Is 3-Act Structure Dead?


By mid-2001, it was becoming fashionable to say or to write that the 3-act paradigm had outlived its usefulness and was dead. In my view, this is not true and again illustrates the semantic mine field that surrounds any discussion of screenplay structure.

What people who say 3-act structure is dead really mean is that Syd Field's hardliner view of it is dead. And this has been true for some time. For all the pioneering work Field did to bring matters of screenplay structure to the front table, his hard fast rules were never universal. What is universal, however, are the broader cultural principles upon which these rules are based: in essence, beginning, middle, end storytelling.

For beginning, middle, end storytelling to become obsolete, the culture itself would have to change. Moreover, the changes we've seen in the culture in recent years reinforce, rather than undermine, the importance of "what happens next?" in American movies.

We are a less patient culture, not a more patient one. We are a culture more attuned to snippets of information (sound and film bytes) than to slowly developed presentations.

In terms of film storytelling, this has had several consequences. In recent years, screenplays have become shorter in length. In the 1980s, a script had to be at least 100 pages in length and most were over 110 pages. Now 90 pages are acceptable and most are probably under 110 pages.

Because we are less patient, Act One has become shorter. Stories have to get started more quickly now.

So beginning-middle-end storytelling is alive and well. True, creative variations of it are everywhere and the single-protagonist, hardliner approach of a Field has been tainted as a formula, something too predictable. It is still around but it does not rule the available story strategies as it did ten or fifteen years ago.

But we have not changed so much as a culture that "what happens next?" no longer matters to us. In fact, the opposite has happened -- we are less patient with our diversions than ever.

If you understand the 3-act paradigm to be an expression of beginning-middle-end storytelling, driven by the central question "What happens next?," you'll see how this great principle is still at the heart of the way our culture tells its stories. And, of course, the most important medium for those stories is the film.


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