The 3 act structure is one of the best tools to write a screenplay, even though it has 4 acts. I’ll get to that in second, but first, here’s a breakdown of the 3 acts.
Act 1: The Setting
The first half-an-hour of a film is Act I and it sets up the world. Kick it off with an interesting first image. This can be a static shot or a series of shots that sets up the story’s mood, texture, time and place. The main characters, their situation and back-story are introduced in this act. Everything builds to a twist or turn in the story which propels our hero into a new direction, called a turning point, which kicks off Act 2.
Act 2: The Complication
Otherwise known as 60 minutes of something. I like to think of Act 2 as 2 separate acts of 30 minutes each. Obstacles are thrown at our hero until one hour into the film where we hit another turning point that flips the whole story on it’s head. This leads into Act 2.5 where even more obstacles are thrown at our hero until it looks like he’s been defeated. This is where he loses the girl or his best friend is killed or he loses the will to keep moving forward (or all of the above with some salt poured into a wound). That is, until he has an epiphany or a final piece of information is given to him. This is the final turning point that signals the beginning of Act 3.
Act 3: The Resolution
The final 30 minutes of the film kicks into high gear, usually with some sort of countdown. A time bomb is the most obvious example or the hero has to go crash a wedding before his true love says “I do.” This leads to the big finish, and it has to be a big finish. “Lets blow this thing and go home” take-out-the-Death-Star kind of finish followed by a short 1-5 page resolution that ties up any unresolved story threads.
There you have it in a nutshell, the 3 act structure in 4 acts. There’s quite a lot more to crafting the structure to your screenplay, but this is a good start to crafting your screenplay.
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