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Structure in Practice
Every writer starts out as a mimic. That means we see something done a certain way, and then we do it that way. When I teach my novel revision class, I tell my students that whether or not they know anything about three-act structure, it is likely already present in their stories to some degree. The class participants never believe me, and then I teach them three-act structure with seven anchor scenes and their eyes grow wide as they see that framework within their own stories. They didn’t intend to write three acts with seven anchor scenes; they just absorbed them through engaging with so many stories structured that way, and that structure embedded itself into their stories without them even knowing it.
The three-act structure is in no way superior to a one-act structure for a shorter story, or a five-act structure for a longer one. In the same way you buy the sheets that fit your bed best, you work with the structure that fits your story best. That said, whenever I teach this structure, people lock onto it like it’s a life vest in deep seas, so let me say, once again, that this is onestructure that will work; it is not the onlystructure that will work. It is not even the beststructure; it is simply astructure.
If your structure accomplishes SEE Change (start the conflict, escalate the conflict, end the conflict, change the world) then it works. Three-act structure is just one way to do that.
Basic Three-Act Structure
To get started with structure, which escalates the central narrative conflict, we need to create a central narrative conflict for our protagonist that we can then escalate through the story’s structure. For that we have a formula, as you may recall from our discussion of conflict.
PGAG Protagonist/Goal vs. Antagonist/Goal
From jump, you need to know the protagonist and their goal, and the antagonist and theirgoal. These goals, as we talked about in the chapter on conflict, must be mutually exclusive; if one wins, the other must of necessity lose. That is your conflict lock.
The three acts and the seven anchor scenes (let’s call this a 3/7 structure to simplify) will blossom from that fertile ground; they will track the central narrative conflict, escalating it throughout the story, and then landing it with a climax (the final battle in which a winner is decided) and finishing with a resolution (a scene or series of scenes that shows us how the world has changed, for better or worse).
With that in mind, let’s start with a big picture overview of the three acts.
Act I
The first act introduces our characters, sets up the world, launches the central narrative conflict, and escalates it to the point where the protagonist makes an active choice to engage with the conflict and the antagonist. That active choice to engage changes the protagonist’s relationship to the central narrative conflict because they go from oblivious or ambivalent about the conflict to fully engaged and ready to fight.
Act II
Act IIcontinues to escalate the central narrative conflict, making things worse, challenging the protagonist in ways the protagonist is not prepared for. The first response of the protagonist will be to do things the way they’ve always done things, but this time, their comfort zone will not serve them well; this will push them to change tactics, to try something new. The second act is about putting pressure on the protagonist, showing them that they must learn, improve, and dig deep in order to succeed. The second act is where the stakes are raised, and loss becomes unacceptable. The second act ends when the protagonist again makes an active choice to try harder, be bolder, step outside of their comfort zone, and take a risk. This choice will be defining; once they make this choice, going back is no longer an option. They are absolutely locked in, and ready to fight to either the literal or metaphorical death.
Act III
Inthe third act,everything moves faster, the conflict comes to a head, and the final battle is underway. A winner is decided during the climax, which again changes the relationship the protagonist has to the central narrative conflict because now it’s over, and they have either won or they have lost, but they are different for having engaged in the fight. This moves us into the resolution, where we see how our protagonist and/or the world has changed because of this fight.
Active Choices
You may have noticed some of the language I use when talking about the first and second acts; each of them ends (ideally) with an active choice from the protagonistto push the conflict ahead. Every time the protagonist makes that active choice, their relationship with the conflict changes; it escalates. That’s where the ideal act turns are; when the protagonist’s relationship with the conflict escalates
All right; let’s get a little more detailed now.
Act I
In your first act, you must:
Introduce your protagonist and make your reader care about them[11];
Introduce your central narrative conflict, and by the end of the first act, have your protagonist committed to it;
Set up the world, tone, supporting characters, antagonist; and
Get your central narrative conflict launched, preferably in the first scene.
All this while being entertaining and making it look easy.
It is NOT easy.
The first act sets the stage, establishes a protagonist and, by the time you’re transitioning to the second act, has outfitted them with a goal that is active, specific, personal,and achievable. Then, the protagonist feels the opposing pressure from an antagonist with a mutually exclusive goal. At the end of the first act, the protagonist has decided, for once and for all, to engage with that conflict, and to fight back.
