Four Act Structure: How To Keep It Fresh

 Four Act Structure: How To Keep It Fresh

Writers refer to development a lot. Character development, plot development. A new word to keep in mind is rather change.

Stakes need to increase at the moment readers start to get … I won’t say bored, but at the moment they get too comfy. Before they nod off in their armchairs, something … EXPLODES.

[first published at Writing in The Stars]

How can writers follow a four act structure, as screen writers do? Doesn’t structure imply predictability? How can you get something that’s never been done before from an outline?

Characters change, situations change, worlds change. A change is interesting. In real life, we fear change because we fear stakes and consequences. In a story world, stakes and consequences make us feel, and we crave changes at every turn. The best writing puts us on the edges of experience, closest to the limits.

It takes a lot of hustle to leave readers feeling satisfied. An effective plot arc is more than rising action, climax, falling action — or beginning, middle, end. When broken down, a narrative arc includes hook, complication, conflict, pinch point, midpoint, second pinch point, crisis, climax, denouement. Okay, it’s complicated, but it’s important to make sure you got all the right stuff in all the right places.

And while we’re at it, let’s keep our ideas unique. Are you down?

Here’s the four act structure:

Act One: Setup and Complication

Act One has two turning points: the inciting incident, and the first plot point.

In Act One, introduce your characters and their world — but don’t forget to create a hook within the first five to ten pages. An effective hook can be a street fight, a sudden death, a unique character strength or flaw, a compelling theme, a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view, a thrilling chase, a wondrous place (yes, these are lyrics from Aladdin), or a hundred thousand things to see. It can be a really good, laugh out loud joke.

The hook is all about reaction, so keep in mind:

Before they can be hooked, readers first need to care about your protagonist. Why should they? Is your protagonist likable, lovable, or detestable? Shoot for one of these three options, and you should elicit a strong reaction. Your audience will feel something when things go wrong (or right) in those early pages.

Aim to surprise, to achieve the unexpected. If your hook is predictable, can you flip it and do the opposite? Can you alter your tone, inject humor, or amp up the drama? What would happen if you swapped the characters’ genders? Don’t shake your head, ninety-nine percent of the time something will explode : )

Focus on the effect (go for the jugular) and make readers care (make them laugh or bring a tear to their eye, that kind of thing).

An inciting incident changes everything:

The inciting incident is a turning point; remember this is a change. Yes, already. You’ve set up characters and a world in which they live, you’ve hooked your reader, who loves or hates your main character — now you need to cause some problems. Be a trouble maker. Complicate this bitch.

Readers reengage in the reading experience every time there is a change. The inciting incident confronts the protagonist, whose attempts to resolve the problem leads to a second and more dramatic situation.

The inciting incident isn’t the first plot point. Bilbo Baggins is enjoying some alone time in his hobbit hole when some Dwarves begin to show up on his doorstep. That’s an inciting incident.

Bilbo just wants to get the Dwarves out of his living room, but after he accepts the job of Burglar, surprising even himself, that’s the first plot point. The dramatic situation after the unexpected party is at a whole new level; he needs to steal back treasure from a dragon.

The Hobbit

The first plot point signals the end of the first act. It raises a dramatic question that needs to be answered by the climax. Will Bilbo be a good Burglar? Will he survive his adventure?

A strong complication forces protagonists to make a choice, and tension soars if they make the wrong one (so have them make the wrong one. Trust me.). Emerge from act one in a worse position than the dramatic situation you started with.

But if the right option is always for the protagonist to make the wrong choice, how do you keep it fresh? What will make your story different from every other four-act story?

Think about your dramatic question. It should always be unique. An underlying question can be generic: Will she get the girl? Will he solve the mystery? Will they slay the dragon? The dramatic question of The Hobbit is not generic. It’s: ‘Will an unlikely hero who would prefer to be at home in his hole for tea time overcome his fear and his culturally imbued resistance to adventure and effect historical reparations for the Dwarves, whose cultural heritage has been appropriated by Smaug, and will he escape the ensuing war, the fallout for his heroic action?’ The dramatic question of my upcoming novel, Stars and Stopped Clocks, is, ‘Do we really deserve a do-over when we fuck up the world, and what will happen to a time traveling stranger who thinks he’s entitled to a different future?’

