The Five Key Turning Points of All Successful Scripts

I loved my writing classes with Michael Hauge through the UCLA Writer's Program. I learned solid storytelling and proper craft***. Mr. Hauge was very approachable, easy to talk to and he seemed to genuinely enjoy being there in the classroom no matter how many dumbass newbie wannabe questions students needed to ask but were always too embarrassed to ask anyone else. He's one of the good guys.

This article from Mr. Hauge's website is well worth reading with the disclaimer by me that there is no chiseled into concrete ABSOLUTE RULE about the right way to write. If you've studied screenwriting, you already know that.

If you've spent time on writers' messageboards and forums, you will often see quite heated and silly debates about "the rules." I say there is only one "rule" and it is:

Whatever works, works.
Meanwhile, it doesn't hurt to listen to somebody who knows what the hell they are talking about explain a few basics. That's why I recommend you read the article named in the title of this post. Here's another link to it. And here are a few excerpts:

"Though writing a successful Hollywood movie is certainly not easy, the stories for mainstream Hollywood films are all built on only three basic components: character, desire and conflict."

"Film stories portray heroes who face seemingly insurmountable obstacles as they pursue compelling objectives... Plot structure simply determines the sequence of events that lead the hero toward this objective."

"In a properly structured movie, the story consists of six basic stages, which are defined by five key turning points in the plot. Not only are these turning points always the same; they always occupy the same positions in the story. So what happens at the 25% point of a 90-minute comedy will be identical to what happens at the same percentage of a three-hour epic. (These percentages apply both to the running time of the film and the pages of your screenplay.)"

SEE A DIAGRAM OF HAUGE'S SIX STAGE PLOT STRUCTURE [IMAGE LINK]

Read the entire article (you won't be sorry and do remember to be wise about mentally storing away or using all the expert advice there is to be had in cyberspace and in books).

If you are a new writer (as yet unsold and/or unpublished and most likely without an agent although you may have been writing for years and have many finished works), you might believe that craft*** doesn't matter as much as character which doesn't matter as much as theme which doesn't matter as much as plot and story structure and on and on and any combination of the above.

It ALL matters.

Please, please, please do not take as gospel anything proclaimed by self-styled "gurus" of the writing trade that you will find lurking around online writing communities and messageboards. Listen to it all, sift through it, keep what makes sense or what you've had confirmed from truly authentic sources then discard the rest.

Heh heh... I've offended more than one fake guru suffering from Rampaging Ego Syndrome when I've made available the REAL deal by way of linking to a real authority or perhaps by posting the very excerpt posted by the Ego-Fake-Guru person as if it had been their own words.

LOL, I even had to have one messageboard shut down to public view when I caught one of the dummies posting my own writing as their work! Of course, it didn't hurt when the messageboard company was contacted by the reporter from the Washington Post who also objected to having her work copied and pasted without any attribution. That's a definite no-no.

In any event, Mr. Hauge's knowledge and expertise is absolutely worth listening to and digesting and then using if it makes sense to you. Give it a whirl.

Meanwhile, keep writing! Just..do..it.

***CRAFT: There seems to be some confusion over the meaning of this word as it applies to "writing" or "screenwriting." Craft is merely the bare bones mechanics of how you put those words onto that paper (or computer screen). Craft is NOT storytelling.

Craft is, for example: When do I doublespace? How many pages should I write? How do I format a page (spacings, indentations, tabs, etc.)?

Even though "craft" is the mechanical means by which you reveal story and character and incident, it is not the actual story, etc. Yes, craft might involve WHEN certain elements happen in the course of telling a story but craft is not the actual story. Is that too confusing? I hope not.