Sixteen
The Three Acts

Let’s Break It Down

Before we proceed, a word of caution.

Structure is not a formula.

Writing a good screenplay, or a good story in any medium, is not like constructing an IKEA^® Kejsarkrona. It’s not about plugging the right plot point into the right pre-determined slot, though students of mine are often anxious for that simple solution.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been asked on what page such and such is supposed to happen. If it were that simple, if there were a foolproof equation, we’d all be screenwriters and we’d all be gazillionaires.

Unfortunately, there isn’t. And we’re not.

However, there do exist observable patterns in the stories that have stood the test of time, stories we’ve agreed are worthwhile from a commercial or artistic perspective. And it is these patterns that form the basis of the structure that Aristotle describes.

Still, as often as I’m pressed for the illusory (and nonexistent) formula for proper structure, I’m equally besieged by students who are resistant to these patterns. They don’t want to even know about them, let alone emulate them. To these students, the very notion of an observable pattern is a formula, one from which they want to run screaming. THEIR story doesn’t need to adhere to it, THEIR story is special, unique, and can’t be pigeonholed into any traditional structure, however time-honored or universal.

Oh yeah, and THEIR story will usually suck.

As my esteemed UCLA colleague Paul Chitlick put it, as we commiserated about those stubborn students, “Look at all the cars in the parking lot. The Porsches. The Range Rovers. The Mini Coopers. No one’s going to confuse one with another; they all look completely different. But do you notice they all have ROUND TIRES? Those round tires are what allow each of those cars to move. No reason to make them a different shape. Round tires work.”

And that sums up traditional structure.

There’s a reason for these observable patterns, a reason they exist from story to story and have persisted throughout the millennia, from before Aristotle first identified them, all the way to this very moment. And that reason is—they WORK.

And they work because, as Aristotle notes, there is a natural way to tell a story.

Truth is, sound structure is invisible to your audience. They don’t notice it when it’s functioning correctly because its rhythms and harmonies feel organic. But boy do they notice when it’s not.

They might not be able to put their finger on what is wrong, but something feels off. And what’s not working is simply that the big moments that shape the story aren’t happening in the right order or in the right place or with the right emphasis.

And before you start shouting out names of movies that eschew the structure Aristotle describes, yes, some contemporary writers do indeed stray from it, and sometimes do so with effective results.

But Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Christopher Nolan’s Memento, and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, just to name a few, are the rare exceptions that have found success. The vast majority of screenplays that forsake these patterns, whether by intentionally subverting them, as in the above examples, or through simple ignorance of them, invariably go the way of the countless ill-fated dramas Aristotle rebuffs, long forgotten, if they ever even saw the light of day.

Bottom line: Ignore Aristotle’s observations of sound, satisfying structure at your own peril. And if you do, be darn sure you’re aware of the consequences. You have been warned.

And now assuming you’re not one of those aforementioned stubborn students—after all, you did pick up this book for a reason—let’s stop discussing the value of this structure and start breaking down exactly what it is.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know we’ve already described traditional structure in general terms. It derives from Aristotle’s definition of drama from which we began—that a good story has a BEGINNING, a MIDDLE, and an END.

These are the three individual components that make up the whole of the story. And as screenwriters, we’ve come to know them as simply ACT ONE, ACT TWO, and ACT THREE.

Sure, you can divide a story arbitrarily into the two acts of Hamilton, or the five acts of Hamlet, or the six acts of a Law and Order episode (with teaser and tag). But we are not talking about commercial breaks or chances to change scenery or get folks to order more Junior Mints. Those “acts” aren’t about story at all, but about the practicalities and economics of the particular medium in which the story is told.

But most good stories, strictly in terms of the constituent parts of their narrative, are told precisely as Aristotle describes, in three major movements.

Hmm, you say, but isn’t this pattern true of any phenomena that moves through time? As we’ve said before, saying that something has a beginning, middle, and end seems so self-evident as to be meaningless.

