The importance of Plot Point Scenes

Creating Dynamic Scenes - Plot Points

By Paul Chitlik

PLOT POINT SCENES

What are the most important scenes in a movie? 

I’d say the opening five minutes and the closing five minutes. 

In the opening scenes, you learn what kind of a movie it’s going to be, the world of the character, and whether you want to be in that world with that person for two hours.  You decide in those opening minutes whether you like the movie or not.  This is usually confirmed by the closing five minutes, the five minutes you’re left with.  Those are the ones you refer to later when you’re talking about the movie.  My daughter loved Shakespeare in Love until those closing five minutes, and then she felt cheated because it wasn’t, in her eyes, a happy ending.  Now she says she hated the film.   Lots of people make judgments about film just as easily. 

The next most important scenes are the sequences that determine the plot points.  There are all kinds of names for these points, but I’ll refer to them just as I did in the initial blogpost:  inciting incident, act I curtain, mid or turning point, act II curtain, and final challenge (often called the climax).  Great care should be given these sequences because they’re the backbone of the movie.  The major towers in the bridge.  Let’s look at the plot point scenes in Thelma and Louise.  

But before we do, let’s just take a moment and remember what the most important element of any scene is.  Yes.  You already know it.  And it will be evident in these scenes, too.  

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

That could be the rallying cry in this movie.  It’s going to be all about Thelma discovering herself – a little late in her life, but better that than never.  It also applies to when the inciting incident comes in.  You could say that sequence begins in the country bar they stop at.  In a  bit of ordinary life, a man, Harlan, tries to pick them up.  They talk, and he tells Thelma she should dance with him.  In the inciting incident of the sequence, Thelma tells Louise, “You said we was gonna have some fun, so let’s have some,” and she goes off to dance with the man.  That’s also her plan for this sequence.  Act II of the sequence is Thelma and Harlan dancing.  She gets a little whoozy, and he convinces her to go outside with him.  There he wants to kiss her.  This is the mid-point of the sequence when the action spins off in a different direction.  He gets more insistent and hits her, then starts to rape her.  That would be the all-is-lost point of the scene, the end of act II.  Louise shows up and puts the gun to his neck in the beginning of act III of the sequence.  She gets him off of her, then shoots him.  That’s the final challenge of the sequence.  They escape in the final part of the sequence. 

Classic construction.  The whole thing takes place in less than ten minutes, but we now have a whole new ball game.  Their lives are never going to be the same.

Each plot point sequence in the movie follows this type of structure.  The end of Act I, beginning at around 34:45, starts with them in the car saying they’re going to need money.  They argue in the hotel room.   Louise calls her boyfriend in the inciting incident of the scene.  He agrees to help her in the close of act I of the sequences.  The mid-point is when she asks him if he loves her – the sequence is going in a different direction now.  When he says “Yeah,” it’s a low point for Louise – the end of act II of the sequence.  Act three is Louise pulling up outside the motel and honking for Thelma.  They hit the road again in the final challenge of the sequence.  

If this is confusing, remember to think of each sequence as a mini-movie.  It almost always works.  Not always, because in creative endeavors there can be no strict rules, but it almost always applies.

The mid-point of the film comes with a sequence whose inciting incident happens the night before, when JD and Thelma have sex.  Her life is never going to be the same again.  The second act of the mid-point comes when Thelma enters the restaurant light-headed after discovering sex.  She and Louise talk about it until Louise realizes that Thelma left JD alone with the money – this is the mid-point of the mid-point.  The whole thing is spun around into a different direction now. 

They go to the room, and, of course, it’s gone.  All is lost.  The low point of the mid-point sequence.  (Are you still with me here?).  The third act of the midpoint consists of Thelma trying to snap Louise out of it, and their leaving. 

Briefly, the end of act II sequence begins with some ordinary life when they pull into a gas station to fill up.  The inciting incident is Thelma calling her husband, and he knows.  The mid-point of the close of act II sequence (okay, I hope you’ve been plotting this on a chalk board) is when Slocum tells them he knows they’re going to Mexico.  The close of the second act of the close of the act II sequence is when Thelma admits she told JD they were going to Mexico and Louise laments that they had two things going for them, and now one of them isgone.  Act three is their realization they’re fugitives now.  “Let’s start behaving like that.”  And they drive off. 

The climactic sequence has all the traditional points.  See if you can plot them. One thing you have to notice when you look at these scenes is that there is conflict in all of them, even in Louise’s conversation with her boyfriend.  It’s what gives each scene its tension, and it’s what keeps a viewer wanting to know more.  It’s what I’ll be looking at when I read your beat sheets this week.  Look for it in every film you see.

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For more information, see Paul’s book, Rewrite, a Step-by-Step Guide to Strengthen Structure, Characters, and Drama in Your Screenplay ,mwp.com.  You can also get copies of his original The New Twilight Zone scripts from  Digitalfabulists.com. 

Check out his website, Rewritementor.com, for info about Paul and his rewrite retreats and consults. 

© Copyright 2012 by Paul Chitlik.  Copying or dissemination in any format other than a single printout for personal use is prohibited.