Scene Construction in Screenplays
Making an Entrance, Marking your Exit, and the Stuff in Between
Nearly every book you’ll buy on screenwriting talks about screenplay structure. There’s the three-act, the nine-act and even the six-act, all of which map out the rising action of your plot, plot twists, and character arcs so that your narrative moves forward in a way that’s engaging. Without structure, screenplays tend to meander, plodding along at a slow pace and very often feel too ‘linear,’ meaning that the stakes for your protagonist never rise in the middle of your story.
This post is not about the overarching structure of your screenplay. It’s about the microstructures that fit into that broader structure—it’s about the scenes themselves.
Page space is precious real estate when it comes to screenplays. Your job as a screenwriter is to write efficiently. Efficient writing not only saves space but greatly improves the pacing of the narrative.
The first way to do this is to make sure that you open your scene on an important line or action like the scene below:
