This is part 3 in my essays on writing. These will be on a podcast called The Compulsive Writer’s Support Group starting November-ish. You’ll be able to get links to it from here, as well as my site, www.mindofbryan.com.

We can look at other structures from other Mediums as well when we think about giving structure to our pieces. If you have an idea and you have no idea of how to structure it, we can think about things in acts. Giving just this much structure might give the organic writer some better concept of how to outline without interfering with their organic process.

One of my degrees is in theatre, and I’m quite glad I did it, because the intense work of analyzing character and creating movements from words on a page is what gave me a good understanding of character, voice and motivation. Theatre has a number of structures, from Beats to acts.
A beat is the smallest structural unit of theatre. The story goes that when modern acting method was brought over to England and the United States by Stanislavski, he wanted to say “bit” but in his thick Russian, it came out as “Beat” and the term stuck. I believe this is a significant structural element that can be used in constructing a book as well. If we write a conversation, any kind of dialogue, we can think of turning points. Any turning point represents a beat. These points can be moments where advantage is gained or lost, information is imparted, a character loses it, or calms down. The entry of a new character almost always signifies a beat change, as does the exit. When we look at a conversation, we should look at beats, and if things feel aimless, often that is a sign that we wrote a conversation without thinking about the structure of it, likely we spouted a lot of information without thinking about what it meant to either of the characters that said it. Exposition is tough, especially when you have a lot of it, and you feel like you have two people just spouting it off without any real reason for it. We can change that by giving them a reason to say it, give each of them a stake in it.

Every beat has a beginning, and a turn. These are my terms, so you might not find them in any other places. Beats can be long or short. The centerpiece of a beat is a motivation, which literally comes down to what is this character trying to accomplish right now? When the answer to that question changes, you have a new beat. These beats are what give a story momentum and direction. If you look at a conversation, and it feels flat, it is probably worth looking at it, and breaking it down to points where the conversation turns. If it doesn’t turn, or more importantly, turn enough times, it may not be an important conversation, and maybe you could do without it.

If there is crucial plot information, you’re probably going to have to work it, to find points where significant development can happen. We as writers can very easily get lost in information, and thinking about what has to make it to the page to get the plot moving, while forgetting about developing our characters for a scene. Thinking about breaking these scenes into beats is maybe the best way to inject that development back in. Sometimes, a beat breaks with a pause. You know that five minute lull? That is a break in a beat where the author hasn’t written the next beat yet, and that can be a great way to develop a character. If there are pauses while nothing happens, it can indicate contemplation, boredom, any number of isms that make a character tick. Somebody who is socially awkward might let this pauses drop without thinking about it, others may use it as a tool to force the other character into saying something in the uncomfortable silence.

When you string together enough beats, you get a scene. Some plays have scenes, and some don’t. Some just have action for an act and then more for another act, and one of the main elements that will dictate this is setting. One setting, one scene is often the rule. Shakespeare moves things around quite a bit, and so he writes scenes. In Waiting for Godot, Becket has a tree as a setting, and there are no breaks in action, though there are a lot of beats.

Scenes are very much like what we have in our books, screenplays or other writing projects. They represent fairly major actions and movements of the story, and may be spelled out, or may be interpreted by the director. Scenes are more widely used at this point in film and books, but scenes are used extensively in theatre with origins before the mid 20th century.
Common act divisions in theatre are two act, three act, and five act. In a two act play, we look for dichotomy, an equality to the acts in terms of action and emotion. There should be a rise and a fall if the play is a tragedy, or a set-up and denouement if it is a comedy. One of the most perplexing examples of the two act structure is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot. In it, two men stand by a tree waiting for Godot to arrive, and just when you think they must be the two lowest men on the world’s totem pole, two more men arrive, one a slave, and you find just how low we can go. In the second act, the same thing happens.

Two acts, if they are sufficient, can make a large work, but I’m not sure I could make a novel out of two acts. I think this might be a structural experiment for a novella.

I’ve covered three act structure in the section on film structure. Let’s move straight to a five act structure.

The most prominent examples of a five act structure are the plays of William Shakespeare. Five acts, each with multiple scenes, make for a very long play, but in Shakespeare’s time, theatre was an afternoon event that took advantage of daylight. The theatre, like now, would make money based on sales of seats, but also the groundlings selling refreshments, and so long shows meant more money. There is a very strong structure in this that makes a lot of sense for all forms of writing. Since I have just written a story based on Hamlet, I’ll use that work as an example. The basic breakdowns and title of the acts are coined by Gustav Freytag, a 19th century critic. He has created this graphic to help you think about this structure.

(Image is from wikipedia.)

The first act is exposition. Normally we associate exposition with heavy-handed telling, and not showing. In the case of Hamlet, there is a long bit of history to learn, a lot of characters and plots at work, a lot of relationships to establish, and actions are already setting themselves in motion. As you can see this isn’t all about exposition in the modern sense of the word, plots are moving forward even as we look backward.

