Script Outline with 8 Plot Points
Plot Point #1: Opening & Closing Images
The first image is a visual representation of your entire story. Your closing image is your last contact with your audience, so make it strong.
Decide your opening and closing images after you’ve got a solid draft and have a clear understanding of the theme.
Plot Point #2: Inciting Incident
the event that changes the course of your main character’s life, a catalyst that gets everything going, nudging your protagonist toward his journey. You need to identify when the first inciting incident of your story occurs. The sooner it appears, the more quickly audiences will conclude that you know what you’re doing. Here’s where things get tricky: a lot of events can look like an inciting incident…but not really be an inciting incident. The inciting incident is passive, disruptive, personal, causally linked to the first-act break.
Passive - The inciting incident is something that happens to your protagonist. Kung Fu Panda’s Po didn't actively trying to become the next Dragon Warrior. At the film’s inciting incident, when he is selected as the next Dragon Warrior, Po is as incredulous as the other competitors, their mentor, and his adoptive father.
Disruptive - The Inciting Incident Jolts Your Protagonist out of His Everyday World, due to the inciting incident, his existence is thrown into disarray.
Personal - The inciting incident personally affects your protagonist (or someone or something that he values) in an essential way. Things don’t become personal for your protagonist until he’s embroiled in the plot.
The inciting incident specifically triggers the first-act break, which is when your protagonist pursues his overall goal in earnest. - Frequently, in romances, comedies, romantic comedies, and buddy-cop stories, the protagonists become locked into their particular situation at the first-act break. (I call these plots of coerced coexistence.) Because the first-act break and the inciting incident are causally linked, when you know that your protagonists are going to become locked together by the first-act break, you can work backward from the first-act break to derive a potential inciting incident for your story. A monster, who’s supposed to terrify children, must come to the aid of a giggling little girl who treats him like a cuddly pet (Monsters, Inc. ).
Plot Point #3: First-Act Break
marks the end of your setup you’ve introduced most, if not all, of your key characters. Audiences know about your main character, his goal, and the obstacles he faces. In a lot of movie plots, the main character has to go on a journey in order to achieve his goal. Because of this, oftentimes, the first-act break involves a change in geographical location.
Plot Point #4: Midpoint
occurs (a) at the middle of your screenplay, as a whole and (b) at the middle of Act Two, in specific. It changes the entire direction of your story. In a romance, comedy, or drama where people of different personalities are thrown together, the midpoint marks the moment where they stop seeing each other as enemies, usually by accomplishing a minor, but important, goal together.
During the beginning (or Act One), of your screenplay or novel, you just had to set up the pieces. Line them up like dominoes, so that your hook (and your plot) would make sense to readers. Traditionally, at the end of Act One, your hook goes into play, and your protagonist goes after his goal.
But now you’re moving on to the middle (or Act Two), where you have to develop your idea. With the manifest midpoint, protagonist still goes after his goal at the end of Act One. But here’s the trick: you delay the full manifestation of your hook until the midpoint. During Act 2A, audiences experience the “shadow” version of your concept. It’s only after the midpoint, during Act 2B, when the shadow transforms into “substance,” and your hook manifests itself in full.
Without the manifest midpoint, you have to make sure Act 2A is strong enough to get readers to stick around for everything that follows. With it, your Act 2A has to be even stronger. It has to compensate for the fact that you’re delaying the hook, the very thing that compelled readers to pick up your story in the first place.
Your protagonist trying (and failing) to achieve his goal—repeatedly—until the end (or Act Three), where he finally achieves his goal or solves his problem.
Note: A protagonist’s failed attempts to achieve his goal or solve his problem are sometimes referred to as try-fail cycles.
Plot Point #5: Fork in the Road
where your main character reaffirms or escalates commitment to his goal, usually clocking in 60 minutes into the movie. You’ll often discover you already wrote in a point of commitment in your screenplay, even if you didn’t consciously intend to do so.
Plot Point #6: All Is Lost
At this moment, your main character has experienced an extreme setback. He’s the furthest he can possibly be from his goal. It seems impossible for him to accomplish it. This moment usually marks the end of Act Two.
Act Two Ending Essential #1: Pain.
As a writer, you’re probably inclined to be kind to your hero. But you must resist that urge. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of. By being cruel to your hero, you’re being kind to audiences, who expect to experience a roller coaster of emotions. The “all is lost” moment is the “dip” which makes your hero’s eventual ascent during Act Three all the more powerful.
Throw salt onto your hero’s wounds. That’s not to say that you must wound your hero on multiple fronts in order to create an effective “all is lost” moment. A single deep gouge can be equally as powerful.
Act Two Ending Essential #2: Emotion
Your hero’s “all is lost” moment must elicit some significant degree of emotion from audiences.
As far as emotional reactions go, tears are great, but not always probable. Wide eyes and an involuntary gasp work equally well, if successful, your “all is lost” moment recharges audiences’ emotional investment in your hero’s success all over again.
