Five-Act Structures: Exploring Worlds, Solving Mysteries
Previously in this series:
Five-act structures have been standard in playwriting for at least two millennia. Horace wrote a poem about it in 19 BCE. They’re alleged to be the only way Shakespeare wrote—a credible claim on the one hand, given the expansive history of the five-act play. On the other hand, act and scene numbers were only added to Shakespeare’s plays about 80 years after his death by Nicholas Rowe, an editor of a Shakespearean anthology. Could be it’s Nicholas Rowe’s addition.
No matter. Five-act structures are arguably the most common way of structuring a story after the three-act structure. Like the three-act structure, it’s old as balls, but its older conceptualizations don’t necessarily serve the modern novel writer well.
These days, we typically conceptualize of five-act structures using Freytag’s pyramid, a lackadaisical bastard with little original to say for itself.
This sucks for hopefully obvious reasons. Let’s look at another visualization of Freytag’s pyramid to really break down what it wants you to do:
So, to be clear—the climax happens in the middle of the book? The characters and settings are frontloaded at the beginning? And then… falling action for the back HALF of the book?
I think this model imparts one useful piece of information: that the three beats of Set-Up, Tension, and Catharsis still reign in five-act structures. I don’t think this conceptualization tells us very much else as far as good novel pacing goes. What these visualizations seem to advocate for is a three-act structure with a lengthy, sedate prologue and epilogue tacked on.
I think that’s bad advice. Let’s rustle up some good advice instead.
I think the wisdom of Setup-Tension-Catharsis is good. It still applies in a five-act structure, but it should be distributed differently than Freytag’s pyramid would prefer.
Prefacing your novel with a boatload of set up isn’t going to hook your reader. Common novel wisdom is to start as late in the story as possible—with the inciting incident, for example, the thing that motivates your protagonist in the first place. Jeff VanderMeer talks about how he workshopped the beginning of his book Finch at some length in Wonderbook, a craft book I found quite good specifically for this conversation. He tried to open the book in Finch’s apartment some hours before the inciting incident—setting up character and setting beforehand—then he tried to open it while the inciting incident was in progress, and finally opened with Finch opening the door into the inciting incident.
I think about that a lot: the literal opening of the door being the first thing a protagonist does.
The flatness of that protasis line in Freytag’s pyramid is exactly how you don’t want to open a book. Your first words should open the door to your story.
Don’t, in other words, take Freytag’s pyramid too seriously.
I am being very reductive. Of course many authors do successfully engage readers by frontloading worldbuilding, and frontloading worldbuilding isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive with opening a door. The pyramid may work for you.
But just as the four-act structure can’t just be treated as a three-act structure with a heavy middle, so the five-act structure can’t be treated as a three-act structure with bookends.
My usual disclaimer applies even more this week: I have no formal training in stories or structure. With this in mind, I made up a five-act structure that I think works better for the modern novelist.
I discussed the Hero’s Journey in our four-act discussion, but I used a different visualization that suited that structure. I find this one more helpful for understanding five acts: the line between Normal World and Bizarro World is further up the circle, so it’s easier to visualize how Acts I and V are spent in Normal World while the protagonist spends significantly longer in Bizarro World.
There’s a lot about the classic Hero’s Journey that doesn’t apply to modern literature, and as usual you should throw out what doesn’t work for you. From this model, we’re only taking a few concepts:
Act I’s pivot as a “Threshold” moment: the protagonist’s decision to step forward into Bizarro World instead of back into Normal World, marking the beginning of their transformation.
The “Death/Rebirth” or “Revelation” moment forming a midpoint beat in Act III.
The division between “Known” and “Unknown” as an important idea behind the plot’s propulsion.
I’m not the first person to try to fit Hero’s Journey and five-act structures together. Here’s one visualization I dislike because it marries the useless elements of Freitag’s pyramid with the useless elements of the Hero’s Journey. But it does demonstrate the possible marriage of these concepts.
