3. Choose The Right Moment For Your Climax
I think this is simple point, but perhaps deceivingly so. In the case of Django Unchained, Tarantino wrote what feels like the climax to the movie - in which Django battles Calvin Candie's army - about 30 minutes before the actual end. And you know what? It would've made a good finale, but after that, the movie keeps going, and QT doesn't offer us anything else even remotely as exciting in the aftermath. Cue an ill-judged sequence that includes the movie's director in an embarrassing cameo, and you've wasted what could've made for a truly great climax. That's to say, once something like that aforementioned shootout has happened, it's safe to say that you've pretty much spent much of your audience's patience: we associated such things with the ending of a movie inherently (and after two hours, even more so than usual). A smaller battle might've made sense instead, followed by a larger one in the closing minutes. The way QT writes it is certainly strange, though, and emerges as a valuable lesson in script structure - it proves that sometimes adhering to some kind of established rule works, even if you are Quentin Tarantino. Once we've reached the "climax" of your script - and this goes especially for a genre film - it's important to lead into the finale as neatly as possible. You don't, after all, want audiences itching in their seats because you decided to play to your ego.