More Thoughts on Three Acts: Fifteen Years Later
Many of the questions that we have been asked since Alternative Scriptwriting was first published in 1990 center on three-act structure: Is three-act structure always as problematic as you say? Aren’t most films written in three acts? If not three acts, what else? Can there be more or less reliance on structure, depending on the film? Has the emphasis on three acts changed over time?
Since the first edition of this book, the gap between mainstream and alternative films has closed considerably. Major studios today have branches for acquiring and distributing “smaller” films. Many more “smaller” films are recognized in major film festivals. At least on the surface, many stylistic devices first introduced in alternative films have been appropriated by the mainstream, just as independent films have adapted those of the mainstream. Many independent films today do use three-act structure.
Given this, we thought it was time to look back on what we wrote about three acts, and nuance it a little finer. In so doing, we would like to move the discussion from the question of whether many alternative films use three acts, to how they use them.
A Little Context about the Three-Act Discussion
Three-act structure has been a major concern of the wave of screenwriting books, beginning in 1979 with Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting,1 and continuing today. On the first page of Screenplay, after defining a screenplay as a story told with pictures, Field says “All screenplays contain this basic linear structure” (Field 7–13). Then he draws a diagram of three-act structure, identifies it as a paradigm, and calls it the foundation of all good screenplays.
This becomes the defining “paradigm” of almost all the screenplay texts that followed. Shortly after Screenplay was published, William Goldman, in Adventures in the Screen Trade2 (1983), proclaims “SCREENPLAYS ARE STRUCTURE” [caps are Goldman’s] (Goldman 195). Linda Seger starts Making A Good Script Great (1987) with four chapters on act structure. In How to Write a Movie in 21 Days (1988), Viki King proposes writers begin by thinking of a 9-minute movie, a conceptual device that allows her to stipulate that movies must have nine structural signposts, which articulate three acts. For instance, the first three signposts mark the build to number four, “The Act I Turning Point” located on screenplay page 30. This is followed by signpost number five, “The Act II Metaphor,” and so on. In Writing Screenplays That Sell3 (1988), Michael Hauge features a structural checklist that includes much of what we have discussed and then subsequently critique in Chapter 2 of Alternative Scriptwriting—showing “the audience where the conflict is going to lead them” or assuring that “every scene, event and character in the screenplay must contribute to the hero’s outer motivation” (Hauge 87). Lew Hunter, in Screenwriting 434 (1993), proposes a 2-minute movie, which he divides into three acts. More than 200 of his 343 pages concentrate on structure. Robert McKee, whose popularity is both celebrated and mocked in the film Adaptation, dedicates the first five chapters of his book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997) to structure. And in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of this book, we, too, talk about a structural model, even if we end up critiquing it.
What strikes us, looking back on these key texts, is not that they discuss structure, which we agree is an important component in all screenplays, but rather how much attention they put on structure in proportion to everything else. We can speculate on some reasons for this. One is that structure may be easier to teach or to write about, compared to other elements of good writing. To say that there needs to be a plot point on pages 25–27 requires less sustained analysis than is required to discuss the depth of character conflict or theme that makes the plot point meaningful. It is certainly easier for those who evaluate screenplays to turn to the pages identified by the paradigm and assure themselves that the act breaks are happening where they should. A second reason may be that the first wave of the push for structure (Field and Goldman) occurred in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when the intellectual movement called structuralism, even though it had peaked in France (where it was invented), still had great influence in the United States. Many strands of structuralism (beyond the similarity in name) concentrate on the syntagmatic line, or the dimension that unfolds in time—said to mark the deep structure, or universal mental construct—which underlies all stories. This concentration on a hidden, latent truth, at the expense of a surface that evokes many, possibly contradictory readings, may have influenced the focus on three-act structure.
Reframing the Three-Act Discussion
Whatever the reason, we would like to examine three-act structure again, not in terms of how it functions (we have covered that thoroughly in Chapters 2–4), but in terms of how it is used in four contemporary films. To do this, we will propose a spectrum that has at one end an aggressive three-act approach that tends to subordinate multiple meanings to one dominant, overarching structure, and at the other end a relaxed three-act structure that on close examination reveals three acts, but that encourages a more open range of meanings.
