Tony feels like you’re friends and not business associates.” Johnny was so close to getting what he wanted, but now he’s lost.

Total Reversals: There are at least three reversals in this two-minute scene.

  1. Johnny and Little Carmine think this intervention is going to be a success, but Carmine Sr. shows up and makes a power move by belittling his son, setting the meeting off on the wrong foot. But Little Carmine sticks to the script and continues making his case with Johnny playing a supporting role.
  2. It seems like maybe Little Carmine is going to overcome his father’s bullying, but then Johnny oversteps. In retaliation, Carmine Sr. says he’d have been proud to call Tony Soprano his son, which throws Little Carmine off his game. Johnny Sack jumps in to try to smooth things over.
  3. It seems like Johnny might get through to Carmine Sr., but Little Carmine switches allegiances and takes his father’s side against Johnny and Tony.

Change of Fortune: Our POV character, Johnny Sack, starts out the scene hopeful that his work has paid off and this problem is about to be peaceably resolved, but by the end of the scene he’s frustrated and pessimistic about his ability to solve this conflict without bloodshed.

His fortune really only changes once in this scene, but his misfortune escalates with each reversal throughout the scene.

The Wire (2002)

Season 3, Episode 11, “Middle Ground”
Written by: George Pelecanos

Watch the full episode here for context.

Premise: Omar Little, a notorious stick-up man, is walking home with his laundry when he’s stopped at gunpoint by Brother Mouzone, a hitman from New York. They have a violent history but also a grudging respect for each other, and they are each pretty much the only person the other has reason to fear.

Goal: Omar’s external goal is to escape this encounter alive, killing Brother Mouzone if he has to, but his internal goal is to find out what the other man wants. He could probably kill him if he wanted to, just as Brother Mouzone could probably kill Omar, but they’re as intrigued by each other as they are wary.

Brother Mouzone’s goal in this scene is to make an important proposition to Omar without being killed before he can do it.

Intro/Setup: Omar is walking home with his laundry, whistling his trademark tune.

First Reversal: The inciting incident comes about 20% into the scene when Brother Mouzone stops him at gunpoint. Omar’s first tactic is to threaten Mouzone (“I need to remind you who I am?” and “I ain’t tossing nothing.”) even though he’s at the clear disadvantage. He slowly reaches for his gun and it seems like he’s going to get to it in time when —

Midpoint Reversal: At the midpoint of this scene, Omar asks how he found him and Brother Mouzone tells Omar that his boyfriend gave him up. “He didn’t give you up easily.” Omar is afraid now that Brother Mouzone killed his boyfriend. Now he’s angry and he has his gun in his hand though it’s not pointed at the other man. (“Even if I miss I can’t miss.”) Brother Mouzone seems confident Omar won’t shoot when —

Third Act Reversal: At the 80% mark, Omar levels the gun fully at Brother Mouzone. Now any advantage of surprise Brother Mouzone originally had is gone. They are on equal footing. Either could kill the other at any moment. Instead —

Final Reversal: Brother Mouzone lowers his weapon. “I want to ask you something, brother.” Omar lowers his as well. “Omar listening.”

Total Reversals: There are at least four reversals in this 2.5-minute scene.

  1. Omar is having a pleasant night before he’s unexpectedly stopped at gunpoint by Brother Mouzone.
  2. It seems like Omar is going to get to his gun in time to shoot Brother Mouzone when the hitman tells him that his boyfriend gave him up and that he still has him captured.
  3. Angry, Omar still slowly moves for his gun as the two men talk. Brother Mouzone seems confident Omar won’t shoot, but then Omar does turn it on him.
  4. They’re trapped in an old Western style stand-off, when Brother Mouzone decides to lower his own gun even though Omar could easily kill him. He surprises Omar one more time: “I want to ask you something.” Omar lowers his gun to listen.

Change of Fortune: At the beginning of this scene, Omar and Brother Mouzone are on opposing sides but they share a wary respect for each other and they have a shared enemy. During this scene, they nearly kill each other, but by the end of the scene they are entering into a partnership.

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Note: I chose these three scenes pretty much at random based on what was available on YouTube, trusting that any scene from a critically acclaimed series would be a good example for this post. I chose shows that are widely watched among people who care about TV writing so that it would be more likely that readers had seen the episode.

