Screenwriting skill for Claude Code: story circle, but/therefore, three acts, scene craft

Screenwriting-SKILL.md

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screenwriting

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Story structure and screenplay craft. Use when writing, outlining, breaking, or critiquing a screenplay, teleplay, stage play, sketch, short film, pilot, or any narrative scene work — and whenever an outline, beat sheet, treatment, logline, or scene sequence is requested. Applies Dan Harmon's Story Circle, three-act/five-part dramatic structure, the "up a tree" conflict test, and the "but/therefore" causality rule.

Screenwriting

Structure first, dialogue last. A scene that sounds great and does nothing is cut.

0. The prime test: is this a story?

Get a character up a tree. Throw rocks at them. Get them down.

• Up the tree — put someone who wants something in a position they can't stay in.
• Rocks — every attempt to get down makes it worse. Escalation, not repetition. Rock 3 must be worse than rock 1, and worse because of what they did about rock 1.
• Down — they get down changed, or they don't get down. Either way the way down costs something.

If nothing is up a tree, there is no story — there is a situation. Situations are the most common failure: interesting people, interesting world, nothing at stake, nothing escalating.

Run these on every draft:

• Want vs. need. What the character is chasing (want, external, stated) vs. what would actually fix them (need, internal, unstated). Great endings make them trade one for the other.
• Whose story is it? The protagonist is whoever changes most, not whoever is on screen most.
• What's the pressure? Something must make waiting impossible — a deadline, a rival, a leak, a body.
• What does the antagonist want? If the opposition isn't pursuing its own coherent goal, it's an obstacle course, not a conflict.

1. But / Therefore — the causality rule

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's rule: between any two beats you should be able to say "but" or "therefore." Never "and then."

Bad: This happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. Good: This happens, therefore this happens, but this happens, therefore…

• Therefore = consequence. The previous beat caused this one.
• But = reversal. The previous beat's outcome is blocked or inverted.
• And then = a list. Events in chronological proximity with no causal spine. Cut or rewrite.
• Meanwhile is an "and then" wearing a hat. Allowed for parallel plotlines, but the two lines must eventually collide causally.

How to apply it: write the outline as a single run-on sentence with only "but" and "therefore" as connectors. Any beat that only accepts "and then" is either the wrong beat or in the wrong place. Do this before writing a line of dialogue, and again on the finished draft as a diagnostic.

A good rhythm alternates: mostly therefore inside a sequence (momentum), a but at each act break and scene turn (reversal).

2. Dan Harmon's Story Circle — 8 steps

The Hero's Journey compressed into a repeatable cycle. Draw a circle, split it in half horizontally (order above / chaos below) and vertically (comfort left / change right).

1. YOU — A character in a zone of comfort. Establish who they are and what they lack. (Order, comfort)
2. NEED — They want something. The lack becomes conscious; something disturbs the equilibrium.
3. GO — They enter an unfamiliar situation. Crossing the threshold. This is the end of Act One.
4. SEARCH — They adapt to it. Trials, road of tests, new rules, new allies. The fun-and-games middle.
5. FIND — They get what they wanted. The apparent prize — usually a false or costly victory. Midpoint through Act Two.
6. TAKE — They pay a heavy price for it. The cost of the prize, the all-is-lost, the death of the old self. End of Act Two.
7. RETURN — They go back to where they started. Carrying the thing, chased by the consequences. Act Three.
8. CHANGE — They have changed. Master of both worlds — or destroyed by the trip. The proof of the change must be demonstrated in action, not stated.

Rules of thumb:

• 1–4 is descent, 5–8 is ascent. Step 5 is the bottom of the circle, not the end.
• Step 8 must rhyme with step 1: same situation, different person. Show the same choice made differently.
• The circle works at every scale — series, episode, act, subplot, even one scene. Nest them.
• For a comedy or a sitcom, the character often lands at step 8 unchanged, and that failure is the joke. But you still ran the circle.
• Each subplot gets its own circle; the B-story circle should thematically restate the A-story's.

