I never paid much attention to act structures and I don't remember if any of the books I've read on story focused on that sort of story structure stuff. Like Brian, I tend to think of stories as just "start here, go there and end here".

You could say that most movies fit both the three and five act structures because you're basically writing the same thing in a different way. With a three act structure you're looking for a catalyzing event that begins to build tension for the duration of the movie, and then a final moment where that tension is released. The acts are the bits before, after and between these two moments

From my understanding (which is just me guessing based on my own attempts to figure out what the hell people were talking about when talking about 'acts' and 'structure' and 'writing' and 'movies'), a five act structure is just an elaborate way of describing a three act structure, where the end of the second act is broken up by a couple of specific moments that describe the climax of the protagonist's arc and the climax of the main story arc. From what I've discovered, it's not the acts themselves that matter, it's those moments that separate the acts that you have to pay attention to.

But I've come up with my own way of defining how and when those acts begin and end as well, and I dunno how close to 'real' story telling theory I am. Probably quite a ways off, honestly, since according to my rules the first act of Revenge of the Fallen is nearly an hour long... unless Megatron's supposed to be the protagonist...

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2012-04-14 17:57:48)