The Three Acts

Now that we’ve gone over the five elements of story, we’re going to go over the three acts of the story. These acts will help the author sort out the different scenes they’re intending to write and make the action of the story rise at a good pace.

I’ll be posting about all three acts, and I’ll get into a little detail about each one here, but later I’ll have a post for each one.

The Three Acts

Act One

This is the one where the reader starts the story. It introduces the characters and the universe and anything about the book the reader might need to know.  Please don’t infodump though. Please. I beg of you. There’s nothing I hate more than infodumping.

Okay maybe Donald Trump, but I digress.

The conflict should be showing up by the end of act one by the way. I read somewhere (I forget where, if I remember, I’ll post the source) that the conflict shouldn’t show up any later than 20% through the book or movie.

Act Two

Act two is about building the action. In Lord of the Rings, this would be their journey across Middle Earth. Okay, maybe LOTR is a bad example because it’s so long. But the point is the tension is rising and things are getting more and more dangerous for our protagonist. In LOTR, this might be an instance like the Balrog in the Mines of Moria. It’s not the climax of the book, but it was dangerous and a lot of bad things happened. Act two ends right before the climax.

Act Three

This is the climax. The final battle. Frodo drops the ring into Mount Doom. Etcetera Etcetera. This is the part where you can’t put the book down because YOU GOTTA KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING.

I’ll get into more detail each week, but here’s an introduction of what’s to come!