Act 1: The Beginning

This should be approximately 30 pages long (or 1/4 of your script)

As a writer you need to hook the audience enough to get them interested. Most of the people who read your script will decide in the first 5 pages if they like it. This makes it very important indeed!

In Act I you begin with a main character whose life is about to change for better or worse, and who’s going to overcome many obstacles.

The Ten Five Most Important Pages of Your Script

The first ten pages are extremely important, but if you want to stand out and capture whoever’s reading your script, you need to make the first five pages extremely solid.

But generally the first ten pages you write in your script are without doubt the most important as mentioned above. You need to grab the reader there and then or else they will put your script down and move onto the next of many scripts in the pile.

Elements of the First Five Pages

In the first five pages you will want to setup the following:

The Main Character
Who is your main character? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? Do they live an action packed life or does their life revolve around a boring ass job? Your main character is possibly the most important part of your script.

Genre
By the end of the first ten pages it should be clear if your movie is an action flick, a romantic comedy, horror or other.

Location
Where does your character currently live? what’s it like? Does he live in a busy urban suburbia, beaches of Barbados or the cold, lonely streets of New York? Location is important to make the character and story believable.

What it’s all about
The premise is the basic story. For example you could describe any films like Rocky as the ultimate underdog getting his one shot at glory against ‘the man’, a truly motivating story.

After the first 10 pages there are two more important plot points in Act I:

The Exciting Incident
So far the first ten pages have told the viewer of the main character’s life. Well now is the time his world is going to be thrown into chaos. A major problem occurs which the main character will have to resolve for their life to return back to normal. Your main character should have the motivation and will to achieve this goal by doing anything imaginable.

Plot Point I
Nearing the end of Act 1, another big event should happen – Plot Point 1. So far the story has been moving along and now is the time a spanner is thrown in the works and everything is turned upside down. The event will test your main character and challenge them to answer “how far will you go to achieve your goal/overcome their obstacle”

Continue to Act 2 (coming soon)