Ind-E-Focus

The rest of your cards will be used to describe scenes within the film. The most common structure within screenwriting is the 3 act structure. This breaks down your story into 3 acts;

Act 1[Cards 11-20] introduce your protagonist, antagonist, other main characters and sets up the main conflicts which will drive the action in act 2.

Act 2[Cards 21-40] show how these conflicts escalate to the point of no return where the protagonist is forced into action by the seemingly unstoppable antagonist.

Act 3[Cards 41-50] is where the story begins to wind down. All the key questions are answered and we see the protagonist victorious as he looks back and reflects on the events that have passed.

Once you have filled all of your cards, you can lay them out in front of you, in order to visually analyse your structure, changing the position of scenes and sequences, adding/removing them as you see fit until you have found a structure that best suits the tale which you are trying to tell.

Movie Maker.com, has a brilliant article by Joe Mefford (Published January 15, 2007) Titled: Writing a screenplay with a full deck, which goes into more detail on how to use index cards to create an effective plot outline for your screenplay.

The 3 act style mentioned above is very basic and stereotypical. The most famous screenwriters of today tend to completely explode the 3 act convention which has become severely over used and dated. It is advisable though if you are an inexperienced screenwriter, to at least be able to understand this structure, and analyse how your story or other films that you have seen, can fit into this before you move onto creating your own groundbreaking experimental story structure.

A great website for exploring screenwriting styles is unique-screenwriting.com - This website goes to great lengths to describe the intricacies and importance of subtext, exposition, structure, character profiles and back stories with reference to popular modern and classic films. This is an essential read for aspiring screenwriters who want to take a more unique approach to screenplay development.