Tuesdays with Tom Benedek: “Writing the third act first: Resolution, Aftermath (and DIY)
Happy to announce that screenwriter (Cocoon), colleague and long-time friend Tom Benedek will be providing posts from time to time on Tuesdays. Here is Number 1:
Every writing project we undertake is a saga (mostly told only to a select few who bear with us) about the writing. That is in addition to the story we are actually trying to tell on the page every day. The list of spec sales each month that we track represents the aftermath of writing a particular draft for the screenwriters involved. Resolution on a project may be when a decent draft is finished. The saga of the making of the film — that is another story altogether.
Of course, screenwriters don’t always need studios or big production companies to get their scripts shot. Two of my former students are involved in a project, Cockroaches, which just achieved its funding goal of $80,000 on Kickstarter, the crowd-funding website. They are actually past $82,000 now. So my screenwriting student, Ryan de Quintal, who wrote the script will get to direct the film now. And Chris Corpus, another one of my students, is one of the producers of the movie. Congratulations, guys! I am looking forward to seeing the finished film. The trailer-teaser and lot of other information about Cockroaches is on Kickstarter here and is definitely worth taking a look at. Also notable, on a timeline for the project, writer-director Ryan de Quintal notes the date he completed his 9th rewrite of the script. That is what it takes.
I am considering my own DIY project right now, which leads me to the subject of this post — resolution and aftermath. I always write my scripts from page one straight through. I like to envision the movie scene by scene, page by page, to keep it organized in my mind. Most of us probably write this way.
Not everyone, of course. I recently did a video interview with TV writer Ed Bernero (Criminal Minds, Third Watch) for an upcoming class on writing one hour TV pilots. Ed told me that he always writes his third act first — after finishing his story outline.
What is interesting about that is if you can really imagine your character stories in resolution — the final confrontations of the script in a decent way, it is possible to do some very creative, inspired deductive reasoning and discover things to include in the second act culminations which might be better than what you would have created without writing the third act sooner. Ed’s technique seemed like an interesting notion, but not something I was really anxious to try any time soon.
Until a couple of days ago. I had a meeting with the gifted and wonderful Yugoslavian cinematographer, Seo Mutarevic, about making a DIY film of my novel, Peloponnesia. Seo had a lot of interesting things to say about the characters, their conflicts and ways to film the period battle sequences without elaborate costumes or sets. Seo also had many questions about the third act. We discussed the adaptation I planned to do of the book. Seo suggested that I write the third act first, to answer a number of questions he thought needed to be answered in the story.
I decided right at that moment — I will write the third act of my adaptation of the book first. Thanks, Ed. Thanks, Seo. A new approach for me. Feels refreshing. I am always pushing my writers in workshop to answer all the questions that are set up in the first act in the resolution. I always want to make sure they have framed their character and story conflicts early in the script and that they find ways to dramatically resolve them in the third act. It’s my turn now to bust open my own third act and brainstorm the most satisfying resolutions I can imagine. They may already be in the pages of the novel. But there are sure to be some that I have not fully explored yet.
If you have any questions for Tom or subjects you’d like to suggest he address in a GITS post, head into comments and let him know.
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