The act thing

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Can we see a break-down of the concepts behind the Multiple Acts school of writing? I’ve had the idea of three acts only shoved down my throat for years and it feels wrong to try to shoehorn a story into this particular artificial construct. Is there some magic number of acts, or do you just need to make sure your story has a beginning and an ending of some sort and build from there or something else entirely?
quitwriting

Completely agreed. I don’t fully understand what makes one act disparate from the next.erranthope

I’d be interested to see this as well. — stormwyvern

I currently define an act as when the status quo changes into something else, and those changes are irreversible...How many acts, though? My answer right now is "however many you need to tell the story". — Kent M. Beeson

Let me answer this the best way I know, by telling a story:

Often in my work, a producer will say "Let’s make it like Star Wars," or "Let’s make it like Jaws."  So I’ve watched both of those movies many times from a lot of different angles and, over time, noticed something fundamentally different about their structures.

Star Wars Episode IV and Jaws are both 2 hours long. Divided into three acts, that would make each act about 40 minutes. There’s no rule saying that each act must be of equal length, but let’s face it, if your acts get too long or short the narrative starts to feel lopsided. So, when I sat down to study the structure of Episode IV, I kept my eye on the DVD readout and tried to see when things would start to feel "different."

Act I of Episode IV has one agenda: to get its protagonist, Luke Skywalker, off Tatooine. Everything that happens in the movie up to that point is rushing toward the goal of getting Luke Skywalker off Tatooine. As Mr. Beeson notes, this change is irreversible. Luke is leaving Tatooine and he ain’t never going back. If Luke could stay on Tatooine, the rest of the movie wouldn’t need to happen and the Death Star would never get blowed up.

So it is imperative that Luke leaves Tatooine and never comes back. How does the screenplay get that to happen? It has Darth Vader board Princess Leia’s blockade runner, which forces her to hide the plans to the Death Star inside R2-D2, which forces R2-D2 to hop in an escape pod with C-3PO and blast off, which causes them to fall into the orbit of Tatooine, where they crash-land in the middle of nowhere, which causes them to wander in the desert and separate, which causes R2-D2 to get kidnapped by Jawas, which causes the Jawas, who are scavengers and used-droid dealers, to sell R2-D2 and C-3PO to Luke’s Uncle Owen. Meanwhile, Darth Vader is no dummy, and he sends troops down to Tatooine to look for those goddamn droids who made off with his Death Star plans. R2-D2 goes pouncing off one night, which causes Luke to follow him, which leads him to meet Obi-wan, who tells Luke that he is no ordinary farm boy, no indeedy, he is the son of a Jedi Knight. Luke sees the message R2-D2 is carrying for Obi-wan, which causes him to fall in love with Leia and with the whole idea of rebellion and adventure and all that stuff, which causes him to realize the stakes he’s playing for, which causes him to rush home to find that his aunt and uncle have been killed by Darth Vader’s troops, which finally, at long last, makes him realize that HE MUST LEAVE TATOOINE AND NEVER RETURN.

Act II is then: "Respond to the Message," and the point of Act II is to make Luke miserable.

Princess Leia called Obi-wan, remember? So what shall Obi-wan do? He will respond to her message — he will grab Luke and the droids and hire a fast ship to take him to Alderaan, where Leia lives. But — aha! — complications ensue. Obi-wan hires his ship and flies to Alderaan, only to find that Alderaan ain’t there no more, but the Death Star is. They get sucked into the Death Star, and their goal changes — now they must "get off the Death Star." They’re still on their way to help Leia, they’ve just been sidetracked by this Death Star thing and the whole no-Alderaan problem. While Obi-wan goes sneaking off to dismantle the Death Star’s tractor beam, Luke and Han and Chewie (the pilot and co-pilot of the ship Obi-wan hired) discover that Leia is, in fact, here on the Death Star! What fortune! So Han and Luke and Chewie go off to rescue Leia whilst Obi-wan sneaks around being a Jedi. Luke springs Leia, Obi-wan dismantles the whatsit, and they meet up back at the ship. But argh! There’s that Darth Vader guy, and he seems to know Obi-wan somehow, and they fight and Vader kills Obi-wan. This is what we in the business call the "End of Second Act Low Point." Everything had been going so well for Luke, he got his adventure and his princess, but now his mentor is dead and he’s being chased by an entire fleet of Darth Vader’s army guys. So, again, the act break leaves its protagonist irreversibly different — Luke not only can’t go back to Tatooine, he can’t go back to being mentored. He’s all alone now, the Princess ain’t never going to go for a guy like him and he’s never going to make it out of this situation alive.