We won’t be using that. I made my own:
Here’s a text breakdown of this structure:
ACT I (Normal World: Character, Worldbuilding support Plot setup)
Setup
Break from the Past
Catalyst for Change
Call to Adventure Accepted
ACT II (Bizarro World: Plot supports Worldbuilding)
Into the Unknown / Discovery
Working toward Goal A, toward the Midpoint
B-plot introduced
Setback: Try-Fail Cycle #1 completed
ACT III (Bizarro World: Plot supports Character Growth)
Midpoint reached: Goal A falls apart, need new direction (Death/Rebirth)
Connecting plot dots: What did Try-Fail #1 + Midpoint teach us?
Optional C-plot
Revelation: working toward Goal B (Act IV climax / end)
ACT IV (Bizarro World: Character Growth supports Plot)
Mastering the Unknown: New knowledge applied
[B-plot and optional C-plot should integrate into main plot somewhere in Act IV, ideally to support the story’s culminating action]
Try-Fail Cycle #2: New plan finds setback
Dark night: character wallows, assesses sacrifice, reflects on journey and change
Try #3: Push toward climax
ACT V (Normal World: Character and Worldbuilding support Plot)
Gather team
Execute final plan
Final Action
Glimpse of new normal
[sequel setup if applicable: at least one untied thread. A C-plot is especially helpful for this beat]
By complete coincidence, this breakdown has a basic structure in common with the so-called Seven Point Story Structure, though it complicates the model quite a bit. (I’ll bring up the seven point structure again when we talk about outlining, but it’s not complex enough to warrant its own post—it’s relatively simple and best suited in my opinion to earlier stages of outlining.)
I’ve said before that act structure is meant to be scaffolding for story beats. Some scaffolding is relatively simple—Setup-Tension-Catharsis + two pivot points, for example, or the seven point structure mentioned above.
My five-act structure, by contrast, has at least three different structures supporting it. Let’s break them down.
STRUCTURE 1: Three try-fail cycles balance plot propulsion with character growth, plus provide plenty of opportunity for getting deeply into the worldbuilding.
Classic Hero’s Journey has at least two try-fail cycles (or, more accurately, one try-fail and a try-succeed), optionally more. I’ve settled on three try-fail cycles as the right number to slow the plot down for a nice, sprawling, world-heavy novel while avoiding plot repetitiousness.
I most associate the term “try-fail cycle” with Mary Robinette Kowal; she uses it a lot on the Writing Excuses podcast. A protagonist’s failure is often guaranteed by stories. If the road to achieving their goals was simple, it wouldn’t make for a very interesting book.
In world-heavy genres—especially speculative—the world is itself often a part of the plot. One point of placing a story in a fantastical world is to allow that world to be part of the riddle a protagonist solves. The interaction between worldbuilding and plot in this way often produces a story with mystery elements. Try-fail cycles are classic, arguably hallmark, in mysteries: the book is built around a question with an unknown solution. (‘Unknown’ being a key word to Hero’s Journey, remember?) In a classic mystery, the protagonist runs through a lot of try-fail cycles trying to discover what’s hidden from view. As an example: early in a story, Investigator Morneau might follow up with a lead on who drank Mrs. Featherbottom’s milk, but her suspicions are misled: it turns out that the cat had been at the veterinarian on the day in question. The cat is a red herring. Nothing, Morneau learns, is as obvious as it seems. Her discouragement from this “failure” to solve the mystery spurs the protagonist into further action.
In other words, try-fail cycles keep action moving. They can serve as pivot points, but don’t have to. Try-fail cycles complete in different places in my proposed five-act structure: once at the end of Act II, allowing it to serve as a plot pivot point; and once in the middle of Act IV, allowing it instead to create a moment for featured character growth.
The first “failure” can be a pivot point because it’s the first time the reader really has a sense that the protagonist is not going to have as easy a time as it seemed at the outset of the book. Their initial strategy didn’t work, and they have to change something about what they’re doing to get closer to their goal. It may also be a good opportunity to highlight the character’s flaws: they might have failed because they’re not ready to complete the journey. They might instead be working on partial information, which the failure brings to light. Either way, a process of discovery needs to occur before the protagonists have what they need to resolve the plot’s main tension.
The midpoint interrupts these try-fails with the new information required for the protagonists to do better (I go into this below). This new information then allows the second try-fail to transpire in the middle of Act IV.