Act II
The second act raises the stakes and escalates the central narrative conflict.
Escalation can sometimes be a confusing concept, so let’s take a moment and play here for a bit.
Maybe this is where the antagonist starts to take this conflict personally, and it’s no longer enough to win the goal; they want to hurtour protagonist while they win.
Maybe our protagonist desperately wants a promotion and knows they’re in competition with some other people for this job, so they sabotage the competition… then they discover that the person they’ve been secretly in love with all this time is in competition for the job, and they’ve been sabotaging the person that means the most to them.
Or maybe an amateur detective is trying to solve a murder, but in the second act, she discovers that the murderer might be her husband.
These are all escalations, where the problem becomes more complicated, and the stakes get higher. There’s suddenly more to lose if things go wrong. Escalations set up choices for our protagonist, and nothing heightens the flavor of a narrative more than an active choice. Does our amateur detective continue on her path to find the murderer, even if it means that her husband goes to jail? When we force our protagonists to make the tough choices, we learn who they really are, and that adds texture and nuance to your story.
The second act ends when our protagonist is faced with an active choice; do they continue to fight, even though the stakes are so high as to at least feellike life and death stakes, even if they aren’t literallife and death? If the protagonist pushes forward at this point in the narrative, they cannot go back again; they are locked in. They’ve hit the point of no return, and that launches us into the third act.
Act III
In the third act, the protagonist has pushed forward despite all the complications, consequences, and escalations. The final battle happens and a winner is decided. And now, because of the events of this battle, the world has changed. Our protagonist has paid a price for pushing onward. They lose the promotion but win the love of their life; or she solves the case, but sends her husband to jail, and loses the life she had before. A win can be bittersweet; there’s a price to be paid, but the price is worth it.
Or… maybe it’s not worth it. There is no rule against a bummer ending. Maybe our amateur detective chooses to protect the husband, and not solve the murder. She keeps her life as she knew it, but she can’t go back to the way it was, and we know she’s going to suffer for making that choice.
Those are the basics of how acts work. Now we’re going to break acts down further into the seven anchor scenes, the big moments that track the escalating central narrative conflict across the three acts.
The 7 Anchor Scenes
In the last section, we talked about how the three acts work, giving us an overview of the general movement of the story. We start with the central narrative conflict launching and escalating in Act I. We make it worse and raise the stakes in Act II, challenging our protagonist to go outside of their comfort zone in order to win the day. And we climax and resolve it in Act III, resolving the central narrative conflict and showing how the world has changed.
Now we’re going to zoom in a bit and look at our seven anchor scenes, but before we do, let’s spend some time with our definitions, starting with a reminder about scenes:
SCENEA series of chronologically continuous beats pulled together to create change within a story
Now, let’s talk about what makes an anchor scene special.
ANCHOR SCENEA scene that significantly escalates the central narrative conflict.
Let’s take a moment and talk a bit about the difference between a scene and an anchor scene. A scene is a collection of chronological beats that create a significant change within a story… but they don’t necessarily escalate the central narrative conflict. They might nudge it forward a bit, or they might be part of a sub-plot or parallel narrative, but they are not significant enough to qualify as an anchor scene[12]. An anchor scene is a major structural point in the story; something big happens, pushing the central narrative conflict into a new space. A pre-built structure will give each of those anchor scenes a specific job to do in the narrative, and once they’ve done that job, things have changed in the story world.
Three of the seven anchor scenes are also turning points:
TURNING POINT:An anchor scene where the protagonist makes an active choice to escalate the central narrative conflict
The first turning point anchor scene transitions the story from Act I to Act II, and the second turning point anchor scene transitions the story from Act II to Act III. The last turning point anchor scene comes just before the climax, launching the story into the final beats of Act III. Having the protagonist make active choices to escalate the central narrative conflict at these turning points makes for a stronger story and a stronger, more active protagonist.
Below is a diagram of how the seven anchor scenes work in an idealized three-act structure:
Did you notice my use of the word “idealized”? That’s because this is a roadmap, not a strict set of rules. You can alter the plan at any time if it serves your story. You can change the specific job that an anchor scene does. Or you can follow this faithfully. Just remember that this structure, like any pre-built structure, exists to serve the story. When it stops serving the story, you can improvise and that is perfectly fine.
