Plot is a confusing thing, guys. It doesn’t matter how many explanations, breakdowns, or theories you read, turning your crazy creative ramblings into something that even remotely resembles a cohesive whole is not an easy thing. To make matters worse, there is no one way to do a plot. Everyone has their own approach, their own method, for turning their ideas into those wonderful things we call books. There are literally as many ways to write a story as there are words in the world. The trick is finding a few of those ways that work for you.
Today we’re going to be looking at a version commonly referred to as Three Act structure.
Three Act structure is one of the most popular ways to explain story structure. It divides the story into three main parts, or “acts”, which, generally speaking, serve the same function across the majority of stories.
If you’re reading this post, I’d say odds are pretty good that you’ve heard of Three Act structure before. Maybe you heard about it through another blogger (K.M. Weiland does absolutely stunning explanations of this theory), a book (James Scott Bell presents his own interpretation of this in his book, Plot and Structure), or perhaps your favorite author uses it and has discussed it before. Or maybe you’ve never heard of it before in your life and were simply like “Ooh! Story structure! I could use some of that in my life. *click*”. That’s totally ok! This post is still for you because, however you may (or may not) have heard of it, it’s likely that you still have some questions about how exactly Three Act structure works.
I’m hoping to answer a few of those today.
This is not your typical plot post, chock-full of fancy terms and gloriously organized formulas. Don’t get me wrong, those are wonderful (and I highly recommend you read at least a few of those in your life) but, in my experience, the fancy words and formulas tend to confuse the heck out of people. Readers of such posts get so hung up on understanding the formula (“Wait, how exactly does the inciting incident factor into the First Act again?? Is it before or after the first plot point??!”) that they miss the whole reason why Three Act structure works. The whole reason why it applies to so many plots, so many authors, and so many genres. It’s not because of the fancy words, the beautiful diagrams, or even the beloved formulas. No, it’s because of one thing:
Motivation.
The Three Act structure is a strategic way to, quite frankly, make your character’s life absolutely and utterly insane. To take an average person and force them to run the gambit you have planned. It’s about the people. About the change you want to inspire within them. And quite frankly, it’s just common sense.
And that’s what today’s post is all about.
Welcome to Three Act Structure, common sense style.
Let’s get started.
So basically what you've got going on in Three Act structure is three "acts", which are essentially your beginning, middle, and end. These acts are further broken up into more specific plot points - things like your inciting incident, first plot point, climax, yada, yada. Anyway, I like the Act idea because it kind of helps me see the three main stages of your plot. But, for this, I'm going to try and explain them a little differently.
Your first act, or your beginning, is, well, your beginning. You can start off fast (I've literally read books where the first line is the inciting incident) or a little slower (think Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief or J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) but however it goes, you usually want to (and will instinctively have) four things: the "normal life", the “hook”, the “inciting incident”, and the “first plot point”.
The normal life is, well, your character's life at the start. Maybe they're a regular teenager and go to school every day. Maybe they're a space pirate and are trying to rob a ship. Maybe they hate their grandma and are trying to kill her (you never know, man). It's them being how they would be if the book never happened. Their normal life could be crazy (maybe it's war time and they're being bombed), pretty normal (maybe they're biking to school), or maybe it only lasts one line ("I blinked and she was gone" <--- essentially the first line of that one book I mentioned earlier), but it's normal to them. It's what they were, are, and will keep doing unless they get a mega kick in the butt that forces their life in another direction.
That, the beautiful little kick in the behind, is what we like to call the “inciting incident”. Unfortunately, this term is really confusing and... not very helpful. K.M. Weiland takes a beautiful approach to it that I find much easier to work with. In as simple terms as I can manage, here’s what it is:
The “inciting incident” as we think about it is not one event, but three. While K.M. Weiland calls it the “hook”, the “inciting incident”, and the “first plot point”, you can think of it as the shift, the change, and the kick in the butt.
The “hook”, or shift, is usually your first scene. Your character is living their normal life - la dee da dee da - when something a little strange happens. Maybe they’re scrolling through the black market’s webpage, trying to figure out what space ship to rob next, seeing requests from the same old buyers, when, all of the sudden, there’s a request from an unknown user. And the reward is $10,000,000. Your character’s eyebrows would probably shoot up.
They can still go back to their regular life after this shift (it’s not that crazy, it’s just kind of... odd) and nothing will probably change but... it’s a little out of the ordinary. Huh.
Using an example from one of my favorite series, The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, this would be Prince Kai showing up at Cinder’s booth. It’s certainly not something that happens everyday, but it’s not going to change her life. She’ll fix the android, say goodbye, and go right back to living.
In a more popular example, this would be Elle’s special dinner with Warner at the start of 2001 movie Legally Blonde. Being proposed to (or expecting to be, at least) certainly isn’t something that happens everyday, but it’s definitely not outside of Elle’s normal life. This is something that she has expected is going to happen for quite a while. Sure, her life will change a bit after this but it’s all part of the plan.
