Customer Reviews

Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Although I've had some success as a TV writer (with drama, sitcom, MOW and soap opera credits) I've never been able to crack the three-act structure commonly associated with screenwriting. For those like me, Paul Joseph Gulino's "Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach" is a godsend. He manages to cut that intimidating and unwieldy structure into much more manageable portions.

In the interest of full disclosure, I taught a TV writing course at Chapman University this spring where Gulino is a tenured professor. And I won't argue with those who might dismiss this review as influenced by that association. I can only point to my produced credits -- there's not a feature among them -- and my desire to write films (in addition to episodic TV) as justification for seeking out this book and embracing it. I strongly encourage others interested in screenwriting to do the same.

Gulino offers a thorough explanation of the eight-act sequence approach (pioneered by Frank Daniel at AFI, Columbia and USC) and an eclectic set of examples. His use of classic and contemporary features lets the reader reconsider and reconnect with some of these great films. Personally, I found this portion of the book an entertaining trek through the history of the craft. Along the way, Gulino also provides a concise and valuable summation of screenwriting techniques.

While beginners will benefit a great deal from this book, I think those who'll likely get the most out of it are those (again, like me) who've already wrestled with the standard screenplay structure -- and lost too many matches. Gulino is an encouraging coach with a different approach that makes a hellava lot of sense. Battered and bruised screenwriters will want to get back in the ring and try again.

Presents a superb approach to writing a screenplay, or any long story. Much more natural than Syd Field, or, God forbid, overly-Dramatica. Sequences break a story into eight manageable, bite-sized chunks, like chapters, instead of trying to break it up into 3, very large and very intimidating acts (Aristotle's "beginning, middle, and end" -- what the hell does that mean? Aristotle's advice equally describes a story and an elephant. Useless). Each sequence addresses a specific dramatic question in your story (sub-questions of the full, 3 act story), sets up the question, builds the conflict and resolution, while increasing the dramatic tension toward your full-story climax. The book provides examples from known movies, and explains dramatic techniques you may not have read before. This is an excellent book. Goes deeper into story building than many other books. Too many writers seem to forget the 1st Commandment of story writing: seduce the reader/audience into wanting to know what happens next. That's it. That's the bottom line for story writing. Any writer or writing teacher who snubs their nose at the 1st Commandment is full of B.S. This book helps you focus on the 1st Commandment.
Two more books every story writer should have: "Advanced Writing," by Wells Earl Draughon, and "A Story is a Promise," by Bill Johnson.

Typically screenplays are divided into three acts. Paul Gulino goes beneath the 3 act structure to lay bare a critical building block for each act: the sequence. His insightful book discusses how a properly written sequence improves the audience experience of the story.

Gulino focuses on how the movie unreels in the mind of the viewer. A sequence works dramatically when it hooks into the psychology of the audience to keep them involved in the story, wondering what's going to happen next.

Gulino locates the origin of the dramatic sequence in the limitations of early movie making technology: movies started as one-reeler stories with a maximum play time of about 15 minutes. When films stories expanded beyond one-reelers, each reel still maintained the same narrative structure because the viewing experience --and narrative flow -- was interrupted every time the projectionist had to swap reels. Each sequence/reel was designed to be a mini-story within a larger story to pique viewer interest so that they would wait in the dark for the reels to change to find out what happened next.

The dramatic unity of the sequence was also necessary for serials shown in installments over the course of weeks. Stories were written so that the reels ended with a cliff hanger, a dramatic hook to make the viewers come back next week to find out what happened next.

Even after technology made it possible for theaters to show a full-length film without interruption, the time frame and dramatic dynamics of the sequence has persisted. Why? Because, Gulino suggests, there are psychological factors at play in the viewing experience. "The notion of a feature film having eight parts [sequences] is, like all else in dramatic theory, tied to human physiology. The division of two hours into sequences of ten to fifteen minutes each also most likely speaks to the limits of human attention, i.e., without the variation in intensity that sequences provide, an audience may find itself fatigued or numbed rather than by what is on screen."

After a brief discussion of four major dramatic techniques to build and sustain audience interest within a sequence Gulino lays out a paradigm of 8 sequences superimposed on the 3 convential acts of a drama. The rest of the book consists of 11 chapters, each devoted to analyzing a particular film in the framework of the sequence paradigm. Salted among the chapters are sidebar discussions of various dramatic techniques and issues like exposition, character arc, motif, subplot, and reversals.

