My first day of Screenwriting 101 at Tisch, my teacher stood before us, a motley collection of wannabes, wearing mostly black. He gave us his non-negotiable screenwriting rules:

1. Courier 12 point.
2. Always have an active protagonist.
3. No Deus Ex Machina. A Deus Ex Machina literally means “God from the Machine” or rather “a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new character, ability, or object.” (Thanks Wikipedia!)
4. There are only two types of stories and they’ve already been written: “I’m going on a journey” and some version of “boy meets girl.” Every story falls into one of those two categories, metaphorically they can fall into both; it’s the details that will set your story apart.
5. Know your three-act structure, so you can most succinctly and satisfyingly tell a story.

And for whatever reason, those five tips resonated with me. To my credit, I’ve never pulled a Deus Ex Machina because I knew it was a cheap punch, lazy writing. When you use one, you’re, in essence, screwing your audience out of seeing the protagonist have to struggle; which is really the best part. You throw a life raft to help your character, and then he doesn’t have to try and swim. He’s succeeded simply because you, an unseen “hand of god,” helped him. It’s one of those cop outs that always makes me angry.

Rising from the footlights of the ancient Greek stage, Dues Ex Machnia was never acceptable or enjoyed even during its inception. It was so maligned, in fact, as a storytelling device, even on opening night in ancient Greece, literary critics complained about its use, saying that it ruined the story for them.

For example: your protagonist is about to drown, he’s in a small box that’s quickly filling with water. He is going to die. That is, until a tsunami comes from out of nowhere, breaking open the container and freeing our hero into a sun-shiny tomorrow. He didn’t have to try to get out of the box. The box opened on its own, due to circumstances outside of his control. To borrow a phrase from the Bluth family, “That’s a freebie.”

I mostly never think about Dues Ex Machina as a device because I refuse to acknowledge it as a screenwriting tool. That was until yesterday when I re-watched the 1981 “Clash of the Titans.” For some reason, I saw this beloved movie in a new light.

The perfectly cheesy Perseus, played by Harry Hamlin, is LITERALLY moved around throughout the story by ACTUAL GODS. In this instance, Deus Ex Machina wasn’t a lazy go-to, it was an integral and literal story point. So, it got me thinking, in a world where there are few absolutes, is a Deus Ex Machina device always a bad thing?

It turns out no, it’s not. In “Clash of the Titans” it is an integral part of the story that gods are toying with mortals’ lives. If Zeus, Hera, and Athena hadn’t been squabbling and decided to meddle with mortals, there would be no story. So, while Deus Ex Machina is employed as a device, and Perseus becomes the most in-active, active protagonist in history, the device works within the structure of this story.

Deus Ex Machina was also cleverly used in “Donnie Darko.” In fact, Donnie even utters “Deus Ex Machina” as the as the grandma / death paradox plays out. Without the inexplicable addition of the engine falling from the sky, his story would never get moving. Without the Deus Ex Machina, his story can never be concluded.

Also, Charlie Kauffman, like a slight-of-hand-magician, brilliantly used a Deus Ex Machina in “Adaptation.” Not only was Kauffman daring enough to employ this device, he told you he was doing it, while he was doing it. Rather sexy indeed.  In the movie, the character “Charlie Kauffman” desperate for screenwriting advice, goes to see the character “Robert McKee.” McKee guides him, demanding that he not use a Deus Ex Machina in his script. But the actual screenwriter Charlie Kauffman, and the character “Charlie Kauffman” both resort to them in their respective ways. It’s a masterful and clever nod, from a consummate writer.

So, you rebels out there are going, “I am smart enough to pull off a Deus Ex and get away with it.” But you’re not sure how? Build it into the structure of the script. By making the endlessly giving “gods” characters with their own stakes in the script, their interference no longer becomes lazy writing, but clever plotting.

This is not to encourage you to just hand your characters everything they need simply because they want or require it. As a parent you wouldn’t give your kids Oreos for breakfast because you know it’s a bad scene if you do. You need your protagonist to strive and struggle for what he wants, so it can be satisfying to the audience when he succeeds. Remember, for your characters just as it is for yourself, the things worth fighting for are the things worth having, Deus Ex Machina or no.

Printed in “Hollywood Scriptwriter Magazine” July 2005

If you listen to any great raconteur entertain a group of people at a party, he tells his anecdote in a certain way to elicit the greatest emotional response from his audience. Well that, in its simplest essence, is the Three-Act Structure.

