Three Acts Are Three Too Many

THREE ACTS ARE THREE TOO MANY.
There are several problems with the Three-Act Structure of dramatic writing. First, it is used almost exclusively by writers and development people. Most other filmmakers, especially once the filming begins, either ignore it, or are blissfully unaware of it. Second, it does not take into consideration the very important element of Character. Third, film is a temporal art; with a definite beginning and ending. This means that a film can be busted up into as many pieces as you like. During the presentation of a film, there is nothing to inform the audience that an act is over and a new one is beginning. The audience experiences the film as a whole. So the Three-Act structure has no overt impact on the audience. If all of this is true, then why is it used? Because it is better than nothing. And because some people have misinterpreted Aristotle. (Aristotle and his Poetics will be discussed later in detail.)

How many times have you heard a film director say, “Cut, print. That’s the end of Act One, let’s set up for Act Two,” or an editor wringing his hands over a cup of cold coffee exclaiming, “I just can’t find the right pacing for the second act?” You’ve probably never heard anything of the sort. These professionals work in scenes and sequences. With nothing but little bits of time, captured at 24 frames per second, they piece together a cohesive story. They only use what works, and the amorphous admonition that you must have a beginning, middle and end offers little solace and no direction when you’re waist deep in celluloid, or staring at thousands of media files in your editing software. Some directors are cognizant of the Three-Act system, but they rarely take it to the set and/or the editing room because in the workaday world of cinematic storytelling it has no relevance.

At the other end of the process writers and development executives are well aware of the Three-Act structure. Studios have even started including it as a condition of employment in writers’ contracts. They state that a writer must turn in a story that is based on the Three-Act system. Why is this system so popular? Mainly because there isn’t anything else. When new writers start searching around for guidance in the difficult arena of dramatic writing, they are faced with two choices: 1) A book that promises to teach them the “Secrets” of the craft, or 2) A workshop, usually taught by someone who has written a book, which brings them together with similar people striving towards the same goal. Anything is better than nothing, and many new writers do both. The problem is that the books offer up the Three-Act structure or something equally arcane, and the workshops are only as good as the people in them, and everyone in the workshop is new to the process.

To the neophyte, the daunting task of coming up with 100-120 pages can be overwhelming. But by busting up the process into three parts, the writer is faced with a mere 30-40 pages multiplied by three. This is far less imposing than a single block of 100-120 pages. The problem is that those three 30-40 page blocks of drama must be a connected and integrated whole, not three separate blocks of drama which have the same characters. This is one of the main problems with the Three-Act structure; it treats the plot as a series of separate units when it should be a cohesive whole. The other main problem is that the Three-Act system ignores Character. In most screenwriting how-to books a dozen or so chapters are devoted to the plot, and a single chapter about character is wedged in somewhere with passing references about making characters multi-dimensional.

The Three-Act system’s preoccupation with plot has had a deleterious impact on the characters in recent films. The Characters don’t run the story. They run through the story; they are so busy tagging the bases of the plot that there is no time to get to know them. The Three-Act system doesn’t allow for sections of the story to be about the characters. Everything is geared toward the plot. Again Aristotle rears his ancient head. He states, on more than one occasion in the Poetics, “The most important element of Tragedy is the Plot,” and we have listened uncritically to this advice and wandered dangerously far from character.