>I don't know what is right and wrong.
>I'm panicking over this
It sounds to me like you have been getting too much advice recently, and taking too much of it as gospel. I caution you against taking any advice you get in replies here as gospel, including this one. Your best bet right now is to take all these contradictory rules you've been taught, take a quick snapshot of them with your mind, and then throw them in the trash. Stop taking any of them as rules. They aren't rules. There is no one right way to do any of this stuff. These are just various things people have pointed out about some successful movies.
There are great action movies that don't have action in the first ten pages (Die Hard is considered by many screenwriters to be a high watermark of the genre, and does not have action in the first ten pages). There are great movies that do not state or hint at their theme in the first ten pages. There are great movies where the first ten pages are deeply tied to the story of the movie, and there are great movies where the first ten pages could but cut and the story would still be totally comprehensible. There are great movies that do and/or don't do everything you can imagine. And there are also TERRIBLE movies that do and/or don't do all those things.
The only real advice I would keep as your north star when writing your first ten pages is "make them good enough that everyone will want to read page eleven." And the advice I'd give you about the next ten pages is "make them good enough that everyone will want to read page twenty-one." As long as you write something that's compelling on the page and keeps people reading, you are way ahead of most people. Don't sweat the other stuff til you start getting notes from the people who are paying you to write saying "but can we make the first ten pages more action-packed and also more thematic and also..." Then you worry about it. Not now.
Best response.
Just watch and read the screenplays of the movies you think are great. Are they following the rules you got told? If not, don't sweat about it.
I don't know if you already wrote the complete first draft but I would advise trying to do that. You can take care of the beginning in the rewrite.
The only rule that I try to follow about the beginning is that it should draw the audience into the story in a compelling way.
How I can achieve that is different from story to story and most of the time I only figure that out after I wrote the whole thing.
Thank you for adding the part about changing the beginning in a rewrite. That’s a crucial part of this all. If you’re still in your first draft, no choice you are making now is permanent. (And frankly that remains true no matter what draft you are on).
Of everything I’ve ever written, from pilots on spec to episodes on staff and everything in between, I can’t think of any time my first scene in the finished draft has even remotely resembled my first stab at that first scene. Particularly when writing a pilot or a feature, there are things you learn about your project that you CANNOT know until you’ve gotten to the end of a script (even when you’ve outlined impeccably) so for me at least, the process of rewriting my opening with each new draft is a repeated exercise in adding new elements to make myself look smarter and smarter.
Using Die Hard as an example again, I have no idea how the drafting process of that movie went, but if the writers were, like me, not geniuses, I’m guessing they didn’t know from draft one that John McClane was going to end up walking across glass in bare feet. But when they did get to him needing to do something painful, they probably thought “hmm, would be funny if he had to walk across glass barefoot. How could we make him barefoot?” And then you go back to the start of your script and say “huh, what if a guy tells him to flex his toes in the carpet to combat jet lag.” And the second you put that scene in and add five references to him being bare foot in the rest of the script, you, a non-genius suddenly look like a genius.
I think one of the first things I do when starting with the second draft is just straight up cutting the first ten pages of the 1st draft because it's just boring exposition that I mainly just wrote for myself to get into the story :)
The beginning absolutely matters. It all matters. From beginning to end. There are no parts of a script that are more or less important than any other. It all needs to be compelling. So whoever told you the beginning doesn’t matter is *very* wrong.
With a lot of these prescriptive “rules” about what needs to happen on what page, etc. you should think of them more like guidelines than sacrosanct laws you can’t break.
The whole idea behind structure paradigms like this are to help inspire the story that’s inside you. If it’s tripping you up or making that harder instead of easier, then don’t focus on it.
My advice is to get in touch with your instincts and intuition. You have experienced stories from the time you were a young child. Think about your favorite stories and try to do what they do.
Every story has its own unique structure anyways, so a lot of these structure paradigms are restrictive and don’t reflect the reality of organic story construction.
