What are the acts of a story?

I feel like there's a lot of talking around the central point rather than addressing it:

The word "act" is sometimes used as part of a metaphor.

This metaphor imagines a story to be somewhat like a play, with certain logical breaks in the story dividing it up into "scenes" and several of those scenes being lumped together into larger story segments called "acts." In a play, these logical breaks are moments for the stage hands to work at setting the physical configuration of the set; in a more general story they may not be clear or nice at all, since metaphors do not usually perfectly describe reality.

Many story-writing or story-analysis guidelines try to break a story into acts. Possibly the simplest one is the three-act analysis, which goes something like this:

A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning sets up the bigger question of the story as well as little questions of the story: including the people who are asking the question and the setting that the question is being asked. The middle is a series of anecdotes which answer some questions and raise further questions along the way. Finally the end sees the bigger question answered, allowing some form of closure for the audience so that the story does not have to continue forever.

As you can see, this is very generic. It is also not the only way to analyze a story. For example Dan Harmon has an 8-point storytelling structure which I would call "the descent into Hell" and describe in four acts:

In Act I, "Introduction", we are introduced to characters who are living in some "normal" setting, but we are also introduced to something wrong or unsatisfactory with that setting, which prompts the characters to begin a journey into some new "abnormal" setting which we might call Hell. In Act II, "Descent", these characters descend into Hell, usually failing due to their unfamiliarity, until they adapt to Hell and can finally make their own way. In Act III, "Trial by Fire", they learn whatever they wanted to learn or get whatever they wanted to get, but in order to do so, Hell burns them somehow. Finally in Act IV, "Ascent", they return from Hell back to the normal world, having whatever they needed, but also having profoundly changed.

This has strong ties to Joseph Campbell's "monomyth" ideas as well. We see that the three-act analysis above probably would lump "End" into the second half of "Trial by Fire" and the entirety of "Ascent", or so. The breaks are fuzzy because metaphors do not perfectly describe reality.

In addition while the second template describes way more stories than it should (see e.g. the 2015 Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy, Sisters, as well as 1979's classic Alien to get an idea of how widely this thing works), it cannot describe all of the stories that the first one can describe. For instance there is a story structure which is the diametric opposite of the descent into hell; one might call it the ascent into Heaven, favored in Chinese/Korean/Japanese culture and called kishōtenketsu in the latter. There's still an introduction act, but there is nothing unsatisfactory about the starting setting: rather the characters there introduced pursue some Heaven for obvious reasons and in the second act Ascend into that Heaven. But in a third act there is some "Twist" act, some strange thing that should not be happening or some observation or question that reveals that not all is perfect in Heaven: and then as this twist unravels the abstraction, the characters are kicked out of heaven and descend back down to their original setting. Still a beginning, middle, and end: but exactly the opposite story arc.

It is very likely that your show was using some related metaphor for how their comedy show was broken up into "acts." It is not a uniquely defined metaphor; it is a fuzzy application of play logic to other stories.

posted over 7 years ago

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CR Drost‭

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It seems complicated, but it isn't. Even the word act is misleading, because you can have a one-act play, with an entire drama taking place in that one act. That's an artificial structure.

A true story structure, also called classical drama, has three parts. First, the antagonist changes the protagonist's world in some way. Second, the protagonist confronts the antagonist. Third, the protagonist reclaims his old world or finds a way to survive in his new world. You can compare this paradigm to Hegel's thesis/antithesis/synthesis or a hundred others, but that's the gist.

A poor drama will try to distract you with side trips, hesitations, emotion, spectacle, or tropes of the genre, with countless variations. At bottom a story has to have a moral of some kind, a lesson that the protagonist learns. Without it, a storyteller is wasting your time. And yes, sometimes all you want is to have your time wasted.

The five-act structure is really an elaboration of the three-act structure, as seen here. Act 1 is Exposition, which introduces the setting, the characters, and the conflict. Acts 2 and 3, Rising Action and Climax, show the conflict playing out. Acts 4 and 5, Falling Action and Denouement, show the results. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

The Hero's Journey, a further elaboration, adds several more steps, but they don't contribute to the basic story. As seen here, you can break this structure down into the same three parts.