Most three-act stories will have moments that track along these general guidelines, but there will be variation in how they land, and in their function. As you’re tracking acts and anchor scenes in the fiction you engage with, don’t be freaked out if the story you’re working with doesn’t map exactly. You’ll see variations of this structure in different story forms, but in movies specifically, you’re likely to see this 3/7 structure pretty often.
And the reason for that? It works.
All right. Let’s get to it—the seven anchor scenes. To minimize confusion in the following anchor scene descriptions, I’ll be using she/her pronouns for the protagonist and he/him pronouns for the antagonist, but I would like to say here that characters, like people, exist fully everywhere on the gender spectrum and are not limited to a binary representation.
1: The Inciting Incident
The first anchor scene is called the inciting incident. This is the first moment that the protagonist feels the influence of the antagonist pushing back against her goal. Now note, the antagonist doesn’t have to be physically present. Your protagonist doesn’t even need to know who the antagonist is; at this point, only the influenceof the antagonist has to be felt.
The inciting incident should happen as close to the start of the story as possible. There are many things, as the writer, that you’ve got to do at the start of the story. You’ve got to establish the world and the characters and the rules and the stakes; it’s a full plate. With all of that going on, do not feel like you also have to launch the conflict on page 1. That said, you don’t want to wait too long, or you risk losing your reader. Do your best to balance all the demands of your opening scenes, and launch that conflict as soon as possible.
After the inciting incident, Act I continues with the conflict slowly escalating and the protagonist learning more about her situation. Other characters and storylines may be introduced, and then we get to the end of Act I, which is capped with the second anchor scene: Engaging with the Conflict.
2: Engaging with the Conflict
At the end of Act I, we have the second anchor scene, engaging with the conflict. Up until now, the protagonist may have known that someone or something was getting in between her and her goal, but she was still figuring things out. By the end of Act I, she knows that she’s being actively blocked and she commits to her goal, actively choosingto engage in the central narrative conflict to pursue her objective. This is also the first turning point of the story
Once our protagonist has chosen to engage with the conflict, we move into Act II. Things are moving along, our story’s gaining some momentum, the central narrative conflict continues to escalate, and the stakes are getting higher. There’s more potential consequence, more at risk, and the antagonist is being thwarted and working harder to obtain his goal and block the protagonist.
3: Midpoint/Reversal
In the middle of Act II, which is also about the middle of the story, we hit on the third anchor scene, aptly named the midpoint, sometimes also known as the midpoint/reversal
The midpoint is where new information is obtained that changes how the protagonist sees the conflict. This could be that our protagonist learns something new that recontextualizes the conflict for her, making her even more committed to her goal. Or it could be that she’s knocked back hard by the antagonist and realizes now how dangerous or powerful he is. This information may be so shocking that it alters her understanding of her goal and her motivation for pursuing that goal may broaden, or the goal itself might even evolve.
What’s important is that even as the goal evolves, it remains mutually exclusive from the antagonist’s goal. As long as that’s the case, you’re good to go.
4: No Way Out But Through
Next, we move on to our fourth anchor scene, a turning point anchor scene that transitions us from Act II to Act III, sometimes called the point of no return. I think of it as no way out but through
Here, our protagonist again makes an active choiceto continue on with the battle, even though the stakes are so high, even though she’s been challenged so much that she’s not sure she can win. Despite how hard it all is, she actively chooses to move forward, because the consequences of going back are not acceptable to her. This is the point where her motivation to achieve her goal becomes stronger than all the reasons to run and hide, and she chooses to fight.
Now, we’re in Act III, when we crest the hill of our story terrain and start sliding downhill with increasing speed.
5: The Dark Moment
Almost immediately after moving into Act III we get to the fifth anchor scene, the dark momentwhen all seems lost, death is imminent, but our protagonist continues fighting. She doesn’t quit. This fifth anchor scene is the story’s final turning point, pushing the protagonist toward the climax and resolution.
6: The Climax
We move immediately from the dark moment into the sixth anchor scene, the climax, when the final winner in the central narrative conflict is decided. Our protagonist sees the fight through to the end. Maybe she wins, maybe she loses; either scenario is narratively legit. What’s important in the climax is that the victor is decided, once and for all.
