Top Highlights

• Act II is a unit of dramatic action approximately sixty pages long, and goes from the end of Act I, anywhere from pages 20 to 30, to the end of Act II, approximately pages 85 to 90, and is held together with the dramatic context known as Confrontation.
• During this second act the main character encounters obstacle after obstacle that keeps him/her from achieving his/her dramatic need, which is defined as what the character wants to win, gain, get, or achieve during the course of the screenplay.
• action, you have no character; without character, you have no story; and without story, you have no screenplay.
• Personal interviews offer another advantage: They can give you a more immediate and spontaneous slant than a book, newspaper, or magazine
• Dialogue, he said, is “perishable,” because the actor can always improvise lines to make something work. But, he added forcefully, the character’s dramatic need is sacrosanct.