[…] One thing I have learned in my research: Screenplay structure, format and style are ever evolving. I posted something on this very subject here. Bottom line: Screenplays today are far different than screenplays of …read more […]

I agree that screenplays get going very much faster now. Personally, I always aim to have the hero committed and taking action 15-18 pages in. That means compressing character set-up, compared to the traditional structure, but I think it's worth it for the sense of pace and urgency it gives you...

I agree, Debbie. It's possible to service character THROUGH action as opposed to relying so heavily on dialogue, and that can not only help in speeding things along, but also make the story more visual. Also this: I tell my students by the end of Act One, all the major details of the setup should be in place and a reader should know where the story is going. If you look at many movies from the 80s, while they may have gotten the Protagonist into the New World by 30, there is often more 'business' to set into motion before everything is clear. So what used to be 35, 40, or even 45 in an older movie would now be perceived as the 'official' end of Act One, assuming 15 is where the P crossed the threshold into the New World. One more advantage of this compression: It gives the writer more time to explore the middle of the story, which is often where much of the 'fun' stuff is. But it does create a challenge of making sure to create a connection to the characters, especially the P, by the end of Act One (and, of course, set that hook much earlier) while setting up everything is an efficient and timely manner.

Those examples you listed... I wonder about them... particularly about the plot needing time to "get going." Everything that happens in Back To The Future before Marty goes back is important: we get character set-ups, moments, infodumps, we need to know a lot before the movie gets into gear and those moments aren't boring. And even though Marty is still in the 80s, isn't setting up his musical talents but lack of courage, or his crummy home life, or Doc's reckless attitude about safety part of the plot? I think the same thing happens in Witness and Karate Kid, but it's been a while so I can't be positive: we get to know about the characters and the situation before we change things up on them. Even before Harrison Ford goes to Amish town, we know about the kid, the murder, about Harrison Ford, and we're steeped in enough of the contemporary city world to be thrown for a loop just like him when we switch locations. I think Karate Kid is the same way. It starts with Johnny arriving for the first time, we get to know him, his situation, and push him to the point where he needs to fight back. Even though he doesn't take lessons ten minutes in, I don't think there's any time wasted. And I saw Ghostbusters a couple weeks ago, and while I don't think they put on the suits and proton packs until half an hour or more in, they're Ghostbusters right from the start, we're finding out the rules of that universe, the characters, etc...

Chris, not saying what transpires in the first half-hour or so in BTTF and Witness, first 55 minutes of TKK is unimportant. On the contrary, it's ALL important. But that's part of the set-up as, I guess you could say, 'traditionally' defined back in the 80s. We would take 30 pages to get everything established, then some event would launch the narrative into the New World. [Obviously I am speaking in broad generalities.] The different nowadays is that launch into the New World often happens at what used to be the midpoint of Act One, so there is - as a result - less setup to that plot point. [Again generally speaking.] So if a writer were to use a screenplay formula reflected 80s sensibilities and they were writing, let's say, an action movie, a reader seeing the break into Act Two at 30, or 27, or even 25, a pro script reader today would probably critique the story as being too slow to get going. This one of many reasons why I prefer to think in terms of the broadest type of structure possible with no rigid 'rules' to allow the characters and the narrative to evolve into the story it needs to become. Perhaps your story legitimately needs 35 pages to push through the threshold into Act Two. The first Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, did that before Jack and Will joined forces to go after the kidnapped Elizabeth, and that's a fairly contemporary movie. Conversely a story do all the setup it needs in 15 or even 10 pages. Stories. Are. Organic. As writers, we should have the freedom to explore telling them in every conceivable way. Being restricted to some screenplay formula, especially one rooted in a paradigm reflecting narrative sensibilities from 30 years ago, represents the ANTITHESIS of creative freedom. So again, I'm not saying setup is unimportant. It's actually CRITICAL to a successful screenplay. In fact, like Billy Wilder says, if the script has a problem at the end, the problem lies is in the first act. What I AM saying is that audiences appear to want less exposition, less setup in order to get into the meat of the adventure ASAP. That's not a rule, it's an observation. But one I think has merit.