Inneresting 28
issue 28
November 12, 2020
It’s Curtains for You - Helpful takes on Act Breaks
Act breaks in theater don’t leave room for interpretation: There’s a curtain to open and close.
It’s not always as clear when watching something on screen. Sometimes it’s left for the audience to feel it rather than to see a clear sign we’re moving to a new part of the story.
Here’s John’s description of an act break from his glossary page:
The end of an act. Generally, it’s a highpoint in the story in which something important occurs that thrusts the audience into the next chapter or stage. In television, an act will end just before a commercial break. In stage musicals, the act break is usually preceded by a big song to keep people humming through intermission.
Regardless of whether the act break you’re writing leads into commercials or directly to the next scene, these moments create an irreversible change to the story. The characters can only move forward from whatever action or revelation hits them at that act break.
These aren’t your grandfather’s act breaks
For a quick overview of some different takes on TV Act Structure, check out the interviews in this excerpt from Tara Bennett’s book “Showrunners” on rogerebert.com. Several interviews chart the course from a network-mandated number of commercial breaks to a more fluid, story-driven style in the world of premium cable and streaming.
In Pamela Douglas’s book Writing the TV Drama Series, she discusses how to think about crafting structure for a story without hard act breaks.
It starts by looking at the different stories in an episode: Conflicts that center on a single character or group of characters. Starting with the most consequential, and usually longest, story, they’re labelled with letters (A, B, C, as needed).
Douglas offers one suggestion for shaping a commercial-break free script around chronological order:
…figure out the realistic time frame for each beat — early morning, midday, evening, night. You can be as specific as is useful… Then you can color code the scenes for time. If you have two beats of the A story in the morning, and you realize you’ve put a night beat from the B story between them, either you need to change the scenes so they’re all at the same time or move the wrong-time beat elsewhere.
And remember: Each of these stories (A, B, C, etc.) have a structure with their own act structure.
Additionally…
Here’s a short PDF from The Black List breaking down some of the basics of TV writing format and expectations.
John & Craig tackle a question about if you need to write a script for television with act breaks in mind in episode 429 of Scriptnotes.
Here There Be Spoilers
All cliffhangers are act breaks, but not all act breaks are cliffhangers.
A cliffhanger sets up immediate, high-stakes tension that the audience wants resolved as soon as possible.
While a cliffhanger in the middle of an episode may feel like false tension (i.e. locking a character in a room that they escape from in the first scene of the next act), season-ending cliffhangers can upend a show’s status quo.
For some great examples of cliffhangers that stand the test of time, check out these lists from Jennifer M. Wood at Mental Floss and this collection of picks from TV critics put together by IndieWire.
Highland How-To: Break That Act Up
So you’re working on a script for television and want to mark your Act Breaks, but maybe this is your first time doing so in Highland? Here’s what you need:
Center Alignment and Underlining: Wrap your act title in the following characters
> _ACT ONE_ <
And when it’s time to end an act and skip to the next page, include a Page Break with ===
So it would look something like:
> _END COLD OPEN._ <
===
For everything from the basics to some helpful tricks to get the most out of using Highland, check out our Knowledge Base!
No, it’s not pronounced like Chipotle
Unless you pronounce that like Chip-i-tot-ul.
Aristotle’s Poetics was Save the Cat or Story for the Peripatetic set. Thanks to copyright laws not extending protection to authors who died before the Common Era, you can read all of Aristotle’s Poetics for free online.
But why? Because it holds up.
Instead of trying to focus your writing on hitting certain beats at certain page numbers, Poetics talks about Unity of Action — Cutting out what doesn’t support your story, staying focused on the main dramatic action, and making sure all parts of the whole fit together.
Other Cool Things
Courtesy of Quote-Unquote’s own Nima Yousefi, treat yourself to a trip down the rabbit hole of 80’s style remixes, starting with this New Order-influenced take on Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.”
A good reminder for those still typing away at your NaNoWriMo, wrapping up their Fall semester, or just generally trying to keep moving forward, Tim Herrera wrote in the New York Times about the importance of just getting things done instead of making them perfect.
While there’s one Big Sur probably on many people’s minds right now, take a moment to consider some other things related to the iconic California locale, like this list of great surfing movies, or the online offerings of the Tassajara Zen Center.
One More Thing
With the launch of macOS Big Sur and new non-Intel Macs, what does that mean for Highland 2?
We’re ready! Highland 2.9 works great on both Big Sur and on the new Macs. You can find it in the Mac App Store today.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
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UPCOMING EVENTS
YALL Write
Nov. 13th, 12 PM Pacific Time
Panel: "Fantastic Fantasy and Astonishing Adventure"
Moderated by Soman Chainani with John August, Sayantani DasGupta, Kwame Mbalia and Claribel A. Ortega
Register here to join the Zoom webinar.
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