Don't try to put plot points on specific page numbers, says the screenwriting guru.<br /><br />Question: What's the worst screenplay-writing advice <br />you've ever heard? Robert McKee: That there are <br />certain points, certain pages in fact, in which certain things must <br />happen. You got 120 pages—although screenplays are getting shorter, <br />because the emphasis on spectacle becomes greater and greater... And so, <br /> anyways, say 100 pages. And properly typed in the right format, a page <br /> is equal to a minute of time. And so they say, at a certain page, <br />therefore at a certain minute, more or less in the film, there must be a <br /> major turning point of some kind, or expositional point, a revelation <br />of some kind perhaps. And that the worst advice is to—many, many books <br />that say certain events must happen at certain pages in a screenplay. I <br /> mean, that is the most destructive possible thing to say to a young <br />writer. And to actually destroy a young talent by actually convincing <br />him that he has to pretzel his work into these page counts, that is just <br /> terrible. But there is a rhythm, and in order to reach <br />anything like a satisfying limit of experience for these characters, <br />generally, you need a minimum of three major reversals. Okay? And you <br />spread those... it could be four or five, I mean "Raiders of the Lost <br />Ark" was in seven acts. It could be seven, eight, nine acts structures, <br /> I mean in "Speed," if you counted the major reversals in a chase film <br />like "Speed" or whatever, it's probably nine. Every ten minutes <br />something explosive happens. Right? But three is a minimum. And if <br />the film is, again, 100 minutes long, and you're going to space those <br />three out in some kind of fashion, then clearly one of these is going to <br /> happen, perhaps at the very beginning. There may be another one <br />somewhere in the middle and maybe one toward the end, or it could be the <br /> first one happens like 30 minutes in, and the next one happens like 90 <br />minutes in, or whatever. Okay, so you can have, obviously if they have <br />100 minutes of storytelling, you can't have three major events happen, <br />bang, bang, bang, in the first 15 minutes and then leave 75 minutes <br />worth of resolution. Okay? Nor can you make somebody sit there for 75 <br />minutes in which nothing happens and then bang, bang, bang three things <br />happen in the last 15 minutes. So, obviously these events have to be <br />distributed with a certain rhythm. Exactly what that rhythm is, is so <br />idiosyncratic to the nature of the story that is being told that you <br />cannot predict, or demand that they happen on certain pages, but you can <br /> point out to the writer, of course that there is a rhythm and that you <br />have to hook the audience's interest, hold it, and progress it for up to <br /> 120 minutes, two hours, even more in many films. And to do that you'll <br /> need at least three major reversals and then you've got to work out how <br /> to distribute them. So, there's certain forms. There's a <br />form, but by the page is a formula, and that formula kind of thinking is <br /> very destructive.
