Three Act Structure Explained — The Secret to Telling a Great Story - YouTube

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• every magic trick

• three parts or acts perhaps no rule in screenwriting is more important than the three-act structure

• let's stick with the formulas for that formulas but the three-act structure can take many shapes and sizes and isn't as restrictive as one might think

• expert k.myland

• how the three-act structure works I'm cam Wyland and I run the writing website helping writers become authors and have written books like structuring your novel and creating character arcs the three-act structure refers to a framework in which to tell your story

• this means a three-act structure is primarily focused on shaping a writer's plot since story refers to the events which occur in your screenplay

• and plot is how that story is told the three acts differ in length act

• one is the first 25 of a film

• Act 2 is the next fifty percent and

• act three is the last 25 percent not every film follows

• this structure that made no sense and the films which do follow it don't all follow it in the same way

• explains that following these conventions doesn't have to result in a lack of creativity so a lot of people feel that structure can be too limiting for a story or create a story that's formulaic and this is actually the

• farthest thing from the truth what structure does is provide a framework into which the story can then take many different forms but also specifically it's a guideline for creating a resonant psychological transformation because this is ultimately what story is and so if you can understand kind of the skeleton underneath that then you can create all kinds of stories on top of that I particularly like the analogy of thinking of story structure as a gift box so it's always a cube it always has wrapping paper in a bow and looks kind

• of the same but what's inside of that gift can be anything it could be a puppy or a video game or a cookbook so the possibilities are endless

• Jurassic Park is in my opinion a masterpiece of structure and one of the reasons for that is because of how well it balances plot and character so when we think of this movie we generally think of like a really full-on intense action movie but in fact there's basically no action until the

• midpoint in this story it's all character up to that point and it's just so beautifully and powerfully done that by the time we get to the midpoint and all the action we are super invested in these characters and this dilemma that they find themselves in Weiland has taken the three-act outline and further broken it

• into eight parts

• the first of which is the hook the opening of your film must answer one question above all else why should the audience keep watching

• hook as the first domino in the row of dominoes that is your story and even though it isn't necessarily going to immediately immerse your audience in the main conflict that your characters will be experiencing it it is related and it's going to be that first thread that gets pulled that eventually leads into that full-on immersion with the main conflict and obviously the primary point and objective of the hook is to hook your audience into the story and to make them interested enough to keep going with it

• the best way to do this in my opinion is to get them to ask a question what do you believe in huh whether implicitly or explicitly you want them to be asking hmm what is that what's that about or simply what's going to happen next so that they're interested enough to keep going I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you laugh stranger