sw-story-structure

Story Structure (故事结构)

Output language = language of the question; terms are always anchored back to the original word, see sw-workflow/terms.md, do not coin new translations.

This skill merges six structural systems: Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (paradigm/plot points), Blake Snyder's Save the Cat (BS2 fifteen beats, board), Robert McKee's Story (levels of structure, story triangle, inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis-climax-resolution), Hauge's twelve rules of screenwriting (nine beats, A/B story), Neill Hicks's core techniques of screenwriting (three acts = attraction/anticipation/satisfaction, ten elements), Lu Jun's Screenwriting Theory and Technique (起承转合, eight ways to open, eight ways to end, climax disease, eight taboos of transformation, six kinds of change). They are mutually compatible:Field gives the skeleton, Snyder gives the page numbers, McKee gives the principles, Hauge gives the beat names, Hicks gives the audience psychology, Lu Jun gives the practical techniques of Chinese drama.

For comparison tables, examples, and film-by-film plot points, see the same directory reference.md。

I. Levels of structure (McKee)

Structure= the selection of a series of events from the story of a character's life, combined into a strategic sequence, arousing specific emotions and expressing a specific view of life.
Event= change, which must be expressed throughvalue(binary pairs such as life/death, love/hate, freedom/slavery, truth/lie…… that can turn from positive to negative at any time). Rain in East Africa is a coincidence, not a story event; the rain that the rainmaker knocks out of conflict is.
Levels:beat(alternation of action/reaction) →scene(action expressed through conflict in a relatively continuous time and space, turning a value-laden situation on at least one level; subtle change) →sequence(2–5 scenes with escalating impact to a peak; moderate change; give each sequence a title) →act(a series of sequences culminating in a climax scene of major reversal) →story(a series of acts, the final act climax = story climax, changeabsolute and irreversible; changes at the scene/sequence/act level can all be reversible, as in E.T.'s death and resurrection in the second act).
There is no scene without a turn: note the positive or negative value at the beginning, note it again at the end, and if it is the same, ask "why this scene" — almost always it is for exposition → cut it and weave the information in elsewhere.
Plot = "navigating dangerous terrain"; all stories have plot.

The story triangle (determines which kind of structure you write)

Top vertexArchplot(classical design): active protagonist, external conflict, continuous time, causal coherence, closed ending — "a mirror of the human mind," the most for the audience.
Left cornerMiniplot(minimalism): open ending, internal conflict, passive protagonist, multiple protagonists (The Accidental Tourist, Parenthood, Pelle the Conqueror).
Right cornerAntiplot: nonlinear time, coincidence, non-continuous reality (After Hours, Weekend; Roger Rabbit becoming two-dimensional once becomes a rule).
Below the bottom line isnon-plot(static).
Precepts: a writer must live by writing, must first master the classical forms (Bergman, Fellini, Godard, and Altman all first mastered Archplot), and must believe in what he writes—"being different just to be different is as empty as blindly following commercial rules."

Three-way division of structural types (Gu Zhongyi p0169–0182)

Open: presents the plot from beginning to end exactly as it is on stage (The Butterfly Lovers, The Merchant of Venice). The advantage lies in having a beginning and an end, with lively and easily understood scenes, and because the time is drawn out, the characters have a process of development; the disadvantage lies in that when the breadth is wide, the depth is shallow, "if you take care of the plot, you cannot take care of the detailed portrayal of the characters, and the increase in transitional scenes will inevitably scatter the key scenes"—the wider the breadth, the more refined the selected plot must be。
Closed(retrospective / endgame): writes only from the climax to the ending, with the backstory gradually revealed through recollection and introspection as the plot proceeds (in the endgame form, A Doll's House compresses the debt from eight years earlier entirely into the two conversations of Act One; in the retrospective form, Ghosts is "more than nine-tenths a recollection of the past"). The advantage lies in concentration and compactness, the interlocking of inner and outer action, and digging deeper and deeper; the disadvantage lies in being unexciting and easily monotonous, and unsuitable for reflecting broad social life.Proportion: recollection must be mainly present and secondarily past; once the action of the present is weakened, it is the deviation of the Ghosts type.
Tableau(Lawson's Tableau Play): many characters and little plot, "like a group portrait," with extremely slow progression, potential conflict stronger than external conflict,no prominent protagonist, and the characters who run through to the end often serve only as a connecting thread (The Lower Depths, Sunrise, Under the Eaves of Shanghai, Teahouse); it is held together by thematic thought rather than causality.
Choosing a type is not choosing the best: Khorodov'scentripetal force(making time, place, and characters extremely concentrated in order to preserve unity of action) andcentrifugal force(demanding the complete and natural expression of life's richness)—"every play is like the resultant of two forces"; "one must use it according to the material (subject matter), and must not cut the feet to fit the shoes."Self-check: if you cannot say which type you are writing, it is most likely that you have crammed the breadth of the open form into the length of the closed form.
Interface: Gu classifies a whole play as open and an excerpt as closed, and judges that Chinese classical opera has no tableau form (see sw-chinese-opera-banqiang); the tableau form is the interface for the future spoken drama layer (Lao She's Teahouse).