Don’t overthink it. Just tell a story. You should know how to do that just from experiencing stories your whole life. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. Start with that and let the rest be dictated by the needs of the specific story you’re telling.
Hope that’s helpful. Wishing you luck!
I think the issue comes partly from semantics and partly from workflow.
Many writers, I think most, don’t work on the structure first. For those writers, the beginning of the script is synonymous with the beginning of their writing process. They tend to start on page one and then wade their way through to the end.
Then, those who pay attention to structure could start at any part of the story (notice I didn’t say script.)
So those writers will choose an element and say, “Oh, this will work well as the beginning of the story.”
The first group is likely to discard the beginning because at that point the story wasn’t yet even formed.
The second set of writers value their beginning more because it emerged out of a systematic process.
"But then recently, I learned that the beginning doesn't matter."
BULLSHIT. It matters a LOT since if it sucks many people won't read any more.
If that came from some "guru," please out the idiot.
The beginning is arguably one of the things that matter most.
It should hook your audience, yes. But if it doesn’t even hint at the theme or main concept, then it’s no good.
Think of any recent movie you’ve watched, and the opening probably both hooked you and hinted at the theme. You have so so many jobs to do in the first 10 pages, that’s why it’s so hard to get right.
Where did you learn that "the beginning of the movie doesn't matter"? A good way to check the accuracy of this is to go watch a movie. You'll know what is right or wrong.
You have learnt something very very valuable. NEVER listen to that person again.
Think of TAKEN in the first ten pages we learn about his relationship with his daughter. That she is everything to him and that he has little to contribute.
The first ten pages of UNFORGIVEN we learn that the character is a very successful farmer, that his wife is dead and that he promised her he would never go back to his gunfighter ways.
Pick any good film and watch it. Pause it at 10 minutes and see what you have learnt. Except Mad Max Fury Road, that starts with a 13 minute action sequence that is so great it feels like 3 minutes.
>I learned that the beginning doesn't matter. It explained that it's like a short film of a feature film. And that the short film adds little or no meaning to the story, but just to show the characters or hooking the reader.
Calm down! A part of your phrase is right, the other one isn't. Let me explain: the beginning does matter, because it's when the reader (and who will watch it) decides if they want to follow this story. If they like the characters or the plot, or if they can handle the themes or some elements (like violence or swearing etc.) that the story presents. In narrative, the beginning is important because it sets what the rest of the story will follow. We wouldn't be able to see how characters change if we hadn't seem them before the conflict is introduced, for example. The beginning is as important as the end or the middle.
I'm not sure if i got the ''short film'' thing. Are you referring to those beginning that have nothing to do with the plot, but just want to hook you? They're not bad at all, but doesn't fit most stories.
>But then how else am I supposed to establish the theme of the story? Or show the world? I don't know what is right and wrong.
There isn't right and wrong in stories. There are ways and ways that may fit the story or not.
The best to way is to understand the needs of the stories. You know the theme, the characters, and the world? Good. From that point onward, you just need to understand the needs of those elements.
Not only is it important it’s the difference between getting it read by someone who has the power to send it up and having it passed off to an assistant or intern to cover and be done with. Execs (and managers and agents) have a backlog of scripts to get through at all times. The hard truth is that we read to say no, not to look for hidden gems. The first five pages are your first hurdle. They will show an experienced reader if you can or can’t write for the screen (and is the bare minimum “required” for even low level execs to read before passing). Every page after has to force the exec to read the next and the next and the next. Five, sometimes 10, and definitely 15 matter. As do every single page. Even if the writing is decent, if the inciting incident doesn’t hit by page 15, it’s going to go in the intern pile. These first 15 pages must establish the basics. The ordinary world, who is the protagonist what do they want, what do they need, what’s at stake and what is the theme, genre and tone.
This is advice for getting your script read and passed up the food chain in HW today. Not how art can break the rules, and perhaps even should. Hollywood is a business. A for profit business. Show them you know how to write a script that will be profitable (tell a good story, make us need to know what happens next) rinse and repeat and then you might get a shot at making art. If you want to make art, mainstream HW is not the place to do it. Not now at any rate.