What’s funny is that without meaning to, I somehow chose three scenes that are not only written by men, but all the actors in the scenes are men! I’ll make an effort in future posts to choose more balanced examples.

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Your Story Has Two Stories Inside It: Complicating Your Plot

About a year and a half ago, I started writing a blog post called “Your Story Has Two Stories Inside It.” In that post, I looked at three popular and acclaimed movies that I chose basically at random from IMDB and examined how in each movie the protagonist’s goal at the beginning of the story is actually achieved fairly early in the film, at which point a complication sends the protagonist on a new mission which they pursue for the rest of the movie.

This is interesting because often when we’re plotting a story, we pick a goal for the hero and then assume they’ll spend three acts pursuing that goal and that they’ll achieve it (or in some cases emphatically fail to achieve it) at the denouement. But that actually isn’t how most successful stories work.

I never finished writing that post.

Flash forward to this week. I’m working on a new feature and I’m head over heels in heart-eyes-emoji love with it but I have this nagging feeling that something is off about the structure. It feels a little… thin. Like, it’s a cool idea, it has a meaningful theme, I love the characters, and I found a powerful resolution to the plot, but there’s some part of me that keeps thinking… is that really it?

That’s the whole movie?

And then this morning, Monica Beletsky (a writer/producer of many beloved TV shows such as Fargo and The Leftovers, and someone you should follow on Twitter because she posts awesome tweet threads like this) posted this tweet thread:

And oh man, it sucks how right she is, because it means that the kick ass Act 3 climax I just wrote? Is probably actually my midpoint. Or even the end of Act 1! Crap.

What’s funny is this is probably the most common feedback I give people when I read their scripts — this awesome ending you just wrote? I hate to tell you this, but it’s your midpoint. It’s your end of Act 1. Sometimes it’s even your inciting incident! (Sorry.)

Let’s think about Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), which is a movie I use a lot as an example because it’s so satisfying and well-structured and it was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed.

(Some spoilers will follow if you somehow still haven’t seen that movie. I will also talk about Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) with some spoilers for the first half of the film. I later reference Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Annihilation (2018) but don’t reveal any big spoilers for either.)

In Guardians, Peter Quill’s initial goal is to sell the stolen Orb (aka the Infinity Stone) for money. He already has this goal when the story starts (after the quick childhood flashback) and he pursues it relentlessly through the first half of the movie.

But that is not the goal he achieves at the end of the movie.

He actually achieves this initial goal (with the help of his new friends) at the midpoint, but it turns out this was the wrong goal for him to pursue because the Infinity Stone is incredibly destructive (he and his friends learn this the hard way when it blows up The Collector’s lab). They learn that Ronan plans to use the Orb to destroy the planet Xandar, so now their goal is to get the Orb back from Ronan and save Xandar.

This becomes their true goal and the one they pursue for the rest of the film.

Imagine if the entire movie had just been about Peter trying to sell the Orb. That’s an interesting enough problem for the first half of the movie, but having that goal turn out to be the wrong goal is a huge complication that makes the story more interesting and creates an opportunity for each of the main characters to grow as they learn from their mistakes.

Alternately, imagine if Peter’s goal the entire movie had been to stop Ronan from blowing up Xandar. A worthy goal and one that could probably string together enough action set pieces to fill two hours, but it would be very one-note. And where’s the growth then for Peter? In this version, he would have already been pursuing a noble goal from page 1.

This isn’t only true for commercial blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy. Another movie I analyzed that follows this pattern is Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963). The protagonist’s goal at the beginning of the movie is to assemble enough money to buy majority control of his company to save it from ruin. This could be a whole movie in itself (maybe not a terribly interesting one), but then his son is kidnapped and he must use the money he’s accumulated as ransom instead of using it to buy stock. New goal: get his son back.

But the real twist comes when he finds out that the kidnappers took the wrong boy — it’s not his son they have, it’s his chauffeur’s. So now he has to decide whether to use the money he needs for his company to pay the ransom for a son that isn’t even his. The protagonist’s goal was originally control of his company, but now it’s about something much more primal and forces him to confront and reveal the person he really is.

This is definitely more interesting than 140 minutes of a guy trying to raise funds to take control of his shoe company!