II. The three-act paradigm and plot points (Field)

第一幕 建置 setup      第二幕 对抗 confrontation      第三幕 结局 resolution
第 1–30 页              第 30–90 页                     第 90–120 页
           情节点Ⅰ（25–27 页）            情节点Ⅱ（85–90 页）

One page = one minute.Plot point= "an incident or event that is tightly woven into the story and turns the story in another direction"; a completed screenplay may have fifteen plot points, but the two at the ends of acts are the "anchors."
Before starting to write, you must know four things: the ending, the beginning, Plot Point I, and Plot Point II. Know the ending first: "You don't have to know the details, but you must know what happens at the ending."
Pivot action method(Wei Minglun p0081): Another starting route—first define a middle action as the fulcrum, and use it to push backward into the backstory and forward into the ending. "The Scholar of Mount Ba" uses "burning books to lodge a complaint" as the fulcrum: backward, it pushes out the extremely low starting point of repeatedly failing the examinations; forward, it pushes out the "certain death" incurred by violating ritual law; the fulcrum falls at the exact center of the play (the beginning of the fifth scene out of eight).Failure: if the fulcrum action does not violate the character's original values, it can push out nothing in either direction.Self-check: write the fulcrum as one sentence, and ask "what kind of person must he have been before doing this" and "how must the world deal with him after he does it"; only if both questions can be answered does it hold up.
Each of the three acts also has a beginning/middle/end; each act has a "direction."
The first ten pages must establish three things: who the main character is; the dramatic premise (what the story is about); the dramatic situation (the circumstances surrounding the story). Thirty pages complete the setup. There are two kinds of openings: a strong visual action sequence ("Star Wars") or a quick expository character introduction (the moans in bed in "Shampoo" interrupted by a phone call).
The opening connects to the ending: road at the start, road at the end; gambling game at the start, gambling game at the end; boxing match at the start, boxing match at the end; "Will they report it?"
Sequence(sequence) = "linking a series of scenes together with a single idea"; it is the spine of the screenplay (wedding, chase, homecoming, bank robbery). First define the sequence idea (the cup), then fill in the content (the coffee). Pearson wrote "Dog Day Afternoon" using only twelve sequences: first write four (beginning, two plot points, ending), then add eight more.
Theme = action + character: "A screenplay is like a noun: a certain person goes to do his business in a certain place." Action is divided into physical and emotional.
Variations: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is 40/40/40; in "Nashville" the protagonist is the city—"as long as you follow the protagonist, you can find the plot points."