Act III is then "Luke Triumphant." Luke, who has had everything he knows taken away from him, twice, now must survive an ordeal by fire, join up with Leia’s rebel forces, turn around and blow up that goddamned Death Star and show that fucker Darth Vader a thing or two. At the end of Act III, Luke is about as far away from the simple farm boy he was at the start of Act I as he could be.

So that’s all very clear, and very classically constructed.

Now then: Jaws is also two hours long, and when I first sat down to analyze it I assumed that it, like Episode IV, was neatly divided into three acts of equal length. (For a full breakdown of Jaws, begin here.) Now, at the 40:00 mark of Jaws, Chief Brody is sitting in his dining room talking to Hooper about sharks. I thought, well, that’s no act break, let’s keep going. After chatting with Hooper, Brody goes down to the docks to cut open the tiger shark. And I thought "well, okay, that’s an irreversible change, now Brody knows that the big mean shark is still out there.

Then something strange happened.  At exactly the hour mark, the guy gets his leg bit off in the estuary and Brody stands there on the beach and stares out to sea.  And I thought "hey, that feels like an irreversible moment as well, but it’s coming only fifteen minutes after the last one."  What’s happening at that moment?  Why is Brody compelled to stare out to sea when there’s a dead guy in the estuary and his son lies at his feet in shock?  I realized that, at that moment, Brody is realizing that he’s got to go out there.  Up to that moment, he’d been doing everything he could to "manage" the situation, to play ball, to balance the financial needs of the town with the reality of the shark, but now, god damn it, he’s got to go out there and kill this thing.

I went back and started watching the movie again from the beginning.  What’s the first thing we learn about Brody?  The first thing we learn about Brody is that he’s new in town.  He used to be a city cop, now he’s a country cop, and he’s not used to country ways.  He is, as we say in story meetings, a fish out of water.  Why is this significant?  Because Chief Brody, protagonist of Jaws, is afraid of the water.  He’s taken a laid-back job in a small town on an island with the expectation that he would never have to go in the water.  Now this goddamned shark comes along, and Brody does absolutely everything he possibly can to deal with the situation, provided he doesn’t have to go in the water (this is why he gets roaring drunk before going out with Hooper at night).  When he’s set up snipers and lifeguards and patrol boats and everything else and it still doesn’t work, when all his efforts to protect his town and family come to nothing, he realizes that he must go out there and do this thing, he has no choice.

And I thought, well, but that would mean that the first act of Jaws is an hour long, and that can’t be right.  And I kept pushing ahead into the narrative, and I saw that, at almost exactly 1:30:00, it’s night time and Brody and Hooper and Quint are trading their war stories, and they start singing, and they’re bonding and everything is going well, and the shark comes pounding on the side of the boat.  And the rest of the movie plays out in something close to real time as Hooper’s cage gets built and trashed, Quint gets eated and Brody realizes that he, he alone and nobody else is going to have to kill this thing, or else all is lost.  Check out the way Brody, still, does everything he possibly can to stay out of the water, climbing up and up and up as the boat sinks.  Spielberg’s choice to make Brody afraid of the water seems silly and arbitrary on paper, but it transfers directly into the audience’s consciousness, and the visual scheme of the movie is: if you’re out of the water, you’re okay, if you’re in the water, forget it, all bets are off.  Spielberg manages to make the water itself a terrifying vision of doom.

