by Jeff Kitchen
As you do Sequence, Proposition, Plot for each of the sequences, you’re fleshing out the mechanics of your story, further amplifying the detail as it becomes necessary. If you’ve got three or four acts and each one consists of three to five sequences, then we’re talking about doing this three-step process perhaps another fifteen or more times. If each sequence has good forward momentum and grips the audience, then you are creating continuous Dramatic Action. You never want to revert to mere Story, in which the material goes flat dramatically. This is a lot of work, make no mistake about it, but to properly develop and structure an effective screenplay takes this kind of labor-intensive effort. You’ve got to do the work somewhere—and it’s much easier putting in the hours here, where you have control over the shape of the story, rather than slugging it out through endless rewrites, where the script can easily get away from you or lose its original energy. Take another look at David Mamet’s quote about taking the time to design the chair properly before you glue it together.
Once you’ve gone through all your sequences, you then break them down into scenes. Now you do Sequence, Proposition, Plot for the first scene, which gives you a fully detailed outline, and then you write the dialog. Then you do Sequence, Proposition, Plot for the next scene and write it out, and you’re on a roll—based on all the hard work you’ve put into building the structural underpinnings of the story. In Part Two of this book, I’ll create and construct a real screenplay using this process to demonstrate it in action.
The following diagram shows a hierarchical pyramid structure of Sequence, Proposition, Plot applied to the whole script, then to each act, to each sequence, and each scene:
Constructing your script by using the process of Sequence, Proposition, Plot creates Unity of Action. Each scene is its own coherent dramatic unit but is also part of a sequence, which is in and of itself coherent and compelling. Each sequence moves the plot forward and is part of an act, which itself is tightly knit and dramatically sound. In turn, each act is a working part of the whole script, which itself is logical, consistent, flowing, and dramatic. Continuous, coherent, compelling Dramatic Action is the name of the game. In The Analysis of Play Construction and Dramatic Principle, Price puts it this way:
You must have perceived by this time that a law of Unity runs through a play, each principle in a play and each part of a play being distinct in itself, but with relations to the other principles and parts. At the very outset the Theme demanded Unity. You considered the Proposition and saw that it must be ONE thing, one definite thing, so that when asked what your play is about you could reply briefly and would not wander off into a multitude of Details. You saw that each act was about one thing, each scene about one thing, and that each step was a development toward one given end. Following this out, you have seen that a play is a Unit made up of other Units.
Examples from Training Day follow to make all this more tangible. Recall the increasingly tight weave in the diagrams as you review Sequence, Proposition, Plot for the overall script, an act, a sequence, and a scene.
Sequence, Proposition, Plot for Overall Script of Training Day
First, we look at the script as a whole using Sequence (reverse cause and effect).
Object: Jake defeats Alonzo, completes his training, and emerges anew as a powerful man.
Final Effect: Alonzo is executed by the Russians and Jake goes home.
Immediate Cause: Jake takes Alonzo’s $1 million as evidence, so Alonzo is unable to pay the Russians.
Cause: Jake defeats Alonzo in the fight with some help from the neighborhood locals.
Cause: Jake drops onto Alonzo’s car and Alonzo gets stunned from smashing the car around to shake him off.
Cause: Alonzo beats the stuffing out of Jake and attempts to leave with the money.
Cause: Jake tries to arrest Alonzo and a gunfight erupts.
Cause: Jake goes to the home of Alonzo’s girlfriend to confront Alonzo.
Cause: Smiley lets Jake go.
Cause: Jake says he found the wallet when he saved a girl from getting raped, and she verifies it on the phone.
Cause: Smiley and his crew jump Jake and are about to kill him when they find the wallet that belongs to Smiley’s niece.
Cause: Alonzo drops Jake off at Hillside Gang with payment to kill him.
Cause: Jake will not be a member of Alonzo’s team or play his twisted game.
Cause: Alonzo tries to talk Jake into seeing things his way.
Cause: Jake refuses to claim that he shot Roger, and Alonzo manages to get his own men and Jake to calm down.
Cause: Jake takes the gun away from Alonzo and turns it on him.
Cause: Alonzo shoots Roger and tries to force Jake to claim he did it.
Cause: Alonzo and his crew raid Roger’s house and rob him of $1 million.
Cause: Alonzo bribes the three wise men to let him “tax” Roger for the $1 million dollars to pay off the Russians, and “buys” a real warrant.
Cause: Alonzo robs $40,000 from the Sandman’s house with a fake warrant.
Cause: Alonzo forces information out of Blue, the drug dealer, by sticking a pen down his throat.
Cause: Alonzo fires Jake up about being a wolf and then sics him on Blue.
Cause: Jake is angry that Alonzo let the crackhead rapists go.
Cause: Jake stops the rape but Alonzo lets them go.
Cause: Jake is stoned, but when he spots a rape in action he makes Alonzo stop to break it up.