III. BS2 Fifteen Beats (Snyder, 110 pages)

#	Beat	Page	Key Point
1	Opening Image	1	Tone, genre, scale; a snapshot of the protagonist's "before"; opposite of the final image
2	Theme Stated	5	Usually a line spoken to the protagonist by a non-protagonist; the screenplay = a debate around it
3	Set-Up	1–10	All main plotline characters appear or are mentioned; the "six things that need fixing" (time bombs, later detonated and healed); a storm is coming, and standing still means death
4	Catalyst	12	A telegram, being fired, catching someone cheating, only three days left; bad news disguised as good news; if it runs to page 20, cut it
5	Debate	12–25	The last chance to say "this is crazy"; pose a question
6	Break into Two	25	No later than page 25; the protagonistdecides for himselfto enter, and cannot be tricked into it or wake up already on the spaceship
7	B Story	30	Usually the love story, carrying the theme; the new character is the reverse mirror image of an act one character
8	Fun and Games	30–55	Delivering on the promise of the premise; the core of the poster, the material for the trailer
9	Midpoint	55	A false victory or a false defeat; "the crisis intensifies"; the opposite of "losing everything"
10	Bad Guys Close In	55–75	Hardest to write; external villain regroups + internal team splits
11	Lose everything	75	Worse than the beginning;the smell of death(Obi-Wan dies; if not, put a goldfish and a flower)
12	Dark night of the soul	75–85	5 seconds to 5 minutes; the lesson can only be learned after being defeated first
13	Enter Act Three	85	Get the solution through subplot characters/thematic discussion; main plot and subplot merge
14	Resolution	85–110	Defeat the villains one by one from low to high (minions die first); the protagonist must change the world; "synthesis"
15	Final image	110	The opposite of the opening; without it = Act Two is missing something

Three acts = thesis/antithesis/synthesis.Setup longer than 25 pages = the audience wants a refund(Minority Report takes 40 minutes to drop the hook).

Storyboard (40 cards)

The board is divided into four rows: 1–25 / 25–55 (up to the midpoint) / 55–85 / 85–110, with a turning point at the end of each row.
First pin the most exciting scenes → find the gaps → pin the three major turning points (first the midpoint, then lose everything as its opposite, then enter Act Three).
Common problem: stuffing 20 cards into Act One (all backstory, finally compressed into one card, "the protagonist appears");Act Three always has only two cards("the protagonist knows what to do" "the big final battle")—go back and check the six major flaws, the subplot, and the villain list.
On each card write +/-(the emotional change in this scene; if you can't think of one, throw the card away) and ><(who has a goal, who blocks the way, who wins; write only one conflict per scene).
Same origin as Field's card method: 3×5 cards with a few words each, different colors for different acts; the process is one day for Act One, two days for Act Two, one day for Act Three, then several weeks of shuffling and moving scenes. "Trust your story." Once you start writing, the board can be thrown away.

IV. The Nine Beats (Hokst) and the Linear Development Chart

Act One (<30 minutes):basic exposition(the protagonist has a problem/desire; inciting incident) →debate(wants it but doesn't know how to get it; the first commitment is weak and unrealistic—Jojo injuring himself by throwing a grenade = "a long way to go").
Act Two (≈45 minutes, two halves):initial progress→raise the stakes(a wolf chases you into a cave and there's a mother bear; the ex-girlfriend is dating the ex-boyfriend who hates you and tomorrow he becomes your department manager) →midpoint(the second commitment, no way back, the protagonist becomes a hero) →commitment(aid) →crisis(the lowest point + revelation; opening up for the first time).
Act Three (<30 minutes):confrontation(the plan meets a counterattack) →resolution(the goal is achieved, the theme is revealed, the world changes; "give us a little time to feel it").
Different stories emphasize different beats: Winter's Bone has the longest debate (turned away family after family); How to Train Your Dragon has more than 20 minutes of initial progress.
A story= main plot, what the protagonist wants, the surface motivation;B story= Key character relationships, "who would you confide in," strongest in Act II, at the end of Act II Character B helps the protagonist formulate the Act III plan, and when the plan is executed, A completes it. Once the theme is determined it never changes; what changes is the attitude toward it.
"Is three-act structure right for me?" Six questions: mainstream genre? Strong goal-driven? Plot-driven? Clear ending resolution? Major protagonist transformation? Aimed at mainstream audiences?
Tarantino's three-act information gap: in Act I the audience does not understand and the characters know more; in Act II it is a tie; in Act III the audience is far ahead.
Goldman's Ten Commandments: do not take the crisis away from the protagonist; do not let the protagonist have it easy; do not argue for the sake of arguing; do not create suspense with cheap shocks; respect the audience; know your world as God knows the world; if the elements are already rich, do not make them artificially complicated; exploration does not stop at bringing characters into the deepest conflict; do not be straightforward—every line of dialogue must carry subtext; revise repeatedly.

