The 3rd Act: Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay
Posted by adminNov 18
Product Description
A film’s ending is crucial. It is the last thing an audience sees and often the last thing it remembers upon leaving the theater. Indeed, it’s no stretch to suggest that, more than any other part of the film, the ending determines whether the audience likes a film or not. By extension, the ending of a script is probably the last thing the reader will remember when they put it down. An otherwise great script will likely be passed on if it does not end well. … More >>
The 3rd Act: Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay
Nothing exciting or new here.Some dull reworking of ideas any screen writing enthusiast comes across in many other useful guides.The author’s cleverness shows only in selecting the topic which, one should agree, has not been touched exclusively by any one before him.Moreover, his style of writing is hesitant and boring.Better avoid.
Rating: 1 / 5
What this book is about doesn’t really need a description, it’s right in the title. It doesn’t provide any earth-shattering revelations (at least for me); it just puts into words what most of us knew, if only subconsciously. But it does provide the reader with a new way of looking at the three-act structure. This is well worth getting.
Rating: 4 / 5
By the time we reach the third act we expect a lot to happen. The final battle, the denouement and wrap up. This book is one of the few that give this part of storytelling (for screenplays) the attention it deserves.
Did you see ‘road to perdition’? Did the ending leave you flat too? Drew Yanno explores several films and discusses why their endings worked (or not).
It’s not an expensive book but deserves a place in any script writer’s bookshelf. I know i’ll be referring to it again and again.
Rating: 3 / 5
Here’s a great book that tackled a very, very important and overlooked part of structure. We hear so much about the almighty first act, while the third act is the red-headed stepchild of acts….
Most advice I hear about the third act is this extensive: build to a climax, wrap up all your story threads, type “Fade Out”.
Drew breaks up the act into these parts:
1. Set-up of the final battle
2. The final battle
3. The outcome of the final battle
4. The denouement
5. The bridge (not all screenplays have this)
It’s not all as obvious as it seems. Drew analyzes a number of screenplays – Saving Private Ryan, Rain Man, Gladiator, etc. – all contemporary, all award winners, so you really see his theories in action.
Also, he’s humble and easy to read – not one of those writers who fills in pages about how he was sitting on the toilet when this idea came to him and he ran into the living room and typed for three days without sleep and all of his friends read his pages (posted on his personal site, insert URL here) and told him how he HAD to turn this into a book…. (Don’t those types of screenplay gurus just drive you nuts???)
Another thing Drew does is make a distinction between the ending of a film and the third act, and link the third act back to the first. (This really helped the script I was working on when I read this book a few months ago.) Finally, he breaks down different types of endings – including Hollywood, happy, hopeful, and down.
So, if you’re looking for more structure, The 3rd Act is a great, cheap way to get it.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’ve been aware for a long time how each element of a screenplay is interconnected, I’ve read enough books and screenplays to have at least gleaned that fact but including this into your own screenplay writing derives from knowledge and experience of which is generally obtained from at least a few years study and indulgence within this craft.
In “The 3rd Act Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay” the author Drew Yanno brings those years of study and experience to bear and stresses how important a logical and powerful ending works to lift up a screenplay to a higher level of writing and narrative experience for the reader/audience.
According to Yanno, a good ending is directly related to the protagonist character, the conflict he or she experiences and how he or she reacts to that conflict and how he or she resolves those conflicts. A good story should strive to show resolves of any conflict an audience expects it so. But a good ending also considers how those characters, subplots, main plot and theme drive the screenplay narrative beat by beat, scene by scene, and sequence by sequence through conflict, reaction and resolve and any ending is no different. In fact the 3rd act is not only the place within the screen story where the protagonist battles and resolves with the major antagonist but it is the place where all those subplots and the character conflicts merge, loose ends are tied up, they are eventually resolved. Good or bad, up or down, happy ending or down ending, if it is logical where all roads merge into one then, like discussed in the book, you’ll produce a sound, logical and aesthetic and emotionally satisfying ending for your screenplay.
There are many examples culled from produced movies, some which are considered very successful because of their successful 3rd act and subsequent ending and where others are considered not so successful because they fail to deal with the original premise and do not tie up any loose ends and as a result seem less satisfying to movie audiences.
“The 3rd Act Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay” is a well researched and written book which discusses the merits of what constitutes good and bad endings from an aesthetic point of view and from an audience perspective and how you the screenwriter can use this knowledge to craft endings which mean something to the reader and or audience because the last thing any reader remembers from a script or movie audience remembers from a movie is the ending and this book illustrates by examples how to avoid the pitfalls and how to elevate your story idea into something with heart and meaning which not only satisfies a reader/audience but which lifts the screenplay from the mundane and average to those great heights of storytelling by the masters we all strive toward.
“The 3rd Act Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay” is well-worth the investment and a worthy inclusion for any screenwriter’s reference library. I intend to return to this book each time before I begin to write a screenplay just to remind myself how important the ideas about the 3rd act and the ending are to any well crafted screenplay just so I don’t forget that everything is interconnected which then resolves at the end together with the importance of tying up any loose ends. Because the ending is a conclusion derived from the established theme through the protagonist character and how conflict is dealt with and resolved from interaction with other characters, subplots, the main plot to provide a satisfying but logical conclusion. A good ending will not only be remembered but could be the very thing which helps to sell your screenplay in an already overcrowded commercial marketplace.
There are a lot of books on screenwriting in the marketplace but this book examines perfectly what it proclaims on the cover. Definitely worth the investment!
Rating: 5 / 5