Comment by DocSavage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DocSavage | Hacker News Reader

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"Save the Cat" may be popular, but the idea of breaking down the three-act structure for screenplays has been around for a while. I took a screenwriting class that had a similar template that was taught to UCLA screenwriters who have then taught it to others. Wikipedia has a page on the three-act structure as it relates to screenplays: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure

I like to think of it as a pattern -- something that has been proven as one way to tell a story. Screenplays are particularly conducive to this patterning because (1) movies are generally about 90-120 minutes so not a huge variation in length, (2) each page of the screenplay is about a minute on screen so you can easily project where critical points usually sit, e.g., the inciting incident, and (3) really big budget films seem to be made more on how not to lose money rather than how to try something original and potentially misfire. The third point is why Hollywood prefers making a movie with a proven market and audience (i.e., proven book sales) than using original spec screenplays.

There must be 50 books out there about screenwriting that talk in similar terms about the pattern -- the 3 act structure with character development tent poles and rising stakes. Their weakness is that there is no admired movie that fits any proposed pattern very closely, although many excellent follow the pattern loosely.

Perhaps the genius of this book is it has achieved the correct enough formula for comfortable mediocrity? Dunno. Do not care.

This makes no predictions, but there is a more general creative principle to be had, and in other creative spaces too, music ensembles such as choirs and orchestras being one example of another arena. Actors don't get to give great performances if the words and myths in their stories are not supple enough for them to play with. Writers who are tied to one structure and following simple rules are never going to get as much out of actors as would someone like Ken Loach or Robert Altman, famous for improvisation and throwing away script.

incidentally, I think there's even an analogy to sports management in this, too. Although many here don't like sports, if you look at the most successful football (soccer to you lot) managers you see how a looser structure but more tailored to the context (cf story setting, themes) can help with results. Manager as script. They have a set of principles and strategies, but they work to the strengths of the individual players (characters) to allow them to play the best game they can. A mediocre manager, OTOH, will prescribe and overorganise the players in rigid rule which leads to more consistent, but less creative and watchable play.

This structure goes all the way back to the ancient greeks.

Arguably it existed before we had language.

I'd like to hear that argument.

Well, the three-act structure basically just describes conflicts. There is a pre-conflict phase (Act 1), an event at the end of Act 1 that sparks a full-on confrontation for the duration of Act 2, and another event at the end of Act 2 that shifts the conflict into a climax in Act 3, wherein the conflict is resolved. You even see it in non-human animals, and not just in violent conflicts. For example, if you consider mammalian sex, there is foreplay (Act 1), penetration (first transition), intercourse (Act 2), first urethra contraction (second transition), and ejaculation (Act 3). You don't need language for that story to play out; you just need language to communicate it.

I think you've fallen victim to an anthropomorphic fallacy here. I see what you're trying to do; as someone who owns a lot of animals I spend a good amount of time observing their behavior patterns. But one could just as easily describe them with a 4 act structure or in terms of stimulus-response behavior.

I guess my point is that while we need language to specify what a 3-act structure is, the underlying behavior from which the pattern is an abstraction does not need language.

I agree it's not the only way to look at things.

That's a fairly strong shoehorning going on there.

Alright, so consider animals hunting each other then. Act 1: predator and prey alone; transition 1: predator initiates chase; Act 2: predator chases prey; transition 2: predator catches up to prey; Act 3: predator and prey fight.

If you have a theory that can equally explain Hollywood screenwriting, two dogs fucking, and a cat catching a mouse, you have a theory that tries to explain too much and will necessarily end up not actually saying anything. The meaning of a theory is in what possibilities it rules out.

I don't think we really disagree. A 3-act structure captures so many situations that it has no bearing on the quality or originality of a story. It's just the simplest definition of a story possible: there is a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

Okay then yeah, I agree. I once had a discussion with someone who claimed Aliens could be analyzed in terms of the three act structure, and I didn't disagree - but it turned out we disagreed on where the three acts actually were, which in my opinion negated the claim that such analysis had any predictive power.

But the original article is talking about a formula that is apparently much more prescriptive than the three act structure.

For it to really be "3 acts", you should be able to stop watching at any of the act ends, and feel like the story had closure, for at least some notable elements.

Complaining about how everything was great in the past and modern society is full of idiots who don't care is also sorting that the ancient Greeks (Romans) did as well.

Really, all this has happened before.

I made up a phrase I use to describe situations like this: "There is nothing new under the sun."

OR, to sum up the RMS<->Joy debate about open source: "There is nothing GNU under the Sun."

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