V. Three acts = attraction / expectation / satisfaction (Hicks)

Act I must generateattraction: make the audience "willing to go along"; Act II managesexpectation psychology: make the audience constantly guess the next step and guess wrong; Act III providessatisfaction: fulfill all expectations but not in the expected way.
Drama is conflict: arrange conflict, compress time, break down events—Bonnie and Clyde breaks "stealing a car" into a series of small actions: the parking space, the keys, starting the engine, and every step can go wrong.
Ten-element checklist(fill in item by item before writing the outline): subtract from backstory (keep only what relates to the goal); no flashbacks; inner need; inciting incident; external goal; preparation; opposing forces must be stronger; self-revelation; obsession and trouble; the struggle must be won by the protagonist personally; problem resolution.
Every scene has two things: advance the external goal + expose the inner need. "Less is more."
Five premise questions: Who? Wants what? Why now? Who blocks it? Result?

VI. Structural techniques of Chinese short plays (Lu Jun)

Boundary: setup-development-turn-conclusion is the full-play structural level for short plays / one-act plays / opera; feature films and series only borrow its local techniques (eight kinds of openings, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, the four diseases of the climax, the eight methods of endings), not its use as a skeleton; for opera projects see sw-chinese-opera-banqiang Section 2.

Setup-development-turn-conclusion = phoenix head, pig belly, leopard tail

Setup: the beginning of the contradiction and the first conflict, the fuse is lit; clearly reveal the appearance, strength, and tendency of both sides; generally very short, embedding exposition in action—sharp and striking.
Development: about two-thirds, tightly linked and rising step by step, winding and turning, sometimes fast sometimes slow; Hunter: "Kick the horse in the belly to make it run forward, but pull the reins to keep it at a natural pace."
Turn: the peak of the climax, where character and theme are deepest, "with tremendous force."
Conclusion: conclude immediately after the turn, brief and with lingering flavor.
The setup should make people anticipate, the development should be captivating, the turn should shake people, and the conclusion should make people reflect—even a one-thousand-character sketch must have all four sections complete.

Enter the drama quickly: three shoulds and three should-nots, and eight kinds of openings

Better near than far (the first cut should be close to the climax, deleting retrospective accounts of events before the conflict), better simple than complex (one small matter, going straight in with twists and turns), better active than static (open with a dramatic situation; even one person can create "trouble"). Avoid a starting point too far away, a focus too chaotic, and too many doubts—The most feared thing in drama is explanation.。
Eight kinds of openings: the conflict method (conflict right from the start: "The current township head won't come"), the formation method (setting up a conflict situation from the very beginning), the rendering method (direct/indirect/contrasting rendering of the main event), the surprise method (a blind girl comes to take the exam), the running-counter-to-the-goal method (the lazy man says, "You should have let me know and I'd have come to get it myself"), the head-on-blow method (the father rules that three flower baskets must be woven every night), the self-introduction method (chorus/host/phone call to reduce exposition), and the forced-onto-the-road method (the old wife steals the breeding rabbit and is interrogated while straddling the wall).
Archer: the opening must "clearly point out the direction in which the dark clouds are gathering on the horizon."

The thread must be clear: find the core + addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division

Rodin cut off the "perfect hands" of the Balzac statue—proper detail and omission in four words:highlight the key points. Lu Xun's Kong Yiji: the broken leg takes one hundred fifty words, the fennel beans five hundred—find the core "the heart of a newborn child" as the standard for selection.
Wherever character is portrayed, write in detail (one song and three sighs, one wave and three turns, one step and three chants); openings and endings are written briefly, "surface" is written briefly, and places unrelated to the theme are written briefly.
Sort out the thread:subtraction(delete people and events to clear out the shining points, dare to cut what you love),addition(supplement the social factors and emotional basis for abnormal behavior),multiplication(multiply one ridiculous factor to an extreme exaggeration),division(if the entry point is wrong, start over from scratch).

