Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, I'm Sylvia Bishop. And in this class, I'll be
introducing you to plotting a story using the three
Act or five act structure. So there are a lot of books on structure seriously a lot and most addressed in some form, the story arc known as the three Act or
five act structure. It can feel pretty confusing as they all offer slightly
different versions, especially around the middle. But they have certain key
points in common that are really useful to have at your fingertips as
a fiction writer. So in this course, we'll be
learning what those are. In the first class, I'll look at where these
ideas come from. They aren't universal laws, but they also aren't just
cookie cutter cheat sheets that somebody made up one day. They are accumulated wisdom designed to solve
specific problems. And in this class, I want to emphasize what those
problems are so that you're empowered to use these
structures well and to come up with different solutions if that is more appropriate
to your work. So then in the second class, I'll give an overview
of the structure. The five x structure maps onto the three so they can
be discussed together. And this is your
introductory roadmap to what everyone is on about. Then we'll look in more
detail at each section of the structure and each
section's challenges. And in a final class, I'll give some thoughts on
breaking the structure, why you might want to and
how to think about it. For your class project, you'll be outlining a plot of your own. So for this, you'll
need a one line idea. I want to write about
a girl being bullied. I want to write about
a soldier at war. If you don't have one,
but you want to just practice the plotting,
go to your bookshelf. Give me the top one
line summaries of the books there and pick out
one that appeals to you. So obviously, a
summary with M plot, something like it's
a regency love story or it's biologists in space. Is a setup. And
that's what you'll be using as a jumping off
point for your plotting. Then you're ready to
go. I'll see you there.
2. Context: Why think in three acts?: Okay. So first, before we begin, let's address this idea of there being a
structure for stories. Storytelling isn't physics. There aren't laws out there
waiting to be discovered. And for some people, the
idea of doing things to a structure feels
almost sacrilegious. The three x structure
has been derived from looking at stories that
have already been told. It's not really the enemy of
the storytelling instinct. It's an attempt to codify
it to work out what the people who are good at
storytelling already know. Some books have recently argued that there is a
relationship between the three x structure and the evolution of our brains that make this storytelling structure feel right on some deep level. I'm skeptical, but I'm not an evolutionary scientist,
so I'll stay in my lane. If you want to
read more on this, these titles are
in your resource. But regardless of whether
you think this is the evolutionarily
determined right way to tell stories or just a right
way to tell stories. It is a very good
way to tell stories. More specifically, I think what the three act structure
does is solve two problems, answer two questions that every storyteller
needs to answer. And these are questions
that your reader will have. Why should I care what
happens next? And so what? At the end, they might ask what? What was the point of
reading that story? I'm going to keep emphasizing
those two questions. Sometimes there might be a better answer within your
story to those questions. If that is the case, use that answer, break
the structure. The structure serves
the questions, always. Okay, so now a little
bit of history because that's going to
bring up an important point, which is that this did
not begin with novels. So Aristotle is
widely credited with the first expression of a three
act structure in poetics, and he was looking, of
course, at Greek tragedies. Now, for the purposes
of our short course, we can fast forward
a few centuries. Eugene Scribe developed
the concept of a well made play in
five acts in 18 25. This got used in such
boilerplate fashion so often and so badly that it eventually
became a derogatory term. Now, the five acts
were driven in part by necessity, and set changes, audience comfort, even trimming the candles meant that
there had to be breaks. This gradually gave way to a three ax structure as
theatrical technology evolved. But the five Act maps
onto the three Act. It's just got further
subdivisions. So that's why from a novelist
structural point of view, I think we can look at them
as much the same thing. Then came the formulation
of the a structure that is often cited as a first
version of our modern take. It was formulated by
Freytag in 18 63, and it's sometimes called
Freytag's Pyramid. Crucially, he
brought in the idea of a mid point more
on that later. Like Aristotle, Fretag was
looking at Greek tragedies, and he was also looking at
Shakespearean tragedies. So notice all of this
is about theater. John Gardner's art of
fiction is credited with making the linked novel
writing much later in 1983. He writes, the fact that Aristotle was talking about
tragedy need not delay us. If he'd known about novels, he'd have said much the same. Okay, hold on to that thought. Meanwhile, A little
before Gardner, 1949, Joseph Campbell writes his famous comparative
work on mythology, the hero with 1,000 faces, which outlines what
you might have heard of as the hero's journey. This maps onto our old friend, the three act structure. This version of the
structure really took off for writers in the
screenwriting world. First, because George
Lucas used it as a story structure for Star Wars, and then a guy called
Vogeler put it into a helpful book in 2007. And the rest is
cinematic history and increasingly
literary history. Many of the most popular
books on plotting used by novel writers are
written by screenwriters, sometimes explicitly adapted as in Save the CT writes a
novel, but not always. Now, I think it is basically true that we can
take these ideas from drama and cinema and myth and apply them
to writing novels, because the central
concern is storytelling. You might want your novel to do something other
than tell a story. I will look at that a little
bit in the last class. But I'm going to
assume for this course that we are aiming
to tell a story. And in that case, I think borrowing theory from these
areas makes total sense. I do have one caveat. An audience for a play or a film are sitting through
it in one setting. And that means that they