3. Three acts / five parts

Three acts is the shape. The five-part dramatic structure (Freytag) is the movement inside it. They map onto each other:

Act	Part	What it does	Rough share
I	1. Exposition	Ordinary world, want established, inciting incident, choice to go	25%
II-A	2. Rising action	Complications escalate, allies/enemies, midpoint reversal	25%
II-B	3. Climax (of the middle) / crisis	Highest pressure, all-is-lost, everything the hero used stops working	25%
III	4. Falling action	The new plan, the final push, consequences unspool	~15%
III	5. Resolution / dénouement	New equilibrium, proof of change, the button	~10%

Load-bearing hinges — if these are soft, the script is soft:

• Inciting incident (~10%): the thing without which the story doesn't happen.
• Act One break (~25%): the protagonist makes an active choice to enter the new world. Not "gets dragged." Harmon step 3.
• Midpoint (~50%): a reversal that changes the goal or reveals the real stakes. Reactive protagonist becomes active. Harmon step 5.
• Act Two break (~75%): all is lost; the old self dies. Harmon step 6.
• Climax (~90%): the protagonist alone, choosing want vs. need, using something learned in Act Two.

For stage plays, the same five parts hold but scene count is the unit: a common shape is five scenes — setup, complication, crisis, reversal, resolution — with act breaks placed where the audience needs a lobby. A one-act runs the same five movements without the intermission. Stage climaxes are verbal and confined; film climaxes are physical and mobile. Write for the constraint.

4. Scene craft

Every scene is a mini-story and must turn. If the value at the end of the scene (safe→threatened, together→apart, hopeful→broken) is the same as at the start, the scene is exposition wearing a costume.

Per scene, be able to answer:

• Whose scene is it? What do they want in this scene (the objective)?
• What's in their way?
• What changes by the end — the turn?
• What's the but or therefore linking it to the scene before?

Craft defaults:

• Enter late, leave early. Start after the greeting, cut before the goodbye. Cut on the turn.
• Conflict in every scene, even friendly ones — competing objectives, not necessarily shouting.
• Subtext. Characters say what they can afford to say, not what they mean. On-the-nose dialogue is the most common amateur tell.
• Show, don't tell, but specifically: don't have characters narrate their own emotional state or backstory to someone who already knows it.
• Exposition goes in the mouth of someone who is angry, seducing, lying, or in a hurry.
• Every character wants something, even if it's only a glass of water.
• Character voice test: cover the character names. If you can't tell who's speaking, the voices aren't differentiated.
• Enter/exit the scene on an image or a line that pays. Cut on the strongest beat.

5. Working order

1. Logline — one sentence: when [inciting incident], a [flawed protagonist] must [goal] or else [stakes].
2. Theme as a question, not an answer. The ending answers it.
3. Story circle — the 8 steps in one line each.
4. Beat sheet — 12–20 beats across the three acts, hinges pinned to their percentages.
5. But/therefore pass on the beat sheet. Rewrite anything joined by "and then."
6. Scene list / outline — one line per scene: who wants what, what turns, and the but/therefore.
7. Draft. Dialogue is last and cheapest to change.
8. Diagnostic pass — run §0, §1, and the scene-turn test over the draft.

6. Format quick reference

Standard spec format — 12pt Courier, ~1 page ≈ 1 minute of screen time. Feature ≈ 90–120 pp; half-hour ≈ 22–35 pp; hour drama ≈ 55–70 pp.

INT. DINER - NIGHT

A near-empty room. RAY, 40s, hunched over cold coffee, watches
the door like it owes him money.

The bell jingles. MARGARET enters, soaked.

                    MARGARET
          You didn't call.

                    RAY
              (not looking up)
          Phone's been busy.

She sits. Takes his coffee. Drinks it.

                    MARGARET
          For six years?

CUT TO:

• Sluglines: INT./EXT. LOCATION - TIME. Caps. New slug on every location or time change.
• Action: present tense, active voice, only what the camera sees or the mic hears. Short paragraphs — 3–4 lines max.
• CHARACTER NAME in caps and centered above dialogue; caps the first time a character appears in action lines.
• (Parentheticals) sparingly — only when the reading is genuinely ambiguous.
• Avoid camera directions (PAN, CLOSE ON) unless directing; imply the shot with what you choose to describe.
• Stage plays use a different format (character name flush left with a colon, stage directions in italics/brackets, act & scene headings) — ask which medium before formatting.

Anti-patterns

• Situation instead of story — nobody up a tree.
• "And then" outlines — episodic sequences with no causal spine.
• Passive protagonist — things happen to them through Act Two.
• Talking heads — scenes that trade information but never turn.
• Solving the climax with a new element, a coincidence, or a character who wasn't set up.
• Stating the theme aloud in dialogue.
• Flashbacks or dream sequences doing work a present-tense scene should do.
• Ending at step 6 and calling it dark. Steps 7–8 are still owed, even if the return is bleak.