The climax must be high

"Never easily put pen to paper until you have found the climax"—Dumas fils: "Do not begin unless you have already fully thought through the action and dialogue of the last scene"; Ibsen: "I can almost say that I wrote this play for the sake of the last scene"; the Bai Yushuang example: the red wedding dress becomes black with the character "奠" (mourning); once the climax was achieved, all eight scenes were written in one burst.
Three paradigms:caused by character(Zhang Guirong goes from forbearance to tearing the whip and taking the land deed: "I am a person, I am a person of the nation! Not livestock kept by you"),caused by environment(the new system provides the larger environment; in The Policeman and the Thief, the fake policeman, under the patrolman's guidance, enters the role and finally "catches one"—the other is himself),accidental events(the son who "died" suddenly returns).
Four faults: no climax (three fragments with evenly distributed force, like a lantern slide show), climax too early (after five minutes it's "first cry, second scold, third hang oneself"), climax not high (loud quarreling but the plot slips and there is no rising action), climax artificial (casually kneeling, divorce, splitting the family, slaps—kneeling can be used only when it becomes an inevitable product of character and leads to new relationships, as in Bao Gong Pei Qing, where the sister-in-law kneels: "What I kneel to is your loyal heart for the country and the people, Third Brother").
Before the climax there is also drama: set up necessary scenes, learn to control delay and to restrain first before elevating (the magic mirror is first turned into a bronze mirror and then turned back for the "final look").

The transformation must be smooth (untying the knot)

Eight taboos: passing the contradiction upward (superiors send people, calls, or documents), treating a serious illness lightly (repenting after a single test), being irrelevant to the topic (saving the girlfriend's father and "messing around blindly in scientific research" are two different matters), long sermons in "fu zi ban" style, handling offstage (Secretary Zhang criticized him), bringing in reinforcements, accidentally discovering blood relations, and the old trap of "inviting you into the jar."
Three methods:the power of environment(hand over the irredeemable villain to irresistible social forces),the power of foreshadowing(Folk songs progress layer by layer from love songs → songs of oppression → secret meeting signals),The power of action—best is a single masterstroke(In "Ah Er Takes a Wife," weaving baskets: it is both proof of transformation, suitable for the stage, and echoes the opening).

The ending must be masterful

Think out the ending first (Cao Yu). Four taboos: too neat (putting on an ideal halo), too dragging ("end when it should end"; in "The Necklace," even one extra word diminishes the aftertaste), too jumpy (the ending brings a divine stroke and escalates without limit), too soft (four lines of offstage singing to force a close).
Eight methods:Thunderclap style(climax and ending merged into one: "those typewriters," "I am the inspector, I stayed next door for three nights," "he would rather confess," "the engagement wine we drank last month," the towel falling to the ground),Unresolved style("Should I forgive him?" to the audience),Extension style(In "Oppression": "What is your surname?" "I—ah—I—"),Rebound style(the singer abandons his suicidal lover: "I still have one minute and ten seconds" to catch the train; a gunshot sounds offstage),Point-highlighting style(a passage from the fiancée illuminates the whole play),Echo style(three gongs at the opening and three gongs again at the ending, a contrast of light and heavy),Cyclical style(reunion → memory → back to reunion, "beware one day of the anger of the masses"; Anne begins writing letters again),Conclusion style("a draw," summarized by chorus).

There must be many changes

"Where there is change, there is drama." Six kinds: changes in character relationships (deceiver/deceived rotate), changes in personality, changes in fate (three great rises and falls), changes in conflict situation (one gun changes hands four times), changes in atmosphere (duel → courtship), changes in narrative method. Priority of sources:caused by character ＞ screenwriting technique ＞ accidental events ＞ external forces. A short play with five or six notable changes passes; "Beating the Bronze Gong" with fifteen is a model example.