So now I had a movie with an hour-long first act, a half-hour-long second act and a half-hour-long third act.  And I thought, well, that doesn’t feel right.

So I went back to the beginning of the movie again and checked around the 30:00 mark to see what’s happening there.  At 30:00 or so, the tiger shark is caught and Brody has a sense of relief that maybe this whole thing might just blow over.  And I thought "Well, that’s a nice beat but it’s not irreversible," very much so as it turns out.  And I kept watching, and here comes Hooper, and there’s some business with the tiger shark, and then Mrs. Kintner shows up.  Mrs. Kintner is the mother of the boy who got eated earlier in the act, and she’s just come from his funeral.  And here, in Brody’s moment of triumph (I solved the problem and I didn’t have to go out on the water!  Yay!) Mrs. Kintner shows up and slaps him in the face, really clubs him, and then walks off.

And I thought, well, that’s a scene-ender for the ages, but is it an act break?  Is it irreversible?  And the next thing that happens is Brody is getting drunk at home and chatting with Hooper and this is where we came in.

So I thought more about Chief Brody and what his job is.  His job is to protect the citizens of Amity, and so far in the narrative he’s succeeded in doing that by playing along, by swallowing his pride and buckling under the demands of the mayor.  But the slap from Mrs. Kintner, even in the moment of his triumph, tells him that "playing along" is not the same thing as "doing his job."  Mrs. Kintner tells him that he is responsible, and he’d better start acting like it.  No wonder he responds by going home and getting drunk — this isn’t what he signed on for at all.  Chief Brody wanted a lazy job where he could relax after a career in the big city, he didn’t come out here to Amity to be responsible.

So I realized that Jaws, contrary to the thing that gets hammered into film students’ heads every semester, does not have three acts, it has four.  Act I gets Brody to the point where he has to realize his personal responsibility to the people of Amity, Act II gets him to the point where he must reconcile his fears with his responsibility, Act III sends him out on the water (that is, facing his fears) with two "experts" to help him continue to avoid responsibility, and Act IV takes away all his help, whittles away at all his resources until it is, literally, him and the shark.

Once I came the realization that Jaws has four acts instead of three, I started looking at all of Spielberg’s other movies and seeing that most of them, almost all of them really, follow a similar structure.  Spielberg seems to get uncomfortable if his acts go much longer than 30 minutes, and so a two-hour movie has four acts, a two-and-a-half hour movie has five acts, and so forth.  (Munich had me baffled, with its ten-minute sequences that fill up its middle 90 minutes, and took a lot of thought to figure out.  Close Encounters, not so much — the act breaks are practically announced with triumphal fanfares.)

Studying the act breaks of a movie is a hugely helpful tool in figuring out what the screenplay is "about."  Me, I’m suseptible to the lure of gorgeous photography, crisp performances and swelling music, not to mention changes in location, so it’s easy for me to get lost in a film narrative and lose track of the act breaks.  Sometimes a climactic cinematic moment will indicate an act break, sometimes it won’t, sometimes that wonderful moment will just be helping to get the protagonist from point A to point B in an entertaining fashion. 

What studying the act break does is reveal the journey of the protagonist — at one moment, the protagonist is one person, and in the next moment he is another, and that change is irreversible.  The path of the protagonist is the meaning of the movie — that’s the important thing, everything else is in the service of the delineation of that concept.

There is no "magic number" of acts, but I’ll tell you, once you get past five an audience will start to feel like you’re bullshitting them.  Act breaks put an audience through an emotional wringer, and when you have too many of them the audience starts to feel exhausted and your movie feels long.  Too few and it feels weird.  Three is taught because a lot of movies follow it, and the thought of three has become so prevalent that one has to be Steven Spielberg or somebody to make a movie differently structured.  I’ve sat inpitch meetings for 13 years now and I’ve never once had a producer suggest a four-act or five-act structure, even though they are perfectly viable alternatives.

