The average script in Hollywood comes in around 110 pages. But the vast percentage of these scripts have no more than 60 pages of story. That's 50 pages of padding. And that's not going to work at all. Hollywood's top Screenwriters are excellent storytellers who know very specialized story structure techniques for pleasing an audience. These techniques include everything from grand story strategy to scene sequencing to setting up and paying off scene patterns to blending dialogue. Unfortunately, most books and courses on screenwriting teach the tired 3-act structure that produces superficial and predictable scripts. The old 3-act structure is based on theater, which opens and closes a curtain. Movies are far more fluid, so it makes no sense to hold them back with this rigid form. Also, dividing a story into only three parts gives you a very clumsy, on-size-fits-all quality. You may have noticed that 3-act structure believers are always talking about second act problems. If all problems occur in the second act, your method isn't giving you any new information about how to improve your story. You feel like you're working, but nothing's happening.

In short, the 3-act structure is nothing more than the "training wheels" school of Screenwriting. It's a comfortable way to start, but you'd better move on soon if you want to run with the pros. The quickest way to do that is: John Truby's "Great Screenwriting" 15 hour audio course. This course is the heart of Truby's Writer's Studio and has consistently been voted the Best Screenwriting course by film professionals and film students in America and Europe. It's unmatched at laying out all the important techniques utilized by Hollywood's most successful Screenwriters.

Premise is your story stated or reduced to a single line. Also called a logline. It's the most important decision you'll make in the entire writing process. Everything else will depend on that one decision. Premise is the joy of the screenwriting process. It's the initial inspiration that makes you say: "I've got this incredible idea for a script". Your premise line has got to be so inspiring to you that it will carry you through months of great boredom, occasional pain, struggles, and constant rewriting as you develop it into a great script. You've got to be able to occasionally go back to that great premise and say: "Wow, in spite of all this struggle, what a great idea for a script". It's also very important because the premise is also the basis for the so called "high concept" of your script. You can't just be a good Screenwriter. You also have to be able to sell your material. And, in a town where nobody likes to read anything, you must be able to convince a Producer that this would be a terrific story—by giving it to them in one line. If you do not have a good premise, nothing else you do in the screenwriting process will make a difference. You can write terrific scenes, but it doesn't matter if the basic idea of the story is not appealing. You never want to begin the screenwriting process until you're certain your premise is the best it can be. One of the marks of an amateur is to get an idea and immediately start writing script pages. It doesn't work. About thirty pages in, you hit the wall. You put it aside and never go back to it.

You're going to have a lot more ideas than time to write them in your life. Make sure you pick something that you're passionate about. Try to write something that may change your life. That's a pretty high standard. But it's very important. First of all, if it's that important to you, it might just be that important to a lot of other people. And secondly, when you're done writing it, even if you don't sell it, you might have changed your life. And, that's not a bad reason to write anything.

Write something that may change your life...

Premise Words of Wisdom by Screenwriting Guru John Truby