Why Act Order is More Important Than Time Spent

December 16, 2005

I was going through Dramatica for Screenwriters, working step-by-step to get a quick look at the story I was developing. Halfway through I realized that I wanted my story to end in a Success, not a Failure. I reset the Story Engine with the appropriate settings and then finished outlining my story.

Problem is, when I finished, it just didn’t feel right. There was something about it that just felt wonky.

Turns out I was using the old storyform for three of the four throughlines! The fourth throughline - the relationship throughline (or Subjective Story throughline, or Main vs. Impact throughline - whichever you’re more comfortable with) felt great - and for good reason - it had the right pieces in the right place.

Coincidentally, as I was searching through my old Dramatica notebooks for interesting things to post here, I came across some notes from a weekend class I took with Melanie in ‘98:

The amount of time you spend on each act is not as important as the order they are revealed. A slap followed by a scream has a much different feel than a scream followed by a slap.

That’s exactly the problem I had run into.

My story has a goal of Changing One’s Nature. My characters are trying to manipulate their loved ones to be the way they want them to be.

My story originally had this Plot Progression: Developing a Plan, Playing a Role, Changing One’s Nature, and Conceiving an Idea.

So my story would start with the characters scheming a diabolical plan. This plan would involve them pretending to be something they are not, which would lead to them having to change their essential natures. And finally, this change would lead them to come up with a new idea.

With my Story Goal in mind, doesn’t that just feel like a Failure story?

I think it has everything to do with the way the Acts are ordered. They’ve got this plan to change their loved ones; they pretend to be a certain way, but it causes them to change and it changes so badly that they’ll have to come up with some new idea. Things haven’t worked out the way they wanted them to.

The new Plot Progression unfolds like this: Changing One’s Nature, Developing a Plan, Playing a Role, and Conceiving an Idea.

No matter how hard they try, the characters can’t change those around them. Frustrated, they’ll start scheming a way to make their goal happen. In order for their plan to work they’ll have to pretend to be a certain way. This pretending will make them realize that they’ll have to come up with a something new if they want their loved ones to change.

Now that feels much more like a Success story, doesn’t it? It’s got a happy, optimistic up-ending to it.

Both stories ended with Conceiving as the final Act, but because of the order of the acts that came before it, the stories have very different endings. This could have a lot to do with the way I encoded the two separate stories, but I think you’d be hard pressed to write the Failure story with a happy ending.

Instinctively that’s what I felt the first time I ran through the outline.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some rewriting to do…

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