need their payoffs in terms of excitement and resolution to come within a
certain time frame, or else they're going to start getting physically
uncomfortable. And I think that's where
a lot of this idea about when the different structural beats have
to happen comes from. I'm not a fan of doing
that for novels. I think each novel has
its own pace and shape. Your audience are going
to put their book down when they're busy
and come back to it. And honestly, I think the
reason they come back to it has more to do with so what
than with what happens next. That's my personal take. If you would like some sense of where the beats should fall. Save the mentioned earlier, save the CT writes a
novel does give you sort of novel percentages that
you should be aiming for. And those are a
helpful guideline if you want to orient yourself. But it's this difference
between drama and novels that means I'm not going to focus on that in this course. Again, it's in your resource,
if you want to look it up. One final, very important point. The three x structure
is an outline for one story one story arc. Your novel may contain
more than one story arc. This doesn't mean
this ceases to apply. It means you have
to be even more diligent about knowing what the beats of each story
are so that you can make sure that your
chapters are covering them. I tend to have them next to each other in a spreadsheet next to my chapter list so that I
can see when I'm doing what. The result is something
so richly textured that your audience is not going to be sitting there seeing
your scaffolding. They're just going to be
enjoying the whole novel. So bear that in mind, what we're discussing
in this course is how to plu one story,
not a whole novel. And that story might just be a thread within your
overall tapestry. So to recap, the three
or five act structure is an attempt to
codify what works. Based on stories that have
already been written. Why it works is up for debate. This means it addresses your
readers two key questions. Why should I care
what happens next? And so what? Where you find an alternative solution
to these questions, you should feel
free to use them. Structure is only ever
in their service. The structure is orgidly
derived from work on theater, sacred myth and films. So this is relevant to novels, but it does mean we can be less rigid about the time frame, and one level may contain
multiple stories, each of which have their
own three act structure. Okay, so in the next classes, I will walk you through
that structure. We'll begin with an overview, and then we will dive into
each section in detail. We'll talk a little
more about why you might want to break
it at the very end. See you there.
3. Overview: Hi, welcome back. So
I want to begin by reminding you of our two key
questions for your reader. Why should I care what
happens next? And so what? To make sense of the structure
I'm about to show you and why it's not just an arbitrary
set of instructions, I want to headline the answers
to these two questions. So why should I care
what happens next? The key to this
is I want to know the answer to a central
dramatic question. So in act one, we set up a dramatic question like,
will the hero live? In Act two, the aim of the game is ramping up the
tension around that question. And that's a real art that
we'll discuss in that class. And then in act three, you
give us the resolution. What stops to your reader
saying so what at the end. In short, stories show change. So the key to this question is the underlying change
in your story. If at the end of your story, your main character is
back where they started. They've overcome
all this adversity just to get back to square one. There's generally a
feeling of so what. It's just a round trip, and we haven't got anywhere. It hasn't been a journey. For some writers on structure, The change has to be an
internal character change. This is the point of hero's
journey kind of structures. So your hero is going after something external
that they want, but internally, they
learn a lesson. Look, this is one really
effective option. I don't personally
believe it's essential. I think you could have anything that feels fundamentally human. Maybe two characters who weren't working together at the
beginning are a team by the end, and it's a transition from
loneliness to friendship or maybe it's a transition from not really having
a home to at the end, having somewhere to call home. I'll talk more about
walk sort of think can go in that slot later. But it's worth noting that for a lot of writers
on structure, the focus is really on
internal character change, and that is always a
very strong option. Okay. So with that in
mind, let's begin. Here's a quick preview
of your whole journey. So, roughly speaking, we spend act one in the status quo world, the way things are for our
hero at the beginning. By the end of act one, we've
got a dramatic question. They spend act two trying to overcome problems to reach
the outcome they want. We resolve this
struggle in act three, but we are not quite back
in the status quo world. We've achieved the new world, the change that answers
the question, so what. Now let's zoom in to act one, here's a preview,
ordinary world. Inciting incident,
reluctance or preparation, act one game changer. So our first step is to spend some time in
the ordinary world, the characters life as it is
at the start of the story. You'll want to showcase here the aspect that is
going to change, show us what they
lack in their lives. You'll also want to
take this opportunity to get us invested
in the character. Part of answering the question, why should I care what happens next is making me care
about the character, and we'll look at that
in our class on Act one. Okay? Then something happens that shakes up our hero's life. Now, this is a baffling
array of names. Inciting Incident,
catalyst call to adventure, ignition
point, awakening. We're going to use inciting
incident because I like it. So in five x structure terms,
that's the end of act one. The next bit is act. But
for our three x structure, this is all coming
under act one. So there's now a
section, which is again, described in lots
of different ways, grappling with incident, the debate, refusing the call and meeting a mentor
in the hero's journey, doubt and overcoming reluctance. In other words, this is a
section where your character doesn't immediately respond
to the inciting incident. Maybe they're fired
from their job, and their first reaction is to spend a while
trying to get it back before they set off
on their new adventure, or maybe they know there's
