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Three disasters plot template

The three-disasters plot grows a novel from one sentence. You write the premise, then three disasters, each caused by how the hero answered the last, and an ending the third disaster leaves no way around. The disasters fall at the quarter, the half, and the three-quarter marks.

A route through manuscript pages encounters three increasingly severe setbacks before reaching an exit.

When to use it

  • You plan from a premise outward and want the whole book on one page first.
  • Your hero reacts instead of acts. Each disaster here is their own doing.
  • You want an outline you can write in an afternoon and expand later.

It is the second step of Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method, which expands one sentence into a paragraph of three disasters and an ending.

The 3 acts

  • Act One: The Premise. One sentence, grown into a world: who this is about, and what they are about to lose.
  • Act Two: The Consequences. Two disasters they bring on themselves, each one the price of how they answered the last.
  • Act Three: The Ending. What the third disaster left them no way around, and what it cost to go through it.

The 5 beats at 90,000 words

The marks assume 90,000 words, because the method was built for full-length novels. 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. The Premise 5% · word 4,500 The whole book in one sentence, then in a paragraph. Who wants what, and why they cannot have it yet.
  2. First Disaster 25% · word 22,500 The first thing to go badly wrong. This one may arrive from outside; nothing after it may.
  3. Second Disaster 50% · word 45,000 Caused by how they answered the first. The middle turns here, and it turns because of them.
  4. Third Disaster 75% · word 67,500 The worst of the three, and the one that leaves only one way out. Again, their own doing.
  5. The Ending 95% · word 85,500 The way out they were left, taken. It should need no explaining once it has happened.

A worked example

Esme, a county surveyor, redraws a boundary line to save a friend's farm, and it takes the valley's water with it.

  1. The Premise. A surveyor fakes one line on one map, and the valley is split over whose river it is.
  2. First Disaster. The farm is saved, but the new line moves the spring onto the mill owner's land.
  3. Second Disaster. Esme forges a second survey to fix it, and the mill owner's lawyer spots the forgery.
  4. Third Disaster. To keep her friend out of it, she confesses to everything, and the county voids every map she ever drew.
  5. The Ending. She walks the whole valley with a chain and compass and draws it honestly, whatever it costs her friend.

Open this template in Tabularia

Tabularia opens a new Book on the Three Disasters 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 90,000 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