How I Write A Script, Part 5: Plotting

Here's another in a series of posts about how I approach writing a script. Previous posts:

Part 1: Story Concept

Part 2: Brainstorming

Part 3: Research

Part 4: Character Development

PART 5: PLOTTING

This is another part of the process that happens while I’m brainstorming, doing research, and developing characters. Again, I just follow my instinct – where do I feel like I should go today. If I feel an itch to work on the plot, that’s what I’ll do. And a stack of 3x5 cards can be an invaluable part of the plotting process.

I go to my brainstorming list, which has been augmented by scenes and moments which arise as I’m generating the characters, and I write down what I think are interesting beats, scenes or dynamics – one per card. I engage in some critical analysis here, starting to separate the wheat from the chaff – obviously, I have to or else all the story ‘stuff’ I’ve churned up would translate into a 10 hour mini-series. But if I’m on the cusp with a beat – in or out – I write it down and put it in: Better to chuck it later than not to consider it at all.

After I’ve written all the beats, scenes, and dynamics onto individual cards, I divide them into three stacks: Act I, Act II, and Act III. Having written screenplays for nearly 25 years, I have a pretty intuitive sense of what goes where. Basically if it feels like something that has to do with setting up the story, that goes in the first stack. If it feels like something that has to do with the final struggle, that goes in the third stack. And everything else goes into the second stack.

I take special care to see if I can find four major plot points. This goes back to some advice I received from a veteran writer while picketing the 20th Century Fox lot during the WGA strike in 1988 (I used those events to grill other writers about the craft). This old dude told me, "You gotta know four things before you start to write a script. What's the beginning? What's the end of Act One? What's the end of Act Two? And what's the ending? If you know those four things, you can write a script. If you don't know the answers to those four questions, you got dick."

I think that's pretty sage advice. After all, those are four of the most important plot points in a screenplay. Once I know the answers to those four questions, it not only gives me confidence about where I'm going, it can also help with the rest of the plotting process.

Then I go through the three card stacks, sorting and re-sorting the cards. I’ll read through the beats to get a sense if a narrative flow is starting to emerge. If I’ve done my job right, really brainstormed, really researched the story world, really dug into my characters, then the plotting process can be a pretty smooth one. I pay particularly close attention to the Protagonist's transformation [assuming the story has one], what I look at as four movements Disunity (Act 1 - Deconstruction (Act 2A) - Reconstruction (Act 2B) - Unity (Act 3), as that almost always provides an emotional spine to the story.

Every screenplay paradigm seems to have a certain number of "plot points": My own approach (Narrative Throughline) has ten. Before I move on, I want to identify those ten major events. If I know I need to have a major plot point, but haven’t come up with the specifics, then I just write “Something Happens Here” on a card, and include it in the stack. Of course, I have to do some brainstorming to try to come up with a great sequence to serve that narrative function, maybe more research or spending time with characters, but eventually I try to uncover those 10 plot points.

Then I like to tack the cards up on a wall, so I see the plot unfolding left to right. I may shift cards around as the story can feel different when looked at in a linear fashion. When I feel comfortable with the plot, I know I'm ready to go to the next step -- outline. And that's the subject of our next post.