Using the 3-Act Structure: Adjusting Expectations

Most writers use a 3-act structure and for good reason. It works.

• Act 1:
  25% of the length, sets up the story conflict and ends when the main character (MC) commits to doing something about the conflict.
• Act 2:
  50% of the length, develops and deepens the conflict and ends when the main character begins to make a last, heroic effort to solve the problem.
• Act 3:
  25% of length, is the last attempt to solve the problem and eventually ends in either success or failure (tragedy).

Top-heavy manuscripts fall over!

Somehow, in all the revisions, the structure has become top-heavy. Skimming those chapters or laying them out in a shrunken manuscript revealed that several scenes repeated; there was escalation with each repetition, so it wasn’t all bad. Still, I wondered if I could cut a considerable chunk from the first section.

Today, I cut 2000 words! Hurrah!

But, with a sinking feeling, I realized that it is still top-heavy. Could I stand to cut another 8000 words? Probably not. That would gut too much of the emotion and story.

Restructure the 3 Acts

The only answer then, is that I must restructure the story, must think about it differently, set it up differently. Fortunately, there are 29 plot variations or plot templates and at least three types of character arcs. Will one of those work?

As is, it’s set up as a quest: now in a quest, there should be character growth and often what the character sets out to discover is not what they need, not what they find. But it’s that definitely stepping into a “new world” that is bothering me in this story. The new world can’t be the fantasy world they find in the story because that now comes at about halfway through the story.

IF I consider this a story about maturation, and not a quest, then the current structure is very close. At page 21, out of 80 (single spaced, small font—just the way I like to work; I will reformat before I send it out), there is a first step of defiance of Father, a step into the world of adulthood, if you will. That’s about the 25% point and works perfectly. Likewise, the rest of the plot points fall into line.

Making this type shift is subtle: it’s not about the plot or actions, per se. Instead, it’s about setting up expectations in a reader’s mind. They intuitively understand this deep structure of dividing a story into acts, and subconsciously expect it to happen. If I set up the story, with subtle word changes, as a story of maturation, I think it will work. That crucial transition from Act 1 to Act 2 will be the move into the world of adulthood, of being responsible for your own actions, of defying parents and doing what you think is best. Act 2 will be the various problems encountered when you attempt to do things on your own, and Act 3 is the result of those actions.

My next task is to comb through the first twenty pages or so and make sure this structure is set up.

P.S. I’m still glad I cut those 2000 words. They were dead wood anyway.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

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In part 1, I covered plot patterns beginning with character or beginning with a pattern such as the Hero’s Journey. This continues the discussion of 9 ways to plot.

5. Combinations of Plot Paradigms

Many descriptions of how to write plot combine a couple of these paradigms:

Overlaid with Three Act Structure.
Syd Field: Snowflake + Important Points Paradigm. Syd Field basically advises a Snowflake approach to writing plot, but overlays a paradigm that points to important events and connections among those events. His plot points aren’t labeled with reference to the hero and his journey, but with reference to the three act structure; often, however they coincide. Field works mostly with screenwriters, so is emphasis on the three act structure comes from that.

Emphasis on Inner Plot. Peter Dunne in Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot likewise has a chart of events, with a variation of the hero’s journey. Dunne, however, emphasizes the difference in the inner and outer plot, relegating most of the outer story to acts one and three, leaving act two as the character or inner plot. Same story, but with a variation when you want the story to be about two people changing each other. It won’t work, though, when the main antagonist is man v. nature or man v. himself.

To emphasize the importance of both inner and outer plots, Dunne recommends you write plot points on an index card with the outer conflict on one side and the inner conflict on the other.

Major Change at Midpoint. Another idea for patterns is from David Seigel, a screenwriting, who emphasized that at the midpoint of a story, there must be a change in the main character’s goal. It’s the understanding that interesting characters grow and their needs and wants change because of events. His classic example is from The Lion King. In the first half of the story, Simba wants to be happy; in the second half, he wants to be restored to his rightful place as king of the lions. Seigel said that without this major change, stories are ineffective. He basically falls in with the hero’s journey type structure, but puts his emphasis on this major shift of the story. (Seigel had his plot paradigm on line at one time, but it’s no longer available.)

6. Emphasis on Writing in Scenes

One other variation in writing and plotting novels is the emphasis or de-emphasis on writing in scenes. Screenplays and theater plays must be written in scenes, but novels can be fuzzier about this and still succeed. However, I think there’s value in learning to write in scenes, as it keeps a story focused better. Dwight Swain’s classic Techniques of the Selling Writer, is followed by Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. One of the most helpful on scene writing is Sandra Scofield’s The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer.

When you write in scenes, it’s possible to plan every scene in a novel, as Swain and Bickham recommend. But generally, you need some other paradigm of the overall structure to do a good job of it.

7. MICE quotient

There are other approaches to plot patterns that I find less helpful; nevertheless, knowing them sometimes makes it easier to be bold in doing something different. For example, Orson Scott Card in Character & Viewpoint discusses the MICE quotient: stories are governed either by their milieu (For example, fantasy which invents and explores a new world), an idea (mysteries), a character (romance or character novels) or an event (an imbalance in the world, an injustice that must be put right). The author’s focus on one of these elements determines what actually makes it into the story.

For example, on The Lord of the Rings, it could be classed as an event story, with the Dark Lord disturbing the balance of the world order. Card argues, though, that it is rightly understood as a milieu story. The story begins in the Shire, travels through Middle Earth, and as it is destroyed by the battle, it returns to the Shire; Frodo can’t remain there, though, because he’s been too damaged by his contact with evil, and takes the boat ride with the elves across the Western Sea. If it was just an event story, the story ends with the defeat of the Dark Lord. But as a milieu story, it doesn’t end until we see the end of Middle Earth.

8. Author’s idiosyncratic plot pattern

Hero’s journey overlaid with the process of grief. Pattern can also come in the shape of any process of change or growth that a human might undergo. For example, in my novel, The Wayfinder, I used the process of grief as a structure: loss, denial, acceptance, healing, You can even combine several of these structures: the process of grief overlays the hero’s journey for a more complex structure.

Patterns can come from any other source: you can think of a novel as peeling away layers of an onion; as way-stations on a long journey; as episodes.

What plot patterns work best for you?

Books Mentioned in This Series

• Bickham, Jack. Scene & Structure
• Card, Orson Scott. Character & Viewpoint
• Dunne, Peter Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot
• Field, Syd.
• Noble, June & William. Steal this Plot.
• Scofield, Sandra. The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer.
• Swain, Dwight.Techniques of the Selling Writer
• Tobias, Ronald. 20 Master Plots
• Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey.
• Vorhaus, John. The Comic Toolbox.

Websites Mentioned in This Series

• Free Write to Let Characters Reveal Themselves
• Idea, Idea, Character, Character, Character, Setting
• Plot Starts with Character
• Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method

Next: Enhancing the Basic Plot

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win