Category: The Editor’s Hat

Most writers have a natural instinct when it comes to story structure and plot. We do so much reading, or we see so many movies, that understanding pacing is just part of our makeup. Even new writers, still learning their craft, have this instinct.

We know that if we have action scene after action scene, eventually we need to have a calm scene that gives us the chance to breathe. We know that there needs to be those moments of reflection, looking at what has happened. But if we spend too much time dwelling on the past, we'll need an explosion to get things going again.

And there will also be those moments when a character decides to risk all and just go for it—damned the consequences.

As writers, we follow a story structure with the instinct of knowing where the rise and fall in the action needs to be. However, when something is off in the pacing of a story, that's when all the discussions come out about one of countless number of story structure models out there and the analytical tools associated with it.

As a developmental editor, it is my job to look at story structure and pacing on the macro and micro levels. If pacing is off, for whatever reason, I delve into the mechanics of a manuscript and tear that structure apart to find out why things don't work. Much of what I do on this particular front is instinct, simply because every story is different. However, there are some commonalities within the beats of a story, which has given rise to models like the traditional 3-act structure.

In today's post, I want to start breaking down what is involved in the traditional 3-act structure. There are three posts involved in this series, with each post focusing on a different act.

Much of what a writer does when crafting a story is based on instinct, weaving in the rise and fall of action. But when looking at story structure specifically, one need to recognize that every story is different. There is no strict formula that can be applied.

Tools like the traditional 3-act structure are only diagnostic tools, designed to help us understand why something might not be working.

In the first post of this Traditional 3-Act Structure series, we introduced the importance of this structure as a whole, and began breaking it down. We looked at the first act (The Setup) and the first point of No-Return. Today, let's get into the nitty-gritty of Act 2.

There is a natural instinct that exists among most writers about where to put the tension beats in, where things need to change, and when the reader needs a break from all the action. That is because most writers read a lot, or watch a lot of movies, or... Well, we just spend a lot of time in a fictional world somewhere. When we do that, we start to see the patterns, even if we don't understand the formula being applied to those stories.

The traditional 3-act structure is just one of countless number of models out there on story structure. Over the past few posts, we have been breaking down the traditional 3-act structure into the nitty-gritty, getting to the root of why it works the way it does.

In Part 1 of this series, we examined the elements of act 1, including the inciting event and the first transition point, what I called the first point of No-Return. In Part 2, we looked at the first half of act 2, heading into the midpoint, and we discussed what is meant by the A-story and the B-story.

In the final installment of this series, we're going to look at the final transition point for the manuscript and what the working components go into act 3.