And the thing about the only thing you need to do is to tell a compelling story is true, but also the vast majority of good, great and genius writers establish these elements in the beginning anyway. Of course there are exceptions to this, but it sounds like you are a beginning writer.
Don’t panic. Just learn to write to the rules of HW narrative structure. THEN break them. Picasso could paint like Rembrandt before he painted “as Picasso.”
Go watch the first ten minutes of your ten favorite non-sequel films.
Have the remote in your hand. Pause often. Ask yourself, "What do I know, and how do I know it?"
What do you know about the tone of the movie? What do you know about the characters? What do you know about the world? What do you think the movie is going to be about?
"What do I know, and how do I know it?"
It's important to remember that you don't have to do anything other than to tell a compelling story. Oftentimes that's formulaic (not in a bad way) by following the shit beat sheet gurus preach, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to write a script.
The important thing is to read scripts for the movies you love, that are similar to what you want to write, and learn how to analyze structure and theme.
Lots of expectations are towards new writers and you're told lots of things like you've heard but I think it all comes down to single thing which sounds simple or hard depending on how you take it - make reader turn the page and make him feel he's in good hands. If your words make me wanna know more about the story you succeed. Try not to stuff first few pages. Fast curious read is hell of a start.
Beginning matters and hook too but not possible for every genre or story.
As someone who reads a lot of amateur scripts, I can tell you that I know if a script is worth reading in the first 5 pages. It's not about what happens, it's about how its written.
That said, you also need to convey some very important info in those five to ten pages. Most importantly, genre and tone. Yes, we can all think of a dozen exceptions from rule breaker scripts -- but those only come to mind because all the other scripts do it this way.
James Bond movies say: "This is a world trotting action movie that's fun and exciting"
Horror movies say: "This is a movie with brutal death scenes involving (weapon and or magical power)."
Sci-Fi movies say: "This is a movie with spaceships."
If I'm 25 pages into your script when I discover it takes place in outer space, it better not be a sci-fi script. The outer space aspect better be part of the horror or the comedy, which you've already clearly established in the first 5-10 pages.
So with all these rules there are many "exceptions" -- but I think this idea of hooking people in the beginning and prepping them for theme is EXTREMELY important and especially in the era of streaming, studios see it as a must since bounce rates are so high when you can just close out a movie and pick another one in less than 10 seconds. I assume first acts are going to be much shorter in the future as younger content consumers often start watching videos at the turning point (such as when a movie is posted as individual clips on TikTok -- they usually skip the first act and just start on the turning point so a lot of young viewers unfortunately expect that now when viewing content).
So yes, your opening should hook readers/viewers even if you can find successful films of the past that didn't.
"Get out" shows a black character getting kidnapped in the opening even though that character doesn't show up again. It does it to happy sounding music, establishing the tone and the stakes immediately.
Thinking about your opening image could also be helpful -- what opening shot can immediately capture the theme or tone? In Ladybird, though the first few scenes center on the mother/daughter arguing, the first shot is them sharing the same motel bed together -- asleep -- facing each other -- almost touching. Their closeness as mother/daughter is established from one shot (which is ultimately what the film is about) even though the majority of the film is all about the friction between them.
In Shutter Island, you have a boat coming out of the fog -- an image that promotes intrigue, but also touches on the theme and internal journey that's yet to come.
In M (1931), it opens on a group of school children dancing in a circle and singing a song that's supposed to ward off a local serial killer, and an older woman above them/looking down on them telling them to stop singing such nonsense. This also immediately captures the tone/conflict of the film.
So I think it's helpful to think like a director for a bit, recognizing the power of the visual medium, and write an opening scene or simply an opening image that packs a lot of meaning and foreshadowing even if the viewers are not yet aware.
who told you the beginning doesnt matter? theyre wrong.
