blueneumann at 2014-01-31 15:45:28:

There was an episode of the Cracked podcast where they talk about this, and the way they said it was "the audience EXPECTS this to happen by this page, and this to happen by this page." So you don't HAVE to do certain things by a certain page, but there are consequences that you have to be aware of. As I got into carding my stories, I realized the sentiment "something has to happen by this page" is misleading: something has to happen in EVERY scene, otherwise you don't need that scene.

Scott at 2014-01-31 19:24:46:

Dean, the sequence approach likely has historical roots (I have mentioned this on the blog before, so feel free to skip if you've read it already). In the earliest days of cinema, there were one-reelers: short bits or scenarios that played out in 8-12 minutes on a single reel of film. Viewers wanted more and longer stories. So filmmakers started to make two-reelers and three-reelers. Problem: Since they only had one projector, that meant the projectionist would have to unload the finished reel, put on the new reel, thread the film through the projector, then start up the projector. This process could take a couple of minutes. How did the writers deal with this issue? They started to create some sort of 'cliffhanger' at the end of each reel. That led to each reel having its own beginning, middle and end. Over time, the theory goes, this solidified as a practice among writers, so either consciously or not, they began to write stories in these chunks of time, 8-12 minutes, each with a beginning, middle and end. The sequence approach is simply one way of organizing that preexisting scheme. Interestingly when I stumbled upon the sequence approach, I realized it slotted right into the broad contours the outline I teach as one way to structure a screenplay story. I agree: For some people, the sequence approach is a great tool for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it breaks down the page-writing process into a series of 'mini-movies,' making the task less daunting as compared to being confronted by the specter of having to write a 120 page behemoth

Scott at 2014-01-31 19:32:45:

blue, I make this point to my students all the time: Something has to happen in every scene. Otherwise what you have doesn't qualify as a scene. And I believe you're right: People DO expect things to happen. Only natural seeing as one study suggests, by the time someone graduates from college, s/he will have read, heard or seen over 10,000 stories. As a result, much of what constitutes 'Story' becomes part of our intuitive nature. And that is what Aristotle described in "Poetics" when he talked about Beginning, Middle and End. And that is what Campbell laid out in "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" with his iteration of The Hero's Journey. And that is what I take from Carl Jung in describing the process of 'individuation' which offers a wonderful metaphor for the Protagonist metamorphosis arc. And this is what Larry Gordon was getting at when he told me about The Whammo Theory. There is this organic sense of how Story works. And we can play TO those expectations, play WITH the, and play AGAINST them. But again, to reduce Story to some sort of formula does a massive disservice to stories, writers and the craft of writing. Screenplays are not about widgets. They are about magic. We do well when we feed our creativity and innovation, not the dictates of so-called 'rules'.

Mike S at 2014-02-04 12:30:20:

This is a timely post, as the Nashville Film Festival Screenplay contest just had its deadline for entries. For the initial two rounds, only 30 pages are read, and a friend of mine who was acting as a sounding board was concerned that a certain event in my script had to happen by page 30. I use Movie Magic and then convert to PDF, and since I recently upgraded to Windows 8, I've been having difficulties with the formatting, to the tune of about 3-4 extra pages. I'm curious what your advice would have been- cut chunks of the scripts to hit the magic '30', or trust that the script is good enough in those opening pages that even if the big 'Act 1' event hasn't happened by then the script will still get a pass to the later rounds, where it will be read in its entirety? I know that writing for the purpose of winning an award probably won't serve the story, but is it wrong to be concerned about something like that?