

Let’s say you get a call from the doctor asking you to come in for a scan because they noticed something unusual in your blood results. There’s a reason why this three-act structure paradigm has stood the test of time, all the way from Aristotle through to Frozen II…īecause it so effectively imitates real life and its recurring Rule of 3.Įven on a day-to-day level nearly everything we do can be boiled down to a three-act structure paradigm. For example, the Call to Action, Act One Turning Point, Midpoint and so on. Act three (the end) brings the story to a resolution when either the protagonist or the antagonist win the final battle, and what’s at stake has either been won or lost.Īs the protagonist makes their way through the three-act structure paradigm, they’re hit by multiple crises that form major turning points in the story.Things get increasingly complicated for the protagonist as the antagonist reveals new obstacles and challenges them to ever greater degrees. Act two (the middle) shows the protagonist and antagonist battling over this goal-what’s at stake in the story.Act one (the beginning) sets up the story world, the protagonist and antagonist and what’s at stake-the problem/crisis they have to resolve over the course of the story in direct opposition to one another.Act Three: Get them down again More detail on what classic three-act structure entails.Act One: Get your protagonist up a tree.So the sweet spot of a 110-page screenplay is about a one-hour-fifty-minute long movie.Īpplying a three-act structure divides these pages/minutes up like so:
#PINCH 1 SCREENPLAY EXAMPLES MOVIE#
Here’s a quick breakdown of classic/traditional three-act structure in a movie screenplay:Ī screenplay should be roughly 90-110 pages long.Ī single page roughly equals one minute of screen time. However, they all fall into and work in harmony with what’s known as “classic” or “traditional” three-act structure.

First, just what is three-act structure?Īs we’ve already mentioned, there are many different screenwriting structure theories out there.
#PINCH 1 SCREENPLAY EXAMPLES HOW TO#


If there’s so much information out there on how to craft the perfect three-act structure, why is it so hard to put it into practice in your own script? Why is it so difficult to know how the hell to fill those 50-60 pages in Act Two? 34 comments Are you obsessing over three-act structure? Here’s what you should do instead.
