Alternative to a three-act structure.

[Aspiring Mogul]

This author says a better model would be to consider the story as conflict-resolution, and he suggests movies like Silence of the Lambs and Gladiator as examples.

I think this is a better model, and Hearts of Darkness, whether it's Apocalypse Now or a sci-fi version, would also not follow a three-act structure. This then leads to the question of how a story should be structured - yes, there's conflict-resolution, but what other tools are needed to tell the story?

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

I like to create layered characters with a layered story. It turned out to be a saving grace for the filming of I, Creator 2 - Goddess of the Hunt like my blog said because even with divas in the.cast and crew preventing us from shooting all the scenes in the script, the layered story still offered enough to tell a story. The film would have been much better if we shot the whole script with all of the characters. But, it is what it is.

There are tutorials on web sites you can find with Google on how to structure a layered story.

We used to also have a script Guru here who quietly left us called Film Jumper who had a four act structure and dragged his heroes through mud who sold a million dollar script to Hollywood.