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Screenwriters are constantly being told to “set things up” in their screenplays. The opening scenes, heck, sometimes the whole first act, needs to “set-up the characters, time, place, and establish the world of the story.”

Hmm… We realize, of course, certain things need to be set-up, but we also think this kind of advice is the reason so many scripts from budding writers fail. Whole chunks of the first act end up being spent on back-story—explaining who the main protagonist is, where they work, who their friends are, their love life, their favorite donut shop etc. etc. It’s amazing how often we receive a script in which nothing noteworthy happens until page forty. And the main culprit for this is too much set-up.

So, in this post we’re going to de-bunk the myth of setting-up, and show how you should be writing your opening scenes.

When weaning screenwriters off the tendency to spend their opening pages explaining things, the phrase “Hit the ground running” seems to crop up remarkably often. There is simply no better way to put it—hit the ground running.

In other words, start your script with your protagonist already in forward motion. Something has just happened in the back-story, and when we first see them they are already acting on it. Or maybe nothing happened as yet, but within the next few pages something had better kick off!

It is important to remember that films need to grab an audience’s attention right from the get-go, and the best way to do this is by creating an immediate problem and, therefore, forward story movement. Story should always, ALWAYS, take preference over set-up.

Think back to some of your favorite films. They all seem to throw you in at the deep end of the story, don’t they?

So, you’re writing a script about a sheriff at a coastal town. Do you spend pages setting-up his family life, his friends at the local bar, and his job? And then on page fifteen kick-start the story by making a shark attack and kill someone? I hope not. In Jaws, a girl is dead from a shark attack by the end of the first scene. Chief Brody receives a call from the station telling him about the attack in the next scene. Just eight minutes into the film, Brody’s looking at the dead girl laid out on the beach, and the story is up and running.

As we’ve already mentioned in our post on misused screenwriting terms, Sideways begins the morning Miles leaves to pick up Jack for their trip. There are no setting-up scenes of Miles teaching class, writing his novel in Starbucks, or hanging out with Jack. We find out that he teaches English, has written a novel, and is friends with Jack along the way.

North by Northwest opens with Roger O. Thornhill dictating some notes to his secretary and jumping in a cab. All pretty mundane. But in the next scene he is apprehended by two men who stick a gun into his ribs. All of a sudden, Roger has a big problem, and it’s arrived by the second scene. Where’s the set-up?

Cut the back-story, hit the ground running, get to the main story as quickly as possible and you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of ninety per-cent of aspiring writers out there. We look forward to receiving your trimmed down screenplays very soon!