Seven, Inciting Incident and Progressive Complications (McKee)

Inciting incident

Five-part design: inciting incident → progressive complications → crisis → climax → ending.
Mustbe dynamically and fully developed(moving to Los Angeles is not; parking tickets as wallpaper + a felony arrest warrant and escaping down the fire escape is), thoroughly breaking the balance and pushing toward positive or negative;the protagonist must react(refusal is also a reaction); arouse the desire to restore balance → object of desire → quest; a complex protagonist simultaneously arouses unconscious desire.
Must be on screen, raise the major dramatic question, project theobligatory scene(the shark and the police chief face to face).
Placement: in the first quarter; can be in the first second ("On the Waterfront") or at 27–32 minutes ("Rocky," "Casablanca"); if late, it needs a subplot to cushion it;introduce as soon as possible but be sure to wait until the time is ripe—the audience needs to know how much in order to react fully (Rocky needs half an hour before "Him? That bum?!").
Creation method:how the worst thing becomes the best thing(Kramer),how the best becomes the worst("Death in Venice"); "if a story is to become art, it does not speak of the middle ground."
Story spine: If there is no unconscious desire, the conscious objective is the spine; if there is, the unconscious desire is the spine and the conscious desire is allowed to change continuously.
Hockster: Two types of inciting incidents—character-driven (a friend suggests substituting teaching) or coincidence (mistaken identity; a distress signal); hook the reader within ten pages.

Progressive Complications

Facing increasingly strong opposition generates more and more conflict, passing through onepoint of no returnafter another: each gulf eliminates actions of equivalent force. "The soft, bulging belly protruding over the belt" = the author repeating an action on the scale of Act One. Hundreds of scenes need to be invented to mine out 40–60.
Law of Conflict: "Nothing in a story can move forward without conflict"; the amount of conflict in life is a constant (squeezing a balloon).
Gulf: A character always takes the smallest conservative action from their subjective point of view → the world reacts differently from or more strongly than expected → a second action with greater risk. Risk test: "If the protagonist doesn't get it, what will he lose?" If the answer is "return to normal," it isn't worth telling.
Complication type (single level: action films have only extra-personal conflict, soap operas only the personal level) vs. complex type (inner/personal/extra-personal three levels turning at the same time—the French toast in "Kramer" has three values and three levels). Advice:Do not multiply characters, do not multiply set pieces; relatively simple yet complex.
Four techniques for expressing progression: social progression (the scope affected by the action spreads outward), personal progression (wedging deeper into private relationships and the inner self), symbolic ascension (images move from the particular to the universal, and must be invisible), ironic ascension (six kinds: finally getting it but too late; being pushed away from the goal yet led toward it; abandoning something only afterward known to be indispensable; unknowingly going counter to the goal while pursuing it; wanting to destroy but shooting oneself in the foot; getting what was thought to be misfortune and wanting to get rid of it, only to find it is a great gift).
Each level of failure must let the protagonist know one more thing(Wei Minglun p0082): The action line of "Bashan Xiucai" is "four levels of accusation"—pleading for relief → indirect accusation (mistaking a cruel official for an upright one) → clever accusation (placing hope in the imperial court) → furious accusation exposing everything in the great hall,four levels of accusation = four times being deceived = four ascensions of understanding, the action line and the character line are two sides of the same line.Self-check: Write down the sentence the protagonist newly knows after each failure ("officials protect one another" → "Sichuan is dark, but there is still the imperial court" → "the imperial court also wants to kill me"); delete any level you cannot list.Failure: If the protagonist gains no new information between two failures, those two scenes can be merged into one.

Act Design

Aristotle: the longer the work, the more major reversals. A long work has at least three acts (good → bad → ?). Proportions: Act One ≈ 25% (climax at 20–30 minutes);the last act is the shortest (⚠️ conflicts numerically with BS2's "enter Act Three at 77%": the 110-page table shrunk to 100 pages at 77% = 23 minutes for Act Three, exceeding this item's upper limit.Both are rules for feature films, not a conflict of media; take the shorter Act Three—move entry into Act Three to 78–80%, and keep Act Three within 20 minutes. BS2's percentage is a ratio, not a law) ≤20 minutes(sense of acceleration); Act Two is a 70-minute morass → two solutions:subplot(each with its own act structure) oradding acts(Mid-act climax → Act Four; four weddings in Act Five; Raiders of the Lost Ark in Act Seven). The cost of multiple acts: a proliferation of climaxes invites clichés and weakens impact. Three-act main plot + subplot is the standard.
False Ending(E.T. dying, the alien blowing up the ship) Unsuitable for most films; the penultimate act climax should reinforce "what else could happen at this point."
Act Rhythm: The last two act climaxes cannot carry the same charge (an up ending does not set up an up ending, a down ending does not set up a down ending); for an ironic ending, first determine the leaning, then make the penultimate act go the opposite way.
Four Relationships of the Subplot: With the Controlling IdeaContradiction(a sweet love main line + a betrayal subline);Resonance(multi-plot takes this as its root, "being a parent can never win");Foreshadowingfills the vacuum left by a late main plot;Creating complications for the main plot(most important: the love line in a crime film). If it neither contradicts, resonates, foreshadows, nor complicates → it splits the story. The center of gravity must be controlled (the love line in Rocky is handled carefully to preserve the sports genre).
Break convention for only one reason: to replace it with something more important(in Kiss of the Spider Woman the inciting incident is postponed to the mid-act climax, first establishing empathy before revealing the deal).