But wait, the whole point of a plot is to change your character’s lives, right? Of course! That’s why we’re writing these things! Which is why we need more than just a shift.
We need some change.
A little after your shift/hook we have the change. The change is the point at which your character’s life really, well, starts to change. Things were odd before but now they’re just plain different. After this, they can’t quite go back to normal, though they will certainly want to.
In the random space pirate example, this might be when (after taking the odd job and going to rob the ship), he discovers that the "cargo" he’s going after... is a little girl. Huh?
His life isn’t really changing (he could easily ditch and shake off the oddness later) but it’s just enough of a change that... things aren’t really normal anymore. He steals jewels. Not people.
This is your real inciting incident. It’s when things start rolling. It can often take the form of a call to adventure (“Dear Mr. Potter, we are pleased to inform you...”, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) or meeting a new character (Buzz, Toy Story) or sometimes it’s a death (Peony, Cinder) but whatever it is, it’s enough that it’s not just odd, it’s actually changing the way your character is living their life.
But the thing is, it’s still their life they’re living at this point. It may be changed, but it’s still relatively normal and they’ll probably do everything they can to make it as close to it was before as humanly possible.
But no, character! If you go on trying to keep your life all calm and normal, you’ll never go through the epic adventure we have planned for you! How on earth can I get you out of that ridiculous rut you have??
The answer to that, my friends, is what we call the first plot point.
Also known as the “pinch point” or the “first doorway”, the first plot is the mega kick in the butt I was talking about earlier. After this, your character’s life will never be the same. It’s what you do to them (or make them do to themselves) to make it so that they cannot, no matter how much they try, go back to their normal lives.
In Cinder, it’s being volunteered for the Cyborg Draft.
In Legally Blonde, it’s finding out that Warner is engaged.
In the space pirate example, it might be when people attack and your guy makes a split second decision to take the little girl with him, escaping on a different ship when his own is destroyed in the ambush.
Your character may be happy about this change (you’re a wizard, Harry!) or they may not be (You can’t volunteer me!) but they kind of don’t really have a say. Their life is changing and, whether they like it not, they’re being kicked straight out of normal and right into the second act (James Scott Bell calls the first plot point the “first doorway”, or a point of no return that forces them into a new life).
The “Second Act” is basically another way of saying your middle. This is the longest part of your story and it’s where the most things tend to happen. There are two important things in here: try/fail cycles and your midpoint. Once again, these are fancy ways of saying things that are pretty much common sense. Let me explain:
So, you’ve set your story up. Your space pirate and little kid are stuck together, facing the ruthless attackers. Great, that’s what you want the whole story to be about. The whole reason why you’re writing this novel is setting it up so that your good guys defeat your bad guys (or maybe your bad guys defeat your good guys, I dunno, whatever you want, man). So great, your Second Act, your middle, is where this has started to happen. They’re fighting the people. (Or at least heading in the right direction to do so, lol.)
Now, of course, you can’t let your bad guys be defeated on the first try (what on earth would your end be??) so your good guys have to try and, well, fail. This is where try/fail cycles come in. They’re the points at which your characters try - and fail - to reach their goal. Joss Whedon’s 2015 masterpiece Avengers: Age of Ultron is a good example of this. After Ultron has gone all nuts (first plot point, mega kick in the butt, whatever you want to call it), the Avengers have to stop him. Sweet. But how many tries does it take? Like, a million. I mean, they try when he first shows up (and fail) and then try again when he’s stealing the vibrainium (and REALLY fail) and then, my goodness, how many times do they even try to kill him during the whole flying city thing? It’s virtually impossible to count.
Anyway, try/fails are pretty much what your middle is made of. There’s usually all sorts of other insanity going on (#sub-plots!) but, generally, your middle is all about your characters trying to achieve their goal and sucking at it.
At least until your midpoint.
Before this, your characters will still probably want to get back to their normal lives. I mean, it’s just common sense. They may have decided that they’re really, truly, going to escape from their evil stepmother (Cinder) but have no idea how to do it. Or they may have heard about this strange villain before but not actually met/decided to fight him yet (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone). Your midpoint is that deliciously evil event where you have your character decide that now, now this war.
It doesn’t have to be crazy (though it certainly can be) but this is the point where you want to make it real. Make your characters irrevocably invested in assuring that they meet their goal. This is motivation to the extreme.
I don’t know what your midpoint will be but you know it did its job if, after it, your character is willing to see this through to the end.
(Side note: Sometimes midpoints are hard to pinpoint (such as in Cinder, where I’m pretty sure the midpoint is actually Iko being dismantled) and, especially in series, they don’t really happen until later (the point at which Cinder actually decides she wants to defeat Levana (the villain) is probably the end of the second book) so don’t stress too much about making sure you have any one ‘specific’ point. Just make sure your character is motivated enough to do whatever they have to do to complete their goal.)
This will lead you into the second part of your middle. While your characters are not quite at the climax yet (that’s Third Act stuff!), they’re so invested in their goal that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish it. The second half of your middle is all about setting that up. Here comes the final battle. Plans are laid, armies are prepped, ready, set ---
Second plot point!