It will be useful to start by making a distinction between plot and structure. Plot is usually defined as two or more non-simultaneous events that are connected by cause and effect. In its purest sense, plot has nothing to do with communicating this cause and effect to the audience. Structure, at least in the way it is used in most screenplay discussions, assumes plot but goes further. It is the articulation of plot in such a way that it is shaped or organized for the viewer. Some aspects of structure serve to orient the viewer in time, relative to the progress of the story. Others serve to draw particular attention to important story points. To demonstrate how much of structure has to do with communication with the viewer, eight out of the first ten items in Michael Hauge’s structural checklist refer explicitly to communicating the audience’s relationship to the story:
1. 
2. …show the audience where the story is going to lead them.
3.
4. Accelerate the pace of the story.
5. Create peaks and valleys to the action.
6. Create anticipation in the reader.
7. Give the audience superior position.
8. Surprise the audience and reverse the anticipation.
9. Create curiosity in the reader.
10. Foreshadow the major events of the screenplay (Hauge 87–93).
Structure, then, is a form of narrative voice, a direct address to the viewer (see Chapters 21 and 23). Most examples of narrative voice in mainstream film are minimized or hidden beyond character action, in order to create the illusion that character, rather than some outside force, is driving the story. However, structure is one exception to this rule. Structure must call attention to itself if it is to have an effect on the audience. This is most apparent at act breaks, when it is frequently articulated by music, change in rhythm, and/or lyrical scenes of character reflection. If the audience does not feel this articulation, then there is no sense of structure shaping the story—this lack would cause the story to be perceived as flat and undifferentiated.
In Chapter 21, we argue that the alternative film tends to make more obvious use of narrative voice than does the mainstream. That is, alternative films tend to more consistently and explicitly recognize communication with the audience, not just at act breaks, but at other times as well. Because of this, even when alternative films use three-act structure, it may function as just one of many organizing principles. Thus three-act structure, although present, may be more relaxed because it does not tend to dominate the way it does in mainstream films. This will not necessarily flatten the story because the other narrative articulations give it shape.
Two provisos are necessary here. The distinction between aggressive and relaxed three-act structure is sometimes easier to make when viewing the final film than when reading the script. Many of the elements that add to the relaxed feel (quality of the image, shooting patterns, importance of production design, to name a few) depend on directorial interpretation (the broader expression of narrative voice) that builds on the script and more clearly distinguishes its approach. However, while this is true, it is still important to consider the approach to three-act structure that you are suggesting to the director when you write. An intensely action-based script with strong act breaks will not have much room for personal reflective moments, no matter what the director wants to add, just as a flattened, personal screenplay most likely will resist the director’s desire to stage a serious car chase.
Secondly, the distinction between aggressive and relaxed three-act structure is a continuum, rather than an either/or. Different readers/viewers respond differently to structural clues. We are proposing this spectrum in celebration of the increasing overlap between various approaches to film storytelling, rather than as an unbridgeable distinction between them.
Let’s now make this concrete by looking at some examples.
The Constant Gardener
The Constant Gardener (2005), adapted from a John Le Carré novel of the same name, is a good place to start. Directed by the Brazilian Fernando Meirelles, The Constant Gardener in many ways demonstrates the changes in mainstream narrative filmmaking over the past 15 years. It contains images of raw African poverty that we would not have expected to see in the mainstream films we cited in previous chapters, such as The Verdict or Wall Street. Handheld or steadicam images are more restless than are those contained in earlier films and allow a looseness of frame that suggests a much broader sense of context. There is a pronounced filtering of images to heighten their dramatic functioning (and encouraged by computer-based editing), along with greater activity in the frame, which creates a richer sense of environment. The script combines a love story with an adventure film, so that the film is positioned to deal with the texture between the personal and the political. Yet, despite all of this, the film features an aggressive three-act structure.