7: Resolution
Finally, we move into the seventh anchor scene, the resolution. The resolution being designated as one anchor scene is a bit misleading, because the resolution is usually not one big scene, but a series of small scenes showing us how the world has changed now that the battle is decided. However, even as a group of scenes, this part of the story functions to achieve one objective; to process what happened and understand the new world left in the wake of those events.
In the resolution, we look to what has changed in this story to understand its meaning.
Illustrating The 7 Anchor Scenes
To illustrate the seven anchor scenes, I’m going to expand on our simplified version of Little Red Riding Hood from earlier in this book. We’ve already done Red’s story with the basic SEE Change structure, and I’ll map that four-point structure—Start the conflict, Escalate the conflict, End the conflict, Change the world—to the 3/7 structure to illustrate the concepts behind the anchor scenes, but also so you can see how you expand a story from a simple structure to a more complex one.
Act I: Inciting Incident (Start the Conflict)
Red comes inside after doing her chores to find Mother crying at the kitchen table. Red asks what’s going on; Mother says that Grandma is ill. Mother wants to go take care of Grandma, but there’s so much to do at the farm; she can’t take that kind of a trip. Red says she can go, but Mother hesitates. It’s too dangerous. Red promises to be careful. Mother agrees with a sigh of combined relief and apprehension. As she loads up a basket with food and medicine, she gives strict instructions; don’t talk to anyone, don’t stray from the path, and get to Grandma’s before dark. Red promises to follow her mother’s instructions, takes the basket and heads out. The walk is pleasant. It’s a sunny day, no one is around and Red is enjoying herself.
After a while, she notices some movement and glances around. Nothing. She walks a little more and hears a whistle.
She looks around.
Nothing.
A few more steps and suddenly a beautiful dark gray wolf appears just off the forest path, walking in pace with her.
“’Morning,” Wolf says.
Red says nothing.
“Nice day, don’t you think?” Wolf asks.
Red says nothing.
“Luckily, I’m not the kind of guy who takes things personally,” Wolf says, and slows down, letting Red continue on her way. Red is relieved, but then she hears singing…
It’s Wolf.
Red stops to listen. His voice is deep and gravelly, but the melody has a surprising bounce to it. Her feet are eager to dance, but Red holds still.
When he finishes the song, she asks, “Who taught you to sing?”
In an instant, Red realizes that she broke one of her mother’s rules; she spoke to him. But his song was so lovely, and she wants to hear it again so she can remember it, she thinks Grandma would love the song… but Mother said not to talk to anyone. Red starts away again, eyes on her feet to be certain she doesn’t stray from the path. If she keeps her head down and stays away from the edge of the path, maybe the wolf will just go away…
“What’s the rush?” says Wolf, walking just off the path, keeping pace with Red. “Don’t you like my song?”
Red shakes her head.
“I know you can speak,” says Wolf. “You spoke to me just a minute ago.”
Red keeps walking, eyes on the path.
“My mother taught it to me,” Wolf says, and wanders off, ambling lazily into the woods without looking back.
Red glances up to see him retreat and continues on her way. She keeps her feet solidly within the bounds of the forest path and gets to Grandma’s before dark.
That night as Grandma sleeps, Red sits by the fire, trying to remember the wolf’s song. She hums a bit to herself, then hears a hint of a gravelly voice from deep in the darkness, singing that tune. She goes to the window and strains to listen, but hears nothing more than the wind.
We’ve launched Red’s internal conflict; she wants to obey her mother, but she also wants more of Wolf.
Act I to Act IIturn: Engaging with the Conflict (Escalate the Conflict)
The next day, Red is picking flowers in Grandma’s garden. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and she sings the song to herself quietly.
“What terrible song is that?” a voice says. Red jumps and looks up; it’s Wolf.
“It’s yoursong,” Red says.
“That is not my song,” Wolf says. “You got all the notes wrong.”
“Well, I like my version just fine, and anyway—” Red catches herself, once again, talking to Wolf and stops. Wolf grins.
“Your mother said not to talk to anyone on the wayto Grandma’s,” Wolf says. “But now, you’re here. The rules have changed.”