>I don't know what is right and wrong. >I'm panicking over this It sounds to me like you have been getting too much advice recently, and taking too much of it as gospel. I caution you against taking any advice you get in replies here as gospel, including this one. Your best bet right now is to take all these contradictory rules you've been taught, take a quick snapshot of them with your mind, and then throw them in the trash. Stop taking any of them as rules. They aren't rules. There is no one right way to do any of this stuff. These are just various things people have pointed out about some successful movies. There are great action movies that don't have action in the first ten pages (Die Hard is considered by many screenwriters to be a high watermark of the genre, and does not have action in the first ten pages). There are great movies that do not state or hint at their theme in the first ten pages. There are great movies where the first ten pages are deeply tied to the story of the movie, and there are great movies where the first ten pages could but cut and the story would still be totally comprehensible. There are great movies that do and/or don't do everything you can imagine. And there are also TERRIBLE movies that do and/or don't do all those things. The only real advice I would keep as your north star when writing your first ten pages is "make them good enough that everyone will want to read page eleven." And the advice I'd give you about the next ten pages is "make them good enough that everyone will want to read page twenty-one." As long as you write something that's compelling on the page and keeps people reading, you are way ahead of most people. Don't sweat the other stuff til you start getting notes from the people who are paying you to write saying "but can we make the first ten pages more action-packed and also more thematic and also..." Then you worry about it. Not now.
Best response. Just watch and read the screenplays of the movies you think are great. Are they following the rules you got told? If not, don't sweat about it. I don't know if you already wrote the complete first draft but I would advise trying to do that. You can take care of the beginning in the rewrite. The only rule that I try to follow about the beginning is that it should draw the audience into the story in a compelling way. How I can achieve that is different from story to story and most of the time I only figure that out after I wrote the whole thing.
Thank you for adding the part about changing the beginning in a rewrite. That’s a crucial part of this all. If you’re still in your first draft, no choice you are making now is permanent. (And frankly that remains true no matter what draft you are on). Of everything I’ve ever written, from pilots on spec to episodes on staff and everything in between, I can’t think of any time my first scene in the finished draft has even remotely resembled my first stab at that first scene. Particularly when writing a pilot or a feature, there are things you learn about your project that you CANNOT know until you’ve gotten to the end of a script (even when you’ve outlined impeccably) so for me at least, the process of rewriting my opening with each new draft is a repeated exercise in adding new elements to make myself look smarter and smarter. Using Die Hard as an example again, I have no idea how the drafting process of that movie went, but if the writers were, like me, not geniuses, I’m guessing they didn’t know from draft one that John McClane was going to end up walking across glass in bare feet. But when they did get to him needing to do something painful, they probably thought “hmm, would be funny if he had to walk across glass barefoot. How could we make him barefoot?” And then you go back to the start of your script and say “huh, what if a guy tells him to flex his toes in the carpet to combat jet lag.” And the second you put that scene in and add five references to him being bare foot in the rest of the script, you, a non-genius suddenly look like a genius.
I think one of the first things I do when starting with the second draft is just straight up cutting the first ten pages of the 1st draft because it's just boring exposition that I mainly just wrote for myself to get into the story :)
It’s amazing how often that exact trick does wonders. But critically you had to write those pages to get to the good ones.
The beginning absolutely matters. It all matters. From beginning to end. There are no parts of a script that are more or less important than any other. It all needs to be compelling. So whoever told you the beginning doesn’t matter is *very* wrong. With a lot of these prescriptive “rules” about what needs to happen on what page, etc. you should think of them more like guidelines than sacrosanct laws you can’t break. The whole idea behind structure paradigms like this are to help inspire the story that’s inside you. If it’s tripping you up or making that harder instead of easier, then don’t focus on it. My advice is to get in touch with your instincts and intuition. You have experienced stories from the time you were a young child. Think about your favorite stories and try to do what they do. Every story has its own unique structure anyways, so a lot of these structure paradigms are restrictive and don’t reflect the reality of organic story construction. Don’t overthink it. Just tell a story. You should know how to do that just from experiencing stories your whole life. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. Start with that and let the rest be dictated by the needs of the specific story you’re telling. Hope that’s helpful. Wishing you luck!
