By Sean Ryan

I’ve mentioned previously how important the first ten pages are in your screenplay/script. This is not just important in getting the script read, it is also important if it gets made.  The opening ten minutes of a film are vital.  You need to hook your audience and open your story. Get the audience “interested and invested”. If you haven’t defined your story and characters, you risk losing the audience’s interest. I find a good exercise for this is to go back and watch the opening ten minutes of some of your favorite films. See how they play out and how much you know before the 11 minute mark. Keep an eye on that run time/dvd counter and see when your main characters are introduced, when the inciting incident of the story occurs (although it can happen in the first 15 pages/min).   If you get your hook/inciting interest in early, you increase the chance of hooking the audience’s interest.

Why so? Well imagine you watch a movie that spends the first ten pages only introducing characters but very little — if any — plot. With good actors it may work (on some level) but if your audience thinks for one second “where is this story/film going?” you’ve lost them. They’ve stepped back and out of the illusion of the film/world that you are creating. You need to keep them locked into your story. One great piece of advice a writer gave me is: “Fill the story with a wonder of ‘what happens next’”. Simple statement, but a very effective rule to keep in your mind as you plan/plot and write.

First of all let’s look at what we need in the opening 10 pages of our story, the necessities from a structure/formatting point of view, then we will look over how we get the essence of the story into the opening, how we make it as good as it can possibly be.

What should be in the first ten pages?

The exposition: Explain the rules of your story early. Who are the main characters and what is the story/plot about?  If possible, and you have one in your story, also introduce your villain. You don’t want your audience to be well into your film before you introduce your hero or villain, or any other main character for that matter.  If they are a key player and must be introduced later, try and provide a glimpse/hint of them beforehand. This is also a main element of character creation and writing. If you introduce a main character later in the story, we a) have no idea who she is or what she has to do with the hero/villain/story and b) if she is there for drama purposes and perhaps falls victim to something, why do we care?  We don’t know this person and haven’t invested ourselves in them. If we had met them earlier, we would already know who they are and have a brief idea of what part they can play.  Explain your story early, set the rules before the story gets into motion (or during the motion). In “Minority Report” we could have started with John Anderton being dragged into committing a murder in the opening scenes. But we would have known nothing about him, about this future, about this new method of predicting crime and how it all works. By the time the inciting incident occurs, we know the rules, we know the main players and we are ready to be taken on the ride.

The Hook and/or Inciting Incident: As mentioned, the inciting incident and hook can be one in the same thing. Example being the opening shark attack on the girl swimming in ‘Jaws’. We now know there is a killer in the water and we want to know more. We are hooked and we now have a fair idea of what the story will be about – the plot/story is in motion. You can have a hook before the story’s inciting incident. Another fine example is ‘Minority Report.’ The open scenes are purely to hook as well as being the exposition (the rules are explained and our interest in the future world and future crime prevention is established). But does the actual opening scene have any real plot involvement? Not really. The inciting incident in Minority report is when one of the pre-cogs shows Anderton a flash of a murder, they interact with him and show us a sign of things to come — the story is in motion.  Most people would state the inciting incident in that film is when Anderton is goes on the run, note that this is the first plot point or turning point.

Some of this was covered during the previous blog articles on the three act structure, but it is important to mention again here (with different examples), because it shows how important the opening pages can be, not just in content, but also in context.

Now back to the content and story of your first ten. Remember if you get people to read your script(s), be it for a competition or production, it is worth remembering that these people read a lot of scripts and unfortunately a lot of scripts are just bad. Fact of life. From the moment a reader picks up your masterpiece, they are looking for a reason to put in down, or dump it in the bin. Unfair I know, I’ve been there.   You have to give them a reason not to put it down. But how? Start your story strong, and then polish it as much as possible. Follow the structure and formatting tips, but above all, make it stand out, make it shine. Make sure it is all that it can be and then go back and make it even better. There is an unwritten rule, (well at this stage I’m sure it’s written down on a blog or social network) that if you have a single mistake on the first page the game is already over. I would imagine this is true. Also true is that if you don’t give that reader or producer a reason to read on, they will not make it past page 10. No matter how good you think it is, or even how good it actually is, it will end up in the dustbin/trash can/shredder. Have that in mind when you tackle your first ten.

