21.18: Deconstructing the Three Act Structure

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3:14If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com slash Writing Excuses. Season 21, Episode 18.

3:28This is Writing Excuses.

Deconstructing Three Act Structure

3:30Deconstructing the three-act structure. Tools, not rules. For writers, by writers. I'm Mary Robinette. I'm Dong Wan. I'm Erin. And I'm Howard. And I'm very delighted to have a longtime friend of the podcast back with us, Margaret Dunlap. It's delightful to be here. Thank you for having me. So one of the reasons we wanted to bring Margaret in for these is that besides writing prose, Margaret is also a screenwriter working in Hollywood. And today we're going to be talking about the three-act structure, which is a classic structure.

4:05One of the ways that it was popularized was by a book by Sid Field in 1979 called Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting. So the way he describes it is that the three acts are the setup, the confrontation, and the resolution.

4:24Act one, act two, act three. I would get very salty about the whole idea of a three-act structure because I'm like, three acts, act breaks come from theater and you need them to move scenery around. So when you, you said that you have actually read this book. Oh, I have indeed. I am aging myself by admitting that. But yeah, no, when I was first coming up, taking my first screenwriting courses, that was like, that was the Bible of the time.

4:56Can you talk to us a little bit about what you think it, like, the, the, let's, I guess. No, what is the three-act structure really, Margaret? You also said that in a way like you had no opinions about this book whatsoever. I also want to clarify that like it came out in 1979. I was not reading it in 1979. It just took a while for there to be a lot of popular screenwriting books. Like that market was wide open for a long time.

Establishing Normal

5:22So, so as I understand it, the first act is about establishing the main characters and their relationships in the world they live in. Sometimes this is called, you know, describing normal.

5:36I've seen several failure modes of describing normal in early manuscripts, early career manuscripts. Can, can we talk about like what, why we want to do that in that first act? Yeah, sure. We can do that. I didn't mean to cut you off there. It's a, no, I think, and you talk about the failure mode of, it's like the ordinary world. If people are familiar with Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, which was also very big at the time of, it's like,

6:06oh, it's the hero's journey. And we've had many discussions on this podcast about the hero's journey and these strengths and weaknesses thereof. But there's this idea that you're starting in the ordinary world. Like to get the audience on board, what's going on? Who are these characters? Why should I care about them? Why am I invested in this story? You have to let them know what the status quo is. And I think for writers who are early in their own journeys, it can feel, it's like, well, nothing's allowed to happen starting out

6:40because I have to set up what's going on and where things are. And it's like, and you do have to set up, you know, what's going on and who are these people and what does their day-to-day look like? But at the same time, that doesn't mean that things can't be starting to change or starting to be in flux. It's exciting things can still be going on. But I think there's this idea of like, okay, in, you know, in screenplay format at the time, the first 25 to 30 pages were just sort of tootling around to find the plot, as it were.

7:11And that just, there was also a time when pacing was slower on these things. And now that's, if you are a writer of a spec screenplay, that's not going to fly. Like, you've got to let, you know, your reader know. You need to do something a little more interesting well before the 22-page mark. But by, honestly, before page five, like, you've got to let people know, like, what story are we reading?

7:41What is going on? And that's just, you know, the way that storytelling, and American storytelling specifically, and I think this is also somewhat true on the fiction side as well, has just evolved. There is an expectation of, you're going to let me know, like, what is the story going to be about? What is, you know, at least an idea of the main action that might evolve? But like, what are the stakes? Because that really is what gets your reader invested of knowing, it's like, okay, what am I worried might happen?

