: Re: What are the acts of a story? I'm interested in the elements of how a good story is compiled. When in high school, I was exposed to Shakespeare plays where the stories were divided into

@Carla500

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Roughly speaking, acts divide the action into sections. At the end of each act is a turning point. Some disaster has befallen the protagonist(s), who must then choose whether to turn back or go forward.

The Snowflake Method guy calls his acts "three disasters and an ending." In the Hero's Journey, the ends of acts are the Thresholds. Each represents an obstacle, like as not interior, which the protagonist must overcome to continue on the quest.

The point of the disaster or threshold is to help character development along and to give the plot a conflict which the protagonist must overcome. Without conflict, there's no plot; the story doesn't go anywhere. If the protagonist solves the initial conflict immediately, that's boring. If the protagonist solves the conflict and doesn't learn anything, that's also boring. Having additional, rising crises beset the protagonist (often caused by the earlier attempts to solve the previous crisis) is more interesting for the reader and gives the protagonist opportunities to learn, grow, and change.

TV shows on network TV are now broken into five acts to allow for ads, but four was the previous standard — again, as much for advertising as anything else. But three, four, or five acts is somewhat arbitrary. You want at least three acts or the action doesn't rise and fall. Four or five may be influenced by and depends on your story and the medium.

You can write a six-act story if you want; no one will stop you. Whether it is well-written or well-received is an exercise for the student. Character development is also up to you. I prefer it more or less evenly spaced, and attached to some kind of story logic rather than "he changed because I as the writer needed him to change here." But you have to do what works for your story. Maybe your character's growth is what creates the disaster at the act's end, or maybe it's what solves it. There are no standards about that.

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