Everyone knows the story of Hansel and Gretel. Convinced the only way to save their impoverished family was to abandon their two children in the terrifying wood, Hansel and Gretel’s step-mother insisted that their father take them deep into the forest and leave them there. Being cunning, clever, resourceful children, and having overheard their evil step-mother’s plan, they filled their pockets with breadcrumbs in order to leave a trail to find their way back home.

Well, crafting good film structure is a lot like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs so your audience can find their way home. As a writer it is your responsibility to carry, to direct, to tantalize your audience into following you on your journey. Every crumb you leave is another detail, another character, another plot point and together, after they’ve all been collected, they should bring the audience to a satisfying climax or, in other words, lead them home.

Regardless of genre, structure is the skeleton that your story rests upon. The characters, the plot points, the mood, the setting, they’re all just skin and muscles and ribbons in hair, but they’ll never be as important as the skeleton. Without a skeleton, a solid foundation on which to build, it doesn’t matter that your story is a macho muscle man, with long flowing hair resembling sexy wheat, if he is a boneless puddle of skin and tissue lying immovable on the ground.

When the structure is off, I get bored. I get bored, because I feel lost and adrift. When I’m lost and adrift, my mind wanders. I think about emails, or where I’m going next, or about the piece of popcorn stuck in my teeth. I’ll think about anything, other than your film. And you don’t want my mind wandering to that sweater I wanted but didn’t buy because it wasn’t on sale. You want my full-undivided attention for as long as your script / film is.

As an audience member, I want you, as the writer, to own me. I should be so invested in your story that I would follow you into a fire because I just have to see what’s on the other side. Whether you’re doing alternative structure or traditional three-act structure, telling a story is telling a story. You follow each bread crumb, until you’ve collected them all and wind up at your destination.

So, recently when I was talking with my best friend Scott about a movie we had just seen, he said he loved it. While I had laughed at the jokes, I felt the structure was off and therefore the movie seemed, to me anyway, like a 1000 hours of lugubrious uphill battle. I was exhausted from trying to figure out what act we were in, if the dark moment had passed, who the main character was because we spent equal time with everyone. Scott felt that I get too hung up on structure and sometimes it’s nice when they mix it up. While I couldn’t argue with that, what I could argue is that structure is important because without it, you get lost in the story, and not in a good way.

Imagine instead of dropping a measured trail of breadcrumbs, Hansel and Gretel chose to throw their breadcrumbs buckshot, willy nilly, all over the place. While the wild life those crumbs would attract would be beautiful and diverse and unexpected, Hansel and Gretel would be no closer to reaching their goal. Applying that same principle, if you as a screenwriter choose to scatter your story to the wind, relying on the details to carry your audience, your film simply won’t work.

Screenwriting is an artful balancing act. Every scene must build upon the next scene which must build upon the next, like a pyramid. Each moment being supported by and supporting the next. Whereas in other writing, prose, fiction, even non-fiction, you have the space to slowly spin your yarn, you have page after page to describe the pattern on a character’s blouse without it detracting from your overall piece. In screenwriting, brevity is king and without a clear cut travel itinerary your audience will be lost forever.

Structure is so important because as a story teller you want to tell your story in the fastest way to illicit the greatest response. You have a lot to accomplish and only a small amount of space in which to do it. You should have a main character who experiences growth throughout the piece and takes most of the focus. You should have a villain or detractor of some sort, constantly throwing road blocks in the hero’s way. You should have sub-plots and comedy and drama (regardless of genre) to provide the tension and the release needed to create an edge-of-your-seat story. You should have supporting characters and issues. That’s a lot of business to jam pack into a movie, leaving you with no time to waste.

When you go to write your next project, imagine you’re back in high school and you’re going out for the evening, but your father stops you at the door and cross-examines you about your nighttime agenda. He wants to know where you’re going, with whom, what you will be doing, and as if that’s not enough, he wants to know when you’ll be home. Well screenwriting is the same thing. You should know where your character is going, with whom and what he’ll be doing and where and when he’s going to wind up back at “home.” All of those elements are related to structure. If you miss one of those key points, your story will suffer. Your audience will get lost in the woods, and your script / film will feel like it’s a 1000 hours of wandering through the forest looking for the hint of a trail home.

So, while Scott was correct, that sometimes it is nice to mix it up, it also has to pay off for your audience in the end. It can’t be rambling or unfocused. You can’t use “But it’s alternative structure” as an excuse for shoddy craftsmanship. The best writers know that alternative structure is really traditional three act structure, dressed up for Halloween. At its core, your story has to be a clear path from Point A to Point B. The rest, the details, the minutia, that’s all window dressing, unique to each writer. It is in that area where your creativity, your cleverness, your genius can shine. I won’t be daydreaming about getting a pedicure or thinking about which has more carbs, a pizza or a chocolate cake. I’ll just see the story as you intended.

Apparently, when Hansel and Gretel finally did find their way home, after escaping from the evil witch who tried to bake them into gingerbread, they found yet another witch waiting for them, their step-mother… can anyone say sequel?