Something that stuck out to me in the Syd Field “Screenplay” chapter “Plot Points” is the idea of having four *main* plot points to structure the screenplay around— the beginning, the ending, and two plot points in between. These two plot points should be the “anchors” of your screenplay’s story, but they are by no means the only plot points in your story. This concept from Syd Field reminded me of the three act structure of the screenplay, particularly of the ends of Act I and Act II. Act II is easier to explain from my point of view, so I’ll start with that: Act II should end with the climax of your story, the culmination of your story’s themes, characters, and action. Act II is the main chunk of your screenplay, set up by the inciting and key incidents, full of action, character arcs, and themes. While Act III focuses on resolution and the fulfillment of arcs, Act I is all about set-up, notably with its inciting and key incidents as established in the last chapter we read. I’d like to think of the key incident as our big plot point for Act I— it’s not necessarily the beginning, but it does get the story into motion and kickstarts much of the plot and characters.
Another point, so to speak, of Syd Field’s thoughts on plot points that I am intrigued by is the idea that a plot point does not need to be overly dramatic necessarily. It can be quiet and calm, it can be a line of dialogue, or it can be big and loud, if that’s what suits your tastes and your story best. Personally, my key incident is externally quiet and small, but internally it is huge for Dolores, as she feels that she has finally found “her person” within both her career and love life, both of which she has begun to lose hope in. With Dolores going through major changes to her emotional approach to the world while also being a creature of (bad) habit, this moment manages to be huge for this arc even though she still engages in self-isolating behavior and avoids some of her feelings in the “flash forwards” of Act I. Meanwhile, my second big plot point I have planned at the end of Act II and beginning of Act III is Mariko’s death. It’s a dramatic moment, but at the same time, (my hope) is exactly what you would expect after witnessing Mariko’s declining well-being and the Council’s active unwillingness to address the issues at hand out of adherence to tradition and legacy. This moment also marks Dolores decision to change and the subsequent guilt, grief, and regret about how she is too late to do so in multiple regards. By having this points planned, I have a solid idea of where my characters are going and how I am going to achieve getting my themes across in my screenplay.
Structure is one of the most important aspects of a story. You need structure– a direction, a set-up, a storyline– in order to even begin building a story. You need to know how the story will end, how it begins, and the plot points that, one, push it from Act I to Act II and, two, push it from Act II to Act III. The chapter “Plot Points” in Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting focuses on this main tenet of screenwriting, particularly as it relates to the plot points that transition the story between Acts I and II and then Acts II and III. Plot Point One takes place right at the end of Act I, and it is the key incident that marks the true beginning of the story. It’s the action point that sets in motion the entire screenplay, ending the exposition and getting into Confrontation of Act II where the main character(s) will have to overcome obstacles in their way in order to move toward the resolution and achieve their dramatic need. Plot Point Two occurs at the end of Act II, leading the screenplay into Act III by transitioning from the Confrontation to the Resolution (or, in other words, the solution to the story).
As I was reading this section of the book and learning about the purposes of the two main plot points, I started trying to apply them to my own screenplay in order to identify my Plot Points I and II so that I may be able to better understand how to connect the various parts of my story. In doing so, I discovered that my first Plot Point is the meeting between the Trusted One– Evakdor Hafdin– and the five travelers. That scene is the end of Act I, and it marks the transition to Act II because the travelers (as well as the audience) learn more clearly about the main conflict of the story and it sets the travelers on their journey to save Latabat and protect their families–which is the dramatic need all of the five main characters share. This is also the true beginning of the story because it begins the action, the adventure, and the discovery that the story is all about, whereas everything leading up to it was, although important, mainly introductory and expository. This Plot Point is also where I will end Act I, and so it is the furthest scene into the story that I will write for the Act One of a Screenplay Assignment. However, I did also identify the second Plot Point because knowing it will help me to connect my first and second Acts in such a way that effectively leads into the final Act. Plot Point II, therefore, is the scene in which the travelers discover that they have been lied to by their Trusted One and that the “monster” they were sent to defeat is really the ancient protector of Latabat who the Trusted One locked up when he staged a coup against the rightful lineage of Latabatian rulers. This is the second Plot Point in the screenplay because it’s the turning point from the travelers going on a journey to serve their leader to them realizing they need to take him down, which will be the outcome that serves as the resolution to the story. Through the reading of “Plot Points”, I learned more about the structure of a screenplay and I applied that new knowledge to my own screenplay so that I will be able to improve upon the set-up of my first Act.
