The classic story arc shows the way in which a writer can engage the reader's attention, whether it be a film, or a novel or any other work of fiction. The story arc follows a basic three act structure, first proposed by Aristotle. After the beginning, in which the stage is set for the plot to develop, the upward slope indicates increasing tension towards the climax. After the climax, the tension falls, the situation normalizes and questions are answered for the audience. In practice, however, the process is not as simple as shown here. The rising action phase of the arc should have several peaks of tension to represent challenges.

Each challenge is greater than the last one, until the challenge representing the climax seems impossible to overcome. The hero is definitely finished. Or is he? More than script writers have taken the basic idea of Aristotle, and they've adapted it slightly and making it a little more complicated. The celebrated scriptwriter Syd field produces a three act structure, in which he introduces pivotal points that changes the direction of the overall movie story. Act One is called the setup.

Act to confrontation and act three, the resolution in Act One, which represents 25% of the whole story, all the main characters To be identified, the audience is made aware of the hero's goal. supporting characters are introduced, and the setup is complete. And one ends with plot point one, which is an incident that turns the plot to a new direction. The hero decides to pursue his goal and take further action to achieve it. This goal opposes that the villain. pinch point one is tension introduced by an obstacle that also reveals and hints at the struggle ahead with a villain acts to account for 50% of the movie script.

Here the hero sees and overcomes challenge after challenge as described in the classic story. The midpoint is the first major clash with a villain. The hero is forced to enter the villains world to follow his quest. Intense conflict develops between them. pinch point two helps to escalate the tension, often by presenting a challenge from a different direction. For example, in the movie diehard, the FBI mistake john McClane for a terrorist and they try to shoot him.

Bullet point two is a time of maximum challenge, called the climax in the classic story arc. The hero is physically, mentally and morally exhausted. The ending is generally the last 10 pages of the script Heroes he's a deeper meaning to his quest. He's sons of hidden reserves of courage and the overcomes the villain. Some script writers have gone even further than the Syd field and they produce complex structure arrangements intended to help the scriptwriter. However, for our purposes, the basic Syd field idea of a three act structure works very well.

It gives us all the elements we could possibly need to create our movie. More More movie script structure to take a look at is the one produced by Michael Hogue. It's a six stage structure. But as you can see, it's very, very similar to the three act structure proposed by Aristotle and the one proposed by Syd field. We still have the three acts. We have the 50% midpoint but it's broken Come down into further smaller percentages.

So it's a little more precise than Syd fields paradigm. The setup is exactly the same in Act One. And there's a turning point at the 10% point, an opportunity, an opportunity to do something, something happens. There's an incident, which makes the hero react into the new situation. And at the 25% point, there's a turning point, which is similar to the plot point of Sid fields paradigm. Now this represents quite a big change of plans.

And throughout the 50%, the represents Act Two, he starts to enter into the conflict with the villain. He does break act two up into two parts. In the second stage, which he calls stage four, there are complications things get worse, the stakes are much higher, and the struggle between the hero and the villain becomes very personal and very intense. At the 75% mark, there's a major turning point a major setback, there's something happens and it's looking really bad for the hero. The climax of the structure, which is turning point number five, and the final push when he overcomes a villain acts in the last 10% of the structure. This paradigm is interesting, because above the structure, we can see that there are some notes relating to the hero's journey.

This is the change that he goes through internally, and is normally not shown in the structure of a movie script. The modern movie structure is surprisingly similar to a formula produced in the 1930s by a pulp fiction author, named list of dent lists. specified for each 1500 words of a 6000 word story, exactly what should happen then specifies exactly what should happen to the hero every 1500 words. And this is the kind of analysis that the scriptwriter needs to apply to his own work. You can download the Complete Formula in the resources section of this lecture. In the first 1500 words, indicates that all the main characters should be introduced into the action, just like recommended in removing the hero dives into the quest and experiences a challenge near the end of the passage.

He also specifies a plot twist, which could reflect Syd fields pinch point or plot point The second 1500 words bring more challenges to the hero, leading to a physical conflict. This represents the rising action part of the classic story arc. The third 1500 words, see the hero making some progress in his quest, facing another physical conflict, and ending it in a major setback. Finally, the hero is almost defeated, but wins by summoning up new reserves of skill, strength, or intelligence. Less the dent pays more attention to plot twists than the heroes in a journey, which is called the character arc. But apart from that, the formula works quite well as a template for an exciting story of any kind.

The idea of increasing tension through conflict and overcoming challenges is at the core of his formula, and is still the way that we write novels and movies to this day. In the next lecture, we're going to start writing the script. The subject is characters and setup.