Post History

The "Why" is that we want the MC (Main Character, or Main Crew) to undergo some sort of struggle in order to get from the end of the Act I to the beginning of Act III. Because that is what makes the story interesting; A seemingly difficult problem, it cannot be a walk in the park (or maybe it is but it is a very dangerous park to walk in, and a thousand miles long).

My approach is to follow a slightly different **4** act structure, which is really the 3AS with the second act broken in half. Initially (while my story is being conceived) I imagine these as 4 acts of equal length, each 25% of the book.
For consistency with the 3AS, call those Act IIa and Act IIb.

At the end of Act I, I expect the MC to be leaving her "normal world," physically or mentally, to solve the problem that grew out of the Inciting Incident. 

The specific purpose of Act IIa is to add complications and roadblocks to her life. There is no straightforward way to solve the problem. One way to accomplish this, which I frequently use, is to make my MC very good at something we'll call her superpower (it doesn't have to be magical), and very bad at something else we'll call her super-weakness. 

Take the current TV series Young Sheldon; the MC is a hyper-genius at science, and clueless incompetent at interpersonal relationships. The stories tend to write themselves; they are 80% about Sheldon's super-weakness, his screwing up relationships for himself and others, but spiced up with 20% of his superpower (which is what we are watching for).

I should note the ratio doesn't have to be 80/20. In the TV series Elementary, about a modern-day Sherlock Holmes we have a very similar motif; Sherlock is a genius but struggles with relationships and his own arrogance and loneliness. His mystery solving superpower is much more prominent, but his super-weakness that causes him to fail personally is there in every show. call that a 20/80 ratio of super-weakness to super-power.

That is the basic dynamic of many stories: The hero's superpower is on display and those are exciting scenes, but it isn't very useful in solving her main story problem, and her super-weakness is making her fail.

So she has problem after problem in Act IIa, and makes very little progress on main problem, in fact she may be reduced to working on a sub-sub-issue of her main problem, and by the end of Act IIa, she is in despair. She can use her superpower all she wants, but it won't get her anywhere. Say her superpower is computer hacking, but there is nothing to hack, she has no clue WHO to hack.

There are many ways to construct Act IIa, as a series (or overlapping series) of Try-Fail stories, perhaps that make matters even worse. Or injure or trap the MC.

In Act IIb,  we have to unravel these complications, somehow, and we do that with a desperate Try that succeeds. Not for the main problem, for some sub-issue or side-issue. But she has a small victory, the beginning of growth in her super-weakness category. This success gives her hope.

Act IIb should not be a cake-walk,but she uses her new understanding like a thread to pull up a string, then uses the string to pull up a rope. She unravels the complications of Act IIa, growing her super-weakness enough so it is no longer a disability. And that leads her to a place where all that remains is the main story problem, which she can finally confront. (It doesn't have to be a villain, or even a battle, but it should involve taking some high-stakes risk). 

If you want, the solution can, finally, require her superpower. That may be so because using her new-found skill clears the way for her superpower to be useful, or perhaps because both skills are needed to navigate to the final confrontation.

I am a discovery writer. But one thing that enables that is understanding the structure of the four acts, and the lengths of the four acts. I can write up to the Inciting incident pretty easily; and I know that is 10% to 15% of the way into my story. Which lets me know approximately how long the story should be.

The consequence of that is, I always know as I am writing, within 5% to 10%, **what kinds of scenes I am looking for.** In Act IIa, I am looking for complications and stumbling blocks, and situations where my hero's super-weakness is making her fail, and not just on random throw away scenes, but screwing with her plans and making her rethink and revise. Near the end, she is out of ideas, and the only thing that will save her is coming to a realization about her super-weakness.

In Act IIb, I am looking for scenes that, increasingly, help her overcome her super-weakness, and resolve the issues she created in Act IIa. Near the end, she should be at a point where she can finally take a big risk, to put herself into a position to confront the main problem, the formerly unbeatable problem.

That is what happens in Act III, followed by her return to her normal world, or beginning her life in her new normal.

As a discovery writer I typically then rewrite, lengthening or shortening half-Acts. I have turning points in the middle of each of the four Acts; so my story is in 7 parts, each around 14%-15% of the story. I rewrite to get them all to the right length for pacing. 

If you outline, you can pre-plan to make these the same way. Act IIa is for complicating factors, and should generally be failures, tinged with clues that will lead to understanding, when she puts some or all of these clues together by the end of Act IIa. 

Act IIa is 25% of the story, so break that into scenes, however long you make them, enough to cover 25% of the total word count you want. (Look at other scenes you have written). Maybe five scenes, maybe a dozen, it depends on the writer's style. And plan her descent into misery and despair. At the end of Act IIa (midpoint of the story) she should be desperate, out of ideas, not knowing what to do, how to escape, or how to move forward. 

But you also plan, for Act IIa, the reveals of the clues she may or may not understand at the time, but these will allow her to have (finally) a good idea at the beginning of Act IIb, one last thing to try, and that works. And gives her hope. Maybe it didn't work *perfectly*, but it worked, and she learns something from that, and gets better at unravelling the complications of Act IIa. If she has failures in Act IIb, she learns something from each, tries again and succeeds.

Act IIa is mostly a downslope for the MC's mental state, with minor bumps up.

Act IIb is mostly an upslope for the MC's mental state, with minor bumps down.