a threat from space, but they're not immediately
up for going out to fight it. In other words,
they are reluctant. Sometimes there's a
preparation phase. Instead of a reluctance phase. Think Harry Potter going
off to buy things ready for Hogwats or any kind of
classic training montage. So where does this
section exist? I think it's doing more of the work that the
ordinary world did. We might be further showcasing
what needs to change. So particularly if you're looking at internal
character change, this is a chance to
show them responding to things the old way
and not working out. Um, it's also more time to get us invested in your character to set up any information
that you need. So bear all of that in
mind with this section. Ask yourself what it's doing for your story and use
it intelligently. I don't think it makes sense
to prescribe a length here. Some inciting incidents require a pretty immediate response. Use this section to suit
your story's needs. Finally, however, you are
going to get to your response. And this again, has many names. I'm going to call it
the Act game changer. Whatever you decide to do here, your hero should be responding to the inciting
incident themselves. They should have agency,
make a decision. The story doesn't begin when
the killer issues a threat. The story begins when
the hero decides to respond by tracking him down. I'll talk more about
that in the next class. I call it the game
changer for a reason. It should not be
possible for your hero to go back to the way
things were at this point. If as soon as it
going gets raft, they can just say, Oh, never mind, I won't
do it after all. There's not really
anything at stake. So this is a step
into a new world. Often characters physically
leave at this point, but if they don't, they are stepping forward into
something irreversible. Okay, from this point, from either the inciting incident or the act one game
changer or both, we should be very clear
on the dramatic question at the center of the story, the scaffolding for the answer to why should I want to
know what happens next? We've also ceded the need
for the central change, which will answer so what. And that's act one or act one and two for
five act thinkers. Now on to act two or act three and four,
in five act parlance. So here's a preview attempts, midpoint attempts and an
act two game changer, which will be either despair
and change or yes, no, but. Okay, so all writers on
structure agree that basically, our hero tries to win for a bit. This is referred to variously as first and second attempts, fun and games, tests, allies and enemies,
experimenting with knowledge, the dream stage and
frustration stage. I'm just going to
call it attempts. Some authors do try and pin down the most satisfying sequence
of success and failure. We'll come onto that in act too. I think the important
thing for me is to understand that here you are maintaining your answer
to the question. Why should I care
what happens next? The attempts will lead
us to a midpoint. Again, there are slightly
divergent ideas on this. For some thinkers, it's a complication where the
heroes task gets a lot harder. For S it gives key knowledge that changes things importantly. For S it's a strong challenge to the characters
attempt to change. All of these have
in common that it's a point where the
tension ramps up. It's like a level up of the
problem at the midpoint. There will then be more
attempts to deal with this midpoint
complication before we reach our at
two game changer. Now, thoughts diverge again. Sorry. I think the
different presentations of this moment can be grouped
under two main headings. Despair and change. Bring your character to
the ultimate low point. This section gets cheerfully called Dark Night of the soul, ordeal and death,
the nightmare stage. Basically, this is when things are as bad as they
are going to get. Crucially, that can only be reversed by the
key story change. For example, the characters
internal change. Different presentations
of the structure differ on whether they
present at two as ending on the low point and act three beginning
on the change or whether they put
the change at the end of a two. That doesn't matter. You get this pair despair reversed by your
central story change. There's another option that does similar work
and you'll see why. Answer the dramatic
question, but with a butt. So you could answer
the dramatic question here by introduce
unexpected consequences. So she got a guy, but she realized that was
a horrible idea, and she has to extricate
herself from him. Or she rescued her daughter, but realized that the real plot going on was
something much worse. So then what we have
is a change of desire, a change of aim on the
part of our protagonist, and we'll spend that three
dealing with the butt. So you can have despair and
change or yes, no, but. Either way, it's the
Act two game changer. And what they have
in common is that they are provoking
the central change. So in Act three, we see
the changed attempts, a final push to reach
a good resolution, but affected by
the act to change. And then we get
our resolution, a, a final victory or a tragedy. It settles how things are
going to be from now on, with respect to the dramatic
question and the change. So from now on, I'll be
talking about victories, but don't forget
that the tragedy version is always there for you. Originated in tragedy. Just answer the
dramatic question in the negative and fail to change, and you have the tragic version. You might then one to CODA that showcases this final
state of affairs. You know, that's optional, depending on how well it suits your story. So here's a recap. Don't worry, you will be
familiar with this by the end. Act one or one and two. Ordinary world,
inciting incident, reluctance or preparation and
the act one game changer. At two or two and three,
attempts, midpoint, more attempts and an
act two game changer, which can be despair and
change or yes no, but. Then at three change
attempts, resolution encoder. All of this is in your
downloadable resource. Okay. So in the next class,
we'll zoom into Act one, and that's when I'll
set the first part of your course project to write
out your Act one plot. For now, you might want to go over this structure and take a look at your one liner and jot down any ideas
you already have. Maybe you're already pretty clear what the
dramatic question is likely to be or what the
central change is likely to be. So start making notes
of what comes up for you and I'll see you next time to pin down that first act. See you there. Okay.
