Writing A Novel - Act Structure

As an avid fan of film and television, looking at stories through an Act Structure is something that makes a lot of sense to me. Act Structure is defined on Wikipedia in the following way:

Act structure explains how a plot of a film story is composed. Just like plays (Staged drama) have 'Acts', critics and screenwriters tend to divide films into acts

The Three Act Structure
 
While there a number of different division options (three-act, five-act, or seven-act structure), the most basic and easy to understand is the three act structure. Why is this so simple? Well, whether you are writing a novel, a film, play, or even a short story there are always three very clear parts your audience will remember:

1. the beginning
2. the middle, and
3. the end

As silly as that sounds, it is a great way to think of the three act structure in a broad strokes kind of way.

Of course, to write an entire novel, one needs a little more meat than that. Here's a video (less than two minutes long), that takes the three act structure description more in depth in a tutorial for screenwriters:





The Five Act Structure

One thing that is un-ignorable in the visual representation of the three act structure is the disproportionate length of the second act.

For some writers, breaking that middle chunk into smaller manageable bites is necessary, this is where the five act structure comes into play. Jordan McCollum describes the difference in this way:

The basic difference between three and five act structures is that the second act in the three act structure is divided into three acts in the five act structure. (Uh . . . what?) It’s like this: the confrontation phase of the story is divided into the rising action, turning point and falling action.

He even offers up his own visual aid for this structure:

In my eyes, this is the same idea with some added guidance for plotting out your second act conflicts.

Outline Your Novel Using Act Structure

Corinne Jackson, author of If I Lie and Touched (Sense Thieves), not only uses act structure in writing her novels, she outlines with it! I love her technique and aspire to be as organized as she is some day. She was gracious enough to write a blog post describing her method of outlining her stories using the three act method. I highly recommend this post, not only for the technique, but also to give you an even clearer idea of what the three act structure is all about.

Another Viewpoint

As I explained in the beginning of this post, growing up a film fan and TV lover, the act structure makes a lot of sense to me when I reflect upon many of the stories I have come to love. However, does it always make sense? Should writing a book be looked at the same way as writing for the screen? James Bonnet addresses some of these questions in his article What's Wrong With The Three Act Structure. It's a great article and raises a number of compelling points about why act structure was developed, which has little to do with readers.

It can't be argued that act structure has its merits - a number of very successful authors claim to use this method for their writing. However, every writer is unique and if you are feeling constricted by "the rules", step back, write your story and just make sure you have a beginning, middle and end!

 Thanks for reading!

What are your thoughts about Act Structure in Novel Writing?

Is there another structure you prefer to follow in your writing?