Eight, Crisis, Climax, Resolution (McKee)

Crisis= decision; the protagonist has exhausted all actions and only one remains; an obligatory scene; it must be a true dilemma (choosing one of two goods or the lesser of two evils; a choice between good and evil is not a choice);The crisis decision must be a deliberate, static moment, not off-screen and not glossed over (Thelma & Louise: "Go? What do you mean go?"). The crisis and climax can be in different places but must be cut together, and cannot cut to a subplot.
Crisis within the Climax: pry open the gap once more during the climactic action (the spiral of three crisis decisions in The Empire Strikes Back).
Climax: The supreme reversal need not be noisy or violent butmust be full of meaning—"meaning generates emotion"; the action is purely clean and self-evident; Aristotle's "inevitable yet unexpected"; Goldman's "give the audience what they want, but not in the way they expect"; what the audience wants is not a happy ending but emotional satisfaction (down endings also make money);Key Image: a climax written for the eye + a single image of the controlling idea (the handcuffs in Greed; tearing apart the apartment in The Conversation).
Once the climax arrives, enterrewriting from the end to the beginning, establishing each scene's reason for existence by comparison with the climax, and cutting anything that has no effect; it is best when a subplot reaches its climax within the main plot's climax (Rick resolves love + politics + Renault + Strasser in one action), otherwise the least important reaches its climax first.
"What cinema is about is the last twenty minutes"; 75% of effort goes into design, of which 75% goes into the final act climax.
ResolutionThree uses: give a scene to any subplot not resolved within the climax (the main plot can be dragged into the resolution to create a false complication); show the reach of the climax's impact; respect for the audience—add a line on the last page for a slowly pulling-back shot.
Hauge's three climax questions: Does the villain's failure express the theme? Has the protagonist done something they could not do in Act One? Does it simultaneously complete the plotline and account for the entire story?
Coincidence: introduce it as early as possible to give time to build meaning; do not use coincidence after the midpoint;never use coincidence to turn the ending("Deus ex machina" is a lie and an insult, an anti-structure exception; comedy can tolerate it, but the protagonist must already have suffered enormously and never despaired).

Nine, Nonlinear, Multi-line, and Ensemble

Non-chronological (Reservoir Dogs reveals through flashbacks; 500 Days evokes memory; Pulp Fiction loops; Lost Highway loops as puzzle-solving)—Hauge: still observe segment coherence; frame narratives can be circular (La Jetée, Twelve Monkeys).
Multi-line plots (Much Ado About Nothing, Contagion); multi-segment (Sin City); ensemble (The Dirty Dozen with a protagonist / Love Actually and Babel linked by theme, one inciting event affects all lines); minimalist plot (Stranger Than Paradise, three places, three acts, "nothing happens").
McKee: multiple protagonists each with their own desire → multi-plot, held together byecho(variations on the same controlling idea) rather than causality (in Altman's and Jarmusch's films, "the degree of interlock depends on the degree of correspondence among the various threads").
Flashback: Tony Bill, "when I see a flashback, I know the story is in trouble"; McKee: dramatize it (a mini-drama with inciting incident, progression, and turning point) andfirst create the need and desire to know, then use; Truby, "if the reader doesn't care about what is happening now, we don't need to tell the reader what happened in the past"; Hicks: no flashbacks (use present tense and active voice to compress backstory into present action).
Chekhovian anticlimax (even-numbered acts, no central climax, events offscreen) see chekhov-dramaturgy; Ozu-style "events offscreen, reactions onscreen" see ozu-screenplay-style。

