This is one of those rules I'll never understand because it seems like it's in such stark contrast to all the others. If a script averages at say, 100 pages, throwing the inciting incident in on page five is allocating only 5% of a story to the foundation - the setting, the characters, the physics, motives, etc. - right before those things start to change. Without taking the time to really develop that baseline, doesn't that mostly leave exposition and flashbacks as the only way to pack in more information?

What you're proposing does sound pretty deadly, but I don't think anybody ever said you had to work all that stuff into the first five pages (and btw, most scripts are 110-120 pages). Skillful writers hook you with an exciting opening and work in the other stuff later. A number of classic films - like JAWS, STAR WARS, HALLOWEEN and THE GODFATHER - don't even introduce the protagonist until after the 5-minute mark. Then they dole out the information in a way that doesn't seem like exposition, like Michael Corleone's scene with Fay at the wedding in THE GODFATHER.

P.S. In HALLOWEEN, Laurie doesn't even appear until about 17.5 minutes in - in hindsight, a fairly ballsy move by John Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill, considering the whole damn movie is only 90 minutes including credits!

I'm with Adam. If you're writing a film that has action in it, you need to show that. You need to set the tone in the first 5-10 mins. So throw the action in there.

And as Adam says, you can add the other stuff later. Almost every decent film works that way. Dramas tend to hook you via characterisation - they give you one hell of an emotional scene to drag you into the character.

So you're not just devoting 5% of the story to setting, characters etc. You're getting in only what isneeded for the audience to understand your smashing opening. Then you can spend more time later on getting what you need in.

Most important thing has to be to hook the audience ASAP - in one way or another.

Thanks, Scott. Thanks for all the comments, guys, I just need to keep practising, reading scripts, writing scripts.

maybe what scott is trying to coax out of you is not that you have a guy jump out of a burning building... but that whatever you write in page 1 thru 5 or 10 gets the reader involved, excited and, most importantly, invested in the story so that they look fwd to reading another 100 pages... you can have your audience invest their time if the characters are vivid and fresh w/o really having anything 'happen' to them, but whatever is going on should establish who they are and how this will pertain, make and break them in the rest of your story... except for in rare cases, remember that you have only 100 pages to take someone's life, flip it upside down and have them pick up the pieces; every scene should be critical to your character's arc

Hope it helps, Antonia. I think I wound up addressing kgmadman's question than yours - you were talking about pacing, and he was talking about how to get the information out. What I was trying to get at is you don't need to reveal things in a perfectly linear way.

Openings are tough. From what I've observed and experienced in my screenwriting group, it usually takes at least 2-3 passes before the writer gets the balance right. I'd err on the side of having too much information at a pace that's too fast at first - then slow down the pace and "bury" the information, ie figure out how to disseminate it without being obvious.