Hello everyone! Is it okay that the first act on a 90-100 pages script lasts around 20 pages?
Screenwriting : First act by Roberto Dragonne
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Yes, act breaks and lengths are subjective, structurally there are many ways to signal or ignore or smooth over any break,
structure is for the writer, the final product should feel like a film, the coherent story will sustain interest or not once the scaffolding falls away, regardless of the lengths of the structural components, just my opinion.
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Great Daniel Stuelpnagel Thank you!
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Good point Dan Guardino Thank you!
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The story will tell you where the act breaks need be. The 25/50/25% structure is a VERY rough estimate indeed. Do you think that basic structure works for shorts - 10 - 15 pgs?
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Act 1 ends when you need it to end.
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Entirely contextual to how you structure your stories and thus how many acts you use.
Having a regular rhythm is good though. I write 90pp scripts in 5 acts so my act breaks hit at around 18 pages each and lend themselves to advert breaks.
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Wow, great comments and points of view. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to respond.
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That sounds fine. As long as your first act serves all the purposes it needs to within those pages then you don't need to worry. Every script is different.