Working the 3-Act, 8-Sequence Structure

The storytelling secret you don't know that you know!

What I'm going to talk about now is the key to the story plotting technique I write about and that everyone's always asking me to teach. 

My workshops and books are called Screenwriting Tricks for Authors for a reason—there are a LOT of incredibly useful tricks to steal from the movies.

But the real secret of film writing and filmmaking, that we are going to steal for our novel writing, is that most movies are written in a Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure. Yes, most movies can be broken up into eight discrete 12-15-minute sequences (a series of related scenes), each of which has a beginning, middle and end.

I swear.

Now, I know some writers freak out at the very word, structure. If that’s you, you’re probably going to really lose it when I show you this story grid:

But this is actually incredibly easy. And if the word “structure” gives you hives, just think of it as a pattern of storytelling. Or a rhythm of storytelling.

And here’s the thing. You already know this structure. You can’t help it, because you’ve seen it in action in thousands of movies and TV shows over the course of your lifetime. If they could test for these things, I’m pretty sure you’d find it in our DNA.

If you write, you’re already using a lot of these techniques in your writing. What I want to do is make it conscious for you, so you can use it more deliberately and effectively to write better—and better selling! books and scripts.

Because you have to understand this. Your reader or audience ALSO knows this structure, however unconsciously. They EXPECT it. And if you’re missing some key elements, your reader or audience are going to get edgy and think that you’re doing something wrong or the story’s not going anywhere, and they’ll bail on it.

We don’t want that!