The 3 Act Story Structure Equals 4

The 3 act story structure never made sense to me until I divided it into 4 parts, and Story Beats made the big difference.

You can trace back to Aristotle the division of the story structure into three segments. That’s interesting, but that history won’t do much for your writing except to show it’s a time-proven framework. Unfortunately, knowing stories parse into setup, confrontation, and resolution did nothing for me.

With more research and study, I found teachers of writing craft subdivided those thirds, but I got lost in various writing terms that didn’t explain fully their purpose.

What Is the Typical 3 Act Story Structure?

As I soon found out while studying story structure, the terms used for the nomenclature often changed from one teacher to another.

Let’s start with some common terms and explore from there.

• Act 1 – Setup: (1) Exposition, (2) Inciting Incident, (3) Plot Point One
• Act 2 – Confrontation: (4) Rising Action, (5) Midpoint, (6) Plot Point Two
• Act 3 – Resolution: (7) Pre-Climax, (8) Climax, (9) Denouement

If you have an earned Master of Fine Arts degree specialized in creative writing, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and playwriting, you probably nodded as you read these terms. However, for the rest of us, those nine structural story beats do little to help us complete that all-important first draft.

Fortunately, writing craft teachers, such as James Scott Bell, recognized our plight as novice writers, and gave us easier to understand terms and examples.

When 3 Actually Equals 4

Although James Scott Bell is not the first to break the second act into two parts, he justified the division with the “mirror moment.”

• Bell taught that at the midpoint of the middle act, the hero of your story (i.e., the chief protagonist) reflects on the situation, what he dubbed the “mirror moment,” where the fictional person switches from focusing on the satisfaction of a “want” to learning what it takes to address the inner “need.”
• Until the midpoint, the hero’s ignorance (i.e., the individual’s lack of awareness of the inner “need”) prevented solving the story’s problem.
• That “mirror moment” at midpoint divides the second act into parts A and B.

Note: Even after becoming aware of the “need” to learn a life-changing lesson, the hero goes through one or more try/fail cycles, and still may not heed the lesson because the author controls the outcome of the story.

Now that you’re aware of the mirror moment, I’ll share how you can use Story Beats to guide your writing for Act 1, Act 2A, Act 2B, and Act 3.

Assign Story Beats to the 3 Act Story Structure

By assigning 18 Story Beats instead of 9, you’ll follow a divide-and-conquer strategy.

• At first, you may think the addition of more beats seems counter intuitive to simplifying story structure, but that granularity will make writing and arranging scenes much easier.
• By assigning placement percentages to each beat, you can estimate where to fit each one within the overall story.
• The brief definition of each Story Beat helps you understand its purpose and decide the best place to fit the individual and sequence of scenes.
• This understanding will give you the confidence to identify and delete scenes that don’t work for your story.

Here’s a downloadable PDF that shows the name and placement of the 18 Story Beats within the four act structure.

Note: Click here to download a PDF copy of The Trellis Method: Story Beats.

An Update on My Work in Progress

A post I read this week coached me to become more vulnerable to my readers. (Don’t you just hate it when you read or hear something you can’t ignore?)

For me, that means sharing the status of my work even though my progress has not lived up to my goal. Like many of you, I had hoped to write more this month. However, as is often the case, life’s distractions took me off task.

Work-in-progress Update

Genre:

I based the expectations for my story on a mashup of mystery and thriller with a touch of romance.

Premise:

Instead of going over the top with details, I kept the premise simple.

A recently fired corporate whistleblower renews his passion for writing only to discover who murdered his fiancée and parents, putting him on a spiritual quest for truth and justice.

Characters:

I have too many characters! I came to this conclusion after reading a four-book series by one of my favorite authors. Unfortunately, that writer threw in so many characters that I lost track of the multi-POV narrative. So, I’m cutting back my characters with scene-controlling POVs to the (1) hero, (2) mentor, (3) love interest, (4) love interest rival, (5) primary villain, (6) secondary villain. Non-scene-controlling POV characters, such as the sidekick, will have their key roles but not control the scenes. Note: The “community subplot” uses these non-POV characters to set the tone.

Main Plot:

The main plot follows the conventions and key scenes for the mystery and thriller genres, and the goal is to preserve life (e.g., hero and love interest)

Subplots:

The subplots will amplify the main plot and raise these questions.

• Will the villain hide the fraud and assassin kill the hero?
• Will the love interest or her rival attract and hold the hero’s affection?
• Is the community a secure haven or does it hide a dark secret?
• Will the mentor succeed at helping the hero discover his calling?

Themes:

These threads exist within the story, and will increase or decrease their influence as the story unfolds.

• Mystery: Justice reigns over injustice when the hero answers the call and uses his gifts. Injustice prevails when the hero does not answer the call and uses his gifts.
• Thriller: Life prevails over damnation when the protagonist outwits the evil villain. Damnation reigns when the protagonist does not exercise his gifts.
• Romance: Love wins over obstacles when one or both lovers sacrifice for the greater good of the other. Love fails when one or both lovers pursue selfish motives.

Scenes:

I’ve drafted the scenes for Story Beats 1-8 (HOOK to Premise), but still need to add layers of details (e.g., senses, weather, descriptions, etc.).

Long Live the 3 Act Story Structure That Equals 4

I hope you had a great February, wish you continued joy on your writing journey, and thank you for boosting my days with your insights and feedback.

Have a great March!

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