8:12And what do I hope will come to pass instead? Yeah, and as I understand it in the original idea, that this establishing of stakes is basically posing a major dramatic question. Like, is the boy going to get the girl? Are they going to stop the terrorists? And that the answer is going to be either a yes or a no. Um, when, when I'm dealing with, uh, with openings, um, and as I said, I, I, I bounced very hard off of the idea of the three-act structure, but I, when we've been doing the

8:46deconstruction of it, I'm like, oh, okay, I see the elements that are common in other things that I do have like a thematic problem, even if it's not the big problem. And it usually escalates from there. Like if it's a story that's going to be about a haunted house, there's a squeak and they can't figure out where the squeak is coming from. And so there's that disruption of normal, but it's not the big one yet. This, as you were saying that, it made me wonder if this is why so many, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like so many rom-coms, uh, start at a wedding that is not the protagonist

9:20wedding because it establishes like, this is the thing. Like we are all about love, but this person doesn't have it. But by the end, they will. And like, therefore, you know, in that first five pages, exactly the realm that you're in at least. Yeah, exactly. It's like, my sister's getting married and, and I'm stuck at her wedding without a date. And it's like, and that sets up that dilemma. And by the same token, when we've started, when we talk about, uh, cold, cold opens with action, um, we have an action scene that, that resolves in, you know, some sort of success

9:58typically. And, and that describes to us what normal is. This is an action movie that will end with the heroic resolution of the story. Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes when we talk about a salvation normal, it can sound kind of flat, right? It can sound kind of like, you know, this, the character going to school and experiencing his normal life or whatever it is. But I think a recent example of an action cold open that establishes the new normal or the existing normal in a really effective way is K-pop demon hunters, right? We start with this incredible musical fight scene on an airplane that they jump out of, and then

10:32they perform their concert. And we get all of the stakes that are being set up in terms of, you know, establishing the Hanmun, like all the big global stakes, the world building, but then also the personal stakes over that opening sequence of what, what do they stand to lose? What do they stand to gain? Which ends in a reveal of the true stakes for the main character of, you know, her needing to keep her secret and then accomplish this big thing so that she can go back to being normal or she can become quote unquote normal for the first time.

11:02I also, because, you know, we talked about how pacing and expectations for storytelling have changed, but also, you know, even if you're looking at some sort of classic Hollywood examples, which is sort of movies that Sid Field was talking about when he did this sort of structural breakdown for screenplay, you know, you look at a movie like Chinatown or Citizen Kane, like, you know, Chinatown starts with, you know, our lead character, he's showing photos of the wife having an affair to his client and his client being like, I'm going to kill

11:33her. You're allowed to do that. It's, it's an unspoken thing. And it's like, you think you have that kind of money in class, you jerk? Like, no, rich people are allowed to kill their unfaithful wives. You, you are not. And that sort of, it sets up his job. It sets up the theme. We know immediately what he does. And it's not long after that Faye Dunaway shows up or that I, it's been a while since I saw Chinatown, but like, since he gets in, you know, that gets him involved in what's going to be the main case of the film. Your mention of K-pop Demon Hunters made me think that like musical theater is like, this

12:08is most music, not all, but many, many musicals start with this sort of like, here is the world and let me know. It lets you know. Here's the thing we do. Here's the thing. And it's, it's interesting because it works on a couple of different levels. One is to literally tell you like, here is the setting, here is the general vibe, but also musically, it gives you a sense of if you are at Les Miserables or if you're at Hamilton, you're going to get very different opening songs. If like Les Miserables began with a hip hop opening, you would be really confused to the

12:39rest of the time when it went into opera and you were like, when is it coming back? I can't tell right now what Lin-Manuel Miranda's Les Miserables. Or that's my worst nightmare. I'm not sure which. I feel very torn. I'm a hundred percent in. When you said that, I immediately thought of Bonjour from Beauty and the Beast, which is literally, let me run down this whole town for you. Exactly. Let me talk trash about the entire town. But really pretty. She just has beef with everybody. That baker on site.

13:09Make a different bread and roll. My question for this is like, what is the version of that that we're doing on the page? Like, how do we let people know whether they are in Hamilton or whether they are in Les Mis? What's the kind of story that they're going to be getting? Like, I talk about this a lot. And from purely crass commercial, you have to hook the editor when you're starting out that within the first 13 lines, you need to have some reason for us to care.

