The '3-Act Structure'
Why It Should Carry
A Health Warning

It gives a false sense of security

It makes screenwriting structuring an exercise in mechanics and strifles creativity

It's based on the entirely spurious assumption that you can impose structural constraints on your story from the outside

It rests its authority on the howlingly wrong interpretation of Aristotle's theory - the ancient philosopher said only that there's a beginning, a middle and end in every story, not three acts.

It makes you go mad

Unique Screenwriting
Structure Sandpit

The old idea of the creative sandpit is still a great way to play around with stories.

Inside the sandpit, you can do what you want. There are no rules. You create your own. All you need with you is your imagination. But I suggest you take some of these tips on experimenting with screenwriting structure with you too.

Start at the end. Even if you've only gone so far as having the idea for your story.

Instead of thinking 'happy' or 'sad', consider what you want the audience to be feeling.

Have you left them asking questions? Is it 'open-ended'? Or is it tying up all the strands of the story?

What is your main character feeling at the end?

On an index card, write the last two shots of the movie - time limit: 4 minutes.

What's the first thing the audience will see or hear? Do you want them to see an image first, or hear a sound first?

Whichever you choose, why is it so important to the telling of your story? What does the image or sound convey to the audience's feelings?

Write the opening of the movie in rapid abbreviated form on an index card. Time limit: 5 minutes.

Is the opening similar to the openings of other movies? Is it making the audience feel comfortable with familiarity?Or is it suggestive of something unknown?

Make a note of your answers.

Guy Pearce and Carrie Anne Moss in Memento.
Screenwriter/Director: Christopher Nolan.
Newmarket Capital. Summit Entertainment.

Unique Screenwriting Structure: Emotional Plotting

The emotional plot is what your story's really about. It's what powers the surface plot - the action. It's what powers the whole story.

Screenwriting structure will be created by this emotional plot - or should be.

Write down a rough outline of your emotional plot - not the surface plot which is merely a pretext for bringing the emotional catalyst to light.

As often as you can, stop yourself from asking the surface plot question: 'What happens next?'. The danger with this is that you start trying to impose events onto the plot.

Let your imagination find ways to See how you can drive the story by focusing on the emotional needs of the character. It's these needs which should be powering the surface action, creating dramatic moments, generating suspens.

Imagine your character on an emotional roller-coaster. Take a set of brightly coloured pens and let rip scrawling across a big notepad page sweeping the pen in giant waves to represent the character's feelings throughout the story. At the high and low points of the curves, imagine what is happening outside the character when these emotions are being experienced. This is the surface plot - the events of the story.

Take a good luck at your roller-coaster, your roads sweeping out from the character in the circle, and get creative with the ways to tell the story.

Experiment: A looping structure? (Pulp Fiction, Mulholland Drive).

Reverse Structure? (Memento).

Labyrinthine? (Adaptation).

But don't get hung up on labels. And whatever you do, don't start out deciding you want to write a movie 'like' Tarantino or 'like' Charlie Kaufman. Experiment with your screenwriting structure but don't arbitrarily copy the structure of an existing movie.

Unless it's right for your story, the result will be a banal imitation.

The worst thing you can do for your screenwriting is to choose what kind of structure you want to use before you've got a solid idea of what your story needs. When you've got a more fleshed-out sense of the story, imagine some key scenes. Jot them down on index cards (don't number them - not allowed!) and shuffle them around.

As you shuffle, ask these key scenes some questions. Pick up each card and talk to the scene - out loud. What you may find yourself asking:

Maybe I don't want the audience to know this yet?

Is it better to leave this till later?

Do I write a few - even lots of - things that don't make complete sense? Get the audience to work things out?

Perhaps deferring this scene to later on will help keep the audience more strongly engaged?

How can I structure the story to challenge the audience, to get them to focus on what's happening beneath the surface action?In other words, how can the narrative convey what I'm really passionate about without taking a sledge hammer and telling the audience what to think?

Maybe I don't need this scene at all. It's making the narrative too pat, too neat and tied up.

Where's the emotional climax? (It will probably be triggered by an event in the surface plot. But you need to find the emotional climax first because this is related not to the 'action' but to the character.)

Keep using the cards as you create new scenes. You're allowed to trace an outline structure of course, but keep re-assessing it to find out whether it's serving your script in the best possible way.

The most urgent of all screenwriting tips I can offer is to implore you not to get locked into the '3-Act Structure' iron fist. At least when you're tracing in your story, try to forget about inciting incidents, plot points, mid-point, climax, resolution. See if you can structure the story as it emerges in your imagination and as you shape the events and emotions.

Think of your structure not as something static, solid, or unbreakable. You can bend it any way you want. Think of it as fluid - maybe a river - make it trickle, make it rush in a torrent, make it drip, make it flow, make it burst its banks.

You'll be amazed at how creative it can be to treat your script as something that's alive and changeable. It stimulates the imagination, but by some miraculous process, it also helps you to discipline your shaping of both surface and emotional plots.

Finally...

Look in your recycling bin or wherever and find a solid object that you're about to get rid of. Take a good long look at it - it's the '3-Act Structure'. Take a hammer and smash it. Watch the structure fragment into pieces.

Playing in a sandpit is fun but it's also one of the most brilliant ways to discover what works and what doesn't work for your story. If you follow these unique screenwriting tips, you will find out the kind of things the '3-Act Structure' will not allow you to.

Unique screenwriting means liberating the imagination in order to make sure that when you harness your ideas, you're writing in your own unique voice.

It's a paradox that letting your imagination take flight can actually help you create strong, structured scripts and help to discipline your writing in the most powerful ways.

The goal is to make your narrative serve your screenwriting. Structure needs a beginning, middle and end in whatever order best fits your story. It doesn't haven't to be Act 1-to-Act 2-to Act 3. And that means whatever structure best suits your character's story and how you want the audience to respond to that character's journey. It may be that the most compelling structure for this is a linear one. It may mean your character going off on different tracks and looping back to the beginning, or starting the story again.

If you've created a solid, strong emotional journey for the character, the audience will stay with them wherever that character might go. If the character and the story are weak and you choose a fractured narrative, the danger is that the audience won't want to stick around to the end. There is a big difference between intriguing and tantalizing, and baffling and meaningless confusing.

How you create your character is probably the single most important aspect of screenwriting. Start with that, and shape your narrative around the demands of the character. Not the other way around.

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