Cause: Alonzo forces Jake at gunpoint and the threat of expulsion to smoke marijuana laced with PCP.
Cause: Alonzo takes the dope and the pipe off the college kids.Cause: Alonzo and Jake start their day’s work by staking out a dealer and pulling over some college kids who just scored.
Cause: Jake shows up, extremely ambitious, and says he’ll do anything Alonzo wants him to.
Cause: Jake wakes up ready to roll for his first day of work as an undercover narcotics cop.
By working our way backward through each of the major plot points in the film, we have laid bare the spine of the script—the Sequence. The conflict map below charts Proposition and Plot for the overall script of Training Day.Note that the Central Dramatic Question marks the point at which Proposition ends and Plot begins.
Protagonist
Antagonist
Initial Act of Aggression
Alonzo robs the Sandman with a fake warrant and risks getting Jake arrested or killed.
Justified Retaliation
Jake challenges Alonzo, saying he stole that money.
Aggravation of the Issue
Alonzo tries to have Jake murdered by the Hillside Gang.
Precipitating Act
Jake comes after Alonzo, and tries to arrest him and seize the $1 million for evidence.
Central Dramatic Question
Will Jake take down Alonzo or will Alonzo destroy him?
Alonzo fights back, almost kills Jake, and is leaving.
Jake attacks again, roughs up Alonzo badly, and takes his money.
Alonzo tries to intimidate Jake into quitting, and the locals into killing Jake.
Jake beats Alonzo and gets away with the money as evidence, finishing him off.
So that’s Sequence, Proposition, Plot for the overall script of Training Day. We’re dealing with a sketch of the general outline, so the reverse cause and effect doesn’t encompass much detail at all. In analyzing a script, this is very useful because it provides an objective look at the big picture, and can help you find major holes in the cause and effect that might adversely affect the storyline.
When you’re constructing an original screenplay, this process will help you stitch together all the story parts, scenes, and elements from your notes into one solid chain of events. If you’re working backward and discover a point at which there is no cause for a given effect, then you can create one on the spot and thereby fill a hole in the plot. You would say to yourself, “Well, what would cause that to h
appen?” There may be any number of possibilities and you can pick the one that works best. Or there might not be any obvious causes that occur to you, forcing you to really wrack your brain. The worst-case scenario would be that a cause cannot be invented under any circumstances, revealing that you have an insoluble hole in your script. But the good news is that you’re discovering it in your outlining process, rather than fifty pages into your script—which happens a lot to writers who don’t structure their stories first—they call it “hitting the brick wall.”
Proposition and Plot cover the entire proportion of the story, and as we said, the set-up of the fight tends to occur about one-quarter to one-third of the way into the story, with the touch-off coming out around the two-thirds or three-quarters mark. It helps to maintain that sense of proportion when using Proposition, Plot because the Central Dramatic Question in our two-column argument above appears to be at the mid-point of the script, which can be misleading, especially to a novice.
Sequence, Proposition, Plot for Act III of Training Day
Here is this tool applied to Act III (the final act) of Training Day. Notice that the Sequence stage here at the act level includes a little more detail than at the overall script level, especially to a novice:
Object: Jake defeats Alonzo, completes his training, and emerges anew as a powerful man.
Final Effect: Jake arrives home as a voiceover plays of the reported news of Alonzo’s death while serving a high-risk warrant.
Immediate Cause: Alonzo drives to his rendezvous without the money and is executed by the Russians.
Cause: The neighborhood locals keep Alonzo from going after Jake, and Alonzo’s power fades to nothing.
Cause: Jake walks off with the money.
Cause: The locals have Jake’s back and they let him leave.
Cause: Jake strips Alonzo’s badge off him.
Cause: Jake and Alonzo face off, and Alonzo doubts Jake has the balls to shoot him.
Cause: Jake punches out Alonzo and takes the bag of money.
Cause: Alonzo tries to get rid of Jake and gets stunned badly from smashing the car around to shake him off it.
Cause: Jake drops down on Alonzo’s car as he’s getting away.
Cause: Alonzo pummels Jake, leaves him badly beaten, and is getting away with the money.
Cause: Jake hunts Alonzo on the roof, and Alonzo jumps him.
Cause: Alonzo’s son gets in the middle of the gunfight, giving Alonzo time to climb out the window.
Cause: Alonzo flicks a cigarette in Jake’s eyes, grabs his shotgun, and they have a gunfight.
Cause: Jake bursts in on Alonzo, his gun drawn, and tries to arrest him and seize the money as evidence.
Cause: Jake gets Alonzo’s son to let him in the house.
Cause: Jake goes to the dangerous neighborhood to hunt down Alonzo.
Cause: Smiley lets Jake go.
Cause: Smiley’s cousin verifies Jake’s story.
Cause: Smiley doesn’t believe Jake saved his cousin, so he calls her.
Cause: Jake says he found the wallet after he saved a girl from getting raped.
