According to his New York Times obituary, when Syd Field died in 2013, the license plate on his BMW read “PLOT PNT”– his contribution to Humanity.
Syd has influenced millions, including myself. I was one of the legion to read his book Screenplay, to outline my scripts using index cards, to learn about his “paradigm” and “plot points”, to know my ending before I even started writing page 1.
Quoting from the obituary: “The term “plot point” appeared in The New York Times fewer than 10 times during the century or so before 1979. Since then, it has appeared more than 200 times.
It happens that 1979 was the year Syd Field published “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting,” a book that over the next three decades became widely regarded as the “bible” of screenwriting, the paperback enabler of Hollywood dreams.”
He’s one of those Script Gods that helped inspire this site, though I doubt my little blog actually aided in his demise.
My love affair and falling out of love with Syd Field and his methodology can be found in a new article up on Script Magazine. You can find it here.
“Plot Points” are the least destructive of Syd Field’s ideas. I find scenes more appropiate to moving the story along than “plot Points”. But the idea of “acts” in a script can only slow the movement down. I watch this braking of the story in countless films. Shakespeare would be appalled at the act breaks inserted in his stories. He would find them silly and destructive. Acts were invented by producers in the 17th century to take control of the sets and scenery being employed at the time not to help script writers.