Three Acts or Four?

How many parts to a satisfying story: three ‘acts’ or four?

You can artificially break stories into three, or four ‘acts,’ divisions that have an internal beginning middle and end.

They meet a human need for order and structure. But do ‘acts’ matter as long as the story beats make a satisfying shape?

Seven, seventeen  or twenty-four beats? And maybe the ‘acts’ don’t matter. Unless you want to sell ice cream in the intermission?

Some writing coaches swear by five acts. But the story shape stays the same…

The Four-act Structure

Let’s look at a four-act structure. Borrowed from Rachelle Ramirez at pages and platforms, this is adapted from a crime/thriller framework.

Beginning Hook (Act 1):

• Introduce the protagonist’s ordinary world.
• Demonstrate their fear or flaw.
• Kick-start the inciting incident that propels them out of the ordinary world
• Introduce interesting supporting characters.
• Demonstrate what the protagonist wants and needs.
• Make the stakes clear.

Middle Build A (Act 2):

• Put clues, red herrings, and obstacles between the protagonist and their goal.
• Make sure the obstacles escalate.
• Create a midpoint shift: the protagonist goes from reactive to proactive, changes tactics.

Middle Build B (Act 3):

• Continue to escalate the complications and raise the stakes.
• Remove the protagonist’s hope of restoring balance in an all-is-lost moment.

Ending Payoff (Act 4):

• Write a climax: protagonist confronts antagonist.
• Show the protagonist facing their fear or flaw.
• Show the protagonist outwitting the antagonist (+)
  OR the antagonist outwitting the protagonist (-).
• Create a resolution showing balance restored, or continued injustice or chaos.

The Big Middle Build

Dramatically this allows you to have a story arc for each act that ends on a satisfying dramatic moment. What’s the difference between a three- and a four-act structure? Aside from selling drinks and ice creams in the intermission, possibly not  much. A lot of writing advice gives the breakdown of a three-act structure as 25% / 50% / 25%. The middle build is the longest section containing all those tasks, obstacles and set-backs. Not forgetting your training montage. Doesn’t that look like acts two and three are taken together?

Ultimately, your chapters and scenes require the structure and arcs to provide the payoff to each stage of the story. This is the more important focus for structure in fiction.  If you’re following the Hero’s Journey framework, that might mean five, seven, seventeen or some other derived number of plot points. Unless you intend to label your acts with a title page, the reader won’t necessarily know which structure you’re using.

This is why I’ve adopted the twenty-four chapter, three-act structure from Derek Murphy’s Plot Dot paper. The actual number  of chapters may change after editing the first draft, but three acts is the natural structure for all three books in the series. RC