5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

    There's a point to be made with Tarantino's 5 "chapter" structure; novelistic style writing is, as he's previously stated in interviews, "inherently cinematic."

    Five doom-impending sequences, all indepentendly gripping, yet all tied together, making one coherent, epic story.

    This format does not belong to Tarantino alone, but all novelistic-influenced story tellers.

    I know so few writers are truly gifted in pulling this structure off, but why when it's well written is it still so heavily denied by agents, executives and producers?

    Whether you have the facts or an expert's opinion, please expand on this topic with me.
    Last edited by timvm2; 06-06-2015, 07:54 PM.

  • #2
    Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

    Originally posted by timvm2 View Post
    There's a point to be made with Tarantino's 5 "chapter" structure; novelistic style writing is, as he's previously stated in interviews, "inherently cinematic."

    Five doom-impending sequences, all indepentendly gripping, yet all tied together, making one coherent, epic story.

    This format does not belong to Tarantino alone, but all novelistic-influenced story tellers.

    I know so few writers are truly gifted in pulling this structure off, but why when it's well written is it still so heavily denied by agents, executives and producers?

    Whether you have the facts or an expert's opinion, please expand on this topic with me.

    I don't think that anything that works well is denied by anybody.

    But what I have learned over the years is that whenever you hear the phrase, "the writing is good" or that it's "well-written" -- you haven't heard a complement. You've heard an insult.

    It's the nice thing they say about a script when they don't anything better to say about it.

    That may seem odd -- after all, how can a script be "well-written" and yet not, in some larger sense, be a good script.

    Well, Tarantino is a perfect example, in my opinion. In many of his movies, the writing for individual scenes can be great -- but in very few of his movies do those scenes add up to a good movie.

    For any movie or any story to be great you have to have memorable scenes and sequences and characters -- but for the story to work as a whole, you need more than that. You need a structure than holds all of those elements together in a way that draws us in and leads us to a satisfying conclusion.

    You suggest that a five act structure consists of "Five doom-impending sequences, all independently gripping" -- as if to suggest that an act consists of a sequence (whether doom-impending or not).

    But is that the case? Do you imagine that a three-act structure consists of three "doom impending" sequences. Because that's not how I understand a three-act structure. It's not how I understand a five-act structure.

    As it was laid out by a producer who used it, the first act of the 5-act structure was essentially the same as Act 1 in a three-act structure - it introduces protagonist, establishes antagonist, central problem, tone, theme, inciting incident, protagonist begins his quest.

    Second act of five act structure takes the protagonist to point of no return.

    Third act of five act structure takes the protagonist from point of no return to insoluble problem.

    Fourth act of five act structure is return from insoluble problem to confrontation with antagonist and final battle.

    Fifth act is resolution of final battle and denouement.

    Now, that's not to say that other people may not have a different approach to the five act structure and, for my money, the five act structure is really just teasing out elements of the three-act structure and naming pieces of it different acts.

    I think that there is a logical narrative structure to the three act form that I've never seen in a five act structure.

    When you talk about "five doom-impending sequences" -- why five? Why not four? Why not six?

    I've heard people say that there should be an action scene every ten minutes. Does that mean, in a hundred minute movie, we should have a "ten-act" structure -- with "impending doom" coming ten times over the course of the movie?

    Acts arise out of narrative structure and are broadly applicable to any traditional narrative story, so depending on the story you're telling that would necessitate a very broad definition of "impending doom."

    If you're telling a love story -- does the relationship have to face the equivalent of "impending doom" five times over the course of the story?

    I'm not saying that there aren't some stories where that repetitive structure can't work, but I don't know that it's a broadly applicable approach -- I don't know that it's even a broadly applicable approach to the five act structure.

    NMS

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

      Can you give one example of something that was well written yet "heavily denied by agents, executives and producers"?

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

        The three acts is really four acts anyway, plus if you look at structure Act 1 will be the same no matter how many more follow. We usually meet the hero, see what status quo is now, intro the central plot, set the battle and stakes. The last Act, no matter what number it is, will also do the same thing. One last chance by the hero, this time in the final confrontation he wins/loses, consequences are rendered.

        Really anytime anyone talks about some fancy shmancy structure that has 6 Acts or 7 or 12 or what have you, what they are doing is splitting up ACT 2 into more than just two pieces. ACT 2 is told in four pieces or six. It accounts for 60 pages of script. That's a lot. You can break it up into as many pieces as you want to.

        A great way to look at your ACT 2 is six 10 page sequences that escalate in stakes, conflict, and character. Three in the first half and three in the second half of ACT 2. As a writer, you can look at that and say I just invented the eight act approach to screenwriting. Someone else may say that you are still following all principles and techniques of classic three act structure.

        IMO, the only types of stories that are not conventional three act structure are multi protag stories and non linear stories.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

          An act is a segment of a stage play that is marked by opening and closing the curtain. Movies don't have acts. They could fade out and fade in every 30 minutes, right? But they don't. Film is a continuous form. There seldomly are true breaks in the narrative. Let's call it progress

          What Syd Field recognized as acts in movies is part of the inherent structure in any story and in any medium.

          While I do adore Quentin Tarantino's Chapters, they are sometimes kind of arbitrary. Especially in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. It's not like in a tv series, take BREAKING BAD for example, where each episode truly marks new chapter.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

            Right, but when do they close the curtains? At any random time or at the end of big moments? Structure is points in time. Movies have to move at a certain pace, depending on genre, and every genre has conventions that need to be met by the writer. In a romantic comedy if the couple has not met in the first 20 minutes then people are gonna walk out. Yes, you can break convention once you master convention. Too many people wanna jump right to the break part without being a master first.

