Act One

We call this act the SET-UP, since that is its narrative function, to set up the plot.

From our examples, the recurring moments in the Set-Up are the hero’s ordinary world, the event that disrupts it, and the big reversal that launches the hero onto a new path with a new objective.

Aristotle refers to these Anchor Points as Prologue, First Cause, and End of the Beginning. In modern screenwriting terms, we often call them EQUILIBRIUM, INCITING INCIDENT, and FIRST ACT BREAK.

Let’s look at each in more detail.

Equilibrium

This Anchor Point is not really a singular moment, but a sequence of moments. Think of it as an episodic collection of events that describes and reveals the hero’s ordinary world, whether it’s the world of a moisture farmer living on a desert planet and dreaming of adventure, Prohibition Era Chicago where two out-of-work musicians struggle to make ends meet, or suburban Los Angeles where a lonely boy longs to find respect.

It represents a sort of stasis, how the world is and how it will continue to be until the end of the hero’s life, if nothing comes along to shake it up.

And then, lo and behold, something comes along to shake it up.

Inciting Incident

What mythologist Joseph Campbell terms the Call to Adventure, this event represents something OUTSIDE the character’s normal routine that provokes a change in it. It represents the shift from prologue to story, from sequence to consequence, where we start that snowball rolling down the hill toward the eventual resolution.

Unlike the Equilibrium, it is an event, singular and specific. And just as Aristotle deems it the First Cause, it’s caused by nothing that precedes it and is the cause of all that follows. By definition, NOTHING that happens after this moment could have happened without this event occurring.

Luke discovers Leia’s message. Joe and Jerry witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Elliot finds E.T.

It is the moment we feel in our gut, even if we’re not the least bit conscious of it, “AH, THE STORY HAS STARTED.”

Consequently, this event has repercussions as it forces the hero to make decisions, to take action. It causes Luke to leave the security of the farm to look for Ben, Joe to call up the Poliakoff Agency disguised as Josephine, and Elliot to lure the alien into his room with a trail of Reese’s Pieces.

That response, in turn, causes something else to happen, which in turn causes something else to happen, and on and on, all based upon the laws of probability and necessity—

—until these events lead to the biggest event so far.

First Act Break

This event is a big reversal, a change in direction for the story that deposits the hero in a new circumstance, a new context, one as different from his world at equilibrium as possible. It constitutes the end of the SET-UP, the end of Aristotle’s BEGINNING.

It’s when Elliot, having discovered a stranded alien in his backyard, declares, “I’m keeping him,” thus establishing a completely new familial order. Or when Luke, his family’s farm burned to the ground, agrees to head out with Obi-Wan to aid the Rebellion. Or when Joe and Jerry, having witnessed a mob hit, dress up as women and join an all-girl band en route to Miami in order to escape repercussions.

Screenwriting guru Christopher Vogler calls this moment the Crossing of the Threshold, a very fitting metaphor. At UCLA, we like to call it the POINT OF NO RETURN because it depicts something the hero does or is done to him that prevents him from being able to simply return to the world of his equilibrium. He must now leave it behind and enter the unfamiliar world of Act Two.

But however you term it, it represents the end of the Set-Up since, as of this moment, we have provided all the information necessary to set up the Dramatic Question: Will our hero accomplish his new objective or not?

And structurally, what makes our story whole, complete, and unified is that the rest of it will now be concerned with answering that question. So just as the Inciting Incident made us feel “Ah, the story has started,” the First Act Break event should make us feel “AH, THIS IS WHAT THE STORY IS ABOUT.”

That’s because this Anchor Point, put simply, is the reversal that deposits the hero into the plot of the movie.

Think of it as a metaphorical curtain coming down to signal the end of the Set-Up. The logline, the encapsulation of the plot, has now been established.

And when the curtain comes back up, we’ll be in that plot itself, the hero’s pursuit of their dramatizable objective.

And that’s exactly what is described in the second paragraph of each of our story samples, also known as—

Act Two

Now that we’ve tossed our hero overboard, it’s time to lob those coconuts at him. Aristotle calls this act the COMPLICATIONS, and there’s really no better way to put it. So screenwriters often call the Second Act—wait for it—THE COMPLICATIONS, since that’s the act’s narrative function.

If the first act is about depicting the events necessary to give the hero their objective, the second act is about all the obstacles, reversals, revelations, advances, set backs, subplots, alliances, betrayals, tests, and tribulations, that occur in the pursuit of it.

This act makes up the bulk of the story, and while it often contains several recurring elements that we’ll be discussing at length in Chapter Twenty-Four, it always eventually leads to our next vital Anchor Point.

The Complications culminate in another big reversal, one that constitutes the BEGINNING OF THE END, as Aristotle puts it. And it, too, is a metaphorical curtain coming down on what has come before.

And since this event marks the end of Act Two, we have a clever name for it—

Second Act Break

Look closely at this Anchor Point in the stories we’ve been examining. Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi. The mobsters find Joe and Jerry. E.T. dies.

Are you seeing a pattern?

Try these other Second Act Breaks on for size.

John Book is discovered by the corrupt cops. The only man that can exonerate Andy Dufresne is shot dead in the prison yard. Oedipus calls forth the Shepherd that tells him the very news he’s spent his life desperate to avoid.

Seeing it now?

In all these examples, the second act ends with an event that deposits our hero farthest from his goal. His dramatizable objective, for all intents and purposes, becomes hopeless.