Red looks at him. “How do you know what my mother said?”
“That’s what all the mothers say.”
Red buries her face in her flowers so Wolf can’t see her smile.
“There are prettier flowers just over there,” he says, nodding toward the vibrant field of wildflowers blooming off the forest path.
Red meets Wolf’s eye and says, “Now, what would my mother have to say about that?”
Wolf shrugs. “Nothing, if she never finds out.”
Red gets up, brushes the dirt from her knees, and hugs her basket of flowers to her chest. “Maybe tomorrow,” she says, and allows a sly smile.
“Well, then, maybe tomorrow I’ll teach you how to sing that song right,” Wolf says.
Red heads back into the house, feeling a small thrill in her certainty that he is watching her walk away.
Red is engaging with the conflict; she’s not rushing to disobey her mother, but she’s having fun flirting with Wolf.
Act II: Midpoint/Reversal (Escalate the Conflict)
The next day, Red goes outside and starts down the forest path, walking by the field of wildflowers. She pauses at the edge of the forest path. She hums the song, as best as she can remember it.
Wolf doesn’t show up.
Red lifts her foot, then hesitates and puts it back solidly on the path. She hums a little louder and looks off toward the trees that line the edge of the field. Behind them is darkness, but she doesn’t sense any movement there.
He’s not there.
He’s not coming.
Disappointed, Red goes back inside the house.
That night, Grandma starts to run a fever. Red puts cold cloths on her forehead and gives her the medicine Mother sent, but nothing works. It’s late, but Red doesn’t feel like she can wait until morning. She puts on her red cloak and grabs a torch, then heads out to find the doctor.
She’s barely out of sight of the house when Wolf shows up.
“Hey, Red,” he drawls. “Awfully late for a good girl like you to be out and about, isn’t it?”
“Leave me alone,” Red says and moves faster down the path. Wolf’s tone goes from playful to serious.
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to go get the doctor,” she says, her voice brittle. “Grandma’s sick. I think she’s dying. Nothing I do helps. She’s…” Red glances back over her shoulder at the house, the unthinkable crossing her mind. She looks back at Wolf. “She’s alone.”
“Go back,” Wolf says. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“But—”
“Go!” he says, and disappears into the night. Red hesitates, then rushes back to Grandma’s house. Grandma is still alive, but suffering, and Red goes from Grandma’s side to the window, worried about how phenomenally stupid she was to ever trust a wolf. But soon, she sees a dim light on the path, moving closer. It’s a lantern.
It’s the doctor.
The doctor gives Grandma some medicine and the fever comes down. In the morning, Red makes them all breakfast, and Grandma seems to be doing better. The doctor leaves. Grandma naps.
Later in the day, Grandma is still napping, and Red is bored. She putters around the house for a little while, but then goes outside and walks purposefully off the path and into the field of wildflowers and starts to pick them. Once she has an armful, she glances up at the forest’s edge and sees movement in the dark shadows.
Wolf steps out of the forest but doesn’t move closer. He just looks at her.
She looks back. Her heart races. She feels a trickle of sweat at the back of her neck.
He turns and goes back into the forest.
She turns and goes back into the house.
The midpoint/reversal: Wolf honored her trust, and did as he said he would. Red wants him.
ActIIto Act IIIturn: No Way Out But Through (Escalate the Conflict)
Grandma is almost all better. She tells Red to go back home so that Mother doesn’t worry. Red doesn’t want to go right away. She likes it here, in the woods. It’s so much more… peaceful than in town.
Grandma gives Red a knowing look. “You have to go back,” Grandma says. “But someday when I’m gone, this house will be yours and you can stay here all the time.”
Red is horrified at the thought and jumps up to hug Grandma. “I don’t want your house without you in it!”
Grandma hugs her back and says, “Don’t fight nature, child. You’ll lose.”
“I don’t know about that,” Red says, teasing. “I’m pretty stubborn.”
Red packs up her things, and Grandma fills her basket with food and wine for Mother. Red heads out on the forest path. When she’s almost out of sight of the house, she turns to wave, but sees that Grandma has already gone inside.
Red pauses on the path. She looks out over the field of wildflowers, to the forest’s edge.
She glances back at the house.
