The three-act structure is a way of structuring a story. It essentially breaks down plots into their beginning, middle and end, with some recommendations for what goes in each section.
What are the parts of the three-act structure?
The three acts in question can be briefly summed up as follows:
- Act 1: Setup
- Act 2: Confrontation
- Act 3: Resolution
At the end of acts one and two you’ll have a key moment or plot point that marks the transition into the next act. By the end of act three you (hopefully) have a complete story.
The three acts aren’t necessarily equally weighted. Typically act two will be the chunkiest of the three, with the setup and resolution being shorter.
Act one
The first act of the three-act structure involves introducing the characters and setting of your story. You don’t have to tell readers everything about your world all at once. In fact, please don’t! There should be room for discovery as the story goes on. But you do need to lay enough groundwork that readers will understand the story.
Show them who they’re dealing with in the protagonist. What the protagonist wants to achieve and what’s standing in their way. Enough about the laws of the world and the way it works that they can find their feet.
Act one should also include your ‘inciting incident’, the thing that really launches your story. By the end of act one it should be abundantly clear that there’s no going back for your characters.
Act two
This is likely to be the longest of the three acts. In act two, the stakes should get higher for your story. Your characters will probably undergo a series of small skirmishes and set-backs, but they’ll be moving towards the climax of the story.
This is where you get to fully explore the premise you presented to your readers. If you sold a story about kids battling to the death in an arena, that’s where you’ll spend the majority of act two. A story about an adventure? That’s where you’ll be putting your characters for this act.
In most cases, throughout act two things will be steadily getting worse for your characters. You want to put them in an increasingly difficult position as you prepare for the finale.
Act three
The finale of the three-act structure is your act three, the resolution. This involves two parts really; the pre-climax and the climax itself.
First you’ll have your characters prepare for the climax. This may involve them psyching themselves up for a confrontation, gathering the team to storm the enemy base, etcetera.
And then comes the climax itself. The big battle, the final showdown – whatever you’ve been building towards for the rest of the story.
The conclusion of that climax brings you to the resolution. You can decide how much of the ‘after’ you show to your readers. In most cases you want to give some indication of what will happen next. Readers often want a rough sense of how your characters are left at the end of the story, and what their lives will look like once the dust has settled. But that brings you to the end of act three!
How can you use the three-act structure in your writing?
There are a couple of main ways to use the three-act structure. If you’re a plotter, you can use it when you’re planning. Referencing the structure can help you check whether your story is progressing in a way that makes sense. You can use it to take a rough plot idea and introduce more shape to it, so that you’re creating more of a journey for your readers.
If you’re not much of a plotter, or you’re past that stage, you can also use it while revising! The three-act structure can help you make sure your story is paced effectively. If it takes half the book to get out of act one, something’s gone wrong! You can see whether you need to rearrange or amend any points in your story.
Do you use the three-act structure when you’re writing?
If so, do you use it from the outset or is it something that you prefer to look at when you’ve already got a rough draft? Let me know in the comments!
You may also like
The ultimate guide to redrafting
The beginner’s guide to foreshadowing
0 Comments