Comments

45 Responses to “The act thing”
  1. stormwyvern says:

    Thinking about this subject, it’s struck me that film may be the only narrative medium where the audience could be hard pressed to tell you how many acts or sections there are. Books are divided into chapters, which are sometimes grouped into parts that sort of serve as acts. Plays do you the favor of taking everyone off the stage and sometimes lowering the curtain. Commercials mean that TV shows generally have to divide their episodes into roughly three acts. But unless the filmmakers want to be really obvious about it, act breaks in movies don’t seem nearly so clear. If I’m understanding it right, an act break is a game changer, a point where a character’s situation or mindset changes irrevocably. If they were all just “Well, your house is now on fire, so you can’t go back there anymore,” figuring them out would probably be simple, but some of them seem to be more subtle and internal character moments.

    • Todd says:

      A movie’s lack of a delineating moment is also what makes it so immersive, such a potent, powerful medium — there’s nowhere for the audience to go for relief, they have to go on this ride until it stops.

      • popebuck1 says:

        Except that nowadays, they can pause the DVD at any point and go use the bathroom, get a snack, or take a phone call. Or they can, and do, do all that stuff and leave the movie running.

        My parents watch movies this way – more as background noise than an “experience” to dedicate a block of time to. Drives me nuts.

        • greyaenigma says:

          I used to completely dedicate my time to movies without distractions. I don’t do that so much these days, but I feel bad about it.

          It bugs me when my parents do that too. They suggested we watch my Dark Knight DVD (which didn’t fare well on their tiny TV) and almost immediately my mother picked up a magazine and started reading it. Knowing my parents’ tendency to grill me about movies, I poked her and said, “If you start watching now, you’ll have a lot fewer questions later.”

      • stormwyvern says:

        Given that, why are acts in film important if the audience generally isn’t aware of the transition?

        • Todd says:

          Acts are part of a story’s development. If a movie has none, it’s two hours of random sounds and images. If it has too many, the audience gets tired and impatient. Three acts feels like a story — beginning, middle and end. More feels like too much, less feels like too little.

          • stormwyvern says:

            So are acts just a part of the structure of all narrative, whatever the medium? Do books generally have acts, even if they aren’t divided up that way?

            Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I really appreciate it.

    • Anonymous says:

      1. Who are these people and what do they need to do?
      2. They do everything they can to do it.
      3. They either succeed or fail, they come to a conclusion.

      Works every time since Bombasticus. Unless you are a Japanese person, in which case you need eight acts.

      Tony Millionaire

  2. chrispiers says:

    Very helpful lesson! Thank you.

  3. Anonymous says:

    Great post.

    I’ve always been struck by the fact that Luke’s initial impulse was to save the Princess, he goes to all this trouble to save her, then once he gets her on the rebel base and Luke’s in an x-wing taking on the death star, which is minutes away from blowing up the rebel base, he just LEAVES Leia there. To be blown up.

    Heh-heh. He does the same on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, the rebel base falls and Luke just takes off, not worried about his friends.

    re Jaws, I always thought more movies used four acts disguised as three, with the second act split into two …

    I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on THE INCREDIBLES, which has, I think, five acts (or it may be four acts and a teaser) …

    Joshua James

    • Todd says:

      I’d have to watch it again, but if I remember it corretly, I’d say it’s four acts and a prologue.

    • blaisepascal says:

      Luke’s initial impulse wasn’t to save the Princess.

      If you ask the question “What does the Protagonist want?” and look at the beginning of the film, it’s clear that Luke’s initial “want” wasn’t “to save the Princess”, but rather “to be a hero like his father.” He knows his father was a pilot and hero in the Clone Wars, he has models of various space ships in his rooms, he bulls-eyed womp rats in his T-16, etc, all preparing for when he has a chance to get off Tattoine. But Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are actively standing in his way (even if they are careful to not be obvious about it), because they know what happened to his father. He feels trapped on a small world, knowing there’s a lot out there, and having too many ties here and no way out.

