I recently decided that I was going to write my first novel, no matter what it took. I have a habit of coming up with ideas I think are great only to get started and then hit the wall and have no idea how to proceed. I fall victim to “good starts”. This is what’s plagued my screenplays as well as my motivation for writing a novel.

Then, I stumbled upon your site yesterday afternoon. Every moment I’ve been home, I’ve read article after article. I’m finding so much of the content to be incredibly fascinating that I’m struggling to get back to my work or get some much needed sleep.

This series in particular is very clear and helpful and may just be the thing that finally gets going from good starts to good stories.

I appreciate all you’re doing. Keep up the good work!

Take Care,
Chris

Go back to the reason that Part 1 exists in the first place. It’s primary mission is to set things up, to show us the stakes for the hero, to show us the hero’s backstory and inner demons (the things they must conquer internally to achieve their goal).

Then, at the real FPP, the story must experience a major shift. Something new enters that picture that defines the quest, need and mission of the hero going forward, as well as showing us the “bad guy” (antagonistic force) and what they want and need, too. This gives us the drama and tension, in context to stakes, that will make the story fly.

But you knew all that. It’s just that you want it all to happen too early in your story. Let me show you an example.

In the movie Collateral (rent it to see how this example plays out), there’s an unexpected huge twist about halfway through Part 1, which is too early to be the FPP. It looks and smells just like an FPP, as it certainly changes everything and presents the hero (Jamie Fox) with a new problem and thus a new quest/need.

It’s just that this is, we soon learn, just a major element of the “set-up” and not the plot point itself. Which means, major stuff CAN happen in the middle of the parts without them actually being one of the required major milestones. In fact, that’s a good thing, it makes for a powerful, swiftly moving dramatic story.

But it’s not the FPP. It could be, if it was in the right place, but this writer had bigger plans. It’s all about to get more dramatic, with even higher stakes. At this too-early faux FPP, the stakes are simply Jamie surviving the night. We don’t really know the nature of the bad guy or what he wants, or what it means to Jamie.

At the real FPP, though, something much less dramatic happens, but it nonetheless is the real FPP, because now we get a much more dramatic understanding of what Jamie’s need and quest will be, and what the bad guy (the source of the conflict, played by Tom Cruise) really wants. We didn’t know that before.

In a scene with nothing but dialogue (in the back of Fox’s taxi), Cruise tells Jamie what it all means. He’s a hit man with several assignments to make that night (we didn’t know that). He wants Jamie to drive him to each hit (we didn’t know that). If he does, he’ll survive and be paid $700. If not, he’s dead. This is all new information that ratchets up the tension and stakes, a much more interesting and dramatic new quest and need for Jamie. The entire story spins in a new direction as a result of that moment. THIS is the real FPP.

So the FPP doesn’t have to be huge, it just needs to be in the right spot, and do the right things: define the hero’s quest going forward, and show us the nature of the conflict and the goal of the antagonist that opposes the hero. None of that works if you haven’t taken the time (the entirety of Part 1) to set it all up correctly.

Trust me, you do not want to monkey with this forumla. Newer writers who are married to a “structure they made up for themselves” rarely sell their stories… because it’s this tested paradigm that results in the best stories. It’s what agents and editors expect, even if they don’t call it all with the same word.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

(If I’m wrong, please correct me)

I’ll be back to explore the rest of the series and the films I study to understand it. Again, thanks!