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)

here are a few phrases to remember when writing a script:

Show don’t tell
This is extremely important. Telling and explaining things via dialogue or actions can seem like a good idea at the time, but do not do it! It will appear very amateurish. Instead use the stage directions or camera shots to help the director know what you are trying to imply.

Actions speak louder than words
If you have an option to use a stage direction or use dialogue, more often than not try to use actions over words. This famous phrase exists for a reason. Think of different camera angles and different ways of expressing things without using speech. A good tip is to also keep these actions quite subtle.

Write what you know
You might want to write about a life in this Israeli army, but unless you have experience or a lot of time for extensive research, stick to writing what you know or can immediately find out a LOT of information on. If you write a script where the details are just plain wrong, nobody will be interested in it at all.

Don’t give up and start a new script
So many people i know will have an amazing idea, start and attack at full force to then think ‘ah no it’s not very good I’ll think of something else’, this is extremely common and one of the major hurdles to overcome. But take a step back, do some brainstorming and create a plan of what’s going to happen over the next few pages and get through it. It can be hard, but that is the life of writing scripts. Good luck!

There is a lot more to it, but these 6 points are essentials to getting started with your scriptwriting journey.

1/ Brainstorm

The first thing to do is to brainstorm all of your ideas, often helpful with a friend/colleague, and write down everything and anything that enters your head.

Forget the computerised world for a few moments, grab a pen and paper write things down and have a proper brainstorming session!

2/ Theme

What is the overall theme of your script? Be it love, friendship, overcoming the odds, death, etc.

If you think your script doesn’t have a theme, then look in to it deeper, it will. If the theme is lacking, look how to work the theme in to a more important role as it should be the main purpose of the script.

If you look at fantastic stories (a couple of examples being: Shawshank Redemption, Star Wars, Romeo and Julliet, Lord of the Rings) they all had clearly defined themes.

3/ Character vs Setting

Will your script revolve around the strength of characters and the journey they embark upon, or will it be based on a setting with characters added to that setting.

Titanic is an interesting example. Most people would think that it was setting based – based upon the Titanic ship, but truth be told the story could have took place on an airplane. It was the love story between the Di Caprio and Winslet that created the movie.

4/ Script Length

Fairly simple. How long is your film going to be? With correct formatting, the loose rule is that a page equals one minute, so this should help you figure out in your perhaps lesser used left-side of your brain, the type of script you’ll be writing.

A short film can pretty much be anything. A lot are around 5 or 10 minutes, but they can be 30minutes if you desire.

For a feature film you should be aiming for 80-120 pages (up to 2 hours in screen time).

5/ Conflict

A good story requires conflict (or an antagonist). Make sure to have an obstacle or person more your character/s to overcome.

Syd Field said “without conflict you have no drama, and without drama you ain’t got no screenplay.”

6/ Story Planning

When I was learning script writing, I used to make sure everything was planned, it was set in stone what would happen. Then as I was writing I would find that I wanted things to end differently/things to happen differently.

Clive Bradley once told me that when he was writing he likes to know everything about the characters, the world, the theme and let them tell you the story.

I’ve found that as you write more and more, you become more confident and relaxed in your writing, which can make it seem less stilted. So if you want to plan everything, that’s fine, but make sure you allow yourself some wiggle room and don’t stick completely to what you’ve planned, as something else will no doubt enter your mind whilst writing.