      It isn’t until near the end of the first act when he runs into Obi Wan that a path starts to open to leave Tattoine. Obi Wan gives him a lot more information about his father, gives him the light saber, shows him the holographic message from Leia and explains what it means, etc. For Luke, this is a way to get out, train with a mentor, and be a hero. He’d leap at it, if he could. Rescuing the Princess isn’t his goal. This is clear at the end of Act I when Luke states “I will come with you to Alderaan. There’s nothing for me here now. I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.”

      By the beginning of Act III, the Princess has been rescued, and is now firmly in charge of the Rebel Alliance (or at least, her small part of it). Obi Wan is gone, killed by (who he believes is) the same guy who killed his father, and Luke has joined Leia in her battle against the Empire (personified, in Luke’s mind, by Vader). He doesn’t abandon her, he follows her orders to attack the Death Star — and not alone, Luke is the low-man of one formation of support fighters, his job isn’t to blow up the Death Star, but to keep the TIE fighters from stopping the Y-Wing bombers. The X-Wings had bombs to use if the Y-Wings failed. Luke blew up the Death Star after almost everyone else had tried and died.

      And I’m rambling… But Luke’s “want” wasn’t to save the Princess, it was to be a hero like his father.

      • Todd says:

        But Luke doesn’t know about his father until Obi-wan tells him. Before that, all Luke wants is to get off Tatooine. When we meet Luke, what he’s talking about is how he’s old enough to go to flight school and when can he join the academy and why does he have to stick around for the harvest. Luke’s primary goal is to leave Tatooine, long before R2-D2 shows up to lead him to Obi-wan.

        • jvowles says:

          Agreed — he knows his father was a pilot, that’s all really. If anything, he wants to follow his friend Biggs (mostly excised from the final cut, but present in the novelization) and others who have shaken off the dust of the “small town” of Tattoine.

  4. Anonymous says:

    The path of the protagonist is the meaning of the movie.
    The path of the protagonist is the meaning of the movie?
    The path of the protagonist is the meaning of the movie!

    Wasn’t that from Singin’ in the Rain?

    Anyway, I have a new slogan to put over my desk. Thank you once again, sir.

    — Kent M. Beeson

  5. First off, excellent work and thanks.

    I notice that you didn’t use the words or phrases “Inciting incident”, “plot point”, or “climax” in this essay.

    Are these words or phrases that you: a.) don’t find helpful, b.) don’t like using, or c.) just haven’t used for this essay ?

  6. 3 acts – feh!
    If they try to pound it into your head- pound back…

    I think it’s useful to understand how a story arc breaks down
    and why the writer puts the breaks where they are,
    but I think the whole 3 act thing is one of the main reasons why contemporary movies are so boring and predictable.
    It’s a perfect “magic number” for muckety-mucks to use when they get lost in the art of making a movie…it helps sterilize the process – because art is scary and counting to 3 is child’s play…

    Now if your story fits in a 3 act structure- bully for you, it just shouldn’t matter.

  7. Anonymous says:

    Terminator 2

    I believe one of my all time favorite films, Terminator 2, has five acts …

    1st Act ends in the canal, when Arnold rides in on his big hog to rescue John on his minibike. Ends when we see the 2-1000 in full metal glory.

    2nd act – ends with the rescue of Sarah from the mental hospital … once they get away from the T-1000 …

    3rd act ends with the attack on Miles Dyson, when Sarah cannot kill him … (this is a strange act, too, because there’s a part in the center where Sarah, safe in Mexico dreams of the destruction and then makes the decision to go after Miles, it’s almost like an act break)

    4th act – ends with the gang fighting off SWAT, setting charges which will blow up the big robotics center and escaping …

    5th Act – ends the metal factory, with the final battle between our heroes and the T-1000 …

    Note … some folks may say 4 and 5 are actually one act … I see it differently … during the 4th act in the battle with the guards and SWAT, the T-1000 is a spectator, for the most part, and our heroes goal is to destroy the place and escape capture … which they do … once they defeat SWAT and come out to take over the van before the building blows, there’s a change … the fifth act starts when the T-1000 shows up in the copter, which changes the nature of what they have to do … instead of fighting to destroy their enemy, now they’re just fighting to survive. Once the T-1000 shows up, it becomes a different movie beat.

