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Comments on Why does the second act 'reaction' and then 'action' need to be drawn out?

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Why does the second act 'reaction' and then 'action' need to be drawn out?

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I subscribe to the school of writers who like to (and often must), outline their stories before writing them. For a long time however, I did not use the 3-act structure. My mentality on that has now changed, and I find myself playing catch up.

One part in particular of the 3-act structure has me somewhat stumped, and I was hoping for some help on it: the second act.

I'm very much someone who needs clear steps. The first and third acts have these steps, and it's easy to build these acts as a result. The second act does not. The most I've been able to get in the way of steps is as follows:

  • Character reacts to Point of no Return.
  • Unclear 'phase' in which the character continues to react.
  • Midpoint, which starts the character acting to win, rather than reacting to survive.
  • Second unclear 'phase' in which the character continues to act.
  • Darkest Moment, where the character fails.

Everything after the darkest moment is perfectly clear to me. It's those two phases which I have trouble with. I understand that they are there to bridge the gap to the Midpoint first, and then the Darkest Moment (usually preceded by a seeming victory). But I'm not seeing them as needed. Why can't the outline be as follows:

  • Point of No Return.
  • Character reacts to Point of No Return, struggling to survive.
  • Midpoint.
  • Character acts to win against the antagonistic force.
  • Seeming victory
  • Failure, leading to darkest moment.

That makes sense to me, but everything I've seen says that the second act comprises roughly 50% of your story, and that the reaction and action before and after the midpoint are super stretched out. Why do they need to be so long?

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I'm all one for structure, and awareness of structure, but some of these paint by number descriptions of the three act structure strike me as going a bit far. Just as you say, one gets stuck trying to figure out exactly what is supposed to happen at every one of these points.

At the other extreme is the simple principle that readers keep reading as long as they care what happens next. It may be that the three act structure is, in fact, the only structure which keep people caring what happens next, or it may not. But it is certainly not true that any and every plot that hits every mark on the three act plot structure is going to keep the reader reading. You could hit every mark and still not have the reader care a whit. So maybe the focus should be on what keeps the reader caring.

It seems pretty clear that in any story we care about, the hero must be called to adventure and must accept the call. That is act one.

It seems pretty clear that at the end of the story, the hero must either succeed or fail or reach a different and more satisfying resolution than they set out to find. That is act 3.

In the middle, there must be struggle. We do not care about a competent confident hero who goes out and does the job successfully without opposition. So Act two is about struggle. And it seems pretty well established that there must be two kinds of struggle: a practical struggle against opposition, and a internal struggle against the self. It also seems that there must be some sacrifice involved in both struggles.

You can probably put a lot more specifics around those, but I'm not sure if they hurt or help. But I don't believe that is where the problems with middles lies.

Let us say that the middle -- act 2 -- is a series of struggles, and that those struggles probably need to escalate (because is it boring to see Superman defeat Lex Luthor and then rescue a kitten from a tree -- it needs to be the other way round). It follows that some part of the external and internal opposition has to be engaged in each struggle, and that they must provide more serious opposition each time round.

It follows almost of necessity that at some point in this process the hero is going to look themselves in the mirror and say, am I the sort of person who is willing to take this risk, make this sacrifice, etc. In other words, I am not sure that the mirror moment really needs to be contrived. I think it is inevitable if you have an escalating series of struggles.

And here is where I think things go wrong, for both outliners and pantsers. If your act two does not have a series of escalating struggles, it is probably because your hero's circumstances in act 1 and their circumstances in act 3 are not far enough apart. There is not enough to struggle with between their starting state and their ending state. In other words, I think that most of the craft here is making sure that Act 1 and Act 3 are far enough apart from each other. Achieve that, and act 2 almost writes itself. But it is often hard to get that distance correct.

And maybe this is what James Scott Bell is getting at when he says you should write your story from the middle. In other words, that the nature and extent of the struggles in Act 2 are what make the book work or not, and so that hero in Act 1 needs to be low enough, and the goal in Act 3 high enough to create the necessary steepness of slope up which the hero must scramble, and on which they will inevitable at the midpoint stop and ask themselves if they want to go on.

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General comments (7 comments)
General comments
Amadeus‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

@MarkBaker The 3AS is derived from averages and observations from popular stories; just like Campbell's "Hero's Journey". So typically in good stories have an Inciting Incident near the 1/8th mark. Not a rule, but straying far from it would make the work an outlier among good stories -- Or more likely to be not a popular story. It is descriptive of probabilities; like medical advice.

Amadeus‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

@MarkBaker That said, I think the last two paragraphs here are insightful, writing from the middle and adjusting Act I down enough to make the character far from Act III. Even for a discovery writer, it can be a clue to rewrite Act I to further impair the hero.

Mark Baker‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

@Amadeus Yes, even if one grants that the only real rule is, keep the reader interested, that there may only be on general structure that does that over the length of a novel. Still, I have to question the effectiveness of writing to the averages. Averages, in themselves, are not gauges of perfection. An inciting incident at 1/16th or 3/16th may be prefect for a particular story.

Mark Baker‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

@Amadeus, and further to this point: The portion of the story that precedes the inciting incident is about the establishment of the normal world. Yet in different stories and different genres, there may be more of less work required to establish the normal world. For any given story it may be a horrible mistake to draw the normal world out to the 1/16 mark just to fit the rubrics. Analysis is not always the best guide to synthesis.

Amadeus‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

@MarkBaker Aren't you using analysis to determine a (good) story needs a moment of truth, some choice (moral or otherwise) to change or risk it all for a principle? Isn't the prescription to escalate challenges in Act II analysis? As is the proportionality prescription for increasing the moral distance between Act I and Act III, and ensuring Act II is long enough to traverse that moral distance. (cont)

Amadeus‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

@MarkBaker ... The 3AS is more of a sketch, like normal happy people look roughly like :-) , two eyes a nose and a smile, a guide to a portrait with room for innovation. I can break the rules, but I know when I am breaking the rules and what justifies that, like a complex alien "normal world" or a typical contemporary world.

Mark Baker‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

@Amadeus, Anything we say here is analysis. But analysis is usually more valuable for editing and critique than synthesis. If it is not working, analysis may help you discover why. But writing into an analytical framework is not always helpful or effective. A surgeon can diagnose and even heal, but they cannot create life from scratch.