Ah, but the true value of this structural paradigm derives from Aristotle’s observations of the unique nature and purpose of each of those acts.

Take this story for instance:

A screwdriver walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, we have a drink named after you.” The screwdriver replies, “You have a drink named Murray?”

Badump bump. Like I said, don’t forget to tip your servers.

Or try this story on for size:

I was preparing for my dinner party when, suddenly, the cat threw up on the rug. I tried everything to clean it up, but nothing worked. Finally, I used Karpet Klear; it cleaned the stain and the party was a huge success.

And finally, check this one out:

Investigating corrupt cops, John Book gets mortally wounded and finds himself recovering in an Amish farming community. While hiding out, he falls in love with Rachel and decides to make a life for himself there. But soon, the corrupt cops find him, leading to a final showdown where Book and his new friends use the lessons they’ve taught each other to prevail.

The stories I just related may have gotten more complex, but do you see the general pattern? It’s there in a joke, a commercial, and a film. First we establish the circumstances of the story. Then some difficulties develop. Then things get resolved. And according to Aristotle, that is the fundamental structural pattern that exists in every good story.

Pose a dramatic question, discuss it, answer it.

Give a hero an objective, let him pursue it, reveal the outcome.

Or again: Toss a man overboard, pelt him with coconuts, drag him back in.

Accept it, embrace it, rejoice in it!

But we’re just scratching the surface. Structure is all about breaking something down into smaller components to see how they function both individually and together to create the whole. So to truly understand these acts, we need to more closely examine the structure that exists within each.

So let’s do that.

First, Aristotle breaks down Act One, the Beginning, into two components, the PROLOGUE and the FIRST CAUSE.

The PROLOGUE is not backstory, neither is it events that precede the narrative or occur outside of it. Rather, it’s the initial section of any drama that establishes the characters and their everyday world before the actual plot kicks in.

Then once that world has been established, something that “does not itself follow anything by causal necessity” comes along to shake it up. This FIRST CAUSE is a sort of Big Bang since no moments prior have caused it, and just as importantly, nothing that follows could have happened without it. It starts the chain reaction of cause and effect, of probability and necessity, which now links every subsequent event.

And it leads directly to Act Two, the Middle, which Aristotle refers to as the COMPLICATIONS.

In this section, we see the repercussions, the struggles and conflict that arise in the aftermath of that First Cause event. It forms the bulk of the narrative, depicting the journey of our hero in pursuit of his dramatizable objective, and it takes the story all the way up to the section that precedes the hero’s CHANGE OF FORTUNE.

So Act Three, the END, consists of the events that extend from the start of the Change of Fortune all the way to the narrative’s final resolution. Aristotle also breaks this section into two components.

First comes what he calls the UNRAVELING, the part of the story that dramatizes the consequences of all the prior complications, particularly focusing on the transformation of the hero. Following that comes the DENOUEMENT, the section that reveals the new situation that’s arisen from that transformation, and which “has nothing following it.”

For Aristotle, those are the big structural units of a good story well told, the components that make a plot whole.

So let’s recap what we know about sound structure so far.

The story begins at a definitive, non-arbitrary place. And it ends at a similarly specific spot. And everything that happens in between leads from that first event to the last, from who the hero is at the start, to who they are at the finish.

It is broken into three major components: the Beginning (made up of the Prologue and the First Cause), the Middle (made up of the Complications), and the End (made up of the Unraveling and the Denouement).

And this story has a certain magnitude, consisting only of the events necessary to affect the Change of Fortune and answer the dramatic question posed by the hero’s objective. Remember Aristotle’s admonishment, that if you can remove any part without the whole thing crashing down, you remove it since it doesn’t belong. Then what you are left with is simply what does.

So with ALL that in mind, let’s take an even closer look at structure by continuing to break down these larger components into even smaller ones, and by identifying the key moments of reversal and revelation that help determine where each begins and ends.

And for goodness sake, let’s stop with all the dang theory and generalizations and have a look at some actual movie plots, and see if we can discern the observable patterns that Aristotle describes.