    Five acts.

    That’s how I see it, anyway. And it seems to me a case could be made that Arnold is the actual protagonist of T2.

    Just my opinion, of course.

    Joshua James

    • Todd says:

      Re: Terminator 2

      The last time I watched T2, I identified four acts. But I could be wrong.

      • Anonymous says:

        Re: Terminator 2

        I could well be wrong, too – LOL!

        But I do feel there’s a shift when T-1000 shows up.

        Joshua James

    • Anonymous says:

      Re: Terminator 2

      ACTONE:
      1st Act ends in the canal, when Arnold rides in on his big hog to rescue John on his minibike. Ends when we see the 2-1000 in full metal glory.

      2nd act – ends with the rescue of Sarah from the mental hospital … once they get away from the T-1000 …

      3rd act ends with the attack on Miles Dyson, when Sarah cannot kill him … (this is a strange act, too, because there’s a part in the center where Sarah, safe in Mexico dreams of the destruction and then makes the decision to go after Miles, it’s almost like an act break)

      ACT TWO
      4th act – ends with the gang fighting off SWAT, setting charges which will blow up the big robotics center and escaping ..

      ACT THREE
      5th Act – ends the metal factory, with the final battle between our heroes and the T-1000 …

      • Anonymous says:

        Re: Terminator 2

        ACTONE:
        1st Act ends in the canal, when Arnold rides in on his big hog to rescue John on his minibike. Ends when we see the 2-1000 in full metal glory.

        2nd act – ends with the rescue of Sarah from the mental hospital … once they get away from the T-1000 …

        3rd act ends with the attack on Miles Dyson, when Sarah cannot kill him … (this is a strange act, too, because there’s a part in the center where Sarah, safe in Mexico dreams of the destruction and then makes the decision to go after Miles, it’s almost like an act break)

        ACT TWO
        4th act – ends with the gang fighting off SWAT, setting charges which will blow up the big robotics center and escaping ..

        ACT THREE
        5th Act – ends the metal factory, with the final battle between our heroes and the T-1000 …

        I didn’t sign it,
        Tony Millionaire

        • Anonymous says:

          Re: Terminator 2

          Except that, according to how Todd has defined act breaks, Act one isn’t that long, nor would it have different goals as it does …

          Act one rescue JOhn,

          Act two rescue Sarah

          Act three rescue civilization (by killing Miles)

          Those can’t really be grouped as ONE act … plus it would mean that act one is basically over an hour long … so I respectfully disagree.

          • Anonymous says:

            Re: Terminator 2

            Except that, according to how Todd has defined act breaks, Act one isn’t that long, nor would it have different goals as it does …

            Act one rescue JOhn,

            Act two rescue Sarah

            Act three rescue civilization (by killing Miles)

            Those can’t really be grouped as ONE act … plus it would mean that act one is basically over an hour long … so I respectfully disagree.

            I also forgot to sign,

            Joshua James

  8. freyja says:

    man, i just found out about this blog a few days ago and it’s quickly becoming my favorite to read. your analyses are amazing! now i want to go back and rewatch my old favorites just to see if i can identify act breaks. it seems like a really useful exercise for beginning writers.

  9. iainjcoleman says:

    It’s interesting that, while you’ve often broken films down into more than three acts, I don’t think you’ve ever broken a film down into fewer than three acts.

    Besides that, I’d just like to thank you for clarifying something about the meaning of the act structure which has just this very evening resulted in a significant improvement to my current project. You know, I’ve read all the usual books, but you have a way of putting things in concrete, no-bullshit terms that I find more useful than anything I’ve gone out and paid money for.

    Have you ever considered putting some of this stuff together into a book, and selling it to people?