That said, I’m not sure that every movie follows this pattern, even though all the thrillers Monica Beletsky analyzed did. For example, I recently watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) in theaters, which I (in perhaps slight exaggeration) called last year’s “best movie of the year.” I’d have to rewatch it to be sure, but I think the goal in that movie is the same from the inciting incident (when they get sucked into the game) as it is at the climax, though there is a major complication introduced at the midpoint which shifts their approach.

Another counter example is Annihilation (2018), which I also just watched in theaters. The goal in that movie is introduced in Act 1 (enter the Shimmer and make it to the lighthouse) and though there are several complications along the way that change our understanding of the problem, that goal remains the same for the entire movie through Act 3.

I’ll have to think more about this to decide if it’s true, but my hypothesis is that movies like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Annihilation are actually a different kind of story with their own separate structure.

Something those two movies have in common is that they both have an ultra-clear goal from pretty much the start of Act 2 (if not a bit earlier) with a literal map to get there. Like, an actual, literal map! In both cases, if the story is working well, we’re so oriented to the journey that we understand at any given moment exactly where we are on our path to the final goal.

Annihilation goes so far as to have actual title cards delineating each story beat. We get an “Area X” title card at the inciting incident, a title card that says “The Shimmer” at the start of Act 2, and a title card labeled “The Lighthouse” at the start of Act 3.

In Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the characters continually refer back to the map of the game world so that we always understand how far we’ve come and how much of the journey is left.

So maybe these movies have a different structure because they’re almost their own separate type of story.

So, like most writing tips, this is less of a Rule and more of a Tool. If your story feels a little thin, like it would be a better episode of a TV show than a full movie people pay $16 to watch in a theater, maybe the answer is taking your Act 3 climax and making it your midpoint, or even the end of Act 1.

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How to Avoid Plot Twist Fatigue

Plot twists in a movie are great. There are few greater joys in a film than that moment when you are truly, satisfyingly surprised by a twist you never saw coming, but in retrospect realize was inevitable.

But sometimes… there’s too much of a good thing.

We’ve all seen a movie like this. There are so many plot twists and reversals that after awhile, you’re not so much surprised as you are confused, and not so much on-the-edge-of-your-seat as you are put at a distance. The spy wasn’t just a spy, she was a double agent! Actually, she was a triple agent! Actually, she’s been dead the whole time! Actually, the whole movie was a dream! It’s not fun, it’s annoying.

I don’t ever like to name and shame movies on this blog, but I will say that I saw a movie in theaters recently that had so many never-saw-’em-coming twists and turns that by the end of the film, there was nothing left in the story to believe in or care about. Nothing could be trusted, nothing was real. Every aspect of that story I’d invested in had been a lie, from the big, important themes down to the smallest, stupidest facts. It made me feel cheated and like I’d wasted my time.

Here are two ways to avoid that:

  1. Keep your big reversals to the ends of acts. End of Act 1, midpoint (end of Act 2a), end of Act 2, and probably one more at the end of the movie, depending on what kind of movie it is. That’s it. If you have giant twists happening in every scene, the audience will get confused and exhausted. (If you’re writing for TV, then it’s even more straightforward because it is probably unmistakable where your acts end.)

    If you must do the thing where there’s a twist at the end of the movie and then there’s a second twist the audience didn’t see coming because they were still reeling from the first, I would not deprive you of that. Those can be fun. BUT YOU CAN ONLY HAVE ONE EXTRA TWIST. Don’t then have a third twist and a fourth, unless you’re writing a parody because that might actually be really funny.

    This is not one of those things where one twist is great so fourteen must be amazing. More is not better. Better is better.

    Also, when I say a reversal at the end of each act, I don’t mean that each of those reversals is an M. Night Shyamalan style shocker. They can’t all have been dead the whole time. When I say a reversal or a twist, I just mean something that changes the audience’s understanding of the situation and spins the story in a new direction.

    I think sometimes writers are afraid to put reversals at the end of an act because that’s where the audience expects it. But it’s actually satisfying when a story delivers what you expect! The key is to deliver it in a way that’s unexpected. So, yes, do put a big twist at the end of the act (or a small reversal if it’s a quiet, contemplative story), just don’t make it the first, most obvious idea that popped in your head.

