Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/29491
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm interested in the elements of how a good story is compiled.

When in high school, I was exposed to Shakespeare plays where the stories were divided into different _acts_. While I was reading through these plays, I thought that it was simply a way that plays, _specifically_ were compiled.

Over the years, I have heard many references to the structure of different stories across many different types of media. These references normally came from stories that had particularly meta themes, or TV shows that broke the 4th wall.

One of the more recent references that I've come across is one contained in an episode of [Comedy Bang Bang](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2176287/). In this episode, one of the characters mentions the transition into another act of the story line.

I have done some searching online for explanations about the composition of the acts of a story line, but I have not been able to find anything that fully describes how/why stories are divided into acts.

How is character and plot development generally spread out or concentrated among these acts? Is there a standard number of acts in each story, and can there be any variation in this number? What are the reasons for these standards?

Original score: 4