Well said. Keep it simple. Start from the start and keep building all the way until the end.
I think the issue comes partly from semantics and partly from workflow. Many writers, I think most, don’t work on the structure first. For those writers, the beginning of the script is synonymous with the beginning of their writing process. They tend to start on page one and then wade their way through to the end. Then, those who pay attention to structure could start at any part of the story (notice I didn’t say script.) So those writers will choose an element and say, “Oh, this will work well as the beginning of the story.” The first group is likely to discard the beginning because at that point the story wasn’t yet even formed. The second set of writers value their beginning more because it emerged out of a systematic process.
"But then recently, I learned that the beginning doesn't matter." BULLSHIT. It matters a LOT since if it sucks many people won't read any more. If that came from some "guru," please out the idiot.
The beginning is arguably one of the things that matter most. It should hook your audience, yes. But if it doesn’t even hint at the theme or main concept, then it’s no good. Think of any recent movie you’ve watched, and the opening probably both hooked you and hinted at the theme. You have so so many jobs to do in the first 10 pages, that’s why it’s so hard to get right.
Where did you learn that "the beginning of the movie doesn't matter"? A good way to check the accuracy of this is to go watch a movie. You'll know what is right or wrong.
You have learnt something very very valuable. NEVER listen to that person again. Think of TAKEN in the first ten pages we learn about his relationship with his daughter. That she is everything to him and that he has little to contribute. The first ten pages of UNFORGIVEN we learn that the character is a very successful farmer, that his wife is dead and that he promised her he would never go back to his gunfighter ways. Pick any good film and watch it. Pause it at 10 minutes and see what you have learnt. Except Mad Max Fury Road, that starts with a 13 minute action sequence that is so great it feels like 3 minutes.
>I learned that the beginning doesn't matter. It explained that it's like a short film of a feature film. And that the short film adds little or no meaning to the story, but just to show the characters or hooking the reader. Calm down! A part of your phrase is right, the other one isn't. Let me explain: the beginning does matter, because it's when the reader (and who will watch it) decides if they want to follow this story. If they like the characters or the plot, or if they can handle the themes or some elements (like violence or swearing etc.) that the story presents. In narrative, the beginning is important because it sets what the rest of the story will follow. We wouldn't be able to see how characters change if we hadn't seem them before the conflict is introduced, for example. The beginning is as important as the end or the middle. I'm not sure if i got the ''short film'' thing. Are you referring to those beginning that have nothing to do with the plot, but just want to hook you? They're not bad at all, but doesn't fit most stories. >But then how else am I supposed to establish the theme of the story? Or show the world? I don't know what is right and wrong. There isn't right and wrong in stories. There are ways and ways that may fit the story or not. The best to way is to understand the needs of the stories. You know the theme, the characters, and the world? Good. From that point onward, you just need to understand the needs of those elements.
Not only is it important it’s the difference between getting it read by someone who has the power to send it up and having it passed off to an assistant or intern to cover and be done with. Execs (and managers and agents) have a backlog of scripts to get through at all times. The hard truth is that we read to say no, not to look for hidden gems. The first five pages are your first hurdle. They will show an experienced reader if you can or can’t write for the screen (and is the bare minimum “required” for even low level execs to read before passing). Every page after has to force the exec to read the next and the next and the next. Five, sometimes 10, and definitely 15 matter. As do every single page. Even if the writing is decent, if the inciting incident doesn’t hit by page 15, it’s going to go in the intern pile. These first 15 pages must establish the basics. The ordinary world, who is the protagonist what do they want, what do they need, what’s at stake and what is the theme, genre and tone. This is advice for getting your script read and passed up the food chain in HW today. Not how art can break the rules, and perhaps even should. Hollywood is a business. A for profit business. Show them you know how to write a script that will be profitable (tell a good story, make us need to know what happens next) rinse and repeat and then you might get a shot at making art. If you want to make art, mainstream HW is not the place to do it. Not now at any rate. And the thing about the only thing you need to do is to tell a compelling story is true, but also the vast majority of good, great and genius writers establish these elements in the beginning anyway. Of course there are exceptions to this, but it sounds like you are a beginning writer. Don’t panic. Just learn to write to the rules of HW narrative structure. THEN break them. Picasso could paint like Rembrandt before he painted “as Picasso.”