The Constant Gardener tells the story of a British diplomat serving in Kenya, Justin, who is more interested in gardening than in power. When he learns that his wife, Tessa, was killed after going into the bush with Arnold, an African doctor, he seems to accept the common wisdom that they had been having an affair and that her death is the result of a lovers’ quarrel. The first act fills in the backstory to make such an interpretation believable.
Yet, Justin doesn’t quite buy it. In the second act, after learning that Arnold is gay and regards Tessa as a colleague, not a lover, Justin backtracks to London, where he determines the couple had been pursing a pharmaceutical conspiracy that has been killing innocent African victims. While there, Justin is shut down by the foreign service and must surrender his passport. The act ends with him gathering the courage to violate his diplomatic training, leaving London on a false passport, and beginning to track down the corruption that killed his wife.
Since this is a drama/thriller, the third act is extended and follows the now convinced Justin as he tracks down the pharmaceutical conspiracy. Although costing him his life, his actions lead to the exposure of British complicity in the conspiracy and terminates the drug testing that has been responsible for so many African deaths.
We find that the openness of its filmmaking style is contradicted by its aggressive reliance on three-act structure. The first act’s function is to misdirect us into believing the affair between Tessa and Arnold, while discounting the conspiracy they might be unearthing. All the action, including the images that so reveal the texture of Africa, is bent on serving this purpose. For instance, Tessa’s pregnancy leads to a hospital scene in which she nurses an African baby. We are encouraged to believe this is her child with Arnold, before we learn that her own baby died in childbirth. She is actually nursing the baby of a dying African woman in the next bed, a woman whose murder is related to the plot that Tessa and Arnold are seeking to stop. The writer’s choice to blatantly manipulate the audience expectations comes at the expense of exploring the depth of character or situation. Rather than a fully developed character, Tessa is treated as an agent or expression of the misdirection required by the structure.
Because the first act is so focused on creating the illusion that Tessa is cheating on Justin, our sense as experienced film watchers tells us that it cannot be true. This constructed first-act untruth, a frequent strategy of aggressive three-act structure, has the effect of undercutting the rawness of the images of Africa. If the first act is so palpably manipulated to create a suspicion we suspect will later be proven false, we learn to distrust much of what we learn there—including the texture of the African reality the film seeks to expose.
The simple flip-flop of Justin’s skepticism to true belief, which occurs in the second act, has the black and white quality so typical of aggressive three-act films. It suggests a worldview that can only encompass extremes. While this injects us into the conspiracy action movie that makes up the third act of The Constant Gardener, it leaves us feeling that the shattering representation of this part of the world cannot stand up to the personal sense of character either/or that so characterizes aggressive three-act structure.
Craig Brewer’s Hustle and Flow (2005) opens in flattened, documentary style with DJay, a middle-aged pimp, reflecting on the differences between men and dogs. Set in Memphis, the film initially feels open-ended, featuring a series of small encounters. DJay sells some dope at a bar, picks up one of his prostitutes from a club, hangs out, is given a toy piano in exchange for dope, and shops for a popsicle. Underlying this is a vague discontent that is particularly interesting because it is not focused on a specific action or solution. This vagueness gives the film a deeper reality than does all the stuff about whores, street life, and hustling. We know that dissatisfaction—how its seeps into us and cannot be easily named or addressed—even if we do not know the street life through which it is represented.
After about 25 minutes, however, the film slips into the more aggressive three-act mode. The toy piano, along with the chance meeting of a childhood friend who works as a sound engineer, leads DJay to decide to cut a rap demo. He plans to pass the demo on to Skinny Brown, a rap singer due to perform in Memphis.
The second act builds on the first, focusing on the cutting of the demo. Although there are a number of obstacles, most are external (e.g., getting a better microphone), having little to do with character. The greatest character development comes when a secondary character’s wife comes to understand what her husband is doing. Beyond that, the focus is on the community that develops around the recording.
