Alternative Scriptwriting by Ken Dancyger & Jeff Rush (5th edition)
A quick summary of thoughts...
**A Critical Response to *Alternative Scriptwriting* by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush**
"Alternative Scriptwriting" by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush is a long-lived text that explores “non-traditional” approaches to screenwriting, emphasizing storytelling methods beyond the conventional Hollywood three-act structure. The book has undergone several editions… I’ve owned and read the first edition and the fifth. This response is to the fifth (published by Focal Press in 2013).
Reading *Alternative Scriptwriting* by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush was is both illuminating and frustrating. On one hand, the book offers genuinely useful frameworks for thinking beyond the traditional three-act structure. On the other, it occasionally veers into gate-keeping nonsense, needless academic-speak, and the need to (as inherent in the title) claim what they are discussing is somehow unusual and must be referenced back to/in spite of the 3-act structure.
Instead they could spend a single page, hell, just a paragraph to point out the fact that it’s just how Hollywood (a stand-in term here for ‘The West’) has settled on telling stories through film in the mid-late 20th century. A storytelling style that has since gone on to infect every medium and be applied as a “standard” and/or at its most egregious: the definition of “good storytelling”.
One of the most valuable contributions is its breakdown of how characters can function outside of those '“standard” narrative roles. The discussion of main characters as observers, catalysts, or antagonists (e.g., *Full Metal Jacket*, *The Talented Mr. Ripley*) broadens the writer's toolkit in meaningful ways. I also appreciated the practical tools—like assigning all characters to one of two thematic “camps” to clarify narrative stakes, or the rewriting exercises that challenge point of view and expectation. These ideas felt grounded, usable, and creatively generative.
The book is most successful in encouraging structures that foreground ambiguity, resonance, and social context over clean character arcs. Its critiques of the traditional three-act structure—especially how it often erases historical, social, or economic pressures in favor of “individual transcendence” and the ironic change arc (what they call the ‘restorative arc’)—are incisive. The idea that motivation is over-privileged in these structures, often to the detriment of consequence, ambiguity, texture, and depth, really resonated with me. Their analysis of how some narratives remove major character decisions from the screen in favor of showing consequences (e.g., *She’s Gotta Have It*, *Badlands*) was a particularly strong insight and a methodology I hadn’t before considered.
Other strong insights are that the 3-act structure force a certain willful blindness from the Protagonist. In the 2nd act the main character isn’t aware of what we know about them. This obliviousness generates dramatic force at the expense of self-awareness. (And, I’d add, thus the absolute need for the isolation of the main character until a convenient moment for them to learn.)
And then in a concise take down of the McKee “Inciting Incident” concept: “At first glance this appears to bring us closer to the characters but it does not. The first act transgression places us safely outside the story.” (Morrison thought: this means we get the echo of reality but we still sit on high… a comfortable place of judgement and/or anticipation at best.) “[If you write] without such a clear-cut first act climax/inciting incident we are not pre-positioned and we have to work constantly to reassess the meaning and the relative morality of the character’s actions.”
History as Backdrop and failings in the 3rd act: “Once the character stops fighting herself (beginning of the 3rd act) she tips the plot in her favor and eventually triumphs. This form of scriptwriting doesn’t account for the particular historical, social, political, economic, and familial circumstance that also condition fate… the three-act structure privileges the individual over any social, historical, economic, and familial limitations.” ‘Enff said there, eh?
But then there’s the tone. At times, the authors present themselves as gatekeepers of what counts as “serious” or “alternative” cinema—there’s a whiff of white-dude pessimism masquerading as profundity. Their disdain for theme as a structural element, for example, feels dismissive of writers who use theme with intention and nuance. And some of the language—describing structure as necessarily “artificial” or leaning into vague definitions of “alternative film”—feels like academic posturing. It was hard not to roll my eyes at moments where cynicism is presented as wisdom. A particular bug-a-boo of mine.
I will give them HUGE props for this simple statement that is almost always missing from these books (and extra props for taking a shot at *Jurassic Park*’s Strong Female Character ‘feminism’: “JP is not advertised or thought of a s a political film, it conveys, as do all films, a political meaning nonetheless.”
Good on ya, gents!
In the end, *Alternative Scriptwriting* is most valuable when it stays practical and exploratory. Its strength lies in helping writers see new paths (with multiple, strong autopsy1 examples for those that like that kind of thing). I walked away with tools and ideas I’ll use—but also with a strong sense of where I diverge from its worldview.
If you’d like a solid book with some solutions that can get lost in the weeds in terms of tone and endless autopsy work (instead of exercises to get us to actually WRITE like this)… pick it on up!2
(PS: There is a 6th edition with another author added… *GASP*… a woman! Jessie Keyt. It was published by Routledge in 2022.)