Three Act Structure and Scene Layout in Action

Surrey International Writers’ Conference was Linda Gerber’s four act structure talk (which I’ve mentioned in a previous post, and she broke down Juno and, in my humble opinion, she got it wrong. No offense intended to Ms. Gerber, I think she’s a wonderful person and a great speaker and I really enjoyed that session. I just wanted to break Juno down the way I felt it should be broken down, which is substantially different than hers.

Throughout my breakdown, I’ve cherry-picked what I consider are the integral scenes from the story. They are “emotionally charged, turning-point scenes” that the backbone of the story hinges on. Analyzing them is important.

Okay, so without further ado, here we go:

Juno by Diablo Cody

Plot Summary

The movie is best summarized by its tagline: “A comedy about growing up… and the bumps along the way.” In fact, this is an important view of the movie when it comes to deciphering what the actual climax is (as we shall see).

ACT I

Setup

We meet Juno MacGuff, a witty teenager probably too smart for her own good. The story opens with a Juno voice over of the prophetic words: “It started with a chair.” Then we flash back and see what happened in the chair. Juno and her friend Bleeker (who is a friend with benefits) had “benefits” in it. It’s a chair that is now in a front yard with Juno seated upon it drinking Sunny D.

Inciting Event

Juno soon finds out what she expected: that she’s expecting. She’s preggers.

Debate

Being pregnant leaves Juno trying to decide what to do about it. She tells her friend, Leah, who just assumes she’s going to get an abortion. She asks Juno if she wants her to call the clinic for her. Juno says she’ll call herself.

Juno tells Bleeker, the baby’s father, that she’s pregnant. He asks what she’s going to do about it. She eludes, in a very Junoesque way, that she’ll be “taking care of it”–if it’s okay with him, that is.

He says he guesses that it is.

On Juno’s way out the door to the abortion clinic, we meet Juno’s dad and stepmom, Bren, who’s obsessed with dogs.

There’s a single protester at the clinic. Juno knows her. They strike up casual conversation before Juno goes inside. As Juno walks away, the protester (Su-Chin) yells, “Your baby probably has a beating heart, you know. It can feel pain. And it has fingernails.”

Inside the clinic, Juno finds the clinic very “clinicky” (which is a word I just made up). Juno looks at all the other women, sitting, waiting for to go inside. Suddenly, all she can see is their fingernails. Su-Chin has got to her. The next thing we do is cut away to Leah entering her friend Leah’s house, out of breath and sighing.

She couldn’t follow through with it.

ACT I/ACT II Pivot Point

Juno decides to put the baby up for adoption. She’s made a decision that she knows is about to change her immediate and possibly her far ranging future.

ACT II

Unlike a lot of stories, our subplot doesn’t start right away. Instead we have Juno and Leah going through the Penny Saver ads looking for adoptive parents for her baby. They find a couple that sounds promising.

We cut away to Bleeker in his bedroom. His mom calls to him, telling him that Juno phoned for him earlier. We discover that she doesn’t like Juno very much.

Meanwhile, Juno and Leah break the news of Juno’s pregnancy to Juno’s dad and her stepmom. They tell them about Juno wanting to put the baby up for adoption. Surprisingly, her parents take the news quite well. Her dad says he’s coming with her to meet these prospective new parents. Juno agrees that’s a good idea.

We meet the couple, Mark and Vanessa. They are perfect. They have it all: a good relationship; a nice house; they live in a nice neighbourhood; the whole shebang.

There’s a lawyer present for the meeting. Everyone decides on a closed adoption. So far, things seem to be going swimmingly. In fact, the only reason we’re not bored as an audience from lack of conflict is due to the witty writing which is extremely good.

Subplots

The one and only subplot in the movie takes off now. It will become a very important plot line throughout the remainder of the story.

B Plot: Juno finds out she has common interests in music with Mark. The two of them end up in Mark’s bedroom discussing it for a short while with Juno checking out Mark’s music equipment. This Juno/Mark relationship can be considered the B Plot and it starts now. From here on in, I’ll mark the beginning of any sections where we switch from the “A” plot to the “B” plot and vice versa.

Raising the Stakes / Building the Tension

A Plot: At school, word starts to get out that Juno’s pregnant. However, nobody realizes Bleeker is the father of the baby.

ACT II Midpoint

Time moves ahead pretty quickly. We get to Juno’s five month ultrasound. Juno sees her baby for the first time. Bren is with her. We see that their relationship is far from the stereotypical daughter/stepmom relationship when Bren sticks up for Juno after the ultrasound technician says something insulting to her. It’s an emotionally high point in the movie.

Continue Raising the Stakes / Building Tension

Both plot lines continue to rise in tension as they weave back and forth.

B Plot: Juno goes to visit Mark and Vanessa on her own so she can show them the pictures from the ultrasound. Vanessa isn’t home. Juno and Mark wind up watching a horror movie together. They have a lot in common. The audience gets the feeling there might be something happening between them.

Vanessa comes home and finds the two of them together. By her reaction, we get the feeling she thinks there is something between them, too.

Mark and Vanessa walk Juno back to her car and Vanessa mentions she’s worried Juno might back out of the deal once she has the baby. Juno says she won’t.

When she gets home, Bren gives Juno shit for going to Mark and Vanessa’s. She says it was inappropriate.

A Plot: Juno goes to Bleeker’s and finally tells him about the private adoption situation she’s hooked up. She says nobody’s going to tell his folks it’s his baby. Bleeker says he’s relieved by that.

B Plot: We cut to Mark and Vanessa’s house. Vanessa’s painting the baby’s room. Mark tells her she should wait. It turns into a fight.