4. Act 1: Welcome back. In this class, we'll be thinking about Act one. So we saw that this
involves setting up the ordinary world
with its flow that will change or and
tragedy fail to change, shaking that world with
an inciting incident, optional reluctance
or preparation, a game changing decision by our protagonist that launches us irrevocably into Act two, so our Act one game changer. Simple enough, but clearly not all act ones
are created equal. Consider. Ann is a woman in
her 20s working in a bank. She isn't eating
enough vitamins. She contracts an illness that will cause her
to lose her hair. She does nothing about it. Her friends convince
her that she must. She sees a doctor and agrees to begin a course of drugs
and may restore her hair. If they fail, she may
also develop skin issues. But once she has
died the course, she cannot reverse this. Now, this meets all my criteria, but I imagine most of you
aren't grasping to read on. Not because we aren't nice human beings who
would in real life, hope everything goes really well for this woman under her hair. But somehow this isn't
the stuff of story yet. So in this class, we're
going to be looking at what makes us care about a hero, a dramatic question,
and the central change. Okay, so first, the
dramatic question. I think there are two basic
ways to go with this, and our first is to tap a
fundamental human need. Maslow's hierarchy of
needs is very famous. It's a perfectly
good place to start for thinking about
fundamental needs. If the dramatic
question centers on your character's ability to have their physiological
or safety needs met, we are in a high
drama situation. Typical here is the thriller. Belonging ness and love
needs are, of course, central to the
most popular genre of all time, the romance, but they can also be
explored in other ways, and esteem and self
actualization, take more skill in psychological
portraits to pull off. But if we are successfully drawn into sympathy
with the character, we can absolutely
root for these. You also want to bear this in mind for the central change. Whatever the change
is a rule of thumb, it should either be a fundamental
need or something that enables a character to secure
their fundamental need. I think this is kind
of the fascination with internal character change. People tend to get better at securing their love and
belonging as a result, and that's something we're
so keen to learn about as humans that there's a
kind of inherent appeal. And that's why the woman with her vitamins didn't really work? None of us are going
to tear up at the end when she suddenly
gets her five a day. You may have other
fundamental needs in mind, but
whatever you choose, I think that for central change, a fundamental need is
pretty non negotiable. So the dramatic question,
again, however, I think there is
another key option, promise a really cool ride. This is heavily at
work in lots of fantasy and sci fi and
other kinds of adventure. I don't really care if
the dramatic question is, will we defeat the space army or will we rescue this
person from the planet, or will we be the first person to land on this other planet. I care that you are
promising me a ride through space. That's
why I'm reading. So a lot of quest
stories are operating on not particularly
sympathetic esteem needs, but we come along
for the ride because we think it's going to be cool. Your dramatic question should be a fundamental need or promise
a cool journey or both. The central change
should always be a fundamental need or help the hero to secure
a fundamental need. All right. What about
caring about the hero? Okay. First thing, this is not really about your
hero being nice. You can have a wide
range of liability. I would advise that
if they're a St., you make one thing about them a little bit of, so
they're not annoying. And likewise, if
they're an anti hero, if you can give us
something to root for, like, see them love their dog. But basically, I think liability of your hero is
neither here nor there. What do I think matters? For hooking up our sympathy, I want to see character
agency and motivation. So agency, it's boring to
watch characters just be bounced around by
life events and just reacting because
they can't help it. I don't know why. It just is. I want to see a sparky kid who's trying to make
something of themselves. And then because they're
invested, I will invest in them. I think that's sort
of the secret to the advice that we
should kick off into act with a decision by our hero because it takes that
out the way right up top. And it's one of the reasons Vitamin lady was kind of mare. Like, her big action was to finally go to the doctor and
then do what she was told. If she'd done something
a bit gutsier to try and secure a
cure for herself, I might have been cheering
a little bit harder. So agency is really helpful. As for motivation, my advice
here is to be specific. Your characters motive should be expressle as an if
then statement. If x happens, why will happen. We really want X to
happen or to not happen because why
will that happen. If we look at our
needs pyramid again, if you're operating
at the bottom end, it's tempting to say,
Well, if they are killed, they won't live, but trust
me, specificity will help. So sure they're trying to get
their survival needs met, but if they die, they'll
never get a chance to tell Aunt Josephine the truth
that she needs to know. Or if they die, there will be no one left to
look after Tom, or if they die, their
important research project will never see the light of day. It's about giving a sense that they are a pre existing
character with an agenda of their
own and not just a puppet being knocked around
