That’s my goal for my new book. How about you?
Then let’s do it.
To repeat my math, we’re talking about writing one Act per month, 20K words per month, 5K words per week, for an 80K book— and potentially a whole month less for a shorter book!
If you’re new to this newsletter, you may be wondering about this Four-Act Structure thing. And it’s always good for everyone to have a refresher before we embark.
I teach the classic Three-Act Dramatic Structure in four Acts, because books have largely assimilated this four-part structure from filmmaking. Here’s a very brief history of what happened.
Before the advent of the moving camera and location shooting, movies were shot on sound stages with a stationary camera, and written by playwrights in a format much like plays, with a classic Three-Act Structure: very simply - Set Up, Escalating Conflict, and Resolution.
In early days of cinema, a movie had three approximately equal acts, with a longer Act I, a slightly shorter Act II, and Act III ending up the shortest. (This progressive shortening of acts automatically creates pace!)
More on this history:
Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks - Stealing Hollywood or Writing Love
But once technical innovations allowed the camera to move and film production was able to travel off the sound stage into real life locations, films started emphasizing the action of the story, and used the camera to take the audience on a journey into new worlds, which is Act II territory. Act I (the set up) got shorter —because film makes it easy and quick to set things up visually. Act II (escalating conflict) got longer —to allow the kind of exploration of action and spectacle that are such strengths of film.
This evolved into a Four-Act Structure of roughly equal quarters:
Act I (30 minutes)
Act II: Part 1 (30 minutes)
Act II: Part 2 (30 minutes or less)
Act III (generally less than 30 minutes)
In classic film structure, each of these Acts has at least two SEQUENCES (a set of scenes that follow an action line, often in the same location, that builds to a climactic SETPIECE) of 10-15 minutes each. (I’ve written about why, here!)
And the structure of books kept pace and evolved along with the movies. In a 400-page book, the structure looks like this:
Act I (100 pages)
Act II: Part 1 (100 pages)
Act II: Part 2 (100 pages or less)
Act III (generally less than 100 pages)
Again, corresponding to movie structure, each Act in a book will have at least two sequences, and in a faster genre, often more than two, shorter sequences that will create a faster pace.
It’s also important to be aware of these variations on that structure:
Genre movies (action, thriller, mystery, SFF, horror, etc.) will also often have a short TEASER or PROLOGUE or HOOK, which some people call a fifth act in a Five-Act Structure. Personally I think it’s more useful to call it a hook, because usually it’s not a true Act, but whatever works for you!
If you’re writing category romance or a shorter (60K words) book (and often cozy mysteries fall into this category) then you’ll probably be writing a more Classic Three-Act Structure, which tends toward a longer Act I because it emphasizes character and relationships.
And as I’ve been talking about with author Cordia Pearson, if you’re writing a 100K word book, you’re talking about at least 10 sequences. Why? Because your reader is very conditioned, through decades of watching film and TV and reading books, to expect a CLIMAX at least every fifteen minutes of screen time (that is, every SEQUENCE), which translates to about fifty pages in a book, or every 10K words.
And not to be graphic about it, but if you’re not giving your readers climaxes regularly, they will get bored and frustrated and bail on your book.
That means if your book is longer than the 80K words or 400 pages I use as a baseline example, you need to think about your book as having more sequences.
Where would those extra sequences go? Well, that depends on your genre.
Sci-fi/fantasy and dystopian novels often have an extra sequence in Act I, because you can use an entire extra sequence for world building and laying out the rules of your world. (See The Matrix for a particularly good example - I break it down in Stealing Hollywood.)
Again, you might have a sequence-long TEASER, or HOOK or PROLOGUE at the beginning of your book.
Because romance and its subgenres emphasize relationships, the extra sequence might be in Act I.
Another place that often takes an extra sequence is the MIDPOINT, as we saw last month with Se7en. The Midpoint can be a whole action sequence on its own. The Matrix is also great example of that. Another example of this is The Hunger Games - at the Midpoint, the tributes are dropped into the arena, and that first, excruciating battle takes an entire sequence.
You most likely will NOT be trying to put any extra sequences into the second half of your book, because of pacing, unless they are quite short. Acts and Sequences tend to get shorter in the second half of a story because that speeds up the narrative pace. And if you’ve set up your story well in the first half, you don’t need to belabor anything in the second half.
So there’s your structure review - and that’s the basis of the Structure Grid that I encourage you to work with as a frame when you Brainstorm with Index Cards.
Now let’s make that structure work for you—and get your book written by the end of this year.
One Act per month, 20K words per month, 5K words per week.
But don’t worry about word count unless that's motivating for you! The important thing is to be writing scenes and to have that story structure road map to keep you on track.
Ready to go?
Again, here are the Must-Have Story Elements of Act I, with questions to help you define each of these Elements for your story.
If you are new to this I strongly encourage you to see how it all works by watching the Act I of a movie you love or are familiar with, following along with my notes.
Also, these short videos demonstrate how to set up a powerful Act I with a few popular movie examples:
Watching the Act Is of a few movies in a row will do wonders for your understanding of what makes a gripping first Act - and no matter how experienced a writer you are, this is worth doing before and while you write your own first Act as inspiration, reminder, and guideline. Between the workbooks and the posts in the archives I have a LOT of film breakdowns in different genres for you to choose from.
And again, I’m always open to suggestions of movies that will help you with what you’re writing. I won’t always be able to break a movie down, but I do try to use examples from whatever films people ask me about!
Hope you’re getting excited about writing that book this fall!
—Alex
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On my list of to do's: Find Alexandra's 10 climaxes. You are SO right. My Act One has three! It's just as important while revising as while plotting. Find those 'biggies', then setting them up. Thank again for weighing in on this!