The Paradigm
Three acts held together by two plot points.
A screenplay changes direction when an event makes the current course impossible to continue unchanged. Field’s Paradigm uses major plot points to connect the setup, confrontation, and resolution. It helps you ask what launches the central action and what sends it toward an ending.
How it works
Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979) brought the stage’s three acts to the screenplay and measured them in pages, roughly 30, 60 and 30. Two plot points, one late in each of the first two acts, turn the story in a new direction. In The Screenwriter’s Workbook (1984), Field added a midpoint and a pair of pinches to support the long middle.
The Set-Up (0–25%) establishes the characters and the dramatic situation. Inside it, the Inciting Incident lands about 9% in, within ten pages, and Plot Point I at 22% (pages 25–27) swings the action into Act Two. Confrontation fills 25–75% with obstacle after obstacle. Pinch I at 37.5% (around page 45) recalls the central conflict, and the Midpoint at 50% (page 60) splits the act in half. Pinch II at 62.5% (around page 75) ties the second half together. Plot Point II at 73% (pages 85–90) spins the story into the Resolution (75–100%), which holds the climax and its aftermath.
Field’s plot points sit just before the act lines, close to where Snyder later put his act breaks at 23% and 77%, and his pinches at 37.5% and 62.5% match the pinch points in Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering and Dan Wells’ Seven-Point Structure. What stands out is how little the Paradigm names. There is no beat for the lowest point, and the climax is folded into the Resolution. Half the story sits under the single word Confrontation.
The Paradigm fits feature screenplays first, and its midpoint and pinches help any draft with a slack middle by bringing the central conflict back at regular intervals. Because Act Two gets a single label, its contents are up to the writer. A finer tool such as Gulino’s eight sequences can break that half into pieces small enough to outline, with Field’s plot points still holding the frame.
The framework, part by part
Positions are illustrative comparison references, not universal timing rules.
- Set-Up (0%–25%, Ordinary world): Characters, dramatic premise and situation, established in the first 30 pages.
- Inciting Incident (9%, Inciting incident): The event that sets the story in motion, inside the first ten pages.
- Plot Point I (22%, Commitment): An incident that hooks the action and spins it into Act Two, around page 25 to 27.
- Confrontation (25%–75%, New world): The hero meets obstacle after obstacle while pursuing the need.
- Pinch I (37.5%, New world): A reminder of the central conflict, around page 45.
- Midpoint (50%, Midpoint): A link in the chain of action that splits Act Two in half, at page 60.
- Pinch II (62.5%, Pressure mounts): A second reminder that ties the second half together, around page 75.
- Plot Point II (73%, Final push): An incident that spins the action into Act Three, around page 85 to 90.
- Resolution (75%–100%, Climax): The climax and what follows; the story’s dramatic question is answered.
Use it for
Feature screenplays, and any story whose middle sags.
Watch for
Act Two is half the story; the word “confrontation” leaves you to fill it.
See how your story works.
Explore 30 approaches to story structure through short films and illustrated guides. Bring an idea or a draft, build your outline, and compare how different frameworks organize its events.
Free to use. No account needed to write. Save a backup to keep your work.
A short film on every structure
Each of the 30 structures has a 90-second animation that draws its shape beat by beat, and a page with every beat, how its parts work, questions to try, and when it can help. Start with one you’ve heard of.
All 30 structures on one timeline
Each row is one structure. The story runs left to right, from the first page (0%) to the last (100%). Bars are beats that last a while; diamonds are single moments. Drag the red line to any point, and the list below shows the nearby beats in each structure.
- Bar: a beat that lasts a while
- Diamond: a beat at one moment
- Red line: the point you’re reading
- A blank stretch: that structure names no beat there
- Act II-A and II-B are the two halves of Act Two, split at the midpoint.
Rows 1 to 13 follow Robert Carlson’s Ultimate Story Structure Chart (2015). Rows 14 to 21 are the structures readers of that thread asked him to add, and rows 22 to 30 are nine more we added. Positions combine source conventions and editorial estimates. Use them to compare approaches; they are not universal timing rules.
† Credited on Carlson’s chart. We found no primary source; the tree line is also credited to George Abbott and George M. Cohan.
Outline your story in any structure
Choose a framework and give its prompts a few sentences. Compare suggested placements in other frameworks to find a useful question or a different way to develop an event.
Pick a structure you know
Not sure? Try one of these, or any of the 30.
Write a sentence for each beat
A beat is one turn in the story, like the Catalyst that knocks your hero’s life off course. Each beat comes with a question to help you answer it.
Compare another framework
The comparison suggests where your notes could fit. Review each match. You decide which prompts matter to your story.
We wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a Save the Cat! outline. These excerpts from our outline of Baum’s 1900 novel show how suggested placements change between frameworks. Unmapped prompts describe this partial outline, not a flaw in Oz. Pick any structure you know and try it with your own story.
Sketch your story’s ups and downs
Kurt Vonnegut drew stories as a line that rises when things go well for the main character and falls when they go badly. Draw yours from left to right and we’ll name the classic shape it’s closest to.
Take it to the page
The free 91-page guide has the full chart, a chapter on each structure, printable worksheets and beat calculators for films, episodes and novels.