Outline vs. Freewriting, Structure in Narrative Writing Pt. 2
Compulsive Writer's Support Group, on writing No Comments »Go directly to the other parts of the essay:
This is part two of notes from a planned podcast called The Compulsive Writer’s Support Group. It will be available on my official website, www.mindofbryan.com, as well as via a link here. In this section I’m going to talk about the three-act structure of film. I believe this might be a good way to give structure to a novel, especially a shorter Nanowrimo sized novel.
Screenwriters and filmmakers employ a couple different structures: acts and reels. These are simultaneous structures, and I’m much more used to thinking in acts.
In terms of reels, let’s imagine that every movie is 90-120 minutes. This number works for most films. There is a physical limit to how much film we can load onto a projector, and that’s something like 20 minutes. That is a reel. I hear reels being used more in pitching a movie, and producers like to hear very significant things about the first reel, explosions, car chases, a body, whatever really gets the action going. Most acts wind up being two reels in length. If we think about it, most movies have a very significant plot point 15-20 minutes in. Maybe this is a good number for the average movie viewer, the point where we make a decision whether this movie is worth another hour or so, and so we put something major here, just to keep the viewer interested. After this point, we’ve got them.I don’t think we can as writers of novels think in reels, but there are lessons to be learned in the reel. First, the inciting incident needs to come early. There is no better way to lose readers than to bog them down with exposition early. Second, as a smaller division of time, we can think about whether we have the right balance of action, story, character development and plot for a given breakdown of time or pages.
Let’s move on to acts.
There are almost invariably three acts to every screenplay. I suppose you could make a case that Brazil has a fourth act tacked on, and there might be others, but this is the exception to the rule. Acts can be thought of in terms of action, or they can be thought of thematically, or you can think about them as they apply to a character’s development. Thinking about one will often lead you to the others, or you can think of them in conjunction. If you want some support for the theory of a fractal story structure, a film script has three acts, and larger stories that are written at one time are most often trilogies.
There are basic standards for what each act does, however, and knowing them gives us our story’s main structure. Act One is introduction. It introduces the world, the characters, the relationships of those characters, and the problem. Act two is complication. We put more obstacles in front of our hero. Act three is resolution.
Once I have thought about those, I’ll come up with actions and themes to lay over them.
So let’s look at our standard model, Star Wars, for some structural analysis. In terms of on screen actions, the first act of Star Wars establishes the entire series. Since we have a three-fold plot (Empire, Rebellion and Force) we have three main story lines in each act. In act one, Leia gets captured, which in this case represents both the Empire and Rebellion storyline. The Force reaches out in the form of two droids who bring the secret plans to Luke and Obiwan. We meet Han and Chewie, and we escape from Tatooine. We end the act with Luke beginning his training in the Force, and the destruction of Alderaan. I choose this point because it brings us to see the larger conflict, back to the Rebellion and the Empire, and we see just what is at stake. Up to this point, the conflict is hinted at, but not fully elucidated. This keeps the viewer interested in something that was at the time a very foreign idea, and through what is kind of dull in many respects, even though it is necessary storytelling. Read the rest of this entry »
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