The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 222 - A Midpoint Discovered

Ask most screenwriters, and they'll probably tell you that Act Two is the most difficult portion of the script to write. More specifically, the crucial midpoint (of Act Two and of your script as a whole) can be particularly difficult. And the section that comes after that - what I like to call "the 60 to 70 slump" - is traditionally even ore problematic. Those pages (60 through 70, or whatever the ten that immediately follow your midpoint) require both a cool down period to get over the intensity of the midpoint, as well as a continued raising of the stakes; this, in short, makes them onerous to write. 


In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder refers to the first part of Act Two as the fun and games section. We've met our characters and been introduced to their world and situation in Act One. For the first half of Act Two, things are mostly fun for them. They're having fun on their adventure. Things might be daunting, but they're not overwhelming odds yet, nor is the danger really as life threatening as it can (read, will) be. At the midpoint, things come to a head. The midpoint might be the pinnacle of success so far, and it will therefore be followed by a fall from grace. More commonly, perhaps, is the alternative - the midpoint serves as the floor of the valley, the darkest, gloomiest, most devastating moment so far. This might come in the form of a death, a loss (of a crucial object, of a friend to some other fate, of the path to glory), or any number of other devastating blows. After the midpoint, you have to sustain the audience's attention as we work our way toward the climax of the film, but you also offer a minor reprieve from the extremes they've just experienced. If the world has gone to hell, then maybe there's a glimmer of hope at the end of the 60 to 70 slump. Or if all's been stellar so far, then we get a taste of darkness at that point, instead.


Normally, I struggle through Act Two. I'm never quite sure of how well what I've constructed is working or not. It can be particularly difficult to tell when outlining. to my great pleasure, when I met with my co-writer, W.A., this past week, he told me that he loved my second act. Part of the success of it stems from a very wise suggestion he had made previously, which I decided to run with. 


The script contains a number of large reveals. One of them in particular - the identity of the guide turned antagonist - had been a point of contention, as its placement in the script had been in flux for a long time. W.A.'s original outline had this reveal roughly 2/3 of the way through the script. When I took my first stab at the outline, I wound up moving it to the end of Act Two, or about 3/4 of the way through the script. There's a lot of information and material that we can mine from that surprise, though, as well as a lot of character motivation, so W.A. rightly felt that we were losing a handful of opportunities for ratcheting up the conflict by pushing it so far back. Not to mention that the later the reveal comes, the less time we have to address it in the script. And it's something that we have to ensure ample time is devoted to.


To fix this, W.A. suggested that I take a look at moving the reveal up to the midpoint, coupling it with the death of the protagonist's best friend - the crushing defeat that brings the fun and games portion of the script to a swift and definitive end. As the real world hits, so too does this new bit of information. I went with the earlier reveal, and I must admit - it works really damn well. Not only do we get a lot more time to work with the information, but it makes total sense, since the antagonist is directly responsible for the friend's death. It was sort of a speed bump to do the partial reveal - he's an antagonist - and not come forward with who he actually is until much later. And, by the time we got the information, it was almost too much and too late. 


Now, with this reshuffling of the information, the reveal comes at a point where our characters can do so much more with it, the world crashes down around our protagonist even harder at the midpoint, and the actions of everyone we've been following come to a simultaneous head at that point. The fun and games are over, and we know who is good and who the antagonist is. We don't know the full rationale for the reversal yet, but we know we have half a movie to devote to it. Act One flows into Act Two organically, and the fun and games transition naturally into the devastating blow that is the midpoint; coming out of that loss and the attached reveal, we move organically through the obstacles faced on our way to Act Three and the resolution. 


It is, in a way, almost pretty in how it wound up working. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 143 - The Act Two Hump

Ask just about any writer what the most difficult pages to write are, and I bet you'll frequently hear, "pages 60 through 70." If not that, then "the second half of act two" or "the pages right after the midpoint." Ask me the same question, and I'll invariably tell you the same thing.

