GOLDEN HARVEST OUTLINE
Below is Keith Giglio’s (Writing the Comedy Blockbuster) recommended approach to structure (which is a funny version of the same structure we see in drama). Each sequence is 15 minutes long in a 120 minute movie:
Act One
Comic Sequence A – The Comedic World
SEQUENCE ONE – Status Quo & Inciting Incident
Establishes the protagonist, his/her life, and the world of the story. It usually ends with the POINT OF ATTACK or inciting incident, but this plot point can sometimes appear earlier in the first few minutes of the film.
The Opening Image (pg. 1): This is the first impression of what a movie is – it establishes the mood and type of film we are about to watch. The opening image and final image should be opposites, a plus and minus, showing change so dramatic it documents the emotional upheaval that the movie represents.
A compilation of amateur home movie clips plays on the screen of a portable computer while the opening credits roll. They show that Missy has always wanted to be a doctor.
3. The Set-Up (pg. 1-10): The first reel – or the first 10 minutes – sets up the hero, stakes, and the goal of the story…and should do so with vigor! Make a point to introduce or at least hint at introducing every character in the A story. The first 10 page is also where we start to plant every character tie, exhibit every behavior that needs to be addressed later on and show how and why the hero will need to change in order to win.
Missy just about to move her last moving box from the top of her car into the back seat of her well-worn compact car, when a female FRIEND (20) approaches and gives her a big hug. Friend thanks Missy for tutoring help. Friend is the pregnant friend who helps Missy later.
Missy knocks on the door frame and enters her advisor’s office. Her advisor, DR. PIERCE, a disheveled college professor, is sitting at his desk, his head down, grading papers. We learn Missy is pre-med and a technical writer. Missy is shown to know how to do DNA testing.
2. Theme Stated (pg. 5): Somewhere in the first five minutes of a well-structured screenplay, someone (usually not the main character) will pose a question or make a statement (usually to the main character) that is the theme of the movie. This statement is the movie’s thematic premise.
Walking down the hallway, Missy ducks into a room with a sign indicating it is the Pre-Med Lounge over the door.
Missy scans the contents of the vending machines to see if something looks edible. Introduces/normalizes drug company reps.
Missy’s boyfriend is accepted by a med school and suggests that they see other people. Missy’s boyfriend either is accepted or decides to become a drug rep. He breaks up with Missy callously or encourages her to follow him (giving up on her dream). Two docs?
4. The Catalyst (pg. 12): The catalyst moment that kickstarts the action….these may include telegrams, getting fired, catching a wife in bed with another man, news that you have three days to live, a knock at the door, the messenger, etc. First moment when something happens!
Missy is still wiping the marinara sauce off her chin as she walks toward her eye-level post office box. She drops the napkin into a trash can and fumbles with her key, dropping it a couple of times or four attempts to insert key. Paces back and forth before opening post office box, but feels foolish when some approaches. Finds out her application has been rejected. We regret to inform you…
At the end: Opportunity Knocks (Inciting Incident)
Comic Sequence B – Setting the Inappropriate Goal, aka You’re Going to Do What?
SEQUENCE TWO – Predicament & Lock In
Sets up the predicament that will be central to the story, with first intimations of possible obstacles. The main tension will be established at the end of the act. The sequence ends when the main character is LOCKED IN the predicament, propelling him/her into a new direction to obtain his/her goal.
5. Debate (pg. 22-25): The debate section is the last chance for the hero to say: This is crazy. Should I go? Dare I go? Sure, it’s dangerous out there, but what’s my choice? Stay here? The debate section must ask a question of some kind. In Legally Blonde, the catalyst of the fiance dumping Elle Woods quickly segues to her solution: Go to Harvard Law. “But can she get in?” That is the question posed in the debate section of the movie.
Missy is taking care of her Mom, who is ill and bedridden. Maybe it’s her grandmother.
Missy is teary as she enters the kitchen and approaches her MOM. Her Mom is wearing a cancer head scarf. They hug. Missy sobs and her Mom knows the cause. Now happens in Mom’s bedroom. Missy wonders out loud whether she should give up.
Missy walks into the den. Her DAD is home from work, sitting in a reclining chair, streaming a soccer game.
The door to Missy’s Advisor’s office is open. She hesitates in the doorway and is invited in by Dr. Pierce who is sitting behind his desk.
Missy walks into the Physicians’ Lounge and sees Dr. Smaug (late 60’s) looking at himself in a mirror hanging on the wall, stroking his goatee.