Use the dramatic question to narrow in on a unique story arc. If your dramatic question sounds as if it’s been done before, revise it, and apply the changes to your story outline. A fresh and brazen dramatic question that takes risks and crosses the line means a bold narrative we’ve never seen before.

Act Two: Conflict and Rising Action

Act Two has two turning points: a pinch and a context shifting midpoint.

‘Rising action’ is vague literary terminology. The middle of your book can get mucky, messy, tangly and irreversibly snared. Or not. The best rising action happens when protagonists trip over their own swords on their way to fight the dragons.

Your protagonists can’t yet defeat the antagonism they face. And tripping over their own feet, or making a decision that will break some hearts, some eggs, some multi-million dollar Qing-dynasty porcelain … you get the idea … is what Act Two is all about.

In Act Two, protagonists need to learn skills, maybe through a mentor or a failed sexual experience, a black eye, a friend — best of all a team of quirky friends with different strengths and varying senses of humor.

Think about character arc here. Where were the protagonists at the beginning and where are they going? What’s unique about the hero and his or her journey? Got it? Write it down!

To narrow in on the next major plot point, have a pinch. Pinch points are turning points that turn up the pressure and amp up the threat. The pinch reminds your audience of the danger facing the protagonist and the force of the antagonist’s power. In the four act structure, there’s one halfway through the second act and one halfway through the third act.

Maybe the villain kills or kidnaps your love interest. Or blows up a building full of innocent civilians (or if you’re writing the screenplay for Captain America: Civil War, your “heroes” blow up a building full of innocent civilians. And the protagonists’ antagonists are themselves! Bam!). Pinches refocus the audience’s attention and pivot the story toward the next plot point.

After the pinch, next comes a reversal at the midpoint of your novel.

The Midpoint:

The midpoint of the novel comes halfway through the rising action, between act two and act three, right around the middle of your book. And this is a biiiiig change. I like change! This is where you might expect that if a storyteller was going to blow up the protagonist in a rail train bomb, this would be where that would happen — although shaking it up and pulling shit like that in Act One instead is a surefire way to keep it fresh!

The midpoint is your whole new world. After the complication, the first plot point, to which the protagonist reacts, to which the antagonist fires back with a pinch, we enter a whole new story world where we know the protagonist can never return to the way things were in the beginning.

Sometimes the midpoint is the first time the character tries something to solve that problem that actually somewhat works. This shift is what makes Act Three and the resolution in Act Four different from what has come before.

Act Three: Crisis

Act Three consists of a second pinch, and a second plot point.

Act Three is where this whole thing starts to get easy. You’ve set up the problems and introduced changes to the story world and the world of your protagonist’s mind. In Act Three, the hero recovers from the calamities of Acts One and Two, and the villain amps up for a confrontation. Simple.

Time for the second pinch point. The love interest is kidnapped or killed, the villain shows off a shiny new weapon, the wagon gets fallen off of after sixty days sober. Pinches hurt. Never forget that! Or I’ll pinch you.

Before the climax, there’s a second plot point. This is the ‘all is lost’ moment or the moment of greatest darkness. It may seem as if the hero has lost. Everything falls apart.

How to keep it fresh? Remember my earlier advice: always do the unexpected. If there’s a predictable way for the second plot point to turn out, or if the climax you’re heading toward seems clear, try to do the opposite. If it’s obvious the hero will fail here, give them a small victory or a feint, where it seems as if he’s won, but the antagonist will be back. If it seems like the hero has it easy and can prevail, devastate him. Take a limb, knock him unconscious, diagnose him with a brain parasite. The moment of greatest darkness also hurts.

Remember the complexity of your unique dramatic question? That complexity allows for multiple facets with which to play in order to achieve unpredictability.

Act Four: Climax

Confrontation and falling action.

You already know all about the climax, don’t you? The confrontation happens. All hell breaks loose.

The protagonist may have a new plan or strategy to solve the central problem and finally answer the unique dramatic question of the novel. He or she either succeeds or fails to attain his or her goal.

To keep it fresh, see where you can reverse the expectation. To keep it fresh, keep it complex. Every win requires a sacrifice, otherwise what do we learn Even more interesting, every loss has an unexpected value.

Give us something to take away from the journey we’ve experienced along with you. The climax is is a confrontation. When it’s complete, when the combatants walk away from the ring, what’s different?