In the third act, DJay fails to get Skinny Brown to listen to the demo. DJay’s subsequent violent outburst lands him in prison. However, one of DJay’s prostitute’s, Nola, hustles the demo to radio stations, where it is picked up and becomes a hit. When the prison guards hand DJay their demo, he generously promises to listen, saying, “Everyone needs a dream.”
The act structure is anomalous because, although it focuses the action, it does not do much to develop character. Between the first act and the third, the unease that underlies the first few scenes is suspended in favor of the making of the demo. Thus DJay’s violent outburst in the third act is rather abstract, representing a rage and a frustration that has not been progressively dramatized. Depending on one’s reading, this schematic outbreak of violence represents the frustration underlying a generic social situation (DJay’s been struggling financially and socially, which means he is, ipso facto, angry) or a reluctance to fully explore his character. The one blowup between DJay and his producer, Key, in the second act is too generically a creative falling out, soon patched up, to bring us further inside of DJay.
We can see what this structure does to the texture of individual scenes. The film opens with DJay’s ruminations as he sits in his car, seeking to find a john for his prostitute Nola. His monologue about being a man, not a dog, has a longing, a striving for some sense in his life, that allows us to feel the depth of this man’s need. In a subsequent car scene, still in the first act, Nola cuts her own deal with a john, wondering what DJay is even there for. Yet, by the time we move into the second act, DJay is focused, his vague longings addressed, and now he gives an inspirational speech to Nola, claiming “We in charge.” While this is a successful pep talk, it does not suggest the complexity of feelings he expresses earlier in the film. Later we learn how much in service of the structure this speech really is. His repeating “We in charge” to Nola before he goes to jail gives her the courage to go out and push the demo, eventually getting it on the air. It also suggests the kind of feel-good ending that aggressive three-act structure frequently encourages.
Buffalo 66
Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66 (1998) follows a newly released con, Billy, who “kidnaps” a young woman, Layla, in order to pretend to his parents that she’s his wife. At the same time, Billy is determined to kill the former Buffalo Bills’ place kicker, whose missing an easy Super Bowl field goal led to Billy’s losing a bet which he must pay off by serving someone else’s jail time.
The film is deadpan and flat, with limited, relaxed articulation. However, close analysis enables the viewer to make a case for three acts. In the first act, Billy sustains a pretense that his life is coherent and full by presenting Layla as his wife, while not confronting the emptiness that lies underneath his charade. In the second act, the pretense collapses, when, after pretending he no longer needs Layla, Billy cannot bring himself to leave her. In the third act, Billy is able to admit to intimacy with Layla, finally substituting this for his desire to shoot the Bills’ place kicker. Billy develops through modulated steps that chart his growth, yet none of these turns is particularly marked. The film rarely plays its theme, rather allowing it to inform, but not be reduced by, the deadpan flatness.
What is marked are three heightened moments that lend the film an unexpected staginess. Billy’s father lip synchs to a Sinatra song, Layla tap dances in the bowling alley, and Billy’s fantasy shooting of the Bills’ place kicker is rendered in dramatic stop time. Unlike the rest of the film, which is flat and unresponsive to the wishes of character, the lighting and stop motion in these scenes are highly theatrical and dramatically inflected. We read these stylizations as more than just representing the subjectivity of the characters; they are such startling, overt interventions they must also represent a direct communication to the audience, the narrative voice. Long after we may have forgotten the act structure, these moments stay with us, marking the vividness and texture of the fantasies that in relaxed, three-act structure may be more important than the overall movement of the story.
Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) provides another example of a relaxed, three-act structure by dividing the story in three parts, but giving them only temporal, rather than dramatic, meaning. Elephant dramatizes a high school shooting. Act One introduces the students on the day of the shooting. It is a normal day as far as they know; nothing is amiss. Yet, Van Sant manages to suggest something threatening about the ordinariness; the scenes have an exaggerated concentration, but the focus is not on character, but rather on the idea and fragility of youth itself, its energy, its wonder, its sense of a social hierarchy. Act Two flashes back (mainly) and introduces the preparation of the two shooters, Eric and Alex. Although we see them making plans, there is no discussion about what they are about to do nor do we ever see them making the decision to attack the school. Act Three follows the two boys on the day of the shooting, their attack once they reach the school, and the game played by the last boy prior to his final shooting.