I like to call it the "60-70 slump" or, a bit more generally, the "Act Two hump." Basically, these are the pages that just plain suck to write. Act One often breezes by. It involves a lot of set up, but also a lot of fun. The stakes aren't necessarily too high yet - in fact, theoretically they're as low as they'll be throughout the whole script, since the stakes should build steadily as the film goes on. This first half of Act Two (pages 30-60 in a conventional three act, 120 page script) build rapidly, as does the action or conflict or tension. The midpoint (60) hits, and should hit hard - for better or worse. The protagonist meets with great defeat here or is thrown off the path he's been following or experiences a great success from which she might fall later. Things change at the midpoint. It's what comes next that's the hard part.

I often get past the midpoint and, even though I know what has to happen in toward the end of Act Two and into Act Three, I usually stop and think, "what's next?" Things often just stagnate here. My characters and story are not yet at a point where the later events can come to fruition - there are a couple missing beats in between - but they also can't backtrack. In short, they're stuck. Rather, I'm stuck. 

With the firefighter script that I'm working on now, I spent no fewer than two days last week essentially staring at a blinking cursor for an hour a day, trying to figure out what would come next and why my characters couldn't just skip ahead to the end. Granted, I needed the pages in between to bulk up the script, but the main concern in the writing for me at this point is the actual story progression. If it seems like the natural next move is the one that immediately brings about the end of Act Two, then perhaps I've missed something earlier or have not given enough credit to something that needs to happen. Of course, it could also mean that my story's short and warrants a bit more exploration somewhere. 

Ultimately, in this case, the solution came about in two ways. For one, I realized that the order of a few scenes building up to, including, and immediately following the midpoint turn was wrong. I had laid things out in such a way that, in order to fill a scene gap and convey some necessary information, I was going to have to write a highly redundant scene between two characters no more than a couple pages after their last one. Bad news. What's more, other gratuitous scenes and bits of information were going to be thrown in later, since the best places to achieve those moments had already been taken by earlier, similar beats. Reshuffling the scene order not only saved me wasted space in the form of redundant dialogue and action, but it got me thinking about how the rest of the script would likely play out. And when the juices started flowing, they flooded. As if lightning had struck, I raced to hammer out a very terse beat sheet detailing nine or ten sequences that would carry me through most of the rest of the film. They just all clicked right into place, connecting naturally end to end in what seemed like seamless fashion. There's no guarantee that these sequences will generate perfect pacing or pages, of course, but they at least helped me to get through the 60-70 slump, over the Act Two hump.

Don't worry that you're not cut out for this whole writing thing just because you hit a wall in your writing. It's totally natural for writers to experience that at some point. Just work through the slump - it might take some time, but it'll be so worth it when you do - and you'll be in the home stretch. 

The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 59 - The 60-70 Slump

You've done it. Act One is a tiny spec behind you. You've coasted through the first half of act two. You nailed the midpoint; the intensity is building and the end is starting to appear on the horizon. And then it happens. The 60 to 70 Slump.

Ask most screenwriters, and they'll probably tell you that those ten pages, coming right off the high of the midpoint, are some of the most difficult to write. Act One is often a breeze. For me, it's typically the part of my script that requires the least rewriting after the first draft. The first half of Act Two is usually an OK write, though can require more attention later. But there's something about working through pages 60-70 that just makes me want to pull my hair out. I think a large part of that is the degree to which the stakes have been raised and the action is building, a huge climax has just been hit, and everything is moving quickly. Both the writer and the audience need a short breather before Act Three, which will be intense. Those ten pages in the middle of the script have to keep the pace, come down off the midpoint, and give the audience time to both recover and brace themselves for what's next.

You can probably tell that I just dealt with these ten pages. As I write this, my cursor blinks somewhere toward the middle of page 71. I know that I'm going to do some major reworking of the pages before that. Yet, I have to remind myself that this is a first draft I'm working on. First drafts are a foundation. Granted, it's nice to write a great first draft, and I don't try to write anything unreadable, but sometimes it's important to just get the skeleton of the story out and build the rest of the body later. It just sucks that pages 60-70 are a part of that body.