That’s what you’ll cover in the denouement. For real it’s a whole new world this time, and it’s the final edition. What does it look like when everything all comes together and the strings are all tied? Don’t skimp on the falling action, because a sudden ending leaves readers unsatisfied. It’s a kind of fizzle out ‘the credits are rolling?’ moment. The best endings leave us with a smile — or a frown on our faces.

(Go for the jugular.)

Don’t Fight It: The Importance of Structure

I’ve edited dozens of books. Whenever I’m reading a new manuscript for the first time, and there’s a huge change in the story, whether early, around the 25% mark, or at the midpoint, or at the climax, I always give a cheer and a huge pat on the back to the writer in terms of a comment that reads something like “A huge change! Holy crap, well done!” Changes are refreshing. Changes make us feel. Changes take us to the limit. That’s why following a story structure based around drastic changes can be powerful. That first kiss, that fight, that election, that loss, that whole new world — that’s what we read for, and that’s what a great writer needs to write for!

We all know that movies don't really contain "acts" per se. In live or "legitimate" theater the curtain will actually rise and fall at act breaks. The concept of the "act" in screenplays, however, exists only for the writer and is unseen by the audience. That doesn't mean that the concept of the "act" isn't extremely useful for screenwriters, but the problem is that we're using the traditional "three act structure" of live theater, and film is simply better suited to a four-act structure.

You can see the problems with the three act structure immediately -- you have a 30-page first act, a 30-page third act, and then this huge 60-page void to fill in the middle. It's no coincidence that writers so often have difficulty with the second act. Neither is it coincidental that a producer's favorite phrase (other than "we got Denzel!") is: "Yeah, but what's the second act?" The three-act structure has turned the second act into a wasteland feared by one and all.

Why is a four-act structure so much better?

Because there are three major "establishing points" in a well-written script: the event at the end of the first act (the life-changing event) that forces the hero to choose between his/her flaw and some opportunity or threat presented by the opponent; the "hero-ally confrontation" between the hero and the hero's ally in which the hero is forced to finally face up to his flaw; the final resolution of that flaw that allows the hero to "enter the ring" against the opponent unencumbered by that flaw.

Three major establishing points means four sections: the first 30 pages or so before the life-changing event; the 30 pages or so between the life-changing event and the hero-ally confrontation; the 30 pages or so between the hero-ally confrontation and the resolution of the flaw and; the final 30 pages which is essentially the final battle (physical and/or emotional) between opponent and hero.

Using the four-act structure should make writing the second act much easier for writers. First of all the second act becomes a much more do-able 30 pages rather than the full 60 pages -- half the script! Second, it ensures that the writer will include that hero-ally confrontation that: defines the hero and his flaw; strengthens the relationship between hero and ally and; prepares the hero for the next (third) act in which he has to fully overcome the flaw. After all, unless the flaw and the reasons for it are fully enunciated (which is what happens during the hero-ally confrontation), how will we be able to understand and believe that the hero is overcoming that flaw (or succumbing to it in the case of a tragedy such as Leaving Las Vegas)?

So, with this new 4-act structure, this is what we would be writing: a first act in which we introduce the hero, his or her flaw, his or her "enabling circumstances," the opponent and the life-changing event at the end of that act.

The second act will now consist of the hero reacting to the life-changing event and either seeking out or being sought out by the ally, establishing the allies M.O. (modus operandi, the method by which the ally is best able to help the hero overcome her flaw), the struggle of the hero to hold onto his or her flaw while still trying to react to the life-changing event, and the hero-ally confrontation.
The third act will now consist of the hero, having admitted his or her flaw, now fully allying with the ally to fully prepare for the final battle with the opponent. This will be shown in a climactic scene in which the hero shows that he or she has really overcome his or her flaw and is ready for the upcoming battle with the opponent.

The fourth act remains that act in which the hero, now unencumbered by his or her flaw, literally or metaphorically climbs into the ring with the opponent to see who, in the end, will triumph.
A great example of this four act structure is Rocky, one of the most structurally well-made films of all time. In the first act we see Rocky in his enabling circumstances, which are the mean streets of Philly, the dark and dingy gyms. We see his flaw, that he considers himself a loser. We see his mitigating good qualities -- he's a nice guy, not bright, but not a bad person either, not even able to break legs for the loan sharks. And we see the life-changing event, which is the chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world.