This reader found Gulino's discussion of two films particularly insightful: "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Fellowship of the Ring". Upon first glance, these films might seem to be counterexamples of the paradigm. Gulino demonstrates that despite their extended viewing length, such is not the case. The average time for the 16 sequences into which Gulino divides "Lawrence of Arabia" is about 13 1/2 minutes. The thirteen sequences for the "The Fellowship" average a little over 13 minutes.

But in Gulino's judgement "Lawrence of Arabia" is an excellent example of a movie faithful to the dramatic dynamics of the sequence while "Fellowship of the Ring" is an example of a movie that fails. But, of course, "Fellowship of the Ring" was a commercial success. Go figure.

Overall, I found this an insightful and stimulating book.

I've bought the book without browsing through it, convinced by the so many excelent reviews it has.
If you've read a lot of books on writing/screenwriting you know there are lots of books out there repeating always the same vague concepts ("Raise the stakes!")
Mr. Giulino promises a new view of the story structure, away from Field's Three Act Structure. He calls it the Sequence Approach. In this view every every script is divided in 8 sequences (instead of 3 acts). But if you take a deep look, each sequence can be mapped to Field's paradigm. Divide the first Act in two. Divide the second Act in four (from TP1 to Pinch 1, Pinch 1 to Middle Point, MP to Pinch 2, Pinch 2 to TP2). And then divide the third act in two. There, you have the eight sequences. Easy, eh?
There could be more than that. Mr. Giulino could do that "new" structure and then discover a specific function for each sequence. This would be good. Well, it's not. What's the function of the third sequence? Raise the stakes. What about the fourth sequence? Raise the stakes even more, and increase tension. Well, thank you.
Moreover, less than 10 percent of the book is the theory, the rest being analysis of movies. And I even disagree with most of them.
Best advice: check it before buying it. The sequence approach is explained in three pages, and you can get a clear idea from them. If you still don't know, check his analysis of Toy Story!

Gulino's book is one of the best screenwriting handbooks I've ever read. It's simple, clear and concise, providing a powerful tool that can help a screenwriter to engage an audience. The first chapter introduces the sequence concept and shows the four fundamental techniques used to capture the audience attention. In the following chapters the author uses the aforesaid tools to analyze eleven movies, covering six decades and various genres, and showing the effectiveness of the sequence method. Once you have learned the method, it's quite simple to apply a similar analysis on whichever movie you want.

As a screenwriter myself, I'm familiar with the traditional three-acts paradigm and the various writing techniques. In Gulino's book I found the anwers to three major questions I had about screenwriting:

- I noticed that all my favourites directors have the ability to create long, beautiful and well-structured scenes, or sequence of scenes sharing at least one unit of time, place, action. Classical directors like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Lean, Kurosawa and Leone all had these ability, so as Scorsese, Spielberg, Cameron and Tarantino. The sequence approach confirms this intuition and shows that it all happens in a more general way, that is dividing the whole screenplay in blocks that, just like short movies, have their own acts, protagonist and dramatic tension.

- Another classical feature is the ability to enrich and deepen the narration by shifting the thematic point of view from the protagonist to another character. Gulino's book shows that it's easily achieved building some of the movie's sequences around a character other than the protagonist. For example, in "Lawrence of Arabia" fourteen of the sixteen sequences are built around Lawrence, that is the movie's protagonist, showing us its dramatic needs, hopes and fears about the Arab cause. One of the remaining sequences is built around General Allenby and its efforts to persuade Lawrence to go back into the desert, so stating its strategical and military importance. In a further sequence the reporter Bentley serves as the protagonist, expressing the importance of Lawrence as a romantic figure and revealing the reporter's cynical point of view.

- The three-acts structure, and its further developments in Syd Field's work, is a paradigm independent of movie's length. Nonetheless, because of the way it has been developed, Field's theory seems to fit better in a canonical one-hundred-and-twenty pages screenplay, that is a two-hour movie. What about a two-and-a-half- or three-hour movie? Gulino shows that while the three acts are stretched to respect their canonical proportions, the sequences always retain a ten- to fifteen-minutes duration. This obviously means that a three-hour movie contains more sequences than a two-hour, proportionally distributed among the three acts, allowing the screenwriter to create a richer narration and explore more characters' points of view. With an exceptional length of three hours and thirty minutes, "Lawrence of Arabia" stretches the three acts respectively at fifty, one-hundred-and-twenty and forty-minutes, but the sequences are sixteen, that is twice the number of sequences contained in a one-and-a-half to two-hour movie.

In conclusion, I recommend this excellent book to anyone who is interested in movies & screenwriting.