Syd Field’s chapter “Plot Points” really made the structure and function of a screenplay easily understandable as somebody who has no other experience with this form of writing. Field first reiterates the importance of the “paradigm” that he outlined in previous chapters, and reminds us that it gives a direction to the screenplay so that you don’t feel so lost in the pages that you have left to write. The plot points are a part of this, and Plot Points I and II are the most important ones. Plot Point I moves the action from Act I into Act II, and Plot Point II moves the action from Act II into Act III—these plot points hold the paradigm in place. Plot Points are a function of the main character, he says, and they “amp up the action and underscore the arc of the character”—they are relevant to the character and help to develop their story. Field says that Plot Point I is the “true beginning” of the story, as it’s the start of the real story progression, and is usually the key incident, where we begin to understand the conflict and the main character’s mindset. He also emphasizes that a Plot Point doesn’t even need to be a dramatic moment or major scene, just that “it is always an incident, episode, or event that is dictated by the needs of the story.” I found this really interesting as I struggle with moving my story forward in a natural way. This made it easier to understand what I must include in order for my story to have any real meaning or purpose.
The main thing that stuck out to me while reading this chapter is the emphasis on what i would describe as the four corners of your screen play, the beginning, plot point 1, plot point 2, and the end. It makes a lot of sense, this is the basic and necessary structure of a screenplay, yet while reading in the beginning I came to believe this is not something I clearly had defined in my screenplay. I know my beginning, I know my climax, and I know my ending, but I didn’t necessarily have a clear view of what plot point 1 and 2 are, at least not when i looked at the diagram of the paradigm.
Reading further, this is one of the few instances in Syd Field’s story that his examples from movies actually really helped me understand the concept of the two points. The plot points aren’t completely formulaic, they further the story and transition us between acts but there is flexibility in their presentation. My first plot point is my inciting incident, where Odette receives the cactus as a gift, propelling her into an emotional worldwind of denial and eventually acceptance. The story starts with giving her grief a crutch to lean on, the cactus, and we are propelled into the resolution by her losing that crutch, when the cactus pot breaks and the plant dies.
I liked when Syd Field made a point about how the plot points do not have to be dramatic, they do not require a flashy action sequence or explicit dialogue/exposition, they can be quiet. They signal the character changing and moving the story forward, which I think is a really nice way of thinking about it when youre writing a slice of life/drama like myself.
The main takeaways from this reading were how to direct the flow of a story. Syd-field talked about placing these plot points usually at the end of an act. So act 1 will have that inciting incident to drive the story or move it forward. I connected it to how I placed significant information in my own story. I placed my first plot point at the front of my story and I placed another around 20 pages… Even though I’m still working on it. I really liked how I can make these anything and not stress about making it a super big thing.
5 thoughts on “JOURAL # 16”
Something that stuck out to me in the Syd Field “Screenplay” chapter “Plot Points” is the idea of having four *main* plot points to structure the screenplay around— the beginning, the ending, and two plot points in between. These two plot points should be the “anchors” of your screenplay’s story, but they are by no means the only plot points in your story. This concept from Syd Field reminded me of the three act structure of the screenplay, particularly of the ends of Act I and Act II. Act II is easier to explain from my point of view, so I’ll start with that: Act II should end with the climax of your story, the culmination of your story’s themes, characters, and action. Act II is the main chunk of your screenplay, set up by the inciting and key incidents, full of action, character arcs, and themes. While Act III focuses on resolution and the fulfillment of arcs, Act I is all about set-up, notably with its inciting and key incidents as established in the last chapter we read. I’d like to think of the key incident as our big plot point for Act I— it’s not necessarily the beginning, but it does get the story into motion and kickstarts much of the plot and characters.
Another point, so to speak, of Syd Field’s thoughts on plot points that I am intrigued by is the idea that a plot point does not need to be overly dramatic necessarily. It can be quiet and calm, it can be a line of dialogue, or it can be big and loud, if that’s what suits your tastes and your story best. Personally, my key incident is externally quiet and small, but internally it is huge for Dolores, as she feels that she has finally found “her person” within both her career and love life, both of which she has begun to lose hope in. With Dolores going through major changes to her emotional approach to the world while also being a creature of (bad) habit, this moment manages to be huge for this arc even though she still engages in self-isolating behavior and avoids some of her feelings in the “flash forwards” of Act I. Meanwhile, my second big plot point I have planned at the end of Act II and beginning of Act III is Mariko’s death. It’s a dramatic moment, but at the same time, (my hope) is exactly what you would expect after witnessing Mariko’s declining well-being and the Council’s active unwillingness to address the issues at hand out of adherence to tradition and legacy. This moment also marks Dolores decision to change and the subsequent guilt, grief, and regret about how she is too late to do so in multiple regards. By having this points planned, I have a solid idea of where my characters are going and how I am going to achieve getting my themes across in my screenplay.
