What makes a good screenplay? — The Dr.Script manifesto

Structure is a diagnostic tool, not a production tool. A short history from Aristotle to Save the Cat, the criticism it drew, and the five questions Dr.Script asks of a script.

This is not a list of rules. It was written so that Dr.Script's reading of a screenplay is out in the open — and it defends the conviction behind that reading.

The conviction: structure is a diagnostic tool, not a production tool. No template will hand you a story. But it will tell you where the story you already have is limping.

A short history of the idea

The question is old. When Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that events need a beginning, a middle and an end, we were in the fourth century BC. Everything since has been an attempt to measure those three parts more finely.

• Syd Field (1979) — tied the three acts to page numbers. He is the one who brought a ruler to the screenplay.
• Lajos Egri (1946) — put premise before structure. If the story has no sentence it is trying to prove, structure runs on empty.
• Christopher Vogler (1992) — adapted Joseph Campbell's myth analysis for screenwriters; the hero's journey comes from here.
• Robert McKee (1997) — defined the scene as a change in value. If the situation at the end of a scene matches the situation at its start, there is no scene.
• Blake Snyder (2005) — Save the Cat! drew the most detailed map of all.

What Save the Cat actually says

Snyder's book proposes two things. First, the idea that gives it its title: the audience has to like the hero, so showing them early doing something likeable — saving a cat — works. Second, and far more influential, a detailed structural map listing fifteen turning points in a film along with roughly which page each should land on.

That map is Snyder's copyrighted work and we do not reprint it here. If you want to use it, buy the book — you will learn it from the source, and the person who did the work gets paid for it.

The criticism

In a much-discussed 2013 piece for Slate, Peter Suderman argued that this book is why Hollywood films have come to resemble each other. In the productions he analysed, the turning points fall at the same minutes every time and the scenes feel forced — "screenplay Mad Libs," as he puts it. Once you notice, he says, the seams start to show.

Snyder's own defence was that he had offered a structure, not a formula, and not a fill-in-the-blanks method. Suderman's reply is fair too: that may have been the intent, but it is not how it turned out.

What Dr.Script looks for

1. Who wants what, and what is in the way?

The moment we notice that nobody in a scene wants anything, that scene is suspect. No want, no obstacle; no obstacle, no tension.

2. Has anything changed by the end of the scene?

McKee's test is still the sharpest. If the situation is the same at the end as at the start — nobody learned anything, nobody's position got worse — the scene is carrying information, not drama. Bury the information inside a scene that does something else.

3. Is the character choosing, or are events carrying them?

The passive protagonist is the problem we see most. Someone to whom a great deal happens but who decides nothing is not a hero; they are a witness.

4. Is the dialogue carrying information or conflict?

If two characters agree, they are not talking, they are explaining. Characters do not explain to each other the thing the audience needs to know.

5. What do the first ten pages promise?

A reader should be able to tell the genre, the tone and the central question within ten pages. That is not a rule but a fact about how scripts get read: nobody waits a hundred pages in good faith.

The manifesto, briefly

1. Structure is diagnosis, not prescription. Open it afterwards.
2. A scene is a change. If nothing changes, it is not a scene.
3. Character is choice. If they do not choose, they are not the protagonist.
4. Do not write the invisible. A camera cannot photograph a thought.
5. Learn the rule, then break it. Breaking it unknowingly is a mistake; breaking it knowingly is a style.

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