'Rocky'

The second act of Rocky, (using our new four act structure) consists of Rocky trying to react to the life-changing event but really dragged down by his believing that he is a loser. The allies -- Adrienne on the subjective level and Burgess Meredith on the objective level, try to help Rocky overcome his flaw, but can't really do so until he fully admits to that flaw. The end of the second act is marked by one of the great lines in the movies. I'm paraphrasing, but it goes something like: "My father told me I'd better be a good boxer because I'm too stupid and ugly to be anything else." This is the hero-ally confrontation, the point at which Rocky opens up to the ally, enunciates his flaw for the first time. The fact that Stallone uses only one line to tell us everything we need to know about the reason for the hero's flaw is quite brilliant.

The "new" third act, then, will be Rocky, with renewed energy because of having been able to define his flaw, training with increased ferocity and effectiveness until, by the end of the second act, we see the scene in which we understand that Rocky has overcome his flaw and is ready to take on Apollo Creed: the scene in which he climbs the stairs to that great Bill Conti music, arms raised overhead. He may or may not win the upcoming battle, but he's ready and no longer considers himself a loser.
The fourth act remains the battle scene with Creed.

It may not seem like a big thing -- three acts or four acts, who cares? But try it, it may make it easier to navigate the middle 60 pages of your script and will make certain you have all three important "establishing points" in your screenplay.

Good writing to all of you!

A Four Act Structure

When I write a story I use a three act structure--Act One (Ordinary World), Act Two (The Special World of the adventure), Act Three (The Return Home)--or I used to. I'm thinking of dividing my next story into four acts.

Today I'm going to talk about what the four act structure is. In a later post, after I've used the structure for a while, I hope to go over the pros and cons of using it.

I've written about the three act structure here (Story Structure) but here's a (brief!) summary:

Three Act Structure

Act One (Ordinary World) -- first 25% of the story

- Flesh out the setting and introduce the characters.

- Hero accepts his call to adventure.

- Stakes increase and the hero is locked into the adventure just before we break into Act Two.

Act Two (The Special World of the adventure) -- middle 50% of the story

- Explore the new world, it's differences, it's rules.

- B-story begins: Subplot that exposes the hero's inner strengths and weaknesses.

- Make friends and enemies.

- First pinch point: get a peek at the Big Bad.

- Prepare for confrontation. (Perhaps there is a romantic interlude.)

- Midpoint. Hero confronts the antagonistic force. The hero learns more about the special world of his adventure; he now has a different perspective. He has confronted death and (probably) survived.

- Hero either celebrates and has bonding time with friends or licks his wounds and rallies from his defeat. (Perhaps there is a romantic interlude.)

- Second pinch point. Another reminder of who the Big Bad is and why the hero has to win.

- At the end of Act Two the hero will (usually) be at his lowest point. It seemed that everything was going the hero's way, then BAM! Everything fell apart. The worst doesn't happen, the worst raised to the fourth power happens!

Act Three (Return Home) -- last 25% of the story

- Third act twist. The hero figures out how to get himself out of the fix he's in, or at least he comes up with a plan that just might work, but probably won't. Chances are very much against it but he has no choice. He has to make it work. Sometimes the hero figures out the 'good trick' by resolving the B-story.

- The climax. The hero confronts the villain or, if the opposing force isn't a person, the antagonistic force.

- The aftermath. Cash out the stakes. If the hero wins, what happens? If the hero loses, what happens? The hero goes back to the Ordinary World. Show how his actions have changed the hero and what this means for him in the Ordinary World.

Please keep in mind that this is how I see the three act structure. I don't think anyone thinks of it in exactly the same way. 

The essential points are:

- There are three acts; the third act is as long as the first and third acts combined.

- In Act One the ordinary world and the characters are introduced and the hero takes up his quest. 

- In Act Two the hero enters the world of the adventure (which often isn't a separate world; it could simply be a different social environment). The hero will confront the villain and attempt to overcome obstacles.

- In Act Three the hero has his final confrontation with the villain and either wins or loses.

The Four Act Structure

The four act structure is a lot like the three act structure with the exception that each act is the same length. Basically, this is the three act structure cut down the middle. 

