Up until now, we’ve worked on some simple writing skills – narrative, description and dialog. We haven’t gotten too deeply into any of these fields yet, just enough so that you can do something.
Let’s look at structure now. Unless you plan on writing short stories your entire career, you’ll need to learn three act structure. This will lead us into conflict, where we’ll spend some time.
Why Learn Structure?
Story Structure is the most important thing one can learn about writing. Almost all writers employ a three act structure, or a variation for novels – and I put it to you that even in short stories one must employ a three act structure no matter how subtle.
Structure is simple – too simple. So simple it eludes most writers the first time they see it outlined. I would hazard a guess that fully one quarter of the blog articles I’ve written concern it.
The Three Act Structure
Act 1 – present the current situation, establish the incident that incites the story, establish risks and penalties if you win or fail. Begin to address the conflict.
Act 2 – Intensify the conflict. Introduce all characters not yet introduced. Begin to make the conflict more and more difficult, placing other temporary conflicts in the way.
Act 3 – no way out. Your protagonist is going to fail and die, or fail and symbolically die. In the last 10% of the novel, they make the last ditch attempt, and win.
Sound complicated? No. It’s not.
That’s the essence of story.
Structure Breakdown
From a structure point of view, Act 2 is twice as large as act 1 or 3. Fully half the book will be Act 2. Indeed, Steven James insists that Act 2 is more properly two separate acts in themselves, and he argues for a four act structure. However, while there is some validity to his arguments, educators and software programmers are locked into the concept of acts 1 through 3. I suggest you adopt BOTH lines of thought.
Why? How? Traditionally, Act 2 splits in the middle, as if it was two separate acts. Volume wise, it accounts for half the pages of your novel. I literally calculate pages this way (400 page novel, 200 pages are act 2, act 1 and three one hundred pages each).
There are many systems to further break apart the three act structure. Novelists have been slow to adapt the Blake Snyder Save The Cat system to their own works. However, I’ve embraced it as a quick manner of planning novels (we’ll deal with planner vs. Pants’er shortly, and most of you will be upset by my conclusions).
Writing Assignment
Today’s assignment – take a book you’re familiar with, and diagram its plot points into a three act structure. Where in Fellowship of the Ring would you place Act 1? Act 2? Act III? The inciting incident?