By following the Three-Act Structure’s formula, the story teller knows how to introduce the characters, when to create the drama of the circumstances and more importantly, how to get the audience to feel what he wants, exactly when he wants.

Act One is for getting to know your hero, understanding his world, his struggles, and learning what his problem is. Based on a 90 page script, Act One is broken up into a couple of sections. Pages 1-10 contain character introduction, location set up, general opening details. Let’s make up an example for illustration purposes. So, you’ve got a family man, let’s say, a taxi driver from Brooklyn . His ex-wife is a pain and she’s demanding he fetch his daughter’s cake from a Queens bakery before 2pm . By page 10 in Act One you must have the Inciting Event, which is some action that either the protagonist does or something that is done to the protagonist to set his story in motion. In our example, the family man taxi driver picks up a mob guy who dies in his cab and the taxi driver’s now got a kilo of mob coke in his back seat.

Act Two usually begins at page 30 and lasts for the majority of the 90 page script until approximately page 70. Act Two is the hardest section of the script and the place where most, if not all, writers have difficulty because it’s the longest section. This is where all the dramatic pathos is, where the emotionality resides, where the plot complications flourish. So now our taxi driver is on the run, the mob guys are after him, thinking he jacked their coke and they want him dead. Plus he still has to go to his daughter’s ballet recital and stop at the bakery.

So our taxi driver does a creative u-turn and evades his pursuers. It looks like he’ll get the cake after all. However, that forward moving story progress comes to a crashing halt, at the Dark Moment. In a 90 page script, the Dark Moment usually comes in between pages 65-70, and it’s the point in the script where everything is against the protagonist and it looks like the character won’t achieve his goal. So, right before the recital, the taxi driver is carted off by henchmen and is about to get boiled in oil for the coke and it looks like nothing will save him.

However, here comes Act Three to the rescue between pages 75-80. The Act Three act break is a direct result of the dark moment and it gives the character a new chance to rebound from seeming failure. So, maybe our taxi driver hero sees that he can save himself by swinging out harm’s way and in a Herculean feat of strength sending his captor instead into the oil to be French fried. It is this chance that leads the protagonist to the successful resolution of his problems. He makes it to the recital, with the cake, and eventually gives the coke back to the Don. He and the Don make up and our hero’s life is spared. And that is the Three-Act Structure.

Another is example is 1988’s Working Girl, which has perfect Three-Act Structure. This film knows structure and if you’re having trouble figuring it out, check out this movie again and watch for the transition between acts.

Tess is a struggling secretary with dreams of success in the corporate world. However, she’s tacky and no one takes her seriously. So when she gets fired, i.e. the Inciting Event, she has to start a new job, working for narcissistic Katherine. Tess pitches an idea to Katherine, whom she views as a mentor, which Katherine rebuffs.

In Act Two, Tess has to take over for Katherine, who is injured. Tess discovers that Katherine passed off Tess’ idea as her own, and so Tess decides to pose as Katherine’s colleague to get her ideas heard. Tess contacts Jack, a colleague who coincidentally is Katherine’s beau, to put the deal together. Both Jack and Tess are unaware of the Katherine element in their relationship, adding more plot twists and heightened tension for the audience as Jack and Tess fall in love. These are all perfect Act Two details.

The Dark Moment comes just as Jack and Tess are about to succeed and finalize the big Trask deal. Katherine, recently returned from her injury, and having discovered Tess’ scheme, goes and humiliates her in front of Trask himself proclaiming “That woman is my secretary!” Tess, shamed, leaves the boardroom knowing that she’s spoiled her one chance at happiness both for work and love. As part of the audience we shout, “Tess, speak up, don’t let Katherine get away with it!” but you see, if she did, then it would prematurely end the story, providing a less than satisfying climax. But this is not the end of the story. There’s still Act Three to bring us our promised happy ending.

As Act Three begins, Tess is unemployed. But we discover that Jack loves her not Katherine, and he intercedes with Trask on Tess’ behalf. Tess finally has the courage to speak up and vindicate herself. Katherine is fired for her unscrupulous behavior. Tess winds up with a job at Trask as an executive and gets Jack too! This is how Act Three ties up all the loose ends and satisfactorily concludes the story.

The Three-Act Structure is the best story telling tool around. Understanding it, implementing it and using it to your advantage will make screenwriting all the easier because since it’s a formula, you will know exactly where to place the highs, lows and inbetweens. The Three-Act Structure and you are perfect together.