Here's a fun fact: Christopher Vogler uses a four act structure and so does Lee Goldberg. In fact, Lee Goldberg was the inspiration for this post. As I listened to the Google Chat he did with Libby Hellmann and Paul Levine (you can listen to it here: Secrets to Writing Top Suspense) he rattled this off the top of his head. Great stuff!  

Lee Goldberg's description of a story in four acts:

"For me, the four act structure goes something like this:

"There's the tease, there's the hook, there's ... the Star Ship Enterprise flies through outer space. There's a giant octopus! You stick around to see how the Enterprise deals with this giant octopus.

"Act One sets up who all the characters are, what the stakes are, if they succeed or fail. It basically sets up everything they are trying to achieve and all the obstacles to them achieving it. And then something really bad happens that ups the stakes at the end of Act One.

"Act Two, whether it's a mystery, a doctor show, a science fiction show, Act Two is the hero's ... come up with a plan, an approach to solve their problem, to save the world, to rescue the people, to discover the murderer, and they put that plan into action, and its going great, and then everything goes to crap. At the end of Act Two everything they thought they knew was wrong, the guy they thought was the killer isn't, the thing they thought would cure the patient doesn't cure the patient. There's no way they can win, everything they thought they knew was wrong. They're screwed.

"Act three is essentially the hero's recovering from the calamitous events at the end of Act Two, trying to come up with a new approach, a new way of dealing with things but in the midst of this everything keeps getting worse. The stakes are raised, the pressures increase. By the end of Act Three there is no way in hell they'll win a conviction, they'll save the girl's life, they'll find the murderer, they'll stop the giant planet-eating octopus. They're screwed.

"Act Four. They put a new plan into action and solve the problem. They catch the murderer, they stop the giant planet eating octopus, they save the girl's life, and by the end of Act Four equilibrium is restored and everything is back to, essentially, the way it was at the beginning of Act One and they're ready to face a new conflict.

"And I find that's essentially the pattern of any great drama that is on the TV or even every great book that I've read, every crime novel, anyway."

Once again, that's from a Google Chat Lee Goldberg was part of. You can view it here: Secrets to Writing Top Suspense.

Let's put this in point form.

Four Acts In Point Form

Act One (first 25%)

- The inciting incident occurs (/the hook).

- Establish the (initial) stakes.

- The lock in: something happens to up the stakes just before we break into Act Two.

Act Two (25% to 49%)

- The hero comes up with a plan, a way to solve the problem or a way to approach the problem. If this is a murder mystery, it is a way to find out who is the murderer.

- Put the plan into action.

- The plan fails. Everything the hero and his companions thought they knew was wrong. Back to square one.

Act Three (50% to 74%)

- The hero and his/her companions tries to recover from the calamitous events of Act Two. They try to come up with a new approach.

- Everything keeps getting worse for the hero and his companions. The opposing force increases.

- The stakes are raised.

- By the end of Act Three it seems as though the hero has lost. 

Act Four (75% on)

- New plan

- Solve the problem.

- Attain the goal.

- By the end of Act Four equilibrium is restored and we're back to the Ordinary World of Act One, ready for another adventure.

The biggest difference between the three act structure and the four is that the third act has been split in two. Now we have one major crisis at the end of Act Two and the "all hope is lost" point comes at the end of Act Three. 

Food for thought!

Screenplay Structure in Four Easy Pieces

All plays, whether on the screen or on the stage, have a format more defining than any other form of literary expression. Screenplays are, perhaps, the toughest. They have a structure as steely and rigid as the support towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. They are more restrictive than the Japanese seventeen-syllable, set-in-concrete poem known as haiku. The best comparison is to picture a novel a vat of mushroom soup, and a screenplay as a stock cube, same intensity of flavor, but powerfully compressed. If writing a novel is swimming in the ocean, screenwriting is swimming in the bath.

Every story must have a beginning, must have a middle, and must have an end. And don't think you can write it until you know what that end is. These elements can also be called set-up, conflict and resolution. You can dance around this formula until you're blue in the face, but you're always going to come back to it. Set-up. Conflict. Resolution. That's the way it always has been. That's the way it always will be. And the key to screenplay structure is hitting the right page with the right beat.

Set up. Conflict. Resolution. Act I, Act II, Act III. Scripts are mathematical. Structuring them is a numeric problem. They are meticulously engineered; yet must disguise their geometric precision.