by danger for the fun of it. So specificity makes those fundamental problems
more interesting. In the same way, at the
top of the pyramid, specificity is how
I get you to care. So vitamin ladies hair
didn't seem that important. But of course, hair loss
can be devastating. So if you had invested time in showing me how if
she loses her hair, It will be the last dw
for her and Johnny. Then I might be much more invested in all
the vulnerability at stake for her of her hair, and I might cheer when
she finally loses her hair anyway and loses Johnny and goes off into a bold, blissful, wide open future. So that specificity can hook us in at the top
end of the pyramid. Okay, so time to fill
out your own at one. Let's see those elements again alongside the
advice we've had. So the ordinary world should
be showcasing your need, and this should be either
a fundamental need or something impacting
their ability to secure a fundamental need. Remember, at this
point, they don't realize that need is what they
need to solve necessarily. Then the inciting
incident comes along and it lays the groundwork
for the dramatic question. The dramatic question
is going to be either a fundamental need or a promise of a fun ride or both. Then maybe reluctance
and preparation. You decide, are you showcasing the need for
your central change? Are you ramping up our
investment in your hero? Are you giving us some
information that we need? Then the Act one game changer. Here, they respond to
the inciting incident with an irrevocable decision, and that puts them
in a new world. Remember, they should be the agent of their
own lives here, and they should have
a specific motive expressible as if X, then y. Good luck, I will
see you for Act two.
5. Act 2: Welcome back. You should now
have an outline for Act one. So we are ready to plan Act two. Here's a reminder of
your overview structure. Attempts, midpoint. Attempts Act two game changer. Guys, act two is where
people famously give up. It's known as the soggy Middle. Here is where the theory gets
a lot less unified as well. It's one thing to know what a beginning and end of a satisfying story looks like. It's a lot more difficult to pin down how to get from
one to the other. The attempts in the midpoint
basically involve problems. But what kind of problems
and in what order. Again, if you want to go through some of the books
on your reso sheet, some of them will give you
a more specific answer. I want to answer this in the most general
terms and look at how you are finding your version of Act two by focusing
on the question. Why should I keep reading? Okay. First things first, problems in your story should impact your
dramatic question. Remind yourself first what
your dramatic question is. Sure, it's very inconvenient to get sick or lose your job, but would it be relevantly bad? Okay. Second, it helps if you narrow down the sort of
thing that might go wrong. So first, this can
help generate ideas, and second, it can lend a
story a sense of coherence. All kinds of problems piling in and going wrong
is confusing for your reader and confusing is bad for wanting to
continue reading. I mean, sure, getting mumps would impact your ability
to get to Jupiter, but it's kind of not the problem I was expecting in
a space adventure unless you have signaled mumps and its relevance
at the beginning. So I want you to
begin by choosing two kinds of thing that can
go wrong in this story. Now, more than that for now. So here are two examples, a romance story in which
our dramatic question is, C our hero keep her dark
secret from her fiance? Her if then motivation is, if I cannot keep my secret, who will not want to marry me. And a space opera in which
our dramatic question is, C our hero enter and disable
an enemy spacecraft? Her if then motivation is, if she cannot do this, she is facing expulsion from the military force
that she belongs to. Okay, so what kind of problems might I assign
to the first story? Okay. Let's say her
cover up lies lead to misunderstandings and
her would be mother in law tries to sabotage
the relationship. Notice that both these
kind of problems have the potential to impact directly on the
dramatic question. Now, obviously, in reality,
other things could go wrong. The lovers could argue about
something else entirely, but I'm narrowing down
the scope of my story. Or, again, what kind of problems might I assign
to our second story? I might say,
technological problems and violent vengeful aliens. Again, both of these have the capacity to affect
the dramatic question, the success of her mission. We've done step one, choose
your type of problem. Now we need to
choose a series of specific problems that
will make up attempts, midpoint, and then
attempts again, and they need to
stay interesting. The key to this lies
in consequences. First, every problem
must have consequences. If your hero defeats a monster and then just
carries on their way, that was a pointless monster. That's not building a story. That's building an
obstacle course. If the monster leaves
them critically wounded, making their job a lot harder, or if they take
the monster's skin away with them as armor, increasing their
chances of success, then that monster has
affected the story. So all your problems want
to have consequences. EM Forster summed up
the importance of causality and
consequences beautifully. The king died, and
then the Queen died, he tells us, is a
series of events. The king died, and
then the Queen died of grief is a story. So things happen, and because of that, other things happen. Second, the key to making your attempts feel
different to your midpoint, which in turn feel different to the Act game changer is in what kind of
