How to Write a Screenplay: The First Five Decisions

How to write a screenplay when you've never written one? Don't start on page one. Start by answering three questions: what does the hero want, why should the audience care, and when does it have to happen. Write those answers down first. Then write the scene that introduces the goal as fast as you can.

Starting a screenplay is not about writing the first scene. It's about knowing the answers the first scene has to give.

The Force Awakens tells you its plot in 75 seconds

The Force Awakens introduces its entire plot in the first dialogue scene, one minute and fifteen seconds into the runtime. Luke Skywalker has gone missing. The heroes have to find him to defeat the First Order. The way they'll do it: deliver the map leading to Luke to the Resistance before the First Order gets it. That's the movie. That's what we're watching. That's why we're here.

The filmmakers were up against the hardest audience in history: people who lose interest in seconds and reach for their phones at the first sign of confusion. Their answer was radical clarity, delivered immediately. You don't have to introduce your plot in the first scene. But if the audience doesn't know what they're watching within the first ten minutes, you're asking them to sit through a car ride with no destination, and they will get out.

I think about this every time I start a script. The opening isn't where you show off. It's where you make a deal with the audience: here's what this is, here's why it matters, here's how long we have. Everything after that is you keeping the deal.

Open with the hero doing something

The opening scene's job is character first, plot second. Compare two first acts. The Force Awakens opens with Rey scavenging, surviving, refusing to sell BB-8 for sixty portions. Before the plot arrives, we know exactly who she is: an underdog who works hard and cares about others more than herself. Rogue One opens with Jyn being arrested, broken out, and handed a mission. We learn where she comes from. We never learn who she is.

That's the difference doing something makes. Rey's opening is full of small choices. Jyn's is full of things happening to her. When you start a screenplay, open on your hero doing the thing that shows what they want, not receiving the plot that will eventually show it. Plot can arrive on page ten. Character has to arrive on page one.

How to write a screenplay: the five decisions before page one

Decision one: what does the hero want? Not the theme, not the message, the want. Dead Man's Chest puts its goal in the title: find the chest containing the heart of Davy Jones. Jack wants it to save his life from the Kraken. Will wants it to free his father. Norrington wants his life back. Beckett wants to end piracy. One goal, five different reasons, and every character instantly has a purpose for existing. Your hero's want is the engine. Everything else is decoration. If how to write a screenplay had only one rule, this would be it.

Decision two: why should anyone care? This is the stakes question, and it's where most first scripts die. Elysium gives its hero a clear goal, get to the healing stations, but once Max is healed, then what? Nothing changes. His life has no purpose beyond the cure. Compare Wikus in District 9, who has a wife and responsibilities: the cure matters because of the life it gives him back. Ask yourself "then what?" about your premise. If the answer is "then nothing," your script isn't ready.

Decision three: when does it have to happen? The deadline. Dead Man's Chest is one long race to the chest before Beckett or Davy Jones gets it, plus smaller clocks in every sequence: escape the cannibals before the feast, reach the Pearl before the bad pirates take it. A ticking clock is the fastest way to show who a character really is, because it forces choices under pressure, and choices reveal people.

Decision four: who is this person on page one? Rogue One is the cautionary tale. Jyn Erso's opening is all plot happening to her: arrested, broken out, recruited. She makes almost no choices of her own, so the audience learns her backstory without ever meeting her. Give your hero something to want in the opening pages, and something to do about it. A hero who wants nothing gives the audience nothing.

Decision five: how will you finish? Not the ending's details, the shape of it. Know your three acts loosely: the point of no return, the midpoint turn, the all-is-lost moment, the finale. You don't need a beat sheet tattooed on your arm. You need to know the story changes the hero at least twice, so you don't write ninety pages of the same situation.

Then write the draft badly on purpose. Your first draft is allowed to be terrible. Mine are. A feature runs about 90 to 120 pages; if it's your first, aim for 100 and don't sweat the number. And when the pages exist, make sure they're in proper screenplay format, or no reader will get past page two. That is how to write a screenplay for real: the first draft is just you telling yourself the story, and rewriting is the actual writing.

Key points

• Answer what, why, and when before you write a single scene; those three answers are your plot.
• Give the hero a concrete objective in the opening pages; a passive hero kills the script before it starts.
• Introduce the plot fast and clearly; confusion in the first ten minutes is fatal.
• Test your premise with "then what?"; if the goal achieved changes nothing, raise the stakes.
• Finish the draft before showing it to anyone; rewriting is where scripts get good.

Try this

• Write your film's goal, stakes, and deadline in three sentences; if the stakes sentence doesn't unsettle you a little, raise them.
• Watch the opening of The Force Awakens and time how long it takes you to learn the plot; then do the same honesty check on your own first ten pages.
• Write the worst possible version of your opening scene today, on purpose; you can fix it tomorrow, but you can't fix a blank page.