Screenwriting with Brilliant Simplicity

April 13, 2015 by Scott W. Smith

“I did a million drafts. And then I did the thing everybody does—I read Syd Field and I used my index cards.”
Producer/writer/actress Tina Fey

The note card/index card method of plotting out your story has been covered a couple of times on this blog in the posts Screenwriting Via Index Cards and Dustin Lance Black Screenwriting Tutorial (with video), but the “brilliant simplicity” of the technique is worth re-visiting from time to time. Today, screenwriter and instructor John Jarrell puts his spin on using notecards which he says Syd Field made mainstream popular with the 1979 book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting.

Jarrell deviates from Field in that he prefers 4″X6″ cards rather than the 3″X5″ cards Field wrote about. (More writing real estate.) Jarrell says notecards are the first thing students dive into in his workshops. He goes into more detail in his book, but here’s a quick snapshot of his notecard method:

“In the most general sense, I end up with anywhere between 45 and 55 cards when cooking up a feature. Most commonly, I’ve got approximately twelve cards for Act One, twenty-four for Act Two and a final (you guessed it) twelve for Act Three. If I recall, Syd Field recommends fourteen/twenty-eight/fourteen. But since every writer fills in their cards differently, there aren’t any hard numbers to reference. I’ve heard as few as twelve cards total and as many as a hundred.

“For example, I may count ‘CAR CHASE SEQUENCE’ as just one beat, but another writer may have, say, three cards which fully flesh it out — ‘EXT. TOWN SQUARE — CARS RACE DOWN STREET’ then ‘EXT. RAILYARD — CARS SLALOM ONTO TRAIN TRACKS’ then ‘EXT. DOCKS — CARS CRASH AND SINK INTO BAY’. Whatever floats your creative boats while properly building structure is your correct method.

“…The Notecard Method hasn’t survived for over a century now because it doesn’t work. There simply isn’t a better diagnostic tool in the craft of screenwriting as far as I’m concerned.”
Screenwriter John Jarrell
Tough Love Screenwriting: The Real Deal From A Twenty-Year Pro

You can pick up a pack of 100 4X6 cards for under four bucks at any Office Depot, Staples, CVS or Walgreens. A pretty cheap investment. (The 3X5 cards that Fields preferred are under two bucks per 100.)

P.S. If you’re in L.A. and would like to take a screenwriting class with Jarrell, check out his website howtoscreenplay.com.

Screenwriting from Iowa

…and Other Unlikely Places