The act structure tells us about time, but beyond that reveals little. The shooters do not even appear in the first part of the film. The motivation for the break from Act One to Act Two is narrative rather than dramatic; a student sees the shooters arriving and waves to them. The student has no sense of whom they are; it is the narrative voice that at that point takes us back in time. Aggressive act structure is usually organized around one character whose actions (or reactions) trigger the act breaks. Elephant is deliberately unclear about whose story this is—Eric’s, the boy who initiates the shooting, some of the other students in the school, or the school itself. This unwillingness to provide a definitive answer is heightened by an act structure that is not character-based, but rather abstractly thematic.
Traditionally, aggressive three-act structure charts the development of motivation. Given how difficult it is to understand the motivation of the characters dramatized in this film, we might expect a careful step-by-step explanation of what drove these boys to this act. Since the role of the first act is to dramatize the forces that motivate action, that is where we typically expect to get this explanation. But in this film, the boys do not even appear in the first act. When we do meet them in the beginning of the second act, their motives are purposely opaque. Eric is hazed in the classroom when someone throws a spitball at him, yet before he can process his resentment, he is already casing the cafeteria, planning for the shooting. If this indicates he has already decided to shoot up the school, we are left out of the decision-making. If that comes later, we are not clued in. In fact, the film plays with false explanations, video game violence, distant parents, a documentary about Hitler, and a kiss between the two boys, while explicitly denying the release of an answer.
As we have said, structure is an expression of narrative voice; both in mainstream and independent films, it is an articulation for the audience of where they are in the story and the relative importance of events. In Elephant, the events and the shooter’s motivations are inexplicable. The narrative voice, as expressed in the act structure (and in every element in the design of the film), does not function to explain the act, but rather as an articulation of time, almost a ticking clock, that heightens the inevitability of what is about to happen.
Another aspect of narrative voice is intertextuality, a recognition of the social/cultural context in which a film will be seen. Elephant depends on the audience’s awareness of the wave of school shootings that took place in the United States during the late 1990s, particularly the one at Columbine High School. Without this, the writer would be forced to dramatize much more of the circumstances, the build up, and the motivation for the shooting, convincing us that it could happen. This push to a more aggressive three-act structure might have made a film that stands better outside of history, but one whose very neatness would have diminished its bewilderment over how such a thing could happen. Elephant is more of a sketch structured around the audience’s presumed common knowledge. As such, it is freed from having to offer a definitive explanation or even to convince us it could happen. It can instead use a relaxed three acts, an increasing warning of what we know is going to come, to suggest its (and our) inability to understand, a representation without explanation.
Summary
In this chapter, we have looked back at our previous discussion of three acts (Chapters 2–4) and nuanced it to reflect the increasing overlap between mainstream and independent films. We have acknowledged that as a result of this overlap, many independent films are using three-act structure, although the emphasis on story structure is frequently less pronounced than in mainstream films. In order to articulate the difference, we are proposing a spectrum that runs from aggressive to relaxed three-act structure.
One distinction we have looked at is that between plot and structure, where structure is the use of the narrative voice to articulate the cause and effect inherent in plot. In a subsequent chapter, we talk more about the narrative voice and how it tends to be hidden in mainstream film behind the action of characters. The major exception to this is in aggressive three-act structure, where the act breaks are heightened to communicate their importance to the viewer. Since narrative voice is frequently foregrounded in alternative film, communicating directly with the viewer is accomplished by other means that allow three-act structure to be relaxed. The more relaxed story structure yields moments such as Layla’s tap dance in Buffalo 66 or the multiple explanations for the random violence in Elephant, in part by suggesting that the pleasure of these films is not only how it all comes out, but also the sampling of textures and moments along the way.
1. Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. New expanded edition. New York: Delacorte Press, 1982.
2. Goldman, William. Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. New York: Warner Books, 1983.
3. Hauge, Michael. Writing Screenplays That Sell. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1988.