Tools not rules

I realised something yesterday. A friend of mine was asking if I adhered to the 3 act structure. It felt a slightly weird question 'of course I do, what do you take me for?' and then he asked me if I felt restrained by it.

And I realised that it was a very long time since I'd felt that. When I first read Story I railed against it but while he overdoes it he doesn't seem much more than obvious now. I feel almost as perplexed as if you asked a footballer if he feels constrained by the fact he can't use his hands. It's a pretty fundamental part of the job.

So what's changed? Well first I think my aspirations have changed. I would like to make broadly commercial fare, mostly in the romantic comedy genre, rather than paradigm shifting works of art.

Secondly and this is probably the cause of 1 - I've discovered screenwriting is hard. Writing a scene is often easy. An intriguing and entertaining 1st act can be put together without too much difficulty. But a 90 page screenplay which works coherently as a whole and ends in a way that fulfil the promise of the premise? That's really hard.

And now I fully appreciate this fact I'm looking for things to help me. If you're struggling to put something together in a coherent way it's not a hindrance to try and get it to fit a 3 act structure it's a massive boon.

I think the book that switched my attitude to it (because I used to be dismissive of it) was the theoretically even more prescriptive Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, which talks not just about 3 acts but 8 sequences.

Its introduction talked about tools (dramatic irony, exposition as ammunition etc.) and then it just talks through a bunch of films and look at how you could break them down into 8 sequences.

It admits that some films have more sequences than 8 so it starts from the premise that it's just a tool. And what it does is make you do a bunch of short films each with setups, tension and payoffs. And it is by the far the easiest way of dealing with drift in 2nd acts that I know.

So there you go a plug for the sequence approach and an appreciation that I'm now an unquestioning adherent to the rules. And it's made life easier.