The 3-Act Structure: How to Write an Authentic and Satisfying Act 3
Here we are at the Big Kahuna of the 3-act structure: the third act. If you haven't read my last three blog posts on the 3-act structure (an overview and details on Act 1 and Act 2), please go do that now and then come back to this one. (Otherwise, this is not going to make a whole lot of sense.)
Three posts ago, I gave you an overview of the 3-act structure as a simple, powerful way to structure your story.
Then, I walked you through creating a strong Act 1 to hook you and your audience in quickly and effectively.
Next, I talked about how to write an engaging Act 2 by investing emotionally in your story. Now, we’re taking on the third and final act—the last thing you leave your audience with.
I’m sure you’ve been wondering all week how my law school story ends, so let’s wrap it up!
“I was wrong”
The law school story, continued…
I make it through my first law school exam period feeling pretty good about my performance—I don't think I’ve aced my exams, but I feel like I’ve at least passed them.
One evening, I'm sitting at my desk in my room when I get an email from my contracts professor.
In the email, my professor explains that he’s attached our grades and class ranking in a spreadsheet that he has anonymized. (He has ranked us because law schools love ranking people.)
I open the spreadsheet and the first thing I notice is that it is indeed not anonymized. There are my classmates' names.
I recognize every person on the list, and I’m horrified.
But I don’t see my own name.
So I search. And I search.
And, eventually, I spot it: at the bottom of the list.
I am ranked last in my class, and my professor has just accidentally sent this list of names to everyone in my class. My worst fear of being a person who does not belong is not just confirmed in this moment, it is also now public knowledge.
I scream for my roommate. She comes in, and as I frantically explain to her what’s happened, I can tell by the look on her face that it’s just as bad as I think it is.
But then, the horror drains from her face, and she says something that is really the one thing that no one has said that I really need to hear:
“Honestly, everybody right now is so relieved that they're not you that I’m sure they won’t remember. They’re just glad it’s not them.”
I realize that she’s right.
There’s a saying: whenever you find yourself worrying what other people think about you, remember they aren't.
No one is thinking about you.
Everybody's thinking about themselves. No one thought I was dumb. Or if they did, they did for about 30 seconds before they resumed worrying about their own self-confidence issues.
Ironically, by feeling like I didn't belong, I was actually just like everybody else.
...
Let’s step back. What happened in this final phase of the story?
What has happened is that we have completed Act 3, which can be summed up as, “I was wrong”.
Change your character’s perspective
To review, our very simple breakdown of the 3 act structure is:
Act 1: I have a problem.
Act 2: I think I know how to solve it.
Act 3: I was wrong.
Notice that the statements for Act 1 and Act 2 are in the present tense, and the statement for Act 3 is in the past tense. That’s intentional.
Act 1 and Act 2 need to feel very present. It's important to remind ourselves of that as we're writing them.
Act 3 is backward-looking because it’s centered on the realization that the character is wrong, and therefore needs a perspective change based on everything that has happened before.
In the law school story, I’ve had a perspective shift because a confrontation with the truth has forced me to face that my solution isn’t going to work.
Now I want to look at the same novels I’ve used as examples the last couple of posts:
In Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, the custody battle is lost, and the attempted solution has failed. That loss leads the mother of the baby to take drastic action and break into the adoptive family’s home to recover her baby despite what the judge has ruled. This major event at the end of the book echoes a significant discovery for another character in the story: that she, too, is legally someone else’s child. The taking of the baby also leads yet another character to face what motherhood really means to her when her greatest fear comes true in that she, too, loses a daughter, just in a different way. There's just a lot happening, but suffice it to say that in Act 3 of this novel, there is a lot of “I was wrong.”
In Act 3 of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, there’s also a lot of “I was wrong.” The missing twin Stella is found, but it doesn't look like what the other twin Desiree had hoped. Ultimately, the sisters’ reunion raises as many questions as it answers. And as they return to their lives, we know their lives are not going to be the same.
Open yourself up to authentic discovery
So how do you write an Act 3?
If you write an Act 2, by bringing your authentic self to the quest, you write an Act 3 by opening yourself up to authentic discovery.
Every time I write an Act 3, I'm surprised by what it has to teach me. And I’ve come to believe that that surprise is essential to the fiction writing process. It's part of the magic of Act 3. You, as the author, want to discover a truth as well, alongside your characters.
This is how we write books that are bigger and wiser than us. We allow them to become; we don't limit them to our present understanding. We expand at their behest. We grow because they pull us to grow.
It’s one of the beautiful, incredible things about writing. And we achieve it, I believe, through openness.
In sum
You’ve conquered the 3-act structure! Now that you’ve got this simple yet powerful story structure down, now it’s time to get it down on paper—literally.
Next week, I'll be talking about the best way I have found to achieve this openness to the creative spirit: by handwriting, specifically across four notebooks.
In next week’s blog post, you'll learn my Four Notebooks Method of novel writing, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled. I can't wait to tell you about it.
In the meantime, you can tune into my last three podcast episodes giving you an overview of the 3-act structure and the ins and outs of Act 1 and Act 2 if you need a refresher before embarking on your own story.
Happy writing!
