Quik-E-Structure Check

Well, the voting on the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot competition has been highly entertaining to watch! Our 3 finalists must be biting their nails watching the percentages go up and down!

I thought I'd take this opportunity to give Wavers a quick way to check under the hood to see if the structure of your script is solid. So put on your grease-stained jumper, stick your wrench in your backpocket, turn your hat sideways and let's put your script up on the rack:

Take your script and turn to page 10. Write down any significant event that occurred thereabouts (two pages before or after is okay too)

Go to page 30 and do it again. Again, you are looking for a significant event.

Go to page 50 and do likewise, and then again at page 75ish.

Now look at the events you wrote down. They should be the most significant turning points, reversals and complications in your story - upon which the entire plot turns. You should be able to look at these events separately, without the window dressing of the scenes in-between. And they should still work from a bird's eye view of your script.

Well - how do the events you wrote down look? Pretty exciting? Does each one hinge on the last? Are the events causal, compelling and escalating in nature?

Sometimes when your script has made it into the "maybe" pile at a competition, a judge will glimpse at the synopsis of the prior reader and simply thumb through your script - to those significant act breaks, looking for exciting set pieces and turning points. Believe it or not - I've seen this done. One competition called it "the page 50 test".

So go on ahead and test your own script by checking these turning point pages. See anything good?

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