Last night, after a long day of writing and revising an outline, I printed off the work’s status quo<\/i> and shoved it in my briefcase\/bag-thing. It takes about an hour to get to work by subway and train, and there’s time that’s well spent doing something productive. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
As I looked at what I had, as I made notes on a notepad about moving a plotline ahead and roughed out a scene, I made a shocking realization.<\/p>\n
I’d somehow set myself up with a four-act structure.<\/p>\n
I blame decades of watching Doctor Who<\/i>.<\/p>\n
There is Cliffhanger, Cliffhanger, Cliffhanger, End.<\/p>\n
I didn’t plan it that way. I noticed, in writing the outline, that the second act seemed really<\/i> long. Maybe I was just being overly detailed, I thought. Maybe I’m just being wordy.<\/p>\n
No, about midway through, there’s a dramatic rise, the plot turns, and it sets the stage for the next major plot turn, a turn that then takes the story to its conclusion.<\/p>\n
Four acts. Not three. Like a classic Doctor Who<\/i> story. Only, without all the pointless running around in the third act to pad the thing out. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
It’s now just a matter of getting this finished up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night, after a long day of writing and revising an outline, I printed off the work’s status quo and shoved it in my briefcase\/bag-thing. It takes about an hour to get to work by subway and train, and there’s time that’s well spent doing something productive. \ud83d\ude42 As I looked at what I had,Continue reading “On Structuring Acts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[615,4102],"class_list":["post-2111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-dotfe","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}