A few years ago, when I was first trying to figure out how to write a thriller, I broke down, in a similar way, my favourite thriller author's books. This, of course, after my first read-through, which was unemcumbered by any analysis - just breathless page-turning. It taught me so much, to break them apart, to see the setups and payoffs, the misleads, the constant suggestion of danger to generate tension. It is a fascinating exercise, to take a story you love and to see exactly how it works. You actually come to love and appreciate it more. Up was beautiful. I cried like, constantly throughout the whole movie.

Inconsolablecat, I couldn't agree more. After I sold K-9, I completely immersed myself in everything I could find related to screenwriting. One thing I did was read and analyze scripts. I have dozens of scene-by-scene breakdowns still in my files: Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Thelma & Louise, and many more. I know this takes time. I know it is difficult. But this is a key to learning how screenplays work.

When I was first learning how to write, I did a very similar thing with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Breaking down both Kasdan's script (scene for scene) -- and then Spielberg's film (shot for shot). (I know. I'm obsessive). What I think is of utmost importance is discovering how an individual scene works on its own. Every scene will have its own objectives, expectations, twists and turns, and culmination. It isn't until a scene stands on its own that it can be added to the larger whole.

Good Lord, even reading that scene breakdown made me tear up. It was a powerful movie.

Personally? Think over - analysis of screenplays, structure, etc., has gone way overboard in Hollywood over the past 20 years. from SHANE BLACK's LETHAL WEAPON franchise...to TRANSFORMERS...to so much successful and classic, B genre movies in the 30s and 40s...to much of the 60s-70s revolution before the blockbusters took over -- there is no way you can convince me that all these screenwriters, or the majority of them, put so much analysis into structuring their scripts. Many novelists -- pulp fiction authors for example -- don't do as much as the claims seem to be. many successful suspense novelists basically all follow the same blueprint -- cliffhanger and reversal. And what about Romance novelists???? How about FIFTY SHADES OF GREY??? How about TWILIGHT??? Are you really expecting me to believe that they've put all this analysis into their work??? Maybe development execs have their low wage earning readers and assistants do this to justify their ( the execs of course) high salaries; but the reality of many, many bad movies being made out of bad screenplays by bad screenwriters who are paid nonetheless -- good to great wages -- really shed a light on many times, this nonsense attitude of putting too much time into script structure analysis. Many times -- classic film noir as an example -- a great story, great yarn is just that: simple. Great characters in conflict. Over and over. Sometimes...just bam out the story and let it go. Ray Bradbury -- God bless him, and I miss him -- did just this with so many of short stories and scripts. Worked for him.

Mark, please note, as the title of the series states, this is about reading and analyzing a screenplay. Not a novel. Not a short story. A screenplay is a unique narrative form as it is the foundation [or some would say 'blueprint'] to make a movie. Ever since the inception of the movie industry when scenarios evolved into screen plays which evolved into screenplays, narrative structure has been a critical component of this narrative form. Moreover a writer has no page restrictions with a novel. A novelist, if he or she chose, could ramble off for a chapter or more on some ancillary piece of history or what-not tangentially related to the main plot. Not so a screenwriter. We have 120 pages max [generally] and that number is shrinking with a typical script now coming in around 110, even 100 pages. Therefore with the pressure of page count, every single choice we make about scenes is critical. They all have to fit, they all have to work, they all have to fit into a structure [this is particularly true of mainstream commercial movies with latitude for indie and experimental films]. Re the approach I am posting in this series: This is not about how to prepare to write a screenplay. It is about reading, breaking down and analyzing existing screenplays. By doing these type of exercises, we can unpack a story and study its structure, even [hopefully] tapping into its soul and why it has one, what narrative elements contribute to that living, breathing story. By analyzing scripts, we can hope that over time we learn the instincts and practices of other screenwriters on both a conscious and subconscious level. In other words become more intuitive about the craft. Every writer is different. Every story is different. There is no right way to write. Those are acknowledgements I make about the writing process over and over and over again on this site. Some writers will benefit from deep, immersive analysis of scripts, others may not. Some writers may benefit from a similar type of preparation for writing a screenplay, others may not. As I have noted in each series post: "Let me be clear up front: I am not suggesting you have to read scripts precisely this way. Nor am I saying if you choose to use this overall approach that you do so in the order presented. These are not steps so much as they are analytical tools which you can use any way you see fit." Finally as a counterpoint to your argument, I will bet if you talked with professional script readers in Hollywood, most of them would say the scripts they cover suffer from a lack of critical understanding of story due to the writers lack of immersion in and study of narrative, rather than the other way around. That's an informed guess. If you are one of those writers who instinctively understand story and write from the gut, great for you! I wish you the best of success. All I'm attempting to do in this series is open the eyes of writers who may not have that instinct, who may need a deeper understanding of story and narrative, both structure and soul, who could benefit from analyzing scripts. Whether they use some, all or none of these various tools I'm laying out in the series is fine by me. In the spirit of the spec, I throw things out on the blog all the time. People are free to use them... or free to lose them. And yes, God bless Ray Bradbury.

ok, so I wasn't the only one... slightly less embarrased now.

Hi Scott, Excellent breakdown. I learned a lot by what you included as much as what you didn't. When I first saw UP, I tuned in around p 15-20, and missed the whole setup. Not surprisingly, I didn't really like the movie much. Clearly, I need to watch it again from the beginning. Two things... In the first mention of "Kevin" in the two sections listed below, I think you mean Russell. P. 66-70 Kevin pipes up that the bird looks like Kevin. P. 87-88 Kevin hops in his chair out to the front porch of the house Second, how would you fit this into "1 2, 7, 14"? You've got such a nice progression going I'd hate to ruin it with 1,1,2,7,14. (1 deep analysis a week/month.) Or would you do this with the "1" script a week?

Thanks Scott, this is a great help with writing my screenplay.