Ten, Structure Diagnostic Checklist

Can you say in one or two sentences what it is about(in noun form: who, where, doing what)? If you can't, you're not ready to write.
Do you know the ending, the beginning, Plot Point I, and Plot Point II? Is the midpoint a false victory or a false defeat, and is it the opposite of "losing everything"?
Do the first ten pages establish the protagonist, the premise, and the situation? Does the setup exceed 25 pages? Does the inciting event come after page 20?
Does the protagonistdecide for themselvesto enter Act Two? Does the protagonist take action or only react to the environment? Is the protagonist asking questions (many question marks in the dialogue = there is a problem)?
Does the value change from the beginning to the end of each scene? If a scene doesn't change, is it exposition?
Does every gap in Act Two rule out actions of equal force? Is there a "soft belly" (repeating the scale of Act One)? Does it accelerate after the midpoint?
Is the sum of the forces of antagonism stronger than the protagonist at the inciting event (the protagonist should be a "defeated dog")? Is the villain bad enough ("the villain must be worse")?
Is there a smell of death around page 75? Is the crisis a static dilemma? Is the climax "inevitable yet unexpected"? Is there an image of tone?
Does the subplot contradict / echo / foreshadow / entangle with the controlling idea—which one? If none, it divides the story.
Is the last act the shortest? Do the last two acts have opposite climax charges? Does the ending take care of the subplot and give the audience a breather?
Four questions for the army: Does it hook quickly (close starting point, single focus, few doubts)? Is the climax high (not early, not slippery, not artificial)? Is the turn smooth (no escalation, no easy fix, nothing behind the scenes, no calling in reinforcements)? Is the ending absolute (not neat, not dragged, not skipped, not soft)?
Count the changes: a small play needs at least five or six significant changes, and they should preferably grow out of character.
Has the first act already stated the correct answer and had it rejected (Chekhov/Lopakhin method), and is what was foreshadowed at the end fulfilled or deliberately unfulfilled?

11. Workflow: From premise to screenplay

One-sentence story(Snyder's four elements: ironic hook + mental image + audience and cost + title; add protagonist adjective, antagonist adjective, primal goal); pitch it to a stranger as a test. Hoxter's logline formula: protagonist + inciting event + conflict/challenge + stakes + theme, highlighting the hook; it is not a tagline.
Determine genre and position on the story triangle; list comparable films to find conventions and clichés.
Fill in the ten elements(Hicks) and the five premise questions; determine the protagonist's need and obstacle.
Decide the ending first, then decide the beginning and the two plot points; find the climax's "tonal image."
BS2 one-page: fill in the fifteen beats by page number; theme on page 5, catalyst on page 12, entering Act Two no later than page 25, midpoint 55, all is lost 75, entering Act Three 85.
40-card demonstration board, each card marked +/- and ><; Act Three cannot have only two cards.
Step outline(McKee): one or two sentences per scene, "He enters expecting to see her, but finds a note saying she has left forever," with the structural position marked on the back; the purpose is todestroy your own work—sketch a dozen or more versions of a scene and discard them; after finding the climax, rewrite from the end to the beginning.
Talk about the story for ten minutesWatch the listener's eyes; do not show them the outline; an enthusiastic reaction equals a soft "wow" followed by silence.
Treatment(60–90 pages, present-tense moment-by-moment description,no dialogue, write the subtext) → at this stage delete, add, and reorder scenes.
Screenplay: five to ten pages a day, dialogue is best at this point; if you find flaws, go back to the treatment to change the setup and payoff. Skipping the process and writing the screenplay directly = a fake, unexplored treatment, and also the slowest method.
For the first draft, just get it down(Field: better too long than too short, 180–200 pages is better than 90) → calmly compress → polish. Before stopping work each day, start the next scene (Hoxter).
Revise item by item according to goals: first look at Act Two ("generally, yes"); Snyder's nine revision questions: the protagonist does not ask questions actively; do not dictate the plot; make the bad guy worse; accelerate the turns; emotional color wheel; cover the name and test the dialogue; supporting characters get a limp or an eye patch; push the starting point back; make it primal enough.