Structure is one of the most important aspects of a story. You need structure– a direction, a set-up, a storyline– in order to even begin building a story. You need to know how the story will end, how it begins, and the plot points that, one, push it from Act I to Act II and, two, push it from Act II to Act III. The chapter “Plot Points” in Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting focuses on this main tenet of screenwriting, particularly as it relates to the plot points that transition the story between Acts I and II and then Acts II and III. Plot Point One takes place right at the end of Act I, and it is the key incident that marks the true beginning of the story. It’s the action point that sets in motion the entire screenplay, ending the exposition and getting into Confrontation of Act II where the main character(s) will have to overcome obstacles in their way in order to move toward the resolution and achieve their dramatic need. Plot Point Two occurs at the end of Act II, leading the screenplay into Act III by transitioning from the Confrontation to the Resolution (or, in other words, the solution to the story).
As I was reading this section of the book and learning about the purposes of the two main plot points, I started trying to apply them to my own screenplay in order to identify my Plot Points I and II so that I may be able to better understand how to connect the various parts of my story. In doing so, I discovered that my first Plot Point is the meeting between the Trusted One– Evakdor Hafdin– and the five travelers. That scene is the end of Act I, and it marks the transition to Act II because the travelers (as well as the audience) learn more clearly about the main conflict of the story and it sets the travelers on their journey to save Latabat and protect their families–which is the dramatic need all of the five main characters share. This is also the true beginning of the story because it begins the action, the adventure, and the discovery that the story is all about, whereas everything leading up to it was, although important, mainly introductory and expository. This Plot Point is also where I will end Act I, and so it is the furthest scene into the story that I will write for the Act One of a Screenplay Assignment. However, I did also identify the second Plot Point because knowing it will help me to connect my first and second Acts in such a way that effectively leads into the final Act. Plot Point II, therefore, is the scene in which the travelers discover that they have been lied to by their Trusted One and that the “monster” they were sent to defeat is really the ancient protector of Latabat who the Trusted One locked up when he staged a coup against the rightful lineage of Latabatian rulers. This is the second Plot Point in the screenplay because it’s the turning point from the travelers going on a journey to serve their leader to them realizing they need to take him down, which will be the outcome that serves as the resolution to the story. Through the reading of “Plot Points”, I learned more about the structure of a screenplay and I applied that new knowledge to my own screenplay so that I will be able to improve upon the set-up of my first Act.
Syd Field’s chapter “Plot Points” really made the structure and function of a screenplay easily understandable as somebody who has no other experience with this form of writing. Field first reiterates the importance of the “paradigm” that he outlined in previous chapters, and reminds us that it gives a direction to the screenplay so that you don’t feel so lost in the pages that you have left to write. The plot points are a part of this, and Plot Points I and II are the most important ones. Plot Point I moves the action from Act I into Act II, and Plot Point II moves the action from Act II into Act III—these plot points hold the paradigm in place. Plot Points are a function of the main character, he says, and they “amp up the action and underscore the arc of the character”—they are relevant to the character and help to develop their story. Field says that Plot Point I is the “true beginning” of the story, as it’s the start of the real story progression, and is usually the key incident, where we begin to understand the conflict and the main character’s mindset. He also emphasizes that a Plot Point doesn’t even need to be a dramatic moment or major scene, just that “it is always an incident, episode, or event that is dictated by the needs of the story.” I found this really interesting as I struggle with moving my story forward in a natural way. This made it easier to understand what I must include in order for my story to have any real meaning or purpose.
The main thing that stuck out to me while reading this chapter is the emphasis on what i would describe as the four corners of your screen play, the beginning, plot point 1, plot point 2, and the end. It makes a lot of sense, this is the basic and necessary structure of a screenplay, yet while reading in the beginning I came to believe this is not something I clearly had defined in my screenplay. I know my beginning, I know my climax, and I know my ending, but I didn’t necessarily have a clear view of what plot point 1 and 2 are, at least not when i looked at the diagram of the paradigm.
Reading further, this is one of the few instances in Syd Field’s story that his examples from movies actually really helped me understand the concept of the two points. The plot points aren’t completely formulaic, they further the story and transition us between acts but there is flexibility in their presentation. My first plot point is my inciting incident, where Odette receives the cactus as a gift, propelling her into an emotional worldwind of denial and eventually acceptance. The story starts with giving her grief a crutch to lean on, the cactus, and we are propelled into the resolution by her losing that crutch, when the cactus pot breaks and the plant dies.
I liked when Syd Field made a point about how the plot points do not have to be dramatic, they do not require a flashy action sequence or explicit dialogue/exposition, they can be quiet. They signal the character changing and moving the story forward, which I think is a really nice way of thinking about it when youre writing a slice of life/drama like myself.
The main takeaways from this reading were how to direct the flow of a story. Syd-field talked about placing these plot points usually at the end of an act. So act 1 will have that inciting incident to drive the story or move it forward. I connected it to how I placed significant information in my own story. I placed my first plot point at the front of my story and I placed another around 20 pages… Even though I’m still working on it. I really liked how I can make these anything and not stress about making it a super big thing.