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Give a carpenter a truckload of tools and a bunch of wood; he’ll build something. But hand him structural blueprints as well, and the end result will be amazing. Screenwriters work the same way, and the outline is our skeleton. Personally, I enjoy writing a detailed framework – often 20 single-spaced pages brimming with snippets of dialogue - because I find that when it’s time to actually sit down and write the script, I’m able to move through the pages at Formula-1 speed. There is, of course, no magic recipe as to how much you should include in an outline, but the…

From the moment a dramatic situation which contains a grave conflict has been created and has to be resolved one way or the other, the audience begins to guess in what direction the story will develop, accepts the hopes and desires of the main character and, at the same time, begins to realize the abyss in which the hero could crash.