The First Ten Pages Test

Most scripts don't get rejected in the third act. They get rejected on page seven, in the quiet moment where a reader stops asking what happens next.

The first ten pages have one job: make the question of the movie unavoidable. Not the plot — the question. Who is this person, what do they want, and what is standing in the way that they cannot simply walk around?

Try this pass on your own draft. Print pages one through ten. In the margin of each scene, write the single sentence a reader would use to describe what the scene is about. If two scenes get the same sentence, one of them is redundant. If a scene gets no sentence, it is atmosphere pretending to be story.

Then check the last line of page ten. It should be the door closing behind your protagonist — the moment the old life is no longer available.