How to Write a Novel with the Three-Act Structure

hi everyone i'm shaylen here with reedsy in today's video we're going to be talking about the three-act structure so in our last video we talked about the plot embryo or the dan harmon story circle it goes by many names which is a method of structuring story today we're going to be talking about the three act structure the 3x structure is kind of the most basic way to structure a story most other plot structures like the hero's journey save the cat are all some kind of expansion of the three-act structure even if you're not really into plot structures you know they're not something you really like to follow understanding the three-act structure is probably going to be beneficial just because it's probably the most widely applicable plot structure out there most stories by the essence of being stories have a beginning middle and end even if they appear very unconventional it's a very natural way of seeing stories and so i think that's a really good one to understand it's not so rigid that you need to plot your book out based on really specific events which some people don't like about certain plot structures but understanding the 3x structure can help you with pacing and create a strong structure to your book so the first act is going to be approximately the first 25 of your book in the typical 3x structure the three acts are not divided equally we usually see the first quarter being the first act the middle half being the second act and the final quarter being the third act so act one is going to feature the inciting incident basically this is the event that kick-starts the story it's kind of like the first domino or the event that tips the dominoes if you want to learn more about the inciting incident i will leave a link to a video entirely on that plot beat since it's one of the most important plot beats in a story so in action one we're gonna see establishing the characters establishing the world establishing the character's goal establishing the protagonist's internal and external conflicts establishing the protagonists flaws especially flaws that are going to come back to haunt them and be explored throughout the entire book and establishing the story's rules both internal and external so this is how the story's world works you know if you're world building but also internal rules such as what the story's tone is going to be and how the story's forum is going to work act one is the most acceptable place to have coincidence as a general rule the deeper you get into a book the less acceptable coincidence is a coincidence in act three feels like bad writing whereas a coincidence in act one it just feels like the inciting incident events can happen by coincidence here but they can't really later on in the story so a couple tips for writing the first act first of all don't feel the need to introduce everything right away you've got about a quarter of the book to work with so make use of that space it's very common for authors to try to cram all the information in right away but give information time to breathe don't feel like you need to get everything laid out immediately second of all don't wait down the beginning with boring content or filler another really common impulse um for new writers is to spend a long time establishing the character's day-to-day life although at some point you probably do want to establish the world before the story you don't need to do this with long pages showing the character's day-to-day routine you can either keep this very brief or even kind of make it clear after the inciting incident this is the beginning of the story so it's where you really want to grab the reader's attention boring content that just shows the characters day-to-day especially if it's set in a world where their day-to-day is probably fairly similar to the readers it's not going to be very interesting you can get away with more day-to-day this is my mundane in books where the day to day is very abnormal a great example is the water cure by sophie mcintosh this is a kind of strange dystopian novel about three girls who live with their father and have never met anyone else on an island their day-to-day and the things they do in their daily life are very interesting because they're very different from our own quite a long section of the book it's spent exploring their daily lives before the story gets started it works in that book because their daily lives are interesting but if their daily lives aren't interesting it's not really something we need to spend a lot of time on you want to make the beginning chapters as interesting as possible in order to grab your reader's attention and finally understand the promises you want to make to the reader the first act is where you make promises about what the book is going to be about such as what the book's tone is what the book's content is what the characters are going to be like if you make the wrong promises the reader will probably be pretty disappointed later on for example if you establish a really humorous tone really light tone in the beginning but then the book becomes extremely tragic and gut-wrenching you're not following up on the promises that you've made so think about the promises you're making to the reader about the story and make sure you're not making the wrong ones they can be kind of misleading and you won't be drawing in the right readers next up we see act 2 which is the middle percent near the beginning of about two the story is going to find its clear direction and start to move towards a conclusion even though there's still a long road to get there we're going to see a consistent escalation of stakes and this is going to be paired with a series of successes and to set backs you don't want the character to succeed all the time or be set back all the time there's probably going to be some kind of ping pong effect of wins and losses that contribute to moving towards the conclusion as well as escalating those stakes this is also where you're going to develop the core relationships in act one we introduce the characters but in act two we're going to get that key development for the most important relationships in the story there are probably going to be a lot of relationships in a story but usually there's one or two that are really the most heavily developed that's where we're really going to see development for those relationships and see how those relationships change both characters in act 2 it's really important that we see characters changing from their experiences from those losses and setbacks from that relationship development this is where we want to see a character arc starting to take shape act two is the longest and probably the hardest part of the book to write as much as a lot of people will talk about how hard it is to start a novel or how hard the end is i really think that most writers find the middle to be by far the most difficult part of the book to write that's because you don't have the luxury of introducing or concluding in order to move the plot and to create conflict and stakes that's why it's really important to focus on the fact that your plot should be moving forward it's easiest to lose sight of this in the middle than in any other act so make sure you're still progressing towards that end goal as well stay focused and make sure you don't abandon any threads set up in act one focus on maintaining tension throughout the middle by not resolving too many plot threads although you may have some bits of resolution at a certain point if you do resolve something throughout the middle it should probably lead to more questions and open up more tension this is also the place to do that deep character development so while you're writing the middle act really focus on your character's arc and how they're changing as a result of the conflicts that they face so now it's act three this is the final 25 and although it's often considered the most important because it's the end and that's really what's going to stick with readers in my opinion it's probably the easiest to write because you relied on everything you set up until this point and ideally you've built up a good amount of momentum for your story this is where we'll see the highest tension in peace as well as the story's conclusion so a couple tips to keep in mind while writing the third act first of all if you're struggling here it's probably because you have an issue in either act one or act two because act three is pretty much completely based on executing what you've previously set up if you feel like something isn't working it's probably because there's an issue with the setup not with act three itself most problems in a book can be traced back to act one so if something's not right here look earlier and try to find the root of the problem the root of the problem probably isn't in the third act you also don't want to introduce new elements it's just too late to do that you shouldn't really be introducing new characters or new mysteries this is where you want to be focusing on resolution making the most of what you've previously set up not trying to set up anything new and finally this is where we really want to make sure we see the result of the character arc well the the majority of the characters change is going to be happening throughout the middle act 3 is where we really want to see the result and the effects of that character change how is it going to affect their choices and their actions and their ability or inability to ultimately fix the problem or achieve their goal so that is an introduction to the three active structure it's so widely applicable that i think it's a really useful fun to really understand even if you're someone who doesn't really like rigid plotting i don't really like to originally plot my books but i think understanding the three act structure is quite useful even if it's just an intuitive thing to kind of strengthen your structure and intuition i will leave a bunch more resources on plotting if you're interested in looking at different plot structures in the description thank you so much for watching remember to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss any new videos from us we've got new writing editing and publishing tips every tuesday and friday until next time bye

Channel: Reedsy

Views: 3,014

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Keywords: how to write a book, authortube, writing tips, writing advice, writing tip, self publishing, self publishing tips, how to self publish a book, writing, three act structure, 3 act structure, how to structure a book, book structure, novel structure, how to outline your book, novel outline, three act structure explained, three act structure novel

Id: pXwvLTXNbvU

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020