consequences they have. So problems in the
attempts section should change the
course of events. Problems at the midpoint section should change the stakes, and the problem at the
Act game changer should bring about the fundamental change that answers to so what, a change in the hero's
approach or their aim. So let's go back to
my two examples. Remember, our romance hero
who can suffer in two ways. Her cover up lies can lead
to misunderstandings, or her would be
mother in law can try to sabotage
her relationship. So let's say the lover
almost uncovers her secret, so she comes up
with a cover up lie and now has to maintain
this pretense. So this will change
the course of the story as not a
pointless obstacle. We're going to watch
he having to maintain this for the next
however many scenes. And that will in turn impact
how everything turns out. But we haven't changed
the stakes yet. She's not really
any better or worse off than she was before or take our space opera story and our hero who's liable
to tech mishaps. The engine fails,
so she hit hikes on another ship and
meets a new character. So, again, the story has
been substantially moved on, but the stakes haven't
really changed. Things might get a
little better or a little worse over the
course of the attempts, but you're waiting
until the midpoint to really tighten the
screws on either making the chances of
success much slimmer or the consequences of
failure much graver. So let's take a look at one
of these midpoint problems. So, for our romance hero, then, how can I change the stakes using the two kinds of
problem available to me? Well, with the problem type covering up her lie leads
to misunderstandings. I've suggested her lover makes a major sacrifice as a result of one of these
misunderstandings. So at that point,
we've massively increased the consequences
of her lying. Or if we take the mother in law sabotages their
relationship, the mother in law
goes on a trip, which will lead to her
finding out the truth. So at this point,
our hero has to drop everything to go after her. This has massively diminished the chances of her succeeding. So either of these are a
game changer on the stakes, one through the chances of success and one through the
consequences of failure. See that again with
our space for a hero. Tech failures. Let's say her communication system fails and leaves her isolated
from her team. She's now alone. This
is something that has massively lowered the
chances of her success. All vengeful aliens,
she finds out they have someone she cares
about in their clutches, so that massively increases the consequences of her failure. Okay. And then finally, the Act two game
changer is going to force our fundamental change. So as we saw earlier, this is either a low
point that forces a new change in approach
from our character, or it's a yes but or a no but to the dramatic question
that forces a new desire. Let's take a look
at some examples. For our romance hero, here's a low point forcing
a change of approach. The lover has left because of one of the misunderstandings, and it seems all is now lost. So she will have
to go after them and tell the truth
to win them back. So being truthful with them
is her fundamental change. And here's a yes, but to
the dramatic question. Her secret is buried forever, and the lover proposes a, but she has by now realized she wants someone else and does
not want to live a lie. So she must sort
out all the bridges she's burned in the process of covering up her secret to get
to our true happy ending. For our space opera hero, a low point forcing a
change of approach. She is captured. Escape
seems impossible. She will have to cooperate
with her fellow prisoner, the sworn enemy who
caused her to be out of favor with her commanders
in the first place. Fundamental story change, or a no but to the
dramatic question. She fails to infiltrate
the ship successfully. The answer to the
dramatic question is no as she is captured
on entering, but she realizes her
captains are actually the good guys and finds herself switching allegiance
for the final climax. Now it's your turn. This is all on your resource
sheet, so don't panic. First, choose two types of problem that can
happen in this story. Remember, they should
be the kind of problems that can impact
the dramatic question. Second, list some versions of these problems that would
change the course of events, some that would change
the stakes and some that could be forcing the central
change of your story. Then begin arranging these
into a satisfying second act. Here's your general
structure again. Honestly, sometimes
the exact ordering of attempts and midpoint
gets a little blurred, and this is where
you need to bring your instincts as a
storyteller to the table. Once you're aware that some
problems change events only, some change dtakes and some
force fundamental change, and you're aware the problem
you're trying to answer is maintaining your
reader's interest in knowing what happens next. It is over to you to figure out an interesting configuration of these that will keep
us on our toes. You want to vary and build the kind of consequences
things have. And one standard way is
attempts leading up to a midpoint that forces more attempts that lead
up to our final change. And it's a great way. But if it's not working
for your story, you can mix it up. Of course, always remember the very first point
from this class. Every problem must affect the heroes attempts to solve
the dramatic question. Always. So give it a go
and play around until you have a series
of problems and consequences that pleases you. I will see you for
Act three to get your hero out of this trouble
you have got them into. See you there.