  2. Have a few things in your script that you keep sacred and do not let any reversals undo those things. A classic example of this would be a primary relationship if your story has one (and it almost certainly does). It could be your protagonist’s love for her daughter, or it could be a romantic relationship you want to hold sacred in your story. You may want to make that bond untouchable by plot twists so the audience has something to hold onto throughout all the twists and turns of the story.

    Or, if you do want your primary relationship to be undone by a twist because that’s what your whole movie is about (you lovable cynic), then have something else be your Untouchable Truth — maybe it’s your protagonist’s loyalty to his country. Maybe it’s your mentor’s inherent goodness. Maybe it’s the way your magic system works. Whatever it is, have a few important things in your film that are core to what the movie is about and make sure those things are never upended in a twist.

    In fact, if anything, any twists should cement those things. Underline, not strikethrough.

What else am I missing? What makes for an especially good or bad twist? How much is too much?

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The Surprisingly Conventional Narrative Structure of “Arrival”

If you haven’t seen Arrival (2016), this is the plot description from Wikipedia:

“Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors. Hoping to unravel the mystery, she takes a chance that could threaten her life and quite possibly all of mankind.”

This is an exciting, persuasive, and technically accurate description of the film, but based on this description, you might expect the movie to be a nonstop action fest of alien attacks, space battles, and explosions, a la Independence Day.

You would be wrong.

A look at the structure of 'Arrival' - a great movie that feels like it's breaking every structure rule in the book, but actually isn't. Click To Tweet

I finally watched this movie after hearing raves since last year (it has a 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes). My analysis below contains only vague, mild spoilers – I’d consider it safe to read before watching unless you want absolutely zero prior knowledge.

Arrival is an Alien Invasion Art Film

Arrival is a beautiful, sad, slow, contemplative movie that feels more like an art film than a big budget blockbuster. There are dozens of lingering, moody shots of the misty green hills of Montana (actually Quebec in real life) and lengthy, silent close-ups of Amy Adams Feeling Things.

It would be easy to watch a movie like this, love it, read a hundred rave reviews, and think “To hell with structure! I’m going to write a BRILLIANT ART MOVIE like Arrival!”

Please do write a brilliant art movie like Arrival. We need a million more of these and we need them yesterday. But before you burn every dog-eared screenwriting book on your Kindle, let me make one small point:

This slow, quiet, contemplative art film follows the three-act structure covered in most screenwriting books pretty much to the minute.

To be clear, we’re making art here, not playing The Price is Right, so hitting exact page numbers from a self-styled screenwriting guru should not be your objective. But understanding how the vast majority of great movies are structured – even ones that feel like they’re breaking the rules – can be helpful if you’re getting feedback that your own script feels too slow or too rushed.

So let’s look at the structure of Arrival: a great movie that feels like it’s breaking every structure rule in the book, but actually isn’t.

We're making art here, not playing The Price is Right, so hitting exact page numbers from a self-styled screenwriting guru should not be your objective. Click To Tweet

Arrival‘s Structure (It’s Less Subversive than It Seems)

Act 1

While this movie feels slow and meandering, it’s actually not. The aliens touch down on earth a mere four minutes into the story. Though it feels wandering and dreamlike, that first four minutes turns out to be plenty of time to comprehend the tone and theme of the movie and to understand our protagonist’s world before it changes forever.

The moment that Blake Snyder refers to as the “catalyst” in Save the Cat (he says it’s typically a phone call or a knock on the door – in this case, it’s Colonel Weber walking in the door of Louise’s office) is expected to take place about 12 minutes into this 109-minute runtime. In Arrival, it actually happens a bit earlier than that, at 9.5 minutes.

Syd Field (in Screenplay) calls a similar beat the “inciting incident” and would have expected it a hair later, around minute 14, which is exactly when Weber rings Louise’s doorbell in the middle of the night and she gets on the helicopter to go to Montana.

Either way, this is the moment in a screenplay where the protagonist receives a “call to adventure” of some sort, and it happens in this movie in a very standard way and at a very conventional time.

I want to make a note here because it’s something that’s confused me in the past: Snyder refers to the second half of Act 1 (after the catalyst) as the “Debate” section. I used to interpret this quite literally to mean the section of the screenplay where the protagonist is actually deciding whether or not to accept the offer that was made to her in the catalyst.