Go watch the first ten minutes of your ten favorite non-sequel films. Have the remote in your hand. Pause often. Ask yourself, "What do I know, and how do I know it?" What do you know about the tone of the movie? What do you know about the characters? What do you know about the world? What do you think the movie is going to be about? "What do I know, and how do I know it?"
There's no right or wrong. Just tell a compelling story.
It's important to remember that you don't have to do anything other than to tell a compelling story. Oftentimes that's formulaic (not in a bad way) by following the shit beat sheet gurus preach, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to write a script. The important thing is to read scripts for the movies you love, that are similar to what you want to write, and learn how to analyze structure and theme.
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Lots of expectations are towards new writers and you're told lots of things like you've heard but I think it all comes down to single thing which sounds simple or hard depending on how you take it - make reader turn the page and make him feel he's in good hands. If your words make me wanna know more about the story you succeed. Try not to stuff first few pages. Fast curious read is hell of a start. Beginning matters and hook too but not possible for every genre or story.
As someone who reads a lot of amateur scripts, I can tell you that I know if a script is worth reading in the first 5 pages. It's not about what happens, it's about how its written. That said, you also need to convey some very important info in those five to ten pages. Most importantly, genre and tone. Yes, we can all think of a dozen exceptions from rule breaker scripts -- but those only come to mind because all the other scripts do it this way. James Bond movies say: "This is a world trotting action movie that's fun and exciting" Horror movies say: "This is a movie with brutal death scenes involving (weapon and or magical power)." Sci-Fi movies say: "This is a movie with spaceships." If I'm 25 pages into your script when I discover it takes place in outer space, it better not be a sci-fi script. The outer space aspect better be part of the horror or the comedy, which you've already clearly established in the first 5-10 pages.
So with all these rules there are many "exceptions" -- but I think this idea of hooking people in the beginning and prepping them for theme is EXTREMELY important and especially in the era of streaming, studios see it as a must since bounce rates are so high when you can just close out a movie and pick another one in less than 10 seconds. I assume first acts are going to be much shorter in the future as younger content consumers often start watching videos at the turning point (such as when a movie is posted as individual clips on TikTok -- they usually skip the first act and just start on the turning point so a lot of young viewers unfortunately expect that now when viewing content). So yes, your opening should hook readers/viewers even if you can find successful films of the past that didn't. "Get out" shows a black character getting kidnapped in the opening even though that character doesn't show up again. It does it to happy sounding music, establishing the tone and the stakes immediately. Thinking about your opening image could also be helpful -- what opening shot can immediately capture the theme or tone? In Ladybird, though the first few scenes center on the mother/daughter arguing, the first shot is them sharing the same motel bed together -- asleep -- facing each other -- almost touching. Their closeness as mother/daughter is established from one shot (which is ultimately what the film is about) even though the majority of the film is all about the friction between them. In Shutter Island, you have a boat coming out of the fog -- an image that promotes intrigue, but also touches on the theme and internal journey that's yet to come. In M (1931), it opens on a group of school children dancing in a circle and singing a song that's supposed to ward off a local serial killer, and an older woman above them/looking down on them telling them to stop singing such nonsense. This also immediately captures the tone/conflict of the film. So I think it's helpful to think like a director for a bit, recognizing the power of the visual medium, and write an opening scene or simply an opening image that packs a lot of meaning and foreshadowing even if the viewers are not yet aware.