6. Act 3: Hi, welcome back.
Congratulations. You've reached the
end of Act two. You've brought your
hero either to a low point that is going
to force change or you've answered their dramatic
question with an unexpected but and their whole
desire has changed. Now we're ready to take
them home in Act three. Reminder that is
changed attempts, our final push, which finally
takes us to a resolution. And then if it feels right, a CODA might show us
things settling into a new ordinary a sense of how things are going
to be from now on. Now, structurally in many
ways, this is obvious. Audiences can feel at this point that the big
change has happened, and we're ready to push
through to our ending. Unfortunately, that
doesn't make it the easiest section to write. Endings need to be surprising enough that we don't see
them coming a mile off, but not so surprising
that they feel random. When they happen,
there's got to be a satisfying sense that
they were had to happen. This is a really
difficult balance. Also, because at this point, what will work is so
heavily dependent on all the things you've already come up with
in Act one and two, it gets much more difficult
to give general advice. The solution at
this point is going to be so unique to your story. There is some advice I can give my two main bits of
advice are practical. Let's start with a couple
of basic ground rules for satisfying endings. Okay. Your hero's action should be at the heart of the moment. We've been following
this character. Don't suddenly let
their mentor or best friend swoop
in to save them. Unless, of course, the big thing that they needed to do
was learn to step aside. But in that case, that is the
key action for the moment. So the key action should belong to your hero
at this point. Make sure we understand why they didn't just do this
in the first place. Okay? This is an
important basic check. If you've done your
change right in Act two, it should already be there. So it might be the
case that the solution was literally available
to your character, but was psychologically
impossible for them, in which case,
we've watched them go on that internal change. If you've done that right,
we'll be cheering for them. If it's not quite
there, we'll just be saying this is your moment to check that we really
understand why this wasn't an available
solution before and is now. Relatedly, avoiding DS machina. So, there shouldn't
be anything in the resolution that we
don't already know about. This is most obvious in
a mystery story where if the detective uses clues that we weren't told about to solve
the mystery, we feel cheated. In the same way, an action hero can't suddenly be
given a weapon. We didn't know
they have However, domestic, realistic,
personal, your story is, the same rules apply. Don't pull out the
mental equivalent of a gun that nobody
mentioned before. We want to have had all the
pieces to solve this problem. It's just that we didn't and you have because you're the
clever writer. Okay. This brings me to my
first practical tip. This is all very well, but how do we go about
finding that resolution? It's hard work. This
isn't an accident. It needs to be hard
work. If it was easy, your reader would
have come up with it. So necessarily to avoid an ending your reader will
already have thought of, you have to work
harder than they will. So my first tip is to list everything that you already
have in your story. I mean in minute detail, the abstract things, and
the concrete things. Go back over your manuscript,
see what you already have. Okay, so we opened with Aunt Jane crying every
time Joelin plays, and there's a blue teapot
and a three legged cat, and we've learned that Jane tried to drive a bus once
but didn't pass the test, and that our hero has just
left an umbrella on the tube. I want you to be that specific list everything that is there. Brains automatically try and impose connections
between objects. We're going to look at that
more in the next class. So the exercise of doing this will encourage
your brain to start drawing links between these things and things that you might have forgotten about. Of course, if you spot
a perfect solution that uses the bus and the teapot
and the three legged cat, but you just need also to have
a phobia of ants in there, you can go back and write it in. Nothing is set in
stone at this stage. So you can use this principle
that if it's in the end, it needs to be in
the beginning and just reverse engineer it. Okay, my second practical tip, budget time for your
subconscious to work on this and don't use the first
solution that you come up with. I often talk about leaving a story to Brew, and
I really mean this. Now, this doesn't mean you
can just go and have a nap. You have to do the work
that keeps reminding your brain that
this is the problem you are trying to
solve at the moment. So sit down, preferably daily
and have a think about it. But what I mean is that it's likely that the solution
you end up using will come to you maybe while
you're doing something else or maybe on your 20th
time of sitting down. Often, your first
solution is obvious and your second solution
is wildly convoluted. For some reason, the subconscious brain
is better at this, and if you give it time, it will present you with
more varied options. Keep sitting down every
day and doing the work, but don't expect to
take your first idea. So for this reason, your final
project assignment is not to plot one final version
of Act three, but instead, I want you to write that list of everything in your
plot so far and then generate at least
three possible resolutions. Just sit down and
see how many you can crack out in an hour, say. Then come back for
the final class. But after this course, give that resolution
some time to brew. You might want to
start writing Act one. Sometimes the writing
process can bring out the specifics that are going
to inspire your ending. It doesn't have to be set in
stone until you get there. I mean, actually, it
doesn't have to be set in stone until
you finish editing, but that's a whole other story. So write your list and your
three possible resolutions, and then I'll see
you back here for some discussion of when
we might want to break structure or be
ambiguous with structure or throw it out the window
entirely. I'll see you there.