...Putting it through the "sequence" filter opened up many wonderful ideas trapped inside. Sequences were there, mostly, just unorganized, limp. Book is also now pumping new life into other stories, helping me to FINISH (finally)!
Practical, thoughtful, succinct. Haven't even finished reading all of the script breakdowns, the first section (describing/analyzing "sequence" approach) is well worth the price of admission! Two thumbs up!

I cowrote another book on screenwriting, and teach screenwriting at grad school level. So this book is, in a sense, my competition. But I don't think of it that way, I think of it as wonderful complement to my book and the few others out there worth reading. I don't know Paul Gulino, but I do know that his book is excellent. Does it address everything you need to know about screenwriting? No. But it gets to the heart of what makes a script good, in a readable, clear fashion--and in a way that writers will find practical and useful. And so, in addition to my own book, I'm using Mr. Gulino's in my next MFA class. I can't offer a better recommendation than that.

It's been a little while since I went slightly crazy and started buying screenwriting books machine-gun style. I'm much calmer, thanks.

The point is, I've done a bit of reading bout screenwriting. I started with Field and graduated to McKee. Branching out, I discovered some gems (like Teach Yourself Screenwriting and Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting) but most stuck close to the so-called paradigm of three acts. One, by the way, that I agree with although I may not stubbornly call it "three acts". According to Truby (who vehemently poo-poos the three acts structure), Aristotle--claimed as the father of the three acts--actually said nothing about three acts, only about a story having three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The problem for a writer who sticks to the three acts like a limpet mine is one of approach. Looking at the long journey ahead (starting with that cold, empty page), attempting to jam a story into Field's page breaks, turning points, act breaks and so on is daunting enough. A simpler way could certainly help.

Gulino returns to a now-forgotten method of writing a screenplay using sequences. Frank Daniel's teachings from the 1980s are the linchpin of this approach and even that goes back to the technical limitations of early (very early) screenwriting for early movies. Back then, every reel lasted 10-15 minutes after which they had to be replaced. This hard limit naturally forced writers to break their stories into 10-15 minute chunks, each one complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Of course, with time and technological advancements, this limitation disappeared but Frank Daniel realized that continuing to write in this way made a lot of sense. It enabled handling the story in manageable chunks. No more the long line of plot disappearing in the unseen distance, but writing a short 15-minute film that would fit within the longer film is less of a problem.

I really like this idea. It makes sense and it's easy without being simplistic. Gulino has written this book based completely on this idea and it's a success. After the first chapter, which covers the history of the sequence approach, he expands on the approach by showing examples of how some good movies can be broken into sequences. He begins the discourse with analyzing one of my favorite movies, Toy Story.

Supposedly, the movies he analyzes are arranged chronologically. He begins with Toy Story because he really, really likes the movie. I can't fault him on that one. He does go quite far back though and analyzes some obscure (at least to me) movies that I'm having a hard time finding on video. In reality, that slight negative isn't important. What's important is that he proves his point, over and again.

The sequence approach is a valid one and while the casual reader would think Gulino is advocating a radical departure from the venerable three-act structure, he really isn't. In the first introductory chapter, Gulino asserts that sequences actually fit very nicely into the paradigm: 2 sequences in the first act, 4 in the second, and two in the third. Nice.

In summary, this is a good book to have as a reference. Not every movie will fit nor can every story be written by slavish observation of the sequence approach. No matter, for most stories, writing is greatly aided by this method.

Five well-earned stars.

There are tons of books out there and many MANY different structures to consider... this one is terrific (though some others are also).

This one organizes your thoughts into usable tips & techniques, allowing you to eat that elephant one-bite-at-a-time. Lots of great example films (some old, some current) that make you totally relate to the material.

Like so many out there, I wanted to find a book that could really improve my style and my writing. Although this was a well thought out book and the author knows what he's talking about, one wonders if he read other peoples' views of the movies and wrote out opinions. There is nothing new in this and the technical things in the book (such as how long it took for the actors to execute a sequence) is of little use to the actual writer, seeing that any screenplay is a little sketchy on how long it takes to finish a so called sequence.

If you want to know those things, then by all means, buy the book, but I wouldn't recommend your hard earned money for something you could get elsewhere. You could learn all of this in a class and it only explians how screenplays, that were already created, were written in a sequence manner. Who needs that when we're all trying to do things in an original (But similar) way? Personally, I would love a book that teaches you the questions you should be asking yourself for each character. The kind of book that helps you know when to pursue an idea and then write it in sequences. This book was really no help and it is now just collecting dust.