At the end: It’s Time to Go on the Journey; The Dramatic Question Is Posed
Act Two
Comic Sequence C – The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
SEQUENCE THREE – First Obstacle & Raising the Stakes
The first OBSTACLE to the central character is faced, and the beginning of the elimination of the alternatives begins, often a time where EXPOSITION left over from ACT I is brought out. Since our character is locked into the situation and can’t simply walk away, the stakes are higher – there is a lot more to lose.
First attempt to solve problem
6. Break Into Two (pg. 25): Act break is the moment where we leave the old world behind and proceed into a world that is upside down version. Something MUST happen on this page.
Medical scribe training montage.
Missy follows Dr. Smaug into the hospital room of Laura, one of his surgical patients, who is lying in a hospital bed and is hooked up to a monitoring system.
Dr. Smaug offers Missy a job coordinating work on some professional paper manuscripts.
Missy steps in Dr. Smaug’s trap and visits the ghostwriting firm and is introduced to the staff, many of which have personality disorders. One of the guys is a potential love interest. He works on memoirs and maybe warns Missy.
Missy is surprised when she attends a brown bag (lunch) seminar and is exposed to propaganda techniques used in ghostwrting: name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, card stacking, testimonials, band wagon, plain folks.
7. B Story (pg. 30): The B story of most screenplays is the “love story.” It is also the story that carries the theme of the movie. The B story often introduces a brand new set of characters. Often a friendship story.
Missy commiserates with potential love interest, Bob Wilson, MD, and finds out that he works for the ghostwriting firm because he failed to obtain a residency match.
Comic Sequence D – It Just Keeps Getting Worse
SEQUENCE FOUR – First Culmination/Midpoint
A higher OBSTACLE, the principle of RISING ACTION is brought in and builds to the FIRST CULMINATION, which usually parallels the RESOLUTION of the film. If the story is a tragedy and our hero dies, then the first culmination (or midpoint) should be a low point for our character. If, however, our hero wins in the end of the film, then sequence four should end with him winning in some way.
Second attempt to solve problem
8. Fun and Games (pg. 30-35): This part of the screenplay is the one that provides the promise of the premise. The fun and games section answers the question: Why did I come to see this movie? What about this premise, this poster, this movie idea, is cool?” This is the place where you include the big set pieces!
Missy attends a staff meeting on a paper she is editing and others propose she use: repetition, reactance, and declination.
Missy meets with her boss and points out how the firm’s approach is not scientific.
Missy rebuffs another employee’s inappropriate coming on to her.
Missy reads other articles ghostwritten by the firm and is appalled.
9. The Midpoint (pg. 55) – the movie’s midpoint is either an “up” where the hero seemingly peaks (though it is a false peak) or a “down” when the world collapses all around the hero (though it is a false collapse) and it can only get better from here on out. The stakes are raised at the midpoint. The rule is: It’s never as good as it seems to be at the midpoint and it’s never as bad as it seems at the All is Lost point (see beat 11).
Missy is invited to work at Dr. Smaug’s clinic for postmenopausal women, called Quality of Life, which is a false victory.
Ends on Midpoint, which points to the ending of the movie
Comic Sequence E – Love in the Air
SEQUENCE FIVE – Subplot & Rising Action
The SECOND ACT SAG can set in at this point if we don’t have a strong SUBPLOT to take the ball for a while. We still want RISING ACTION, but we’re not ready for the MAIN CULMINATION yet.
Reaction to the midpoint occurs
A major character shift occurs
The theme is developed
Upping the stakes occurs
The protagonist is jolted back to the main action
Missy first works on the side of the clinic serving postmenopausal women. She hears how much the older women like hormone therapy.
Missy meets Dr. Smaug’s laboratory director, E.G. Ore, who limps.
Missy connects the dots. She understands how Dr. Smaug’s ghostwritten articles are corrupting medicine (and making his clinic patients into true believers).
Missy learns that the lab is situated between the two clinics and extracts estrogen and progestin from the young women’s urine.
Missy watches as Dr. Smaug finds out how an older patient is doing. The patient is over 70 with helmet-styled bright white hair who really believes in taking hormones. (See antagonist’s wife in Caddy Shack.)
Missy notices (from the containers?) that the hormones harvested from the Millennials are given to the Boomers (who pay a lot for them).
The Boomer women talk to one another in the waiting room about how much they appreciated the clinic as their own doctors discourage long term hormone used
Comic Sequence F – What Was I Thinking?
SEQUENCE SIX – Main Culmination/End of Act Two
The build-up to the MAIN CULMINATION – back to the main story line with a vengeance. The highest obstacle, the last alternative, the highest or lowest moment and the end of our main tension come at this point. But we get the first inklings of the new tension that will carry us through the third act.