Act II is so long — 60 pages — it must be divided in half to create Act II A and Act II B, which leaves four Acts. Plain and simple. But the trick is to split Act II at the central turning point of the entire movie. This can sometimes be called the flip-the-script moment, or the mid-point, and it happens exactly halfway through all movies. This turning point in the drama must be established long before you begin writing. And it must take the audience from Act II A into Act II B.

Each Act should be 30 pages. Four of those make 120, the Hollywood length. Act I, II A, II B and III. But, unlike the theatre that has a curtain to divide Acts, or television dramas where they are consistent with commercials, how can you tell when an Act has changed in the cinema? Being able to spot this, and understanding why Acts change, and grasping what each Act must achieve is something you must master.

Act I

This introduces the main characters, establishes 'the rules of the world', and sets-up the hero's goal for the rest of the movie. But this can't be an arbitrary decision. In all great scripts, there lies within Act I the Inciting Incident. This is the event, usually found on page 10-15 that sparks the desire your hero needs in order to pursue his goal. When you study films, it can be identified easily. Watch out for the event that occurs in the hero's life that doesn't happen every day. This is the Inciting Incident.

Act I ends on page 25-30. Study opening scenes from films you know. Why have they chosen to start this way? How does this opening reveal character, introduce the hero or nemesis? The opening to a movie must be chosen carefully. The Incident that sparks the story, must, above all, be credible. Not some cockamamie idea that will cause everyone in the cinema to say, "Yeah, right!"

Act II A

The hero begins his journey. It must be filled with conflicts and obstacles that are constantly being thrown in his way. The trickiest part is inventing that turning point on page 60. It must change the course of the story, yet keep the hero pursuing the same goal. A great example is in Derailed. At the end of Act II A, Clive Owen suddenly realizes Jennifer Anniston is no longer the sweet blond with a bad marriage, but his real nemesis. You must come up with something that will literally turn the script around, making the audience gasp. This turning point is so critical you may want to structure the entire story around this one event. Watch films and identify this point. A History of Violence contains another great example.

Act II B

At the beginning of this Act, a ray of hope must shine upon the hero. With his original goal from Act I, and with the drama now aimed in a new direction, conflicts must start again, sliding towards the low-point, where the hero reaches an all-time low. This must happen on page 90. It marks the end of Act II. It's the now-or-never moment, and everything you write is aimed resolutely towards this point. You must keep telling yourself, "I've got to get my hero to the page 90 abyss in the next x amount of pages." You'll find it easier to work backwards. That will stop you over-shooting and ending up page 96, which makes Act II B too long, too long, too long. Then you've got to cut it, which is even more difficult than writing it.

Act III

This contains two parts. The final battle with the nemesis, where the hero achieves his goal against all odds, and then, the long awaited resolution - only a few pages long. The end of the script is the most important part. You must know where your hero is going before you write one word of the script. You write towards the end. This will allow you to plant and foreshadow the drama. You cannot operate until the end has been established. If you start writing without knowing the end, you will fail, probably catastrophically.

Mastering this information.

Once you know the basic story, spend the next five hours trying to work out the last two minutes of the movie. Then you can begin to establish the low-point, moving backwards to the much more tricky mid-point.

The easiest Act to write is the first, because it's an introduction and establishes the Goal. However, Act I requires diligent research and more detail than any other part of the script. Act II is very hard, and this is where almost every script fails, leading up to the turning-point. And if you feel this is going wrong, you might as well turn off your computer and start again.

Ultimately, you live and die between page 30 and page 60. It's a four Act structure, no ifs, ands or buts. Keep the reader or audience hooked, load in the surprises, and no goofing off cruising through three or four pages without much happening. You can't afford it in screenwriting.

Watch films with all these points in mind. Pay attention to Act breaks, (time them on your watch — about every half hour). Count the conflicts being hurled at the hero. Watch how the nemesis always seems more powerful. This is the making of a hero. He must overcome the seemingly insurmountable struggle to achieve his goal.

Thrillers, action films, Westerns and horrors are great genres to grasp these principles. High Noon, The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars all possess the geometric precision I have outlined. The watchword is structure. And it's as critical to your writing as those towers that hold up the Golden Gate Bridge.