This is where we get to be crazy evil author peoples. This is the wrinkle - the huge, earth-shattering problem - that we throw at them right before The End.
In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, it’s the fact that Dumbledore is gone.
In Cinder, it’s Cress’s life-shattering D-COMM.
In Age of Ultron, it’s the jets that make Sekovia start flying.
There are so many forms this can take but basically you can think about it like this:
Your character is ready to go. They’re ready to finish this. But, if you let them just waltz on with their plan (which is usually something a little more subtle than what you want for climaxes), you won’t have the heart-wrenching insanity your reader so desperately wants. And you probably won’t have enough craziness to inspire that final change that you want your character’s personality (or worldview or relationship or whatever) to have. This is your chance to take what your characters thought were their limits and make them even crazier.
A.k.a it’s the KICK in the butt/PUNCH in the gut to end all punches (and/or kicks) that FORCES your character into the Third Act. The Second Doorway. The End.
And it’s climax-time!
Climaxes take place in the Third Act and tend to be the main focus within them. They tend to be pretty easy to identify/create but, for the sake of definitions, they’re the point at which everything comes to a head, where you get to be the wonderfully evil author that you are and make everything so deliciously painful that your readers will be walking into walls they want to finish so bad.
In Cinder, this is the ball.
In Age of Ultron, it’s the final battle.
In Sorcerer’s Stone, it’s when they go after the stone.
In your book it’s, well, whatever you want. And it can end however you want. Good, bad, with an absolutely insane cliffhanger that makes your reader start screaming - it’s all up to you. The thing is, though, that it has to end.
That’s what we call the resolution.
Sometimes this is longer (like in the fourth Inheritance Cycle. Pretty sure that was a 30 page resolution.), sometimes it’s really short (the Back to the Future movies are a good example of that), but most of the time it’s somewhere in the middle (like the chapter at the end of Cinder where she’s in prison). However you decide to do it, your resolution accomplishes a few key things.
First, it ties up loose ends. This might be the time for explanations (the first Harry Potter) or for romantic developments (the end of Cress) or simply show you how the characters are doing (the end of Forrest Gump), but it’s the point where the dust has settled just enough for your characters to breathe and take a look at what’s left of their lives.
That’s not to say that things can’t happen here. The third book of The Lunar Chronicles, Cress, is a great example of how stressful resolutions can be (I’m still reeling from the romantic developments in that thing) and, of course, cliffhangers are a thing of beauty but, in general, the tension has ebbed since your climax. You’re attempting to leave your reader with a sense of finality, or intense burning curiosity, that will carry them through to the next book or to be done with the series and attempt to get on with their lives (hehe, like that actually happens).
So, in conclusion, the Three Act structure works like this:
Beginning (a.k.a. First Act):
Character is living their “normal life”. Something slightly odd happens (hook) that leaves them puzzled but doesn’t really change anything. Then something comes along (inciting incident) that actually does change their lives but they’re still going to be able to (more or less) fix it and go on living. As such, we give them a kick in the butt (first plot point) to catapult them into their new lives (a.k.a. the middle).
Middle (a.k.a. Second Act), Part One:
Your main conflict (whatever it is you want your characters to accomplish) is now set up. They're trying, and failing, to achieve their goal. Things continue to happen and tension continues to develop until you reach your midpoint, the point at which everything changes. Now your character is willing to fight. It's no longer just an idea or just something they were going after, now it's war.
Your main conflict (whatever it is you want your characters to accomplish) is now set up. They're trying, and failing, to achieve their goal. Things continue to happen and tension continues to develop until you reach your midpoint, the point at which everything changes. Now your character is willing to fight. It's no longer just an idea or just something they were going after, now it's war.
Middle (a.k.a. Second Act), Part Two:
Now your characters are serious. They’re pulling out all the stops. Tension is rising, epicness is growing, they’re going after the bad guys, the climax is coming and - their plans are shattered. This “shattering” bit is your second plot point and your MASSIVE kick in the behind which FORCES your characters into the utterly insane, oh sweet Lord I never planned for this!, end.
End (a.k.a. Third Act):
This is when your climax happens. The tension, the insanity, the mistakes, and the consequences have risen to such an insane level that - like it or not - BOOM! Your character is forced to deal with all of it. Hold nothing back because this is where you get to let the crazy out.
After the dust clears, and your climax ends, you have your resolution. This is the time for your characters to look around at what’s become their new life (the life you’ve spent the whole book forcing them into) and try to deal with it. Things may still be happening (there’s usually at least one more character they’ve got to talk to or one more thing they have to do) but, well, you did it. You took your character that wanted nothing more than to go on living their regular, boring old life, and you changed them. Congratulations. It’s time to type out those beautiful words: The End. You’ve earned it.
I hope you enjoyed this alternate explanation of Three Act structure! If you have any questions, or would like to see any examples in more popular fiction, please comment below and I will do my very best to answer! If you want to see how real experts actually deal with this, though, here are a few links I’ve found helpful:
Story Structure by Dan Wells