Sadly, this is where amateur writers make a fatal mistake
They assume that audiences will automatically care about whatever tragedy befalls their hero at the end of Act Two. But this isn’t the case–even with death. Even if your hero experiences a setback which puts an entire city, country, planet, or galaxy into serious jeopardy, it’s still imperative to give audiences a reason to care about such tragedy.
Whether your hero experiences a personal loss or a setback which seriously jeopardizes the stakes, you must show–not tell–audiences how and why this state of affairs matters to your
hero.
That is whatever the big story is, there have to be some intimate subplots and dynamics going on which engender a human connection between the reader and the characters. To make that human connection between audiences and your characters, demonstrate the value of your hero’s Act Two loss. That way, your “all is lost” moment will have emotional impact.
Act Two Ending Essential #3: Paradox
You and I both know that your story climax is just around the corner. Assuming your story ends on a positive note, your hero’s victory is a mere 15 pages away. How can your hero be the furthest away from his goal at his “all is lost” moment?
In truth, he’s not. It just looks like he is.
Your hero’s Act Two defeat, as negative and unpleasant as it is, often is exactly what your hero needs to push past his demons, to give up his crutches, to overcome his innate resistance to change. Because your hero has hit rock bottom, he’s desperate enough to take the path of most resistance and confront the very thing he was trying to avoid. In the process, he’ll blossom into the person he always wanted to be.
This epic defeat contains the seeds of lasting victory.
But to vanquish the villain, the hero will have to let go. Like most people, heroes are often resistant to change, and correspondingly, are reluctant to part ways voluntarily. At the “all is lost” moment, however, the choice is taken out of the hero’s hands. His mentor might die; his organization might cut him loose. Either way, although this is a devastating moment for the hero, it paradoxically contains the seeds of future victory. In the commentary for RETURN OF THE JEDI: There is a point, where the hero has to be left alone, on his own two feet, without anybody there to help him…at some point…all the props have to be taken away, and he has to face the evil monster alone.
Plot Point #7: Climax
In the climax, your main character has gathered his resources (both internal and external). In this final showdown, he will test his mettle against the antagonistic forces that have thwarted him from achieving his goal. If he has a tragic flaw, in the climax, he demonstrates that he has overcome it. All the lessons he learned during the second act will pay off in the climax.
Plot Point #8: Resolution
If your screenplay has a happy ending, the resolution is the best part for your main character. He gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor. His world is in balance again. If your screenplay has, shall we say, a more European ending, the resolution will be either tragic or bittersweet for your main character. If tragic, he might not accomplish his goal. If bittersweet, he might accomplish it–but at great cost.
http://www.plotbot.com/screenplays/trials/screenplay
The first image is a visual representation of your entire story. Your closing image is your last contact with your audience, so make it strong.
Decide your opening and closing images after you’ve got a solid draft and have a clear understanding of the theme.
Plot Point #2: Inciting Incident
the event that changes the course of your main character’s life, a catalyst that gets everything going, nudging your protagonist toward his journey. You need to identify when the first inciting incident of your story occurs. The sooner it appears, the more quickly audiences will conclude that you know what you’re doing. Here’s where things get tricky: a lot of events can look like an inciting incident…but not really be an inciting incident. The inciting incident is passive, disruptive, personal, causally linked to the first-act break.
Passive - The inciting incident is something that happens to your protagonist. Kung Fu Panda’s Po didn't actively trying to become the next Dragon Warrior. At the film’s inciting incident, when he is selected as the next Dragon Warrior, Po is as incredulous as the other competitors, their mentor, and his adoptive father.
Disruptive - The Inciting Incident Jolts Your Protagonist out of His Everyday World, due to the inciting incident, his existence is thrown into disarray.
Personal - The inciting incident personally affects your protagonist (or someone or something that he values) in an essential way. Things don’t become personal for your protagonist until he’s embroiled in the plot.
The inciting incident specifically triggers the first-act break, which is when your protagonist pursues his overall goal in earnest. - Frequently, in romances, comedies, romantic comedies, and buddy-cop stories, the protagonists become locked into their particular situation at the first-act break. (I call these plots of coerced coexistence.) Because the first-act break and the inciting incident are causally linked, when you know that your protagonists are going to become locked together by the first-act break, you can work backward from the first-act break to derive a potential inciting incident for your story. A monster, who’s supposed to terrify children, must come to the aid of a giggling little girl who treats him like a cuddly pet (Monsters, Inc. ).
Plot Point #3: First-Act Break
marks the end of your setup you’ve introduced most, if not all, of your key characters. Audiences know about your main character, his goal, and the obstacles he faces. In a lot of movie plots, the main character has to go on a journey in order to achieve his goal. Because of this, oftentimes, the first-act break involves a change in geographical location.
Plot Point #4: Midpoint
occurs (a) at the middle of your screenplay, as a whole and (b) at the middle of Act Two, in specific. It changes the entire direction of your story. In a romance, comedy, or drama where people of different personalities are thrown together, the midpoint marks the moment where they stop seeing each other as enemies, usually by accomplishing a minor, but important, goal together.