A Plot: Juno and Leah go to the mall and spot Vanessa there. Juno tells her the baby is kicking and let’s Vanessa feel it. Vanessa says it’s magical.

B Plot: Juno’s on the phone, talking to Mark about a weird CD he made her that she’s been listening to. We’re really getting the feeling that something’s growing between them.

A Plot: Juno finds out Bleeker is going to prom with another girl, Katrina De Voort. This pisses Juno off, even though her and Bleeker are supposed to be just “friends with benefits”. She winds up taking a side of him in the hallway at school.

B Plot: Juno drives in anger to Mark and Vanessa’s house. When Mark answers the door, the first thing she asks is: “Is Vanessa here?” Mark’s answer: “Nope. We’re safe.” Juno: “Cool.” All this dialogue completely points to a covert love affair in the works.

Darkness Closes In

Mark tells Juno he has something for her. He gives her a comic with a pregnant Japanese girl on the front, kicking ass and taking names. The comic is called Most Fruitful Yuki. Mark puts on some music. A slow song comes on he says he danced to at his prom. Juno says she can just picture him slow dancing like a dork. She mockingly places her hands on Mark’s waist and begins to move back and forth. Soon they are dancing.

All is Lost

Juno’s belly bumps up against Mark. Mark says, “I feel like there’s something between us,” and they both laugh. Juno puts her head on Mark’s chest and he pulls her close and says, “I’m leaving Vanessa.”

Juno freaks out about this. We find out, as Juno is yelling and Mark is defending, that Mark did indeed have feelings for Juno, but those feelings were not reciprocal. Mark suddenly realizes Juno is just a teenage girl and calls himself an idiot. Juno begs him not to get a divorce. She wants him and Vanessa to adopt her baby.

On her way out the door, Juno passes Vanessa who asks her what’s wrong. Then Vanessa asks Mark why Juno’s crying. Then, right in front of Juno, Mark proceeds to tell Vanessa that he doesn’t think he’s ready to be a father. Juno runs to her vehicle and drives off.

Dark Night Before Dawn

Juno pulls over to the side of the rode and buckles over the steering wheel, crying–unwinding for the first time since she became pregnant.

Everything has changed now. All hope she had about having a normal life again after all this is now lost.

ACT II/ACT III Pivot Point

Once again, Juno’s life has been turned upside down. She had spent Act II becoming used to the idea of being pregnant and that she would be giving up the baby at the end of her pregnancy. Now she’s forced to re-evaluate everything she’s gone through up until this point. She’s re-evaluating her relationship with Mark and Vanessa (especially Mark). And she’s re-evaluating her decision about not having an abortion in the first place.

Act III

The scene cuts to Bleeker in his room with his guitar and then back to Juno. When we’re back to Juno, she’s laying on the hood of her car, contemplating her future. The camera pushes in as she gets an idea.

Subplots Intertwine

Hopping off the hood, she rummages through her vehicle and finds a crumpled up Jiffy Lube receipt. She unfolds it and pulls out a pen, ready to write something . . . At this point we’re basically back to a single plotline.

The Climax

We go back to Mark and Vanessa’s and see their relationship wrapping up. They’re being coldly civil to each other.

There’s a loud knock on the front door.

Mark opens the door and sees Juno pulling away in her van. There’s a folded piece of paper on the doormat. He unfolds it and holds it up the wrong way. “It looks like a bill from Jiffy Lube,” he says.

Vanessa takes the note, turns it over, and reads it. “It’s for me,” she says.

That’s the climax. It’s a pretty passive climax and actually ends without resolution until later in the denouement, but we know something wonderful was written on that piece of paper. It’s enough of a climax for a small movie like this. In fact, it’s perfect.

Now, let me pause here and say that some of you might be tempted to say that the climax of the movie is when Juno has the baby. After all, that’s a pretty intense part, right? Sure, but it’s not the climax of the story. The story is about Juno growing up. The story’s been all about her getting pregnant and figuring out what to do with the baby, not having the baby. It’s for that reason, I think the actual birth belongs in the denouement and not here.

The Denouement

Juno meets with Bleeker and divulges that she is actually in love with him. He tells her he feels the same.

We move ahead to Juno lying in her room, staring at the celing. Suddenly, she sits up, thoroughly freaked out. She finds her father and tells him her water just broke.

Juno has a baby boy. Vanessa is at the hospital. She gets to see her son. Juno and Bleeker decide they don’t want to see him. He never felt like theirs.

Juno shares a special moment with her dad.

The scene cuts to the nursery in Vanessa’s house, focusing on an antique rocker. There’s a Juno voice over, matching the one that opened the film: “It ended with a chair.”

The camera pans past a framed note on the wall (it’s the handwritten note Juno left on the doorstep on the back of the Jiffy Lube receipt). It says: Vanessa–If you’re still in, I’m still in. Juno.

The final image of the film is Juno and Bleeker sitting on the street curb with Bleeker playing guitar and the two of them singing.

And that’s that.

Notice that Juno doesn’t follow the three act structure rules I laid out earlier to a T. Diablo Cody begins ramping up the suspense and tension even before we transition into Act II with the trip to the abortion clinic. She also puts off the launching of the subplots in Act II until after Juno and her friend have a chance to find a couple suitable to be the adoptive parents of Juno’s baby.

This is an important point that cannot be emphasized enough: the structure is flexible. You can play with it. It’s there to be molded any way you want. Form follows function, always remember that. Do not force your story over some skeleton it simply doesn’t want to go over.

One last item of note: if Linda Gerber happens to see this post, I would love to hear some feedback as to what she thinks of my breakdown compared to hers, as, like I said, they are substantially different.

Until next time,

Michael out.