Lesson 5

[Madeleine Vessel]

Madeleine Vessel Has Finished Act 4 + 5

Doing this assignment, I ran into trouble. My outline was not thick enough to complete more than 40 pages of the screenplay. I need to do some rethinking. More development is needed.

This is where Rule 4 really came into play.

Rated B: Rule 4: Allow yourself to start (or continue) without all the answers.

I need to do more self-talk using this rule.

[Jack Young]

Jack Young Has Finished Act 4 + 5 for “STREAM”

I learned that I had more story than needed for the pilot (Had 70 pages), fortunately, there was a great turning point on page 55 that allowed me to shorten it by 15 pages, and yet it worked. The good news is that I have 15 pages of the next episode already primed and ready to go and have my pilot where I need it.

[George Petersen]

George Petersen – HAS FINISHED ACT 4 + 5

What I learned doing this assignment is that the teaser and the lock in form a kind of bookends of the pilot in a way. Both seem to have a function of providing two big unanswered questions to the pilot.

Is a hook a story question? Does it involve something missing? A missing part of the puzzle?

The teaser seems to be a question of why is this happening?

The lock in seems to be a question of what is going to happen next?

The midpoint seems to be a turning point from the general question of why to a more specific question of what.

These three story questions seem to anchor the pilot structure for me.

[Eric Humble]

Eric Humble Has Completed Act 4 + 5

What I learned is: I hit some speed bumps during this final stretch, in terms of just not having time to write consistently over the past few days — dealing with my son getting sick at school, then catching it and being sick myself. I was in a place where I figured the best I could do would be to stop at the end of Act Four and leave Act Five unwritten until the rewrite… but then I made the decision to buckle down, use the high speed rules and plow through… and I love what I’ve created in both acts four and five. My original act five was quite elaborate, more so that act four. But in the writing I found a way to use much of what I had intended for the fifth act to actually be the final few scenes of the fourth act. It works much better this way. I really enjoyed using the high speed rules to just bang out a draft that’s ready for a whole lot of fixing.