Cause: The guys find the pink wallet that belongs to Smiley’s cousin, and Jake says he saved her from getting raped.
Cause: The gang members are about to shoot Jake in the bathtub.
Cause: The guys subdue Jake.
Cause: Jake attacks the gang.
Cause: It’s obvious the gang is about to kill Jake.
Cause: Jake sees that Alonzo has left him, and the gang members show Jake the money Alonzo gave them.
Cause: The gang members cajole Jake’s gun away from him and take his ammunition clip.
Cause: Alonzo leaves Jake with the gang members and “goes to the bathroom.”
Cause: Alonzo takes Jake to the Hillside Gang with presents and cash.
And now on to Proposition and Plot for Act III of Training Day:
Protagonist
Antagonist
Initial Act of Aggression
Alonzo drops Jake off at the gang house to be killed.
Justified Retaliation
Jake goes to Alonzo’s place and tries to arrest him to take the money as evidence.
Aggravation of the Issue
Alonzo pummels Jake and is getting away with the money.
Precipitating Act
Jake drops down on the car hood and goes on the attack.
Central Dramatic Question
Will Jake be able to defeat Alonzo, or will Alonzo kill him?
Alonzo smashes his car into everything, trying to kill Jake or shake him off.
Jake pounds Alonzo when he’s stunned and grabs the bag of money.
Alonzo tries to intimidate Jake and then goes for the gun.
Jake shoots Alonzo in the ass and leaves with the money as evidence, finishing him off.
You can see that in the reverse cause and effect, the entire third act is retraced (we went through it once already for the overall script), but now more detail is being included. You use this same process when you’re building a script—doing repeated passes through increasingly smaller units of the plot (script, act, sequence, scene), amplifying the particulars as you figure out that section of the story in a little more detail.
One trick to working this way is to develop the skill of knowing how much is just a little more detail. You just want a bit more, one more layer to weave in to what you’ve already got. There’s a great example of this in a science fiction short story that I read once. A guy asks a computer for information on a battleship and the computer asks how much detail he wants. It says that it can give it to him in a paragraph, in 10 pages, 200 pages, or 4,000 pages. As you work with this tool, you’ll get a feel for how much detail is just a little more.
What we’ve done above is to map out the conflict within Act III using the Proposition and Plot aspects of our tool. Notice that it was the same process for the script as a whole, but now we’re applying it to the next smaller unit within the story. The same proportion holds for the act as it did for the whole script: The touch-off of the fight occurs at about the two-thirds or three-quarters point. Know where you are at each step proportionately, and bear in mind roughly where the conflict sets up and touches off.
Sequence, Proposition, Plot for Act III, Sequence 1 of Training Day
Now review Sequence, Proposition, Plot for a sequence within Act III of Training Day—the Hillside Gang sequence, in which Jake is almost executed. Notice that we’re including even more detail in the reverse cause and effect.
Object: Smiley lets Jake go.
Final Effect: Smiley thanks Jake for protecting his cousin and says that taking the job to kill him was just business.
Immediate Cause: Smiley puts the gun down and pulls Jake out of the tub.
Cause: Smiley’s cousin verifies what Jake said about saving her.
Cause: Smiley forces his cousin to tell the truth.
Cause: Smiley’s cousin is lying.
Cause: Smiley calls his cousin to check on Jake’s story.
Cause Jake says he found the wallet after he saved the girl from getting raped.
Cause: One guy takes his wallet and notices that it belongs to Smiley’s cousin.
Cause: The guys are about to shoot Jake but want his money first.
Cause: The guys put Jake in the tub and get ready to shoot him.
Cause: The gang drags Jake into the bathroom.
Cause: The gang beats up Jake.
Cause: Jake attacks the gang and decks Smiley.
Cause: Smiley intimates that Alonzo paid him to kill Jake and reveals that Alonzo has to pay $1 million to buy his way out of having killed a Russian.
Cause: Smiley tells Jake that Alonzo has left him, and the mood turns dark in the room.
Cause: One guy points Jake’s gun at him, and Jake says he’s got to leave.
Cause: The gang cajoles Jake’s gun away from him and Smiley takes the ammo clip out.
C
ause: The guys goof around and get Jake off guard.
Cause: Alonzo drops Jake off while he “goes to the bathroom.”
Now look at the structure of the conflict within this sequence.
Protagonist
Antagonist
Initial Act of Aggression
The guys cajole Jake’s gun away, take his bullets, and point his gun at him.
Justified Retaliation
Jake says he’s got to leave.
Aggravation of the Issue
It becomes obvious that the gang is going to kill Jake.
Precipitating Act
Jake attacks the guys and slugs Smiley while trying to get away.
Central Dramatic Question
Will Jake get out of there or will they kill him?
The guys beat Jake up, drag him into the bathtub, and get ready to kill him.
When the guys find the wallet, Jake claims that he saved the girl from getting raped.
Smiley thinks Jake’s lying and did something to his cousin. He calls her.