In act I of Hamlet, we are first confronted with wary guards who see the ghost of Hamlet’s father. We then see Claudius and Gertrude in a procession, moving forward in their lives, while Hamlet is held back with grief. Hamlet is then told by the guards and friend about seeing his father’s ghost. We get a brief scene of Polonius doddering about his son going to college, and beginning the plot to play matchmaker between his daughter Ophelia and Hamlet. Hamlet spends a night on the guard and meets with his father’s ghost, who reveals his murder to the prince, but Hamlet is unsure of the truth of the ghost.

Act two is defined as Rising Action. The stakes go up, the conflict becomes more complicated, obstacles fall in the path of the hero. This is the act where the going gets tough. In Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius try to avert war with Norway. Hamlet decides to feign madness to keep his intentions secret. In response, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are called to help Claudius and Gertrude see through the ruse.

Act three is the climax or the turning point. I believe that Freytag had a different perspective on climax than we do in a modern sense of the word. Turning Point is the better term in a modern context. While in act two, Hamlet seeks confirmation of what the ghost says, in act three, the tip of the pyramid, the action gains momentum, and the inevitable downward fall begins. In this act, Ophelia is sent to court Hamlet, a troupe of players arrives, and Hamlet lays out his trap. The turning point of the whole play is when Claudius sees the play, and his reaction confirms the ghost’s story.

If we want to think of a similar act in a comedy, we can think of Much Ado about Nothing, where (name) falsely accuses Hero of having slept around. At this turning point, this play could very easily have become a tragedy. The whole event is kind of like the part of the date movie where the two people who are falling in love have the fight and break up and feel miserable. If Shakespeare had felt like it, he could have made a very dark little story out of it, but instead we have a wedding at the end.

In act 4, the action falls. When we say falls, we don’t mean slows down, draws to a close, anything like that. In classical terms, rise means an elevation in the tone of a story. It bears some relation to why Dante’s Divine Comedy is called a comedy. It isn’t because it is funny. It’s because the general motion of the story is upward both spiritually (going from the condemned to the blessed) and metaphysically (Hell is down, Heaven is up). In the case of Hamlet, the action is down. Polonius is killed behind the curtain, Ophelia goes mad and drowns, and Hamlet is judged to be insane and sent off to England to be killed, with his friends there to make sure it happens.

Act five is resolution. Hamlet returns, having been attacked by pirates, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dispatched. We find out about Ophelia’s funeral, and Hamlet is welcomed back to court. Claudius sets up the duel, and fixes it with poison when is then shared around to all the most important people in court. Then everybody dies.

This is a very rough overview. I hope you can see how the action of the play fits into the structure.
For a beginning writer, what often happens is that you have a character, or a plot, but halfway though you get lost, and the story never gets completed. If you look at the story that you have, and think about it in terms of these five acts, or four or three, as in the other sections, you have an advantage to getting it done.

So going into writing your project, or maybe into Nanowrimo, you may have an idea of your character and your conflict. You introduce your conflict in the first act. If you just start writing here hoping you will be able to work it out as you go, you may lose your way. Instead, before you set down any words, give it some thought. It is likely that you can come up with several plot points that fit one of these acts, and give you a quick throughline to your story.

I’m working on a story right now that is set in a post-apocalypse Boston. It’s a short story, so the acts may simply become scenes, but who knows at this point. The story is kind of nascent, and I’d like it to be larger. My character is a reporter who is told to go maybe to New York to report on something. In act one, she gets her assignment, and suits up. In act two, she meets mushroom farmers in the big dig tunnels. They are a perfect environment for mushrooms, and it is after the apocalypse, so they need some survival niche. As it turns out, they are actually cannibals, and Pickman, a survival artist who lives alone above ground, rescues her.

In act three, Pickman brings her to his studio. He paints very unusual demons. Suddenly, she sees movement. He gets his guns, and kills a creature that is his next painting. I know, very Lovecraftian, but I’m intending to use it as a fun reference, not quite a main story point, and New England’s apocalypse is essentially an old sin and witchcraft gone amok kind of apocalypse.

In act four, it turns out he needs a mate as any good survivalist does, and she’s tops on his list. She must escape from him, but he has all the guns.

In act five she escapes and finds her assignment.

This is my first line of thinking on this story, and it isn’t great, but it is a structure I could write, and is further along than I was five minutes ago. In fact, I could see this as a very episodic story, and so there will likely be many of these bits as she pursues her main story, and so maybe this is just the first part of a much larger story. Or I could take it in any number of direction. Point is, I got here by thinking of some events in relation to overall points in the structure.

Next we’ll look at a teleplay four act structure, and I might finish off with Aristotle’s Poetics just for the fun of it.