Yes! I’m very pleased and happy to say that I did in fact meet my deadline and, today, have finished act one of my new screenplay. As a memory-refresher, my aim is to complete one act a month, and have a finished script by May 1st.
March is going to be the most difficult month. Screenplays follow a formula of three acts, and the first and third acts are each about 25% of the total. Act one sets up the story, and ends with the first major plot-driving event. Act two is the real meat of the piece, accounting for 50% of the total, and is where the story either develops successfully – or crashes and burns. It also ends with the second major plot point – the one that’s going to drive the story to its conclusion. Act three is all about reaching the grand finale and/or wrapping things up.
Screenplays should come in around 90-120 pages, so most ‘act ones’ are in the 22-30 page range. Mine has come in at 27 pages. Act two should be around 50-60 pages, so March is looking very writing-intensive.
Writing this first act has felt very good. I’ve written screenplays before, but working on any project always brings the same feelings of inspiration and purpose. Wrapping up this first act was particularly rewarding, since the way I first envisioned one character dramatically changed (for the better) earlier today. The change of this one character – from supportive boyfriend to just another stressful element pressuring our main character – helps the overall story to make a lot more sense, and the leading lady’s bad choices seem more realistic. Instead of there now being an element in the story that offers her ‘a way out,’ her struggles just got more intense, and the story just got better.
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