So, for example, I might have previously expected the “Debate” section of this movie to be the period between Colonel Weber showing up at Louise’s office and Colonel Weber showing up at Louise’s house, even though the Debate section is usually 12-15 minutes and that would be a stupidly long time to kill between those two events.

That is not what the Debate section is.

The Debate section is just the part of the story after the catalyst and before the protagonist “steps over a threshold” from which she can never return, one that literally or metaphorically takes her into an “upside down” version of her former world. In some movies that means going to another planet. In others, it just means switching lunch tables in the cafeteria or starting a new job.

In Arrival, it’s when Louise gets on that spaceship for the first time – because up until that moment, she could still call the whole thing off and go back to her old life, but once she steps into that (literally upside down) world, there is no going back.

Act 2a

Snyder thinks Act 2 starts around minute 25, and that this act break is marked by the moment our hero leaves the old world behind, and enters an “upside down version” of that world. 25 minutes is exactly when Louise and Ian enter the spacecraft for the first time, and they are quite literally (and figuratively) turned upside down.

Field would have expected that moment a few minutes later, around the time when Louise and Ian meet the aliens for the first time.

Act 2b

Both Snyder and Field think Act 2 is divided in two parts at the midpoint, which is halfway through the film (around minute 54), which they both say is a pivotal moment when the story changes and the protagonist experiences either a “false high” or a “false low” which will mirror the end of the movie.

In a louder, splashier movie, this moment would likely be marked by a huge explosion or a dramatic death. But Arrival is not a loud, splashy movie. Without going into spoiler-y detail, I believe the midpoint in this film is the conversation Louise and Ian have in the back of the truck outside the camp. It happens exactly halfway through the movie (at minute 54) and it fits both Field’s and Snyder’s descriptions. It’s a very subtle mirror for the end of the movie and is a moment when a pivotal part of our protagonist’s story (very quietly, very subtly) changes.

Act 3

Syd Field expects Act 3 to start around minute 82 in a film of this length, while Blake Snyder expects it around minute 84. Field calls this the “final showdown” while Snyder says it’s a moment when the character achieves “synthesis” by combining all that she’s learned and deciding to make one last crazy attempt to accomplish her goal.

It’s 85 minutes into the movie when Louise goes back into the spacecraft (by herself, without permission) to try one last idea that’s come to her as a result of all she’s learned. This is pretty much the literal definition of a “break into three,” and it happens when you’d expect it.

Conclusion

This movie leaves a lot of room to breathe between big moments, which I think is part of why it’s so deeply affecting – but if you look under the hood, it’s actually very conventionally paced.

And while it certainly subverts some storytelling rules (for example, I’d argue that the protagonist doesn’t truly “step over the threshold” of the story until almost the very last page – which makes perfect sense for this unique film – and subverting that expectation actually makes a powerful point) it also hits a lot of typical story beats at pretty much the exact moment we’d expect to experience them.

On a more artistic level, Nerdwriter’s video below beautifully analyzes what makes this movie so good and I recommend watching it, but be warned: the video is 100% Spoiler City. This is a film I recommend watching unspoiled, so consider watching it first. It’s free on Amazon Prime Video (as of this writing).

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How Long Should the Acts Be in My Pilot? (Data Analysis)

There was a discussion in one of my writers’ groups this week about how long a teaser should be in an hourlong pilot. We all thought it should be fairly short, but we had different ideas of what “short” actually meant. I remembered that awhile back I’d made a spreadsheet analyzing act lengths from 51 hourlong pilots so I decided to go to the data.

(If you’re interested in half-hour dramedy pilot structure, I broke that down here.)

 

What I found: across all pilots that had a teaser, the average length of that teaser was 8 pages (with the shortest teaser being 3 pages and the longest at a whopping 16 pages). This surprised me! I would have guessed that teasers were more like 3-5 pages on average.

I shared this info with my writers’ group and someone asked if I could also share average act lengths for the other acts. This is tricky because I assumed the average length of an act would depend on how many acts the pilot has in total – this group of pilots ranged from 4 acts to 7 acts.