7. Breaking the structure: Welcome back. So you've now outlined a complete three
act structure plot, although your third act is
still open to revision. Within this structure, there is so much room for
variety and freshness, especially when
you consider that most novels are composed
of more than one, and by the time they've
all been woven together, your audience can no longer
see your scaffolding. However, in this last class, we're going to talk
about the possibility of breaking the structure in various ways to give you
maximum possible scope because, of course, these are not rules. So we'll look at
three possibilities, breaking one part of
structure for effect, ambiguous causality, and
ignoring everything we've just said and writing
something else entirely. So first, breaking our
structure for effect. Even before you took this class, you were emotionally, very familiar with the
three x structure. Now, whether that's because it's innate in some way,
as some people argue, or just because you have spent your life reading and
watching it in various forms, you are familiar with it and you can feel
when it goes wrong. If the central question was
never answered or everything, we really well for the
first half of the book, you would feel it
done without control, it would just feel really odd. But done on purpose, it could
be a deliberate attempt to subvert our expectations and therefore control our response. Some examples. Failing to answer the dramatic
question by the end, could be a cliff hanger that's done for very
deliberate reasons. Or having causal reasoning break down might be a sort
of existentialist, exploration of the
human condition and the sense that we're
not always in control. Or maybe you have a
surface happy ending, but without the permanent
change we were craving, and then you get an
ambiguous ending, you're being deliberately
thought provoking. I'm sure you can think of more. The point is that
now you know what each part of the
structure is there for, you can break something with explicit intent to mess with
us in a very specific way. Okay. Change number two, bringing in ambiguous causality. All right, put two or
more things after each other and humans will try to
find the causal connection. More than one
plotting book gives the example of the
words banana vomit. I'm sure you started to
come up with a story. I do not want to
know what it was. So I've said that in stories
events have consequences, and causality is key. And some stories give
very clear causality, and we know exactly how
each event led to the next. Some are a little
more ambiguous. You know, we're left wondering, was the tragedy caused by our hero or was it
something else? When she leaves for Paris
in that final scene, what really tipped
her over the edge? Did we ever really settle why our heroes child stopped
talking to them? These kind of feel uncertainties about exactly what in the messiness of
existence causes what? Can be built into
stories by having chains of events that you
can see could be connected, but you're left to make all those connections
by yourself. How clear we like causality
is a matter of taste. You can't please everybody, but you can play with where
you are on this spectrum. Okay. And finally, do
something else entirely. Let's talk about why.
If the story art works, why mess with it. Well, firstly, it's something I won't go into too much here. What if you want
your novel to do something else besides
telling a story? A novel is just a printed
piece of fiction. It doesn't have to
be like a play. Maybe you want to experiment with what that form can be for. I won't go into
that too much here because this class
focuses on storytelling. But another possibility
is that you might want to experiment with how else we can answer
these questions, these two fundamental questions
and tell stories at work. On the grounds that if
we don't experiment, we will never find other ways. So there's a French
collective called the lipo who took this up in
a fascinating way, and they imposed
constraints on themselves that made it really
difficult to do anything other than
obey the constraint. So, for example, George
Prec wrote a novel entirely without the
letter E Dis in French, a void in English. It is wildly unreadable. But the constraint of
having to not use E, made it almost impossible
for him to mimic existing art because he was so busy just trying
to achieve that. It's normally almost impossible not to mimic existing art. We're so ingrained in
how stories should go, that it's very hard
not to reproduce it, even if we don't think
we're structuralists. Um, So you might be interested in finding out whether there are other ways
of answering the questions, whether we can break free
of the three act structure. My top read for
thinking about this is Jane Allison's
Manda spiral explode. And she discusses
formal experiment often comes at the expense of the reader's feeling in
connection to the narrative because people haven't
answered these two questions in my terms, but a successful experiment will find new ways to
engage those feelings. And she looks at some other
story shapes you might want to try and how
they might work. Because remember, you'll still need to answer my
core questions. Why should I keep reading? So what? Mastering the
three act structure and navigating the unique
questions thrown up by each instance it will home your storytelling instinct
that will get you better and better at answering
these questions and getting yourself into
the mind of your reader. It's a great place to start. It is a very respectable
place to end. Great literary feats can be written that are well
within this structure, and you are under no
pressure to ever leave it. Just remember to use it in service of those two questions. If you find a better solution, then you should be
using that solution. You wear the structure. The structure does not wear you. I think it's probably
time we ended. Thank you so much. I would love to see your plot outlines. Please do post them up here, and I hope you really enjoy planning lots and lots of
stories. Thanks a lot. See you soon.
Sylvia Bishop, Author
