Here’s an old saw: all stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. A true saying too. Authors may play around with the way those elements are delivered from time to time instead of serving them up straight as a linear narrative dish. But a story that doesn’t establish a starting point, a middle section which elaborates upon the beginning, and some kind of resolution at its close will not be regarded as a story at all by most readers. There are branches of literature that step outside these ideas and attempt to write their own rules. But in the field of popular fiction, of books read by people who often don’t think of themselves as ‘readers’, these cardinal points are usually essential.
This division of the narrative into distinct component parts is often known as the ‘three-act structure’ – one that can be found in books, plays and films. The movie industry in particular obsesses over the finer points of those acts. You can read any number of learned tomes and attend quite a few university courses where the minutiae of the ‘three-act’ idea will be picked apart in scrupulous detail. I don’t have space – or the inclination – for that here. I’m temperamentally opposed to obfuscating matters that are uncomplicated at heart, and truthfully this is not a convoluted subject.
But the challenges of writing a book do vary from act to act. Some of the problems that will arise, such as characterisation, are universal and will apply throughout the narrative. A few are specific to an individual stage of the story.
It should be very easy to establish where these different acts begin and end, like this …
First act
Begins at the beginning and goes on to introduce the problem, the main characters and the story world. The act comes to a close when our protagonist understands that this dilemma belongs to him and decides, for whatever reason, he has to solve it.
Think Hamlet. Forlorn son still mourning his much-loved father discovers from his father’s ghost that his dad was murdered by his uncle Claudius. Then, to rub salt in the wound, the uncle has gone on to marry Hamlet’s mother Gertrude. His father’s ghost demands vengeance. Hamlet resolves to act mad until he can work out what to do about this.
Second act
Starts at the point the protagonist has decided he has to fix whatever bundle of trouble he’s lumbered with. In order to do that he needs to understand it better and pursue a variety of options to bring about its resolution. The act ends when he sees what he believes to be the means to deliver what he seeks, and embarks upon the endgame to bring the story to a close.
Hamlet again. Our troubled prince ponders suicide, emphasises his madness, toys cruelly with Ophelia, and agonises over what to do. A group of travelling players arrive at Elsinore to give a performance. Hamlet sees them and a light bulb goes on in his head. In structural terms the second act ends when he utters the words, ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ His course is set. Somehow he will hunt Claudius down, reveal him as a murderer through the players, and avenge his father.
That line happens to occur in the second dramatic act of the play. Bear in mind that dramatic acts in the theatre are not the same as structural acts in narrative. Theatrical acts are in part to do with practical matters of the performance such as scenery changes. Structural story acts are staging posts along the journey of the overall narrative.
Third act
This starts at the moment the protagonist thinks he sees the way forward – catching the bad guy, finding the object of his quest, curing that broken relationship. It ends when the problem is, in some way, resolved. In simple stories and fiction for children we might say ‘solved’ instead. Cue that line: ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ That won’t work for many adult narratives. We expect our world to be restored to some kind of order, but we’re realistic enough to know that rarely happens without a price.
Back to Hamlet … our troubled prince sets the endgame in motion by staging a play that re-creates the murder of his father by Claudius, who understands that his secret is revealed. He plots to send Hamlet to England and assassination. Hamlet’s madness is no longer feigned. He kills Ophelia’s father Polonius. She commits suicide. Claudius enlists her furious brother Laertes in a plot to murder Hamlet in a fencing match with a poisoned blade. Cue Tarantino-style ending in which Hamlet, Gertrude, Laertes and Claudius all die violently.
Those three structural acts are rarely of equal length. The first and third are frequently quite short, the second long and by far the most difficult from the writer’s point of view – and the reader’s at times. But there are no rules.
Hamlet is a variation on the usual theme. The prince’s determination to unmask and wreak vengeance upon Claudius is made plain when he sees the players in the dramatic second act. But we have three more theatrical acts to run before the story approaches its conclusion. During that time Hamlet’s determination slips, and in the fourth dramatic act it needs to be revived as he leaves Elsinore (to would-be assassination if only he knew it). On the way he meets a group of soldiers going to fight over nothing more than the territorial claims of the Norwegian king. Their willingness to die for something without personal meaning shames him for abandoning his pledge to avenge his father. He declares, ‘O, from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!’
In a sense this is the end of the second act revisited. Shakespeare often plays with narrative conventions in order to heighten the sense of drama. The idea of the reluctant hero, one who walks away from his duty only to see something that reminds him he must return to it, is just as valid today.
Now to construct a first act for Charlie and the Mermaid and see what issues that prompts, and how we can overcome them in order to kick this story into life.