The most common three structures among these pilots were:

  • teaser + 4 acts (17 pilots)
  • 5 acts (13 pilots)
  • teaser + 5 acts (11 pilots)

So I decided to break down average act length by structural type:

TEASER + 4 ACTS 
Teaser: 8 pages (range: 3-16)
Act 1: 17 pages (range: 11-22)
Act 2: 14 pages (range: 5-22)
Act 3: 11 pages (range: 6-16)
Act 4: 11 pages (range: 4-18)

5 ACTS
Act 1: 17 pages (range: 11-30)
Act 2: 13 pages (range: 8-18)
Act 3: 11 pages (range: 7-15)
Act 4: 10 pages (range: 5-15)
Act 5: 9 pages (range: 4-14)

TEASER + 5 ACTS
Teaser: 9 pages (range: 5-13)
Act 1: 10 pages (range: 6-15)
Act 2: 11 pages (range: 7-17)
Act 3: 11 pages (range: 7-15)
Act 4: 9 pages (range: 6-13)
Act 5: 9 pages (range: 1-15)

As you can see from the ranges provided, the range of lengths for each act is quite broad which means there is not some hard and fast rule about act length that every professional writer follows. Some individual networks and shows may have rules about act length, but that’s not something you can really concern yourself with when writing an original pilot.

Because there are so many different ways you can tell a story, even on television, you should obviously choose a structure that you feel fits your particular story (or possibly the network you’re hoping to be on, which is a different analysis entirely).

That said, one hunch I had that this data backs up is that acts do tend to get shorter as you progress through a pilot (with the exception of the teaser, if there is one, which is usually shorter than Act 1). This makes sense because it creates a sense of quickening pace as we barrel through the story to the inevitable BANG at the end (which then hopefully propels us to episode 2).

That isn’t a rule you must follow, but it might be a helpful thing to look at it if you’re writing a pilot and the pacing feels slow. Maybe your earlier acts are too short or your later acts are too long.

Another interesting observation is that the total number of acts in a pilot didn’t seem to have as much effect on individual act length as I expected. The only exception is that in pilots with five total acts ([teaser + 4 acts] or [5 acts]), Act 1 is quite a bit longer than the other acts, whereas in the six act structure ([teaser + 5 acts]), the acts are all a more uniform length. You can see this is true even in the broader ranges and not just in the average.

One last fact: the average total page count across all 51 hourlong pilots was 61.5 pages. The shortest was 56 pages (nine pilots were 56-58 pages) and the longest was 69 pages (six pilots were 67-69 pages).

Some caveats on the stats here:

  • This dataset is not huge. It only includes 51 hourlong pilots: 17 are [teaser + 4 acts], 13 are [5 acts], 11 are [teaser + 5 acts], and the rest are a sprinkling of other structures composed of teasers, acts, and tags in various combinations.
  • These pilots come from a mixture of cable and broadcast networks but none are from streaming networks like Netflix. (Look out for a future imaginary post titled Stop Using “My Pilot is Written for Streaming” as an Excuse to Be a Lazy Storyteller.)
  • This list includes pilots that premiered as long ago as 2002 and as recently as 2017. It’s possible (even probable) that trends have changed. That said, 22 of the 37 pilots premiered in the past three years (14 of them in 2017), so most of these are recent.
  • Speaking of recency, I’d need to do a different kind of analysis to confirm this, but it seems like among the more recent pilots, the [5 acts], [teaser + 5 acts], and even [6 acts] structures have increased in popularity over the classic [teaser + 4 acts].
  • Genre isn’t taken into account here at all (except that they’re all hourlongs, so no sitcoms). This may not be true, but my hypothesis is that teasers for crime shows might be shorter than other types of dramas because it’s a more traditional find-a-dead-body “cold open.”

  • Keep in mind that “average” can be a misleading statistic – all datasets have a calculable average, but just because you can calculate a statistic doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.

    For example, let’s imagine that my dataset had included 20 pilots and that in ten of them the first act was 10 pages and in the other ten the first act was 50 pages. In that case, the average length of act 1 would be 30 pages. The problem is that if you took that information and wrote a pilot with a 30-page first act, you would be writing a pilot that doesn’t look like any of the pilots in that dataset. If you were trying to mimic existing pilots from that list, you’d actually be better off writing either a 10-page first act or a 50-page first act, not splitting the difference down the middle.

    Fortunately, our data here is not that dramatically split. Most of the data tends to be grouped around the averages with a few outliers that are much longer or shorter than the average. I included the full range of lengths for each act so you can see how long and short some of those outliers were.

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