13:42That, like, my first three sentences, I'm attempting to ground the reader because sometimes people just don't read past those first three sentences. Sometimes it is setting up the overall theme of the thing, but I want them to know sort of who we're going to spend time with, sort of where we're going to be, and the genre slash mood that we're in, which is what we're talking about establishing with these. It's just, it's just, I think we're talking about establishing the same things. It's just the, the metrics that we use for marking how and when we get them in are somewhat different.

14:17It's all about stakes, always. So we're talking about all of these things that are supposed to happen in act one. And one of the things that is confusing about it, I think for, was confusing about it for me was thinking that act one had to be a third of the book. And that is not the case. So you can do an act one that is very fast and then get into the middle of it. And that, I think, is going to take us to our break. And then after the break, we're going to talk about act two.

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17:40ForHERS.com slash women. Weight Loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. WeGovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, WeGovi clinical study information, and restrictions, Visit ForHERS.com If the world were like a Sleep Number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, Sleep Number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night.

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19:01All right.

Act 2 Discussion

19:02So we're going to talk about Act 2. As we've mentioned, these things don't have to be proportional.

19:09Act 3 is going to be one minute at the end. So brace yourself. So in Act 2, according to this original, Act 2 is the rising action. And typically it's describing, I'm honestly looking at Wikipedia for this. Typically it's depicting the protagonist's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point. The turning point is often like an inciting incident or something that causes the, forces the protagonist to get more active.

19:42So now they are, now they're dealing with this, they've got this big problem. We're doing some more character development and they're attempting to deal with their, you know, confront the problem in this confrontation scene. So what are some of the, what are some of the pieces of this Act 2 that, that we've got to juggle and, and look at?

20:13Yeah. I think what's interesting about that description of Act 2 as the rising action, which, you know, with looking back with experience, like, oh yeah, I can see what that's going towards, but it's, it's also in the Fieldian analysis. Act 2 is about half your screenplay pages. So at the time you thought of a screenplay as 120 pages. Now, if you're writing a screenplay, 120 pages is probably too long, but you'd have like 30 pages in Act 1, 60 pages of Act 2, and then 30 pages of Act 3.

20:45And Act 3 is clearly where the big exciting climax happens. The quick resolution happens. Like, that's all going to be very exciting stuff. And it's like, so, so what the heck do I do with this vast 60 page desert in the middle of my screenplay that is described as rising action? And I think I was talking to Howard one time when I was visiting you guys and you were talking about it. Who is it said described Act 2 is where all the fun, exciting things that are going to be in the trailer happen? Because it is the bulk of the movie or the story or the novel.

21:17Like, this is actually, you know, where the process is the point. You know, it's the... It's where your try-fail cycle typically goes. It's where your try-fail cycles happen. It's, I frequently would break down for my students talking about Shakespeare on a kind of five-act model. And it's, you know, you look at Romeo and Juliet, they meet very early. They get married in Act 2. People forget how quickly that happens in that play. Like, there's that idea of like, oh, it has to be rising up to the big thing.

21:48It's like, no, other things can be happening. It's, as Howard said, it's the try-fail cycles. It's one thing I think about a lot when I'm reading pitches, right? Because the pitches will often be very good at establishing Act 1 information of who are these characters, what are the stakes, what are the world. And a lot of times I'll come back with, okay, but what are they doing in this book? Like, what's the actual, like, meat of the book? Like, cool concept, love the concept, love these characters, the vibes through the roof, but what are we actually getting into? And I think being able to give some indication of that

22:19and having a sense of that. And sometimes when you hear about what the meat is, you're like, oh, that sounds actually very boring, never mind, right? And so I think being aware that the bulk of your book is this Act 2 phase and that needs to be interesting and dynamic and engaging is actually something that's quite difficult to do. This is when we start talking about soggy middles and things like that. The classic, Margaret, correct me if I get the numbers wrong, 47-minute TV episode? Is it 43?