            What makes stuff like Pulp Fiction so great is that there are a bunch of main characters and each of their stories touch at some point and effect each other. That's not a conventional story. I mean, anyone who writes scripts can tell you how hard it is to set-up one protag, get to the depths of one character and let their desires and needs control the storytelling.

            No matter what structure you use or think you are using, there is always gonna be one act at the beginning that outlines the problem and one act at the end that outlines the solution. The stuff in the middle can be split into as few or as many sections as you want. You can look at it as one big 60 page act, two acts of 30 pages each. It can be 6 acts of 10 pages each. It doesn't matter because in those pages you should still be hitting the same benchmarks as you would in the 3 act structure. You reveal a little of the hero's shadow in the first ten, in the next ten we see the hero at first has some success toward their goal, at the mid point you intro a story complication which kills all progress made by the hero, etc.

            The problem with amateur scripts is, amateurs have no eye or ear for pacing. For making sure the story is at a certain place at a certain time all throughout the storytelling. Amateurs meander. Amateurs can't make story points effectively. So, to think you are going to tell some non linear film like Memento or some multi protag film like Pulp Fiction without pulling a story off first in the conventional way, then I say good luck to you then.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

              Using theatre to understand film is thinking backwards. That's all I'm saying.

              You could state that a beginning of a script is always the part until the main character decides to follow his goal, but where exactly do you make the cut between first act and second?

              Ask 10 people, you might get a 10 different answers.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

                It's when the Hero is glued to the journey. No way out but going forward.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

                  Honestly, 3 Act Structure is a super complicated way to say that a story needs a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

                  You want to write in 5 act structure, fine. You still have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. To the script as a whole, and each of those acts. They all need their beginning, middle, and end.

                  The reason there are a million screenwriting books is even though this seems like the easiest thing in the world, most aspiring writers still get it wrong. I've read so many scripts by "friends" are almost entirely beginning. Maybe a little ending. No middle.

                  I used to go on a podcast and a running joke would be one of the hosts "pitching" me his ideas for a movie. They'd all be setups which he'd follow by just saying "hijinks ensue." That's the meat and guts of being a screenwriter. Figuring out what those hijinks are, aka the middle.

                  Everyone says the first 30 pages is critical, and that's true. Being able to catch a reader's attention and set up your concept is essential to getting your foot in the door, but being a long-term, career screenwriter is knowing how to write the middle. Whether it be Act 2 or Acts 2-4.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

                    My background is in theatre, so I always find discussions about "acts" interesting. It seems like everyone uses them differently.

                    When I was playwriting, acts referred to when the intermission was. You either had one-acts, with no intermission, a two-act which had one intermission, or - very rarely in modern plays - a three-act play with two intermissions. In practice, even plays that are written with three acts tend to have just one intermission after either the first or second act in modern performance.

                    One concept carries over, though, which is that when you do have an intermission/act-break, it almost always ends on a cliffhanger or crisis point. That's pretty much just so the audience doesn't leave, though it does influence the flow of the storytelling.

                    In non-premium TV, the concept of an "Act" is used similarly. Your act breaks just occur wherever a commercial break would be, and they usually include a crisis point, cliffhanger, or some other kind of tease to keep your audience from changing the channel.

                    But then we get into the screenwriting use of "act," and it's much more nebulous. It seems like it's just a renaming of the classic Aristotelian structure - beginning, middle, end. Interestingly, play scripts from Aristotle's day are often divided into 5 acts, though off the top of my head I don't remember if that's original to the scripts or an innovation brought on by later translators. Shakespeare also wrote in 5 acts, with Act 3, the middle, almost always the longest act and including the major climax of the play. The classic 5-act structure goes Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution. The funny thing about that is that now people teach those as the essential elements of a 3-act story. Probably because "Beginning, Middle, End," describes basically every story except for really wacky absurdist/dadaist stuff.

                    Anyway....all this to say that "Acts" don't really mean anything consistent anymore as far as I can tell. They basically describe the turning points in a story, but realistically most major story blocks include mini-plots with their own turning points that are nested into the main story. So you might as well just think about structure in the way that appeals the most to you. The main takeaway is that there should be at least a few major places in your story in which everybody sits up and goes "What's going to happen now?" If you don't have that, you probably have a pretty boring story, if it even counts a story at all and not just a situation you're describing.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: 5 Act vs 3 Act Restorative

                      I can only agree with UnequalProductions and omjs. If we take Aristotle's quote verbatim, we have do define what beginning, middle and end really mean so they can help us in the writing process:
                      1. There are four possible "Ends" for any story: Happy End, Bittersweet End, Uplifting End, Downer End. Since it's all about reaching the goal and overcoming the great weakness, there are only four possible combinations. But by that definition, the climax/finale is not enclosed. The end happens after the climax.
                      2. The Beginning can be described as the "Ordinary World" in Hero's Journey terms. It's there to establish the great weakness of the character. But by that definition, the beginnig officially ends with the inciting incident, not with the first act break.
                      3. And the middle? It's so many things at once. Most of the time, for most writers, it's truly more of a muddle than a middle. The term is way too broad to be helpful in any way.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X