The most important thing is to tell a good story. Audiences will notice if you take a paint-by-numbers approach, that is, follow a pattern without thinking of the overall effect. Others can come behind you to classify, analyze, and parse it to death. Be a writer and the rest will take care of itself.

posted over 7 years ago

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Ralph Crown‭

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A play has certain practical requirements that are met by dividing it into acts:

• It provides an opportunity to change the set or to redress the existing set.
• It allows you to suggest a change of time or place to the audience.
• It gives the audience a chance to pee and visit the snack bar.

Part of the art of writing a play is lining up the dramatic structure of the play to align with the physical requirements of acts.

TV has similar problems with its need to show commercials. Again, you want the dramatic structure to line up with the commercial breaks. That is part of the art of writing for broadcast TV.

Even movies have some need for dividing the story up into somewhat regular time units, because while they don't have to pause to change sets, and no longer pause to let the audience pee and visit the snack bar, they do still have to deal with the passage of time, and they have to keep up a pace because the audience is captive in their seats and needs some sense that things are moving along.

Novels, on the other hand, have no need for acts in this sense. The audience is not bound to read at a set pace or in a fixed time and the novelist can indicate the change of time or place by simply stating that they have changed. There is therefore less need to fit the shape of novels to a structure of acts.

Nonetheless, thinking in terms of acts is a common way to describe the structure of a story (particularly in works that focus on the stage and screen, which is where most of the writing on story seems to come from these days). And so, as other answers illustrate, acts tend to get mapped to events in the story arc, usually moments of crisis.

Still, the novel has long had its own unit for breaking the story into parts: the chapter. The chapter is a flexible unit. Some authors use short chapters and some use long ones. Chapters generally have some unity of theme or action, but no one suggests that they always delineate the major turning points of a story. They might better be described a "beats" in the story.

Is it really useful to import the very mechanical function of the Act from the stage to other media that do not share the same constraints of place and time. Some seem to think so. And some seem to stumble over it. Given this I would say that if you are writing for the page, use the concept if you find it useful; ignore it if you don't. But if you are writing for the stage, you are pretty much bound to follow it, and, to a lesser extent, for the screen as well.

posted over 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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Roughly speaking, acts divide the action into sections. At the end of each act is a turning point. Some disaster has befallen the protagonist(s), who must then choose whether to turn back or go forward.

The Snowflake Method guy calls his acts "three disasters and an ending." In the Hero's Journey, the ends of acts are the Thresholds. Each represents an obstacle, like as not interior, which the protagonist must overcome to continue on the quest.

The point of the disaster or threshold is to help character development along and to give the plot a conflict which the protagonist must overcome. Without conflict, there's no plot; the story doesn't go anywhere. If the protagonist solves the initial conflict immediately, that's boring. If the protagonist solves the conflict and doesn't learn anything, that's also boring. Having additional, rising crises beset the protagonist (often caused by the earlier attempts to solve the previous crisis) is more interesting for the reader and gives the protagonist opportunities to learn, grow, and change.

TV shows on network TV are now broken into five acts to allow for ads, but four was the previous standard — again, as much for advertising as anything else. But three, four, or five acts is somewhat arbitrary. You want at least three acts or the action doesn't rise and fall. Four or five may be influenced by and depends on your story and the medium.

You can write a six-act story if you want; no one will stop you. Whether it is well-written or well-received is an exercise for the student. Character development is also up to you. I prefer it more or less evenly spaced, and attached to some kind of story logic rather than "he changed because I as the writer needed him to change here." But you have to do what works for your story. Maybe your character's growth is what creates the disaster at the act's end, or maybe it's what solves it. There are no standards about that.

posted over 7 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

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ACTS when the word is used to designate timing in a story, refer to commonly accepted phases of a story line. These phases and what is in them have been observed over tens of thousands of successful stories (ones people like) in print and in film; and when we find stories people do not like, we often find they have violated the act structure.