22:49I don't know. 47-something. But the classic application of three-act structure there is Act 1, commercial break, half of Act 2, commercial break, the other half of Act 3, commercial break, or the other half of Act 2, and then Act 3. And it's really useful for me in thinking about three-act structure to deconstruct it in that way and to carve Act 2 into two pieces.

23:20Because in a lot of, in a great many TV shows, that Act 2 commercial break is, you know, your dark night of the soul. It's, it's the, it's a big crisis. It's a big reveal. It's a big something. And just being able to put a pin in that and say, hey, about halfway through Act 2, I'm going to start the other half of Act 2 and I'm going to start it with something big. And actually, thinking about it that way,

23:50it makes me wonder, I think the false solution, when I was thinking about what happens at like a, I also love this world where there's only like four Act, only four commercial breaks in a show. I'm like, oh, that was beautiful those days. The halcyon days. Now they're like every three seconds, jump scaring me with RSV. But like the, sorry, you could cut that. But like, it's the false solution. Like I think about like Law & Order episodes, for example, where it's like the Act 1 you're talking about, it's like finding the dead body.

24:20And then they're like, aha, we caught the person like, and then it's like, but for blah, blah, legal reasons, we can't just throw them in jail. We have to do the other half and like figure out and do all of our legal shenanigans to get something happened. Or in Star Trek, when you solve the first thing, but then it breaks something else on the ship when you reverse the polarity. And now you're like, oh no, no negative is positive and positive is negative. How do we deal with that? Yeah. When I was teaching screenwriting and I would frequently teach

24:51the writing the television pilot class and most prestige TV these days is on formats where you don't necessarily have that network commercial breaks where, you know, there were three, there were four, there were five, there were however many we can put in before we get in trouble with the FCC. And I would always say like, write your pilot with Act breaks and then pull them out. Because what those breaks do is like when you're writing to the break or to the turn at the end of the act,

25:22it's that thing that's going to propel us forward into what's happening next. I sometimes describe this as the solution that creates the next problem.

25:34One thing I wanted to flag as we're getting deep into this conversation is, you know, I think there's a lot of failure states of this three-act structure, right? You can have soggy middles, you can have boring openings, like all these things. To return to K-pop Demon Hunters again, that movie is one of the most classic examples of an application of three-act structure. Literally the first, you know, I think it divides very evenly in terms of the percentage that we're talking about in terms of one quarter being Act 1, half being Act 2, one quarter being Act 3. And part of the reason I think that movie hits so hard

26:05is because of its adherence to really classical storytelling structure. And it does it in a really dynamic, fun, contemporary way. But I think that's a great example of when you can see this working, right? And when it hits, by God, it hits. You know what I mean? Our brains love that structure. It's very satisfying to have that normal, rising conclusion. And I think the failure mode of that is where we don't think about what happens in the middle. So I often think about the things on the outside as framing what is happening in the middle.

26:36Like, as you say, the bulk of the story happens in the middle. And so the beginning and end set it up. But we spend a lot of time thinking about how is it going to start? What's the big thing that's going to happen at the end, the conclusion? And for me, since like switching from my background in theater to my background as an art major, it is like purchasing the frame before you figure it out what the painting is.

27:00So when we're thinking about this midpoint, one of the things that I find very, the midpoint of the act, act two is I find it very useful to think about what problem are they trying to solve and how are they trying to solve it? And those give you things that you can escalate as opposed to how long do I have to wait until I get to my really cool thing, my climax? Yeah. Something that I found useful in working through act two was actually something that I came across in a book I read in college about directing for the theater.

27:34And one of the things that this author was talking about was like you have a play and it's like everything's going great and it's a tragedy though. So it ends, you know, it ends on a down note. And it's like, and you've been working on act one, and you've been working on act one and then you go and you work on the second half and you're working on act two and then you put it together the first time and all of the energy in act one is just gone because all your actors are thinking about the fact that they know how this is going to end. And I think as authors we can do that as well.