During the beginning (or Act One), of your screenplay or novel, you just had to set up the pieces. Line them up like dominoes, so that your hook (and your plot) would make sense to readers. Traditionally, at the end of Act One, your hook goes into play, and your protagonist goes after his goal.
But now you’re moving on to the middle (or Act Two), where you have to develop your idea. With the manifest midpoint, protagonist still goes after his goal at the end of Act One. But here’s the trick: you delay the full manifestation of your hook until the midpoint. During Act 2A, audiences experience the “shadow” version of your concept. It’s only after the midpoint, during Act 2B, when the shadow transforms into “substance,” and your hook manifests itself in full.
Without the manifest midpoint, you have to make sure Act 2A is strong enough to get readers to stick around for everything that follows. With it, your Act 2A has to be even stronger. It has to compensate for the fact that you’re delaying the hook, the very thing that compelled readers to pick up your story in the first place.
Your protagonist trying (and failing) to achieve his goal—repeatedly—until the end (or Act Three), where he finally achieves his goal or solves his problem.
Note: A protagonist’s failed attempts to achieve his goal or solve his problem are sometimes referred to as try-fail cycles.
Plot Point #5: Fork in the Road
where your main character reaffirms or escalates commitment to his goal, usually clocking in 60 minutes into the movie. You’ll often discover you already wrote in a point of commitment in your screenplay, even if you didn’t consciously intend to do so.
Plot Point #6: All Is Lost
At this moment, your main character has experienced an extreme setback. He’s the furthest he can possibly be from his goal. It seems impossible for him to accomplish it. This moment usually marks the end of Act Two.
Act Two Ending Essential #1: Pain.
As a writer, you’re probably inclined to be kind to your hero. But you must resist that urge. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of. By being cruel to your hero, you’re being kind to audiences, who expect to experience a roller coaster of emotions. The “all is lost” moment is the “dip” which makes your hero’s eventual ascent during Act Three all the more powerful.
Throw salt onto your hero’s wounds. That’s not to say that you must wound your hero on multiple fronts in order to create an effective “all is lost” moment. A single deep gouge can be equally as powerful.
Act Two Ending Essential #2: Emotion
Your hero’s “all is lost” moment must elicit some significant degree of emotion from audiences.
As far as emotional reactions go, tears are great, but not always probable. Wide eyes and an involuntary gasp work equally well, if successful, your “all is lost” moment recharges audiences’ emotional investment in your hero’s success all over again.
Sadly, this is where amateur writers make a fatal mistake
They assume that audiences will automatically care about whatever tragedy befalls their hero at the end of Act Two. But this isn’t the case–even with death. Even if your hero experiences a setback which puts an entire city, country, planet, or galaxy into serious jeopardy, it’s still imperative to give audiences a reason to care about such tragedy.
Whether your hero experiences a personal loss or a setback which seriously jeopardizes the stakes, you must show–not tell–audiences how and why this state of affairs matters to your
hero.
That is whatever the big story is, there have to be some intimate subplots and dynamics going on which engender a human connection between the reader and the characters. To make that human connection between audiences and your characters, demonstrate the value of your hero’s Act Two loss. That way, your “all is lost” moment will have emotional impact.
Act Two Ending Essential #3: Paradox
You and I both know that your story climax is just around the corner. Assuming your story ends on a positive note, your hero’s victory is a mere 15 pages away. How can your hero be the furthest away from his goal at his “all is lost” moment?
In truth, he’s not. It just looks like he is.
Your hero’s Act Two defeat, as negative and unpleasant as it is, often is exactly what your hero needs to push past his demons, to give up his crutches, to overcome his innate resistance to change. Because your hero has hit rock bottom, he’s desperate enough to take the path of most resistance and confront the very thing he was trying to avoid. In the process, he’ll blossom into the person he always wanted to be.
This epic defeat contains the seeds of lasting victory.
But to vanquish the villain, the hero will have to let go. Like most people, heroes are often resistant to change, and correspondingly, are reluctant to part ways voluntarily. At the “all is lost” moment, however, the choice is taken out of the hero’s hands. His mentor might die; his organization might cut him loose. Either way, although this is a devastating moment for the hero, it paradoxically contains the seeds of future victory. In the commentary for RETURN OF THE JEDI: There is a point, where the hero has to be left alone, on his own two feet, without anybody there to help him…at some point…all the props have to be taken away, and he has to face the evil monster alone.
Plot Point #7: Climax
In the climax, your main character has gathered his resources (both internal and external). In this final showdown, he will test his mettle against the antagonistic forces that have thwarted him from achieving his goal. If he has a tragic flaw, in the climax, he demonstrates that he has overcome it. All the lessons he learned during the second act will pay off in the climax.
Plot Point #8: Resolution
If your screenplay has a happy ending, the resolution is the best part for your main character. He gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor. His world is in balance again. If your screenplay has, shall we say, a more European ending, the resolution will be either tragic or bittersweet for your main character. If tragic, he might not accomplish his goal. If bittersweet, he might accomplish it–but at great cost.
http://www.plotbot.com/screenplays/trials/screenplay
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