As long as people have been able to communicate with each other they’ve been telling stories. Stories are an integral part of every person’s life. They shape the way humans interact with other humans, that every level of interaction imaginable.
The stories that we’ve been exposed to our whole lives have the power to shape, form, influence, and even dictate the choices that we as humans make. As the foundational element of our lives, stories are literally our today, yesterday, and tomorrow.
As stories developed over time, a pattern emerged. Okay, lots of patterns emerged, but I’m going to focus on one specific pattern. Let’s call it the three-act structure. As dumb as this might sound, all the stories that work, that flow, the draw us in until we finish them, have three-acts.
I’ll label the three acts as the beginning the middle and the end of each story.
The beginning of your story draws the reader, viewer, etc. into your story. The middle of your story makes things progressively more difficult for the protagonist. The end of your story resolves the problem created by the beginning of your story.
It can’t get more simple than this. Fortunately for writers, filmmakers, actors, and anyone else in the business of stories once you can master these three parts of the story you’ll be able to make any kind of story work.
It doesn’t even matter what kind of story you’ve created. The three-act structure works for everything.
So, take a look at the story you’ve written and see if it has these three parts. If you notice that your story hasn’t been working there is a good chance that it’s missing one of these crucial elements. If you have all three of these things, then you’re well underway to crafting a compelling and interesting story.