Your first ten pages introduce a lot to that reader and tell them a lot about you, the writer:

a)      How good a writer you are.

b)      How professional you are.

c)       How good you are at writing action/description.

d)      How good you are at writing dialogue.

e)      How good you are at writing characters.

f)       How well you understand the craft screenwriting.

g)      Can you tell a story?

h)      Does your idea/screenplay work?

i)        All of the above!

It is a 10 page CV for your screenplay. It needs to be perfect, otherwise you won’t grab their interest and someone else will get the job. These people are professionals. If you submit the perfect story — the next Godfather — and you don’t have the right formatting, haven’t fixed those typos or just didn’t learn the craft and missed steps, why should they give you their time?

As someone one told me, if you are getting your work out there, do so with the notion that this is a one shot deal. Work with the idea that you “might” get it onto the right desk, to the right reader. Don’t blow it, because you didn’t wait until it was ready, until it was perfect. Put the idea in your head this might be a one shot deal for this script. Just take a chance of not getting it read because that same person read an earlier draft and wasn’t impressed. Make sure the version that lands on their lap is ready. So even if you don’t get that shot, you gave it your best and didn’t take a chance.

When you have the first ten pages perfect and feel it’s as good as it can be, use the same work practice for the rest of the script. All of it needs to be as good as the first ten pages. Because you are setting the bar, setting the expectations for the reader. If your quality or story drops off after the initial introduction to it, you have done yourself and your story an injustice. Remember the first ten pages can also be used as a pitch, as a sample of your script. I’ve often been asked to allow people to read the first 10 to 15 pages as it is a quick (as I said, script readers like to skim over scripts quickly) overview of your script. I made this mistake myself when I pitched a treatment and sent on a script to a producer. He loved the concept, loved the pitch, loved the start of the script and then didn’t think the script was compelling enough. My mistake? The opening ten pages was a mature draft. Polished and ready. The rest of the script was in first draft, it wasn’t ready. It was full of expositional dialogue and long scenes. It needed several rewrites to be ready for sending. So before you send out your first ten “ready” pages, make sure the rest of the script is as ready, in case you get a request to read the rest.

Have a big and interesting opening. I don’t mean a big set piece/battle with lots of special effects. Just start in a place within your story that holds interest that will pull the reader/viewer into the world you are creating with words, while doing the other items above. Even if this means playing with the timeline of the movie/script. Look at the movie ‘Swordfish’, big popcorn movie that may have faults. But study how it starts. It opens with a conversation about films and bank heists, then you are in the bank heist and things go wrong. We are intrigued by the opening scenes that give us the hook, characters, back story and all other exposition that we need to understand what is going on, now we need to know how this came about. We are hooked while doing it with a money shot explosion etc then the timeline shifts back to show us how all this came about. Had we followed the time line normally, and didn’t get to this scene until later in the film, with one of the plot/turning points, we may have lost interest earlier. Timeline shifting is done amazingly well in films like ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Memento’. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of television shows using it, but not as effectively. They seem to be using it as a tool to get some action/strong set piece in early, because a lot of the show’s story is slow. Hence they are using it as more of a gimmick that a hook. So open your story strong and try and do something in a unique way. Very hard to pull off these days as your readers/audience have seen so much and exposed to a lot more visual art than before. So even if your premise is not unique, try and tell it in a fresh way. Bottom line, you have to stand out from the crowd and there are a lot of people writing screenplays out there.

Treatment and outlines/synopsis/breakdowns are all well and down at getting the concept across, but it’s your actual script they will come looking for next…. and it better be more than ready.

Summary:

The first ten pages are the only ten pages and show the rest of your script the same love and care. If you start with high quality, make sure it lasts until the words “fade to black”. Make it as perfect as possible. Get people to read it and get feedback. Read it aloud to find those typos (I have found recently that reading early versions of my scripts to my kids has allowed me to pick up more typos than reading it a dozen times (more about this in a later article).

More reading:

http://www.createyourscreenplay.com/firsttenpages.htm

http://hubpages.com/hub/Make-the-First-Ten-Pages-of-Your-Script-Count

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/writing-act-i-of-your-screenplay.html

http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2010/05/your-first-ten-pages-cant-suck.html

http://www.writersstore.com/how-to-get-em-to-read-your-script