And then… she runs. She runs off the path, through the field, to the edge of the forest where the line of trees stand like soldiers on guard duty. She stops and stares into the darkness. There are shapes there in the darkness, but she can’t make them out. She reaches out her hand into the shadows and a voice says, “Are you sure you want to do that?”
She gasps and pulls her hand back. Wolf watches her from a few yards away.
“It’s rude to sneak up on people,” she says.
“It’s rude to go where you don’t belong,” he says.
“It’s as much my forest as yours,” she says.
He laughs. “That’s not even close to being true.” He moves toward her. “But if you’d like… I can show you.”
Red feels a thrill rush through her, followed by a stark fear. She glances behind her, and realizes she can’t even see the forest path from where she is.
She’s spoken to the wolf. She’s gone off the forest path. And now, here she is, at the edge of darkness. But there’s no going back now, is there? She’s not going to just go back on the path and go home now like a good little girl… is she?
“Show me,” she says.
He steps in front of her and walks slowly backwards, moving into the shadows.
Her eyes locked on his, she follows.
No way out but through. Once Red has broken two of the three rules, she has to break the third. She has to know.
ActIII: Dark Moment (Escalate the Conflict)
Wolf doesn’t speak as Red follows him deeper and deeper into the forest. It’s mid-day, she knows it’s mid-day, but forest shadows make it feel like dusk. The bright red of her cloak is now dark, like blood. And the wolf, who appeared charcoal gray in the daylight, now has a silver shimmer to his coat, making him look like he’s made of starlight. He leads her through an area of thick branches and she has to crawl on her knees to enter his lair. The ground is covered in soft pine needles, and the space smells sweet and earthy.
“Sit,” he says, and she does. It’s so dark, she can barely see him. The air is thick and close, completely silent. He begins to sing the song, but it’s different. Before, it was playful and fun. Now, it is plaintive and melancholy. She feels suddenly tired, and lies down on the ground. He curls up next to her, and his body is so warm that she instantly falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When she wakes up, she’s alone. Where there was very little light before, there is none now.
“Wolf?” she whispers, her voice cracking. There is no sound, and fear rushes through her. She knows she is alone, in the forest, in the dark.
He left her.
Her eyes have adjusted a bit to the darkness, just enough that she can grab her basket and find her way out of the lair, but once she’s out, she’s not sure which way to go to get back to the field of wildflowers. She rushes through the forest. A tree branch grabs at her cloak, pulling it off her but she doesn’t stop. She runs, breathing hard, spikes of panic shooting through her chest. She can feel eyes on her, lots of them, but nothing chases her as she runs.
Whatever is in that forest is letting her pass.
She makes it to the field, and it’s way past dark. Red doesn’t know which way to go. Home, to Mother? Or back to Grandma’s? Should she call for Wolf? Where did he go?
She rushes through the field, the wildflowers and weeds slapping at her shins. When she gets to the forest path, she’s about to head toward home when she hears a noise coming from Grandma’s house.
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.Her mind can’t form any other thoughts as she runs.
Dark moment. Red already knows what has happened, but she’s going to Grandma’s anyway, because she has to know for sure.
Act III: Climax (End the Conflict)
Red bursts through the front door, but everything is silent. The fire is still going in the fireplace. Dishes are neatly put away. Nothing out of place. Red starts to relax, and even laughs at herself for allowing her imagination to run off with her.
Everything’s okay.
Everything’s fine.
She sets her basket on the floor and calls out.
“Grandma?” she says. “I’m sorry. I did something so stupid and I think I’m going to just stay the night here and go back in the morning, if that’s okay.”
The door to the bedroom opens, and Red turns with a smile.
And there is Wolf, in the doorway, just watching her.
“What did you do?” she whispers, her heart rate picking up again.
Wolf says nothing.
“What did you do?” she screams, and runs past him into Grandma’s room.
It’s empty.
“Where is she?” Red asks.
“She’s gone,” Wolf says.
“Where?” Red asks, her voice quivering.
“Don’t ask a question you already know the answer to,” Wolf responds.
Red sits on the edge of the bed, clasping the bedspread so tight in her fists that her fingers start to hurt. “How could you?”
“Stop pretending, Red,” Wolf says. “You knew I was a wolf when you let me in.”