Or take a look at these variations of a Second Act Break.

In the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle, by Jeff Arch, Nora Ephron, and David S. Ward, our hero Annie simply wants to meet Sam, the owner of the voice she once heard on the radio. That is the dramatizable objective of her more abstract goal to find true love, since she believes, as characters in romantic comedies are wont to do, that one will naturally lead to the other. At the end of Act Two, she finds herself across the street from him, her objective within her grasp. But what does she do? Upon seeing Sam’s son happily embrace another woman, she’s overcome with second thoughts, turns tail, and jumps on the next plane back home. In other words, just as she’s about to achieve it, our hero ABANDONS her objective.

Or how about this instance? In one of my favorite comedies, Liar, Liar, written by Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur, our hero Fletcher is desperate to make partner at his law firm. To accomplish this, his dramatizable objective has been to win a divorce case for his horrible client, Ms. Cole. At the Second Act Break, he DOES, and his colleagues congratulate him as partner. He’s accomplished what he wanted. Or has he?

Upon achieving his goal, Fletcher realizes that in order to win, he’s robbed a decent man of custody of his children and left them in the hands of a scheming shrew. And worse, by spending all his time helping this horrible woman, he’s lost the love and affection of his own son, something far more precious to him. Fletcher may have accomplished his objective, but too late he realizes it was a FALSE OBJECTIVE, one that’s left him in an even bigger pit of despair than if he’d failed to accomplish it.

What is key with all these examples, whether the hero FAILS to achieve his goal, ABANDONS that goal, or actually ACHIEVES it only to realize it wasn’t what he wanted after all, is that they all represent a specific event that ends the pursuit of the objective that began at the First Act Break.

And this event, arguably the worst thing that can happen to the hero, invariably results in them wallowing in a deep, dark pit of despair, what my colleague and screenwriting guru Professor Richard Walter has gloriously termed the BIG GLOOM.

So structurally, a story’s two act breaks, the reversal that ends the beginning and the reversal that begins the ending, are bookends to the hero’s pursuit of their objective. The First Act Break begins it, and the Second Act Break ends it. And together, they define the plot and shape its structure.

But that story isn’t done yet.

When the metaphorical curtain comes back up after the Big Gloom, we now find ourselves in the third paragraphs of our story examples, in what we cleverly refer to as—

Act Three

Aristotle breaks this final section into the Unraveling and Denouement, where the hero undergoes his Change of Fortune and where we see the final outcome that results. It’s where we pull our hero back into the boat and discover what he’s become.

And since its narrative function is to resolve the dramatic question we posed at the Set-Up, we call this act THE RESOLUTION.

Looking at the story examples, what are the big events here? Do you see any patterns?

Luke battles the empirical forces to destroy the Death Star, and he does so by trusting fully in the Force for the first time.

Joe and Jerry outsmart an army of gangsters as they’re pursued through the Seminole Ritz. And despite the risk to his own well-being, Joe manages to tell Sugar the truth about himself, something he’s never been willing or able to do before.

Elliot flees the government agents, racing to rescue E.T. and get him safely back to his ship. Along the way, he manages to corral his friends and family into a ragtag group of levitating insurgents, working together with him as the leader, a far cry from the lonely and underappreciated middle child we met at the beginning.

In each of these cases, the act begins from that low point of the Big Gloom with our hero dealing with the consequences of the event that ended the second act. But pulling themselves out of it, they rise from that pit of despair for one final attempt at accomplishing their objective, our next Anchor Point—

Climax

Whether a chase, a fight, a heart-rending confession, or ultimate confrontation, this Anchor Point represents the HIGHEST point of physical and emotional action in the story. It’s where the hero takes one final stab at accomplishing what has become most important to them. And in it, they do something they could NEVER have done before, something that requires the sum total of all they’ve encountered on their journey, something that demonstrates how much that journey has changed them.

And the result of that climactic event is our final Anchor Point—

New Equilibrium

Luke is lauded as a hero. Joe gets Sugar and Jerry gets Osgood. Elliot says goodbye to his friend, knowing that he will always be “right here.” Sniff sniff.

In each instance, a NEW normal has been established, one in which Luke is now a warrior for the rebellion, Joe is a happy monogamist, and Elliot is no longer alone. We get an inkling of what life will be like for our hero, from this point on until the day they die (or find themselves in the inevitable sequel), as a result of all that they’ve done, experienced, and learned.

They have gotten what they NEED, their Change of Fortune is complete, and the dramatic question posed at the beginning has been resolved.

And our metaphorical curtain comes down for the last time. Fade Out. The End.

THAT is what makes a successful structure. It is whole, complete, and unified. It is propelled by the hero’s objective, an objective formed in the first act, pursued in the second, and resolved in the third. A dramatic question is posed at the top, and answered at the end. Our hero has transformed from who he once was to who he needs to be.

And between the beginning and the end, ALL the events are connected by necessity or probability, each causing the next and being caused by the previous, and all united by the central thread of our dramatic question.

Those events, big and small, move the story forward or in a new direction, with the BIGGEST reversals delineating the acts, and thus, the overall structure of the story.

And those structure-defining moments, according to Aristotle, are what we must start with in order to craft our plot, to give it a clear beginning, middle, and end, and to thereby “first sketch its general outline.”

Our six Anchor Points:

These are the plot’s biggest moments, the ones that depict the general outline from which we will next begin to amplify in detail.

And they are the moments that you must first decide upon when crafting the structure of your own story.

So go do that.