28:04It's like whether you're an outliner or you're going back later to sort of shape things and you got through this more by the seat of your pants, it is that feeling of like, well, I know where this is going so I know that all of this is just marking time to get to what's really going on and you really have to sort of, you know, for me, I have to force myself in terms of like, I know, but my characters don't. So what are they doing with the best information they have at the time? Because like they don't know where they are in the book.

28:34We know the reader knows, but they always have to be going on like, no, no, this is the bit that's going to work. Sometimes you can really feel that in terms of like, the writer knows the inevitable conclusion to all of this. So there becomes a real like, yada, yada, yada to the middle part, right? Of just like, and I've seen people do this on a micro level too where an action scene is happening and they'll just be like, yeah, yeah, some fight stuff happens and then here's where we're at two at the end of it. You know what I mean? And it's like, I don't know, that's kind of the bulk of it. You can't ignore act two. But with that, should we start talking about moving on to conclusions?

29:06One quick thing first, I just want to say, I was trying to figure out like, well, how do you not do that? And I think one way is to trick yourself into creating small little like act one, two, threes within your act two. Like, because in some ways, like trial, try fail cycles are like figuring out what it is that's wrong, trying it and then failing. And the fail is the fun act three. And then you just build one upon the other. It's sort of like in a relationship, you're like, oh, my relationship is stale. We're going to introduce date night because we're going to actually like create like a little mini version

29:36of our romance that's going to happen in the middle of our bigger lives together. I use that, that idea of the many things. When I'm looking at the big thing in the middle, I will look at barriers or obstacles between the protagonist and the goal. And then each barrier has try fail cycles that go with it. So the barriers are like a macro version. So like in order to get to something, I need to get through this door.

30:06But then there's these smaller try fail cycles that are involved in getting through the door. I try the knob, it's locked. I try the key, it breaks off in the lock. I get a crowbar, I get it open. And now there are bees on the other side of it, which is my next barrier. In a few weeks, we're really going to dig into using microcosm to sort of illustrate all this on a macro scale. And I think that's going to be a really fun conversation. Two words that help me understand why Act Two has to be there are traversal

30:36and transformation. I have to traverse the terrain. I have to climb the mountain. I have to do whatever. There are obstacles. And I have to transform myself along that journey. Those two things have to happen. If the story didn't require them, then you go from Act One to Act Three and you're done. If the story does require them, then allow us to enjoy them. The traversal is interesting. The transformation is passionate.

31:06And that's why I love having just those two words on tap for me to remind myself of why Act Two should be there. I'm glad you said that because I think that this is an important thing that these are ingredients of the three-act structure. But not every story is a three-act structure. And this is one of the reasons that we wanted to do this deconstruction. So let's move to our last act,

Act 3 Discussion

31:29which is Act Three. And Act Three, according to Sid Field, is called The Resolution. So The Resolution, according to the Wikipedia of The Resolution... You really came up with dynamic names for all of these, didn't you? This feels good because it's going to be exciting. Yeah. I actually really like it because they are so much more descriptive than the seven-point plot structure, which we're going to get to with Dan later, which is like... Lots of pinching

32:00and un-pinching. I'm like, I don't know, I don't want that much pinching.

32:05So in the Act Three, the third act, we've got The Resolution of the story and its subplots. But we also have the climax, which is where things are brought to kind of their most intense point. And we answer our dramatic question, according to Wikipedia, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a nuisance of who they really are. And thank you to whoever this anonymous Wikipedia person was. So these are beats

32:35that we see in other things. With Act Three, that idea of the climax happening there, that's, again, a thing that I think a lot of people sort of struggle with and then struggle with what to do after that because now everything has been solved. So what are sort of some of the, I guess, the nuances of Act Three?

