The Story Solution by Eric Edson

Author:Eric Edson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions
Published: 2011-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

chapter ten

SHAPING ACT ONE:

HERO GOAL SEQUENCES®

1~6

A list of every action that must appear minute by minute in each and every screenplay doesn’t exist. Thank heavens. Movies would be pretty dull if it did.

Sure, an Obligatory Scene will always be required in Act Three. But it can take place in Sequence nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one, just as long as it shows up somewhere before the Denouement in the third act.

An Inciting Incident must occur as well, but exactly where in Act One depends on the individual needs of each story.

However.

Thousands of years of human expectation arising from our enjoyment of the storytelling ritual does allow us to get fairly specific about what happens GENERALLY in most Hero Goal Sequences®. We can pretty much predict, within a few pages, what common story elements can be expected to appear at what point in any successful screenplay.

For the sake of demonstrating how Hero Goal Sequences® work across all genres, I will take my examples from a number of very different film story categories: drama, science-fiction, fantasy, action, romance, comedy, original screenplays, and adaptations.

As I lay out the more specific content for each of the Hero Goals in order, for some of you it may begin to feel a wee bit clinical. But I will do my best to keep it filmic as we revisit some wonderful sequences from great movies.

And this I promise.

Hand pressed firmly over heart.

These next five chapters hold revelations that could turn you into a truly superb screenwriter. Or novelist. Or producer, director, agent, professor, script analyst, or..,

You owe it to yourself to charge onward.

Tally-ho!

HERO GOAL SEQUENCE® ONE

Each appearance of Fresh News information signaling the close of a Goal Sequence should build audience anticipation for the sequence to follow. But the dramatic impact of Fresh News for Goal Sequence #1 in your story can at times feel small. The movie is just getting started, though, and you’ve got a long way to go.

In Hero Goal Sequence® One (HGS #1) a writer should:

a.) Offer the audience some short glimpse of the Hero’s current, everyday life;

Establish the ordinary world in which a particular Hero lives and works in the hours leading up to the moment when he runs into the Inciting Incident and the story really begins. In My Best Friend’s Wedding, we first meet Hero Julianne Potter going about her daily business as a food critic. In Unforgiven, we first meet William Munny doing chores and going about his business of running a small ranch out on the Great Plains.

Action movies begin with an Action Hook first that gets the story started with a bang, then slow down to show the Hero in his more sedate everyday life second.

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