    • Todd says:

      I’ve actually been thinking a lot recently about Death Proof, which seems to have only two acts, but what it really has is two halves, and each half is divided into acts. I’m looking forward to watching that again soon (I just ordered the blu-ray) and will report back.

      • travisezell says:

        I recently saw the Levinson/Beatty film Bugsy for the first time, and while I’m pretty sure it’s got something like a three act structure overall, it still felt strongly to me like a two-part film as well. Part One is “Bugsy: Gangster or Star?” and Part Two was “The Casino in the Desert.” I’d like, sometime, to watch it again and really pay attention for the protagonist’s turning points, but on first watching that’s how I read it. Much like Death Proof‘s two-half structure, though less overt?

      • You really need to go through Tarantino’s work like you’ve done Speilberg.

    • Todd says:

      And sure, I’ve thought about some of these things in book form, I just don’t know anyone in publishing.

  10. Anonymous says:

    I’m pretty sure I remember seeing Spielberg refer to the alien spaceship in Close Encounters as the third act. Is Spielberg just not that well versed on screenplay structure, or are you wrong? Or am I losing it?

    • Todd says:

      I’d have to see the quote in context, but I know from my own experience that when filmmakers (myself included) are talking to civilians, or even each other, they will say “the third act” as a shorthand for “the climactic act” or “the last part of the movie.”

      Either that, or Spielberg thinks about his screenplay for Close Encounters differently than I do. Maybe for him, Act I is everything up to Roy leaving home, Act II is everything up to Roy getting to Devil’s Tower, and Act III is the Mothership.

  11. Anonymous says:

    There Will Be Blood?

    If you get the chance, will you do one of your fantastic breakdowns on There Will Be Blood? I’d love to know how that film ticks.

    Thanks,
    Steve

    • Todd says:

      Re: There Will Be Blood?

      I’ve done an extensive breakdown of There Will Be Blood, beginning here. Look under my “pt anderson” tag for the rest.

  12. quitwriting says:

    Awesome. Thanks for that. It gives me something to ponder for awhile.

  13. Anonymous says:

    This is why some newbies get confused.

    I myself work with three acts — but Act 2 has “A” and “B” halves, split down the middle by the midpoint.

    • Todd says:

      Re: This is why some newbies get confused.

      I’m working on a project now that is structured exactly like that.

    • travisezell says:

      Re: This is why some newbies get confused.

      This two-part Act Two thing also trips me up, and seems common, especially in writing books or classes. I think I spent a long time not clear on what an “act” really amounted to because so many films get described as Act One, Act Two (Part One), Act Two (Part Two), and Act Three, all being roughly equal lengths.

      I’ve had at least three different writing teachers all advise me that it’s only natural for your Act Two to be about twice as long as your Acts One and Three, since so much more is expected to happen in it, what with the crucial Turning Point in the middle.

      • Todd says:

        Re: This is why some newbies get confused.

        Obviously I haven’t taken enough writing classes — if a screenplay is divided into four equal parts with a crucial turning point in the middle, how is that not four acts?

        • travisezell says:

          Re: This is why some newbies get confused.

          That’s basically my thought on the subject as well. It’s been a little while since I’ve been in these classes or read these books, but that was one “lesson” that stuck with me and — frankly — confounded more than it enlightened.

          If memory serves, doesn’t my-least-favorite-but-sometimes-still-helpful writer on the subject Syd Field break the act into four parts, A1, A2a, A2b, and A3? It feels like an artificial way to maintain the idea of a “three-act structure” so that laypeople “get” the idea of a Beginning, Middle, and End. Right?

  14. Anonymous says:

    acts

    1. Who are these people and what do they need to do?
    2. They do everything they can to do it.
    3. They either succeed or fail, they come to a conclusion.

    Works every time since Bombasticus. Unless you are a Japanese person, in which case you need eight acts.

    Tony Millionaire

  15. pirateman says:

    I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again later on… But I really, really love reading your blog. Thanks for taking the time to write it.