The protagonist makes a final push to achieve his/her goal
His/her weakness is exposed
The calm before the storm
At the end: All Seems Lost
A new goal?
10. Bad Guys Close In (pg. 55-75): This is the point where the bad guys decide to regroup and send in the heavy artillery. It’s the point where internal dissent, doubt, and jealousy begin to disintegrate the hero’s team.
Missy is invited (or accidentally wanders) into Dr. Smaug’s other clinic that has an entrance on the next street.
Missy learns that the other clinic serves Millennial women with “high risk” pregnancies. The women’s urine is collected daily. (Maybe their pregnancies are not really high risk.)
OR Missy discovers that pregnant Millennial volunteers are being paid to give urine.
Missy convinces a pregnant friend to be a paid volunteer at Dr. Smaug’s pregnancy clinic.
Missy’s research indicates that a DNA test can identify whose urine it is.
Missy discloses to her love interest what she has learned about hormone harvest and sale and they decide to expose Dr. Smaug.
Dr. Smaug begins to suspect Missy.
Missy substitutes a placebo for hormones.
11. All is Lost (pg. 75): All is Lost is the matching beat to the Midpoint…these two beats are always inverses of each other. We know it is the opposite of the midpoint in terms of an “up” or a “down.” It’s also the point of the script that is most often labeled, “false defeat,” even though it looks all black, it’s just temporary. All aspects of the hero’s life are in shambles.
12. Dark Night of the Soul (pg. 75-85): This section depicts how your character experiences and feels at the All is Lost point. We’ve all been there–hopeless, clueless, drunk, and stupid–sitting on the side of the road with a flat tire and four cents, late for the big appointment that will save our lives.
Act Three
Comic Sequence G – Time to Grow Up
SEQUENCE SEVEN – New Tension & Twist
The full yet simple, brief establishment of the third act tension with its requisite exposition. Simpler, faster in nearly all ways, with rapid, short scenes and no real elaborate set-ups. The TWIST can end this sequence or come at the start of the eighth sequence.
Help from a mentor?
13. Break Into Three (pg. 85): Eureka! The Solution! Both in the external story (the A story) and the internal story (the B story), which now meet and intertwine, the hero has prevailed, passed every test, and dug deep to find the solution. Now all he has to do is apply it. An idea to solve the problem has emerged.
Comic Sequence H – The New Me
SEQUENCE EIGHT – Resolution
Hell-bent for the RESOLUTION. Clarity is important. If they turn left, all is well, if they go right, the world as we know it ends. Not that we don’t have complex emotions or ideas about what it all amounts to, but at this point we crave clarity. Will he get the girl, defuse the bomb, turn in his murderous brother and escape from the sinking boat surrounded by sharks?
The battle, the confrontation, the climax
Resurrection
Epiphany
14. Finale (pg. 85-110): Where the lessons learned are applied. It’s where the character tics are mastered. The chief source of “the problem” – a person or thing – must be dispatched completely for the new world order to exist.
Step 1: The hero, and the hero team, come up with a plan to “storm the castle” and “free the princess” who is “trapped in the tower.”
Step 2: The plan begins. The wall of the castle is broached. The heroes enter the Bad Guys’ fort. All is going according to plan.
Step 3: Finally reaching the tower where the princess is being kept, the hero finds… she’s not there! And not only that, it’s a trap! It looks like the Bad Guy has won.
Step 4: The hero now has to come up with a new plan. And it’s all part and parcel of the overall transformation of the hero and his need to “dig deep down” to find that last ounce of strength (i.e., faith in an unseen power) to win the day.
Step 5: Thinking on the fly, and discovering his best self, the hero executes the new plan, and wins! Princess freed, friends avenged, Bad Guy sent back to wherever Bad Guys go when they are defeated (Two Bunch Palms?) — our hero has triumphed.
Missy hears that Dr. Smaug’s career is going to be celebrated at a special luncheon lecture.
Missy’s love interest is tasked by his boss with preparing a video biography of Dr. Smaug to be shown at the special luncheon.
Missy uses her phone to video what is really going on in his clinics and narrates the clips. Her love interest
Missy conquers her clumsiness.
Missy reapplies to med school (or decides she wants to be an investigative journalist).
Missy writes her med school application essay about what she learned working for Dr. Smaug.
Dr. Smaug is arrested for selling a drug that is not approved by the FDA.
15. Final Image (pg. 110): The final image of the movie is the opposite of the opening image. It is proof that change has occurred and that it’s real.
At the end of Act 3, Missy checks her mail box (after not checking it for several days). She opens a fat envelope from a med school and reads the first line: “Congratulations. . . .”