In general the structure is in four parts. "Act I" introduces major characters, including the villain, even if the audience does not know it is the villain yet. This is typically in the first 15% to 20% of the story; if you are watching a 90 minute (of acting) movie you have probably seen both your hero and the antagonist in the first 20 minutes. You also have to introduce the setting, and any major suspensions of disbelief must happen there: You can't get halfway through the story and suddenly introduce magic. If there is going to be magic, or aliens, or at the end of your story your hero wins using martial arts or shooting a man from a block away, you need to introduce such "improbable" skills in Act I. She is wearing a black-belt in a Dojo, finishing up her daily exercise; she and her instructor know each other.

Even if your hero does not know magic exists in her world, your audience must. Even if your hero does not know an asteroid is going to wipe out Earth, your audience should.

"Act II" is usually broken into two parts, each about 30% of the story. The center of Act II usually contains the Major Turning Point: In most plots things are getting progressively worse for the hero until then, and may continue to get worse, but around the half-way point when everything seems lost and defeat seems imminent, something happens, or is discovered, or a decision is made that is the key to the hero's success.

(The opposite plot still follows the turning point idea: Things get progressively better for the hero in Act I, until "happily ever after" seems inevitable, but the Turning Point transpires and eventually means the undoing of everything.)

The second half of Act II is marked by progress, often with continuing bad stuff that is the ramifications of what has already happened: People are still dying, the villain is still powerful, the hero is still struggling and losing assets and people but she is making progress in some way, the audience is in suspense and rooting for her, but it still seems the hero can be lost. The villain or his henchmen are crazy skilled and smart and it seems the hero is barely a half-step ahead of him (but do not make her too lucky to escape, or introduce a new knife-throwing skill or ability to instantly hypnotize hotel clerks).

The Third Act is the explosive finale. The hero finds or accomplishes the last piece of the puzzle, knows how to solve the problem, and "locks in" the solution. You have to tie up any big loose ends here, but it can be done briefly.

Usually villains are defeated in the last 5% of the movie; and any scenes after the defeat are very short, tying up a single significant plot point introduced in Act I, for a kind of closure with the beginning of the story. This is the hero's reward, in essence: He kisses the girl, or beats the bully that was picking on him in Act I (the one you introduced to show how weak and pathetic he was). In The Pelican Brief, Denzel and Julia are successful and safe (respectively).

In essence, anything after the defeat of the villain is to briefly suggest how the future unfolds from here, and prove the success was permanent. This often involves a jump into the future; which can be hours, months or even years, depending on the scope of the hero's dilemma. The jump may be necessary to ensure plausibility of new emotions being expressed: After the harrowing run from assassins and horror of murders all around her, it would be ridiculously implausible for Julia to be happy and relaxed on the beach a few hours after she and Denzel finally won their battle. It would take months for anybody to believe they were finally safe, and that is the jump made.

The Act structure, and what story elements belong in each Act, are a shorthand story professionals use for typical, commercially successful stories; in a way they condense human psychology concerning stories and how we (on average) expect them to unfold, what we find suspenseful and fascinating, and what to avoid to prevent boredom or confusion.

Minor violations certainly exist; but you cannot have no conflict or villain until the last 15 minutes of a film. It is hard to imagine a good movie in which the hero does not appear within the first five minutes; usually they are in the opening scene. And so on; basically the Acts are about the touchstones and landmarks of a good story. Violations are (to me) usually cheats, laziness, and detractions from the story; to me it usually means the author wrote themselves into a corner and couldn't figure a way out, so they used some sort of magic or something bordering on a secret super power (ninja level martial arts) or some implausible coincidence (Sheila, to her alarm, finds a loaded gun on the floor of the bus, and for the safety of children puts it in her purse, intending to turn it into the police...).

To me the definition of a good writer is that they can follow all these rules and still come up with a fun new story; they have imagination and can put a character in a situation that truly does seem hopeless for them, hanging by a thread, yet plausibly still get them out of it in the middle of Act II.

posted over 7 years ago

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Amadeus‭

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