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Three-act structure template

Three-act structure splits a story into a setup, a long middle, and a resolution, and pins five turns between them: the inciting incident, two turning points, a midpoint, and a climax. The first act ends about a quarter of the way in and the second about three quarters, so the middle is as long as the other two together.

Three manuscript folios show an orderly beginning, a longer middle full of obstacles, and a resolved ending.

When to use it

  • You want landmarks without a checklist. Five turns leave most of the book to you.
  • You are drafting fast and need to know only where the next turn is due.
  • Your middle sags. Naming the midpoint gives the second act a spine.

Aristotle said a whole story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The version with act breaks at the quarter marks came later, from twentieth-century screenwriting teachers.

The 3 acts

  • Act One: Setup. The world, the person, and the thing that goes wrong with both.
  • Act Two: Confrontation. The long middle: trying, failing, and learning why it failed.
  • Act Three: Resolution. The last attempt, and what the story finally says.

The 5 beats at 80,000 words

The marks assume 80,000 words, because most adult novels run 70,000 to 100,000 words. Each beat keeps its percentage at any length, so scale the marks to your own. The story structure calculator works them out for any length.

  1. Inciting Incident 10% · word 8,000 The thing that happens to them and cannot be undone. The story starts here, not before.
  2. First Turning Point 25% · word 20,000 They commit. Whatever they could have gone back to is now closed.
  3. Midpoint 50% · word 40,000 The middle turns: what they wanted is revealed to be the wrong thing, or the cost of it is.
  4. Second Turning Point 75% · word 60,000 The lowest point, and the decision taken from inside it that makes the ending possible.
  5. Climax 90% · word 72,000 The confrontation the whole book has been arranging. Nothing is held back.

A worked example

Nell is the last pilot on a tidal ferry route to a failing island, and the council wants the crossing shut by winter.

  1. Inciting Incident. The council votes to end the ferry at the first winter storm.
  2. First Turning Point. She runs the crossing at night to get a sick child to the mainland, and loses her license for it.
  3. Midpoint. She wins the island a hearing, then learns her brother sold the dock land.
  4. Second Turning Point. The ferry sinks at its mooring. She stops fighting for the boat and starts fighting for the island.
  5. Climax. She takes a borrowed trawler through the storm with the council's inspector aboard.

Open this template in Tabularia

Tabularia opens a new Book on the Three-Act shape: its acts and a chapter for each beat, named for it, with each note pinned beside the chapter it belongs to. The book's word goal is set to 80,000 words. You name the Book before anything is created.

Open in Tabularia

Or take it away

The Word file has every beat with its note and mark, a line under each for your own plan, and the example above. It opens in Word, Google Docs, Pages, and LibreOffice.

Download for Word