Printed in “Hollywood Scriptwriter Magazine” July 2005
If you listen to any great raconteur entertain a group of people at a party, he tells his anecdote in a certain way to elicit the greatest emotional response from his audience. Well that, in its simplest essence, is the Three-Act Structure.
By following the Three-Act Structure’s formula, the story teller knows how to introduce the characters, when to create the drama of the circumstances and more importantly, how to get the audience to feel what he wants, exactly when he wants.
Act One is for getting to know your hero, understanding his world, his struggles, and learning what his problem is. Based on a 90 page script, Act One is broken up into a couple of sections. Pages 1-10 contain character introduction, location set up, general opening details. Let’s make up an example for illustration purposes. So, you’ve got a family man, let’s say, a taxi driver from Brooklyn . His ex-wife is a pain and she’s demanding he fetch his daughter’s cake from a Queens bakery before 2pm . By page 10 in Act One you must have the Inciting Event, which is some action that either the protagonist does or something that is done to the protagonist to set his story in motion. In our example, the family man taxi driver picks up a mob guy who dies in his cab and the taxi driver’s now got a kilo of mob coke in his back seat.
Act Two usually begins at page 30 and lasts for the majority of the 90 page script until approximately page 70. Act Two is the hardest section of the script and the place where most, if not all, writers have difficulty because it’s the longest section. This is where all the dramatic pathos is, where the emotionality resides, where the plot complications flourish. So now our taxi driver is on the run, the mob guys are after him, thinking he jacked their coke and they want him dead. Plus he still has to go to his daughter’s ballet recital and stop at the bakery.
So our taxi driver does a creative u-turn and evades his pursuers. It looks like he’ll get the cake after all. However, that forward moving story progress comes to a crashing halt, at the Dark Moment. In a 90 page script, the Dark Moment usually comes in between pages 65-70, and it’s the point in the script where everything is against the protagonist and it looks like the character won’t achieve his goal. So, right before the recital, the taxi driver is carted off by henchmen and is about to get boiled in oil for the coke and it looks like nothing will save him.
However, here comes Act Three to the rescue between pages 75-80. The Act Three act break is a direct result of the dark moment and it gives the character a new chance to rebound from seeming failure. So, maybe our taxi driver hero sees that he can save himself by swinging out harm’s way and in a Herculean feat of strength sending his captor instead into the oil to be French fried. It is this chance that leads the protagonist to the successful resolution of his problems. He makes it to the recital, with the cake, and eventually gives the coke back to the Don. He and the Don make up and our hero’s life is spared. And that is the Three-Act Structure.
Another is example is 1988’s Working Girl, which has perfect Three-Act Structure. This film knows structure and if you’re having trouble figuring it out, check out this movie again and watch for the transition between acts.
Tess is a struggling secretary with dreams of success in the corporate world. However, she’s tacky and no one takes her seriously. So when she gets fired, i.e. the Inciting Event, she has to start a new job, working for narcissistic Katherine. Tess pitches an idea to Katherine, whom she views as a mentor, which Katherine rebuffs.
In Act Two, Tess has to take over for Katherine, who is injured. Tess discovers that Katherine passed off Tess’ idea as her own, and so Tess decides to pose as Katherine’s colleague to get her ideas heard. Tess contacts Jack, a colleague who coincidentally is Katherine’s beau, to put the deal together. Both Jack and Tess are unaware of the Katherine element in their relationship, adding more plot twists and heightened tension for the audience as Jack and Tess fall in love. These are all perfect Act Two details.
The Dark Moment comes just as Jack and Tess are about to succeed and finalize the big Trask deal. Katherine, recently returned from her injury, and having discovered Tess’ scheme, goes and humiliates her in front of Trask himself proclaiming “That woman is my secretary!” Tess, shamed, leaves the boardroom knowing that she’s spoiled her one chance at happiness both for work and love. As part of the audience we shout, “Tess, speak up, don’t let Katherine get away with it!” but you see, if she did, then it would prematurely end the story, providing a less than satisfying climax. But this is not the end of the story. There’s still Act Three to bring us our promised happy ending.
As Act Three begins, Tess is unemployed. But we discover that Jack loves her not Katherine, and he intercedes with Trask on Tess’ behalf. Tess finally has the courage to speak up and vindicate herself. Katherine is fired for her unscrupulous behavior. Tess winds up with a job at Trask as an executive and gets Jack too! This is how Act Three ties up all the loose ends and satisfactorily concludes the story.
The Three-Act Structure is the best story telling tool around. Understanding it, implementing it and using it to your advantage will make screenwriting all the easier because since it’s a formula, you will know exactly where to place the highs, lows and inbetweens. The Three-Act Structure and you are perfect together.
