The 10 Best Places to Find Your Favorite Screenplays Online
Common wisdom is that feature screenplays should generally contain three acts, with a final page count of around 120. There’s less certainty about how long each act should be, but it’s safe to assume most follow a structure in which the first makes up 25%, the second 50%, and the third 25%.
The basic rules for these acts, according to Sorkin:
- Act One: Chase hero up tree
- Acto Two: Throw rocks at them
- Act Three: Get them down from the tree or let them die trying
According to Sorkin, originality comes from variations on the structure, not from trying to screw around with screenplay structure itself. For those that do have a deep understanding of Poetics, you can further this exercise by becoming what Sorkin likes to calls a “diagnostician.” Learn from what other people do; when you see something that doesn’t work, figure out why. Diagnose the problem by evaluating how it breaks Aristotle’s rules.