32:58I, wow, that you were saying that and I'm thinking like, oh, I should say something smart and I'm just going like, do you want to take a second? If I may, if I may. Go for it. I don't like the word climax because it fits in so many other domains. I prefer the word confluence. I prefer thinking about all of the things that have been happening arriving at one point so that lots of things are kind of happening at once. That's not a perfect description of it, but in my mind,

33:30it helps me sort things out a little better and helps remind me that I have a lot of threads that have to be tied together. You remind me of when we had Lou Anders on many seasons ago. You all can, we'll link to it in the show notes, but the Hollywood ending that at the end the hero reconciles with the viewpoint character, defeats the villain and solves the problem, which is basically what we're talking about happening here at the climax that, oh,

34:01we feel better about ourselves or not, depending on the type of... Depending on how it goes. Yes. Depending on the type of the show.

34:10Bad guy gets just desserts and whatever the problem is, everything's okay now. Or not. Or not. Yeah, it's... When I was... My first TV show I worked on The Middleman for, at the time, ABC Family, which was a delightful and bonkers experience, but one of the writers in the room introduced a term of art that has always stuck with me because we'd be breaking the story, you know, working out what's going to happen, what are the scenes, how is it going, and they'd always reach the point where, like,

34:40we're getting towards the end or we're working backwards and it's like, okay, we know what the big, you know, conflict resolution is going to be. It's like, we're confronting the boy band that is actually a bunch of intergalactic dictators trying to get back to their home galaxy. We have located the cursed tuba of the Titanic and we have to prevent, you know, this guy from playing it or else all of us will, you know, drown in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Actual episodes. And then,

35:10and Hans Beimler would always be there. It's like, and then it's the mad dash for the logo referring to, you know, the showrunner sort of vanity card at the end of the, it's like, we do that and then it's like, you've got a little bit of time to like, you know, if you want to put that nice little button, a nice little sort of like, you know, maybe there's like a B story that you have to resolve like Wendy and Lacey, her roommate, have had a conflict and she comes back from saving the world and is like, yeah,

35:40here we're going to have our moment and then just boom, you're cutting out. And I think in short fiction, that's really useful to remember because there is that expectation of like, we're hitting you, bam, and then, you know, there'll be a nice little graphic at the bottom of the paragraph to let you know that it's over. It's funny that you said like hitting you because I've, to continue with a lot of violence that I have in my soul, one of the things that I think is that I sometimes see in writers' work is that it's like

36:11you punch someone in the stomach and then you walked away before you actually got to see the expression on their face. So you do want to linger like just long enough to kind of get it because if you punch the reader and then like they don't have a chance to actually like process it on the page, sometimes they process it at your page, which you don't want and then they hate you and your story. You want to give them a moment to breathe. Not a long moment. You want that scene of aftermath, but just a moment. Yeah. There's a really great video essay that's about Hong Kong action scenes

36:41on every frame of painting where he talks about how you see the punch land three different times, right? And then, because you see it and then you see the thing and then, you know, you see the consequence of the thing and it's really important to make space for that, right? And one of the nice things about novel versus screenwriting is you have a little bit more space for that denouement. You have a little, I mean, we talked about this a bit in the Hero's Journey episode, but the scouring of the Shire, right? You have time to go back and sort of see who are these characters now that they've gone through their transformation

37:11and to close out that arc. I mean, Lord of the Rings has 1,000 character arcs that need to be resolved, which is why the ending of that book takes so long. And in a novel, you don't always want to go that deep with it. But you have a little bit more space and a little bit less of a sprint for the logo, as you put it, than you might have in other media.

37:31Well, speaking of the sprint for the logo, I believe that it is time

Homework Assignment

37:36for homework.

Homework Assignment

37:36So for homework, what I want you to do is I want you to take a fairy tale, just a classic fairy tale, Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, any of those, and diagram it out as a three-act structure just to see what it would do. Do you need to add elements to it in order to make it fit that? So give that a try on something that's already existing out in the world. And with that, you are out of excuses.

38:08Now go write.

38:11Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. For this episode of Writing Excuses, your hosts were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dong Wansong, Aaron Roberts, Howard Taylor, with special guest Margaret Dunlap. This episode was engineered by Marshall Carr, Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds. For more information, visit writingexcuses.com.

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39:08If the world were like a Sleep Number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body