The following question and answer is from the Creative Screenwriting magazine article
“Frank Darabont on The Green Mile” by Daniel Argent and Erik Bauer:
Q. When it came down to translating The Green Mile into a screenplay, how did you put it together? Did you work with paradigms, three-act structures, reverse structures?
Frank Darabont: I don’t think I’d know a paradigm if it came up and bit me. I don’t think in terms of three-act structures. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in the third act, ‘cause I ain’t there yet. For me, writing is a much more organic process.
You sit down from page one and you try to experience the story as you go, and you try to make the most of the dramatic potential of the story. I generally have an idea where a story begins and I generally have an idea where a story ends.
Believe me, there are plenty of screenplays I never wrote because I could never figure out where the damn thing was going. Why bother starting then? I tend to know certain signposts along the way, and I start working toward the first signpost. And once I’m there I know that off in the distance is the next signpost, and I have to get to that.
All the structural elements flow from walking down that path, and from what the characters are telling me. That’s not to say the more organized method is wrong. Whatever works for the writer is what the writer ought to do. Left to my own devices, it’s an organic process.
In adaptation you have a leg up, because if the material is good at least you know what those signposts are.