Red stares at the floor, her throat choked as tears blur her vision. “I didn’t let you in.”
“Oh, come on,” Wolf says, smirking at her one last time before turning his back and ambling away. “Sure you did.”
Red sits on the edge of the bed, staring down at the floor. Slowly, she pulls her grandmother’s quilt around her and falls back into the bed, where she silently cries until, finally, she falls asleep.
Red’s conflict was always internal; she wanted to obey her mother, but she also wanted to see what was beyond the forest’s edge. When she did that, she grew up, but there was a cost. Now, as she pulls her grandmother’s blankets around her, she accepts that the girl who obeyed is gone. That battle is, finally, over.
Act III: Resolution (Change the World)
A few weeks later, Red sweeps the living room of Grandma’s house, which is now hers. She shoos the dirt out the front door and raises her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun as she looks out to the field of wildflowers. She can barely see the forest’s edge from the stoop.
She goes back inside, leaving the door open. A light breeze flows through the house as she ambles to the kitchen. As she washes the dishes, she sings the Wolf’s tune.
Plate.
Plate.
Mug.
Spoon.
She sets them all in the rack to dry, then turns toward her open front door and wipes her hands on her apron. Wolf stands at the threshold, watching her as she pulls the apron strings free at the small of her back.
“’Morning,” she says, and heads to the bedroom, not looking back to see if Wolf will follow her.
Because she knows he will.
The world has changed. Red has gone from girl to woman. She has lost innocence, but she has gained her own power. She knows exactly what Wolf is, and she chooses to be with him, but on her own terms now. She may never trust him again, but he will never trick her again, and she lives peacefully within that watchful truce.
Review: Any Structure Can Work
Because so many stories, especially movies, are told in 3/7 structure, it is very easy to look at that and forget that any structure can work as long as it can SEE Change:
Start the conflict.
Escalate the conflict.
End the conflict.
Change the world.
Advanced Structure
Before we move on to the chapter on character, I want to take a moment to say that one of the beautiful things about the SEE Change structure is how modular and extensible it is. I’m going to briefly touch on how it can contract or expand to fill the space it’s been given, but since this is an introductory guide to story, I don’t want to get too far into the weeds here. For now, learn the basics, but later, here are some things you’ll be able to do following these simple principles of structure.
Short fiction.The intensity of your conflict depends upon how much story it needs to hold up. In short stories and flash fiction, you have the opportunity to zoom into what might seem like a small conflict… say, a person in a store trying to decide between comfortable or stylish shoes. That simple internal conflict can keep a one-scene story afloat, and a smaller conflict can work really well as a metaphor for something larger.
Parallel structures.You can have two stories with two separate protagonist-antagonist pairings and two central narrative conflicts entwined around each other. Parallel structures lend themselves well to flashback stories where you’ve got two stories in two separate timelines intercut and reflecting thematically upon each other. Romances, where you’ve got a storyline for one half of the romantic pair, and a separate storyline for the other, will often use parallel structures. Or, you can have two separate stories happening in separate spaces in the same timeline and crashing together at different points to intersect and provide big moments for each storyline; but note, they don’t have to be the same anchor scene. A climax for one parallel storyline might be the midpoint/reversal for another. Game of Thronesis an example of this kind of storytelling, with multiple, staggered, parallel stories all happening alongside each other.
Non-linear structures.Non-linear structures will follow a thematic, rather than a chronological, escalation. You can pop around in time, revealing your theme in bits and pieces until the entire puzzle is visible to your reader, who will then put it together. In this case, your climax can happen early in the story, but your reader won’t understand it as the climax until the end; so structurally, the climax occurs when the reader knows it has occurred. Mind-bending. Mementois a good example of this kind of thing.
Nested, or episodic, structures.This is most common to television and comic book series, in which there’s a bigger storyline being worked out over multiple episodes. Each episode will be a complete narrative unto itself, with an escalating central narrative conflict that is resolved by the end, but the episodes themselves also push forward the season- or volume-level central narrative conflict, which resolves in the final episode of the season or issue of the volume. Buffy the Vampire Slayerand Breaking Badare good examples of a nested structure.
Now that we’ve laid out how conflict and structure work, let’s move on to the most important thing you will ever learn to write: character.
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发表于 2024-8-30 18:50