This try-fail is not a pivot point for a few reasons: one is that the protagonists have already failed once, and it’s just not as impactful when protagonists fail a second time. The reader’s familiar with this plot beat: Investigator Morneau was wrong to blame the lactose-intolerant neighbour as well? It’s not that shocking. Instead of acting as a point of propulsion, this second failure does the opposite: it winds the protagonist and pacing down into a moment of reflection or despair. This failure establishes something about the character arc: Morneau’s off her game. Now she has more information, but she still isn’t coming to the right conclusions. Why?
This failure is more important for Morneau than it is for the reader, who might’ve guessed her next try might not be the right one. Beleaguered by their lack of success in sorting out the mysteries of the unknown, the protagonist spends a moment wallowing: pacing slows, character growth meaningfully flourishes on the page.
Apart from giving the characters some well needed moments to reflect on their journey, this slow moment also allows the energy to reduce to a simmer, giving it somewhere to build on its way toward the end of Act IV for that “rising action” feeling.
This “dark moment” beat makes a lot more sense in five-act structures than in three-act structures, where it’s lodged into the middle of Act II. With five acts, you have a lot more time in the tension exploration to put your hands into the finer details.
Notably, the action rising out of this low moment puts the rising action and climax very much not in the third act! Never put a climax in the middle of the story! This second try-fail keeps the plot pacing brisk and makes room for worldbuilding (many places, but especially Act III) and character growth (many places, but especially Act IV) while also putting the plot pivots in the correct places.
The third try-fail, which may be a try-succeed, dominates Act V. This time, the reader is confident that whether this fails or succeeds, the protagonist has as much luck on their side as they’re going to have for this final push.
STRUCTURE 2: The book is divided into two halves, divided by a midpoint. Act III is committed to a midpoint in its entirety, where the characters—deep in Bizarro World—come into new information that changes the trajectory of the plot.
I’ve dithered for two articles now over whether a midpoint counts as a pivot point or not in different act structures. In my five-act structure, the answer is twofold. On the one hand, it isn’t a pivot point because it takes up so much of the book that it’s not right to call it a “point” at all. Act III is a lot of a book. This major plot twist takes a long time to unpack, a mini-arc in its own right: at the beginning of Act III the characters encounter the thing that’s going to change them; they are changed by it; and then they have to assess the consequences of that information or event.
On the other hand, it is a pivot point because without the discovery of this information, the protagonists would not be able to successfully solve the mystery and their story would reach failure after failure.
All this to say that under no circumstances should the height of the action occur in the middle of your story, no matter what Freytag’s pyramid says—but a substantial revelation related to the plot should. This is the “Death/Rebirth” beat taken to heart: this is the point in the journey where the protagonist undergoes a significant change, arguably no longer identical with the version of themselves that left home.
This moment doesn’t have to be death-like; the “rebirth” option is equally important. A protagonist exploring a world may uncover amazing secrets instead of horrible ones. No matter the tone of the discovery, though, it should alter the protagonist’s trajectory and substantially inform how the second half of the book unfolds. It should represent the protagonist’s reallocation or redirection of energies, goals, or dispositions.
The decision to commit to this new direction is the pivot point at the end of Act III, after all this exposition has unfolded to inform the protagonist’s worldview and the book’s plot. The goals of the protagonists in the back two acts may be completely different than they were in the front two, even if the conflict is the same.
STRUCTURE 3: Setup-Tension-Catharsis still applies!
Act I, in Normal World, sets up the tension; Acts II-IV is the protagonists’ immersion in that tension and the exploration of its widespread implications; and Act V is the catharsis the try-fail cycles have desperately made necessary. The exploration of the tension, in other words, spans three acts now.
That sounds like it could get laggy, and it absolutely can. The only reason those three acts of tension work is because books of this breadth are balancing so many elements: character arcs, expansive worldbuilding, and a plot complicated enough to support three try-fails without it feeling tired.
If your pacing lags, it may be an indication that your story doesn’t balance these components well. It’s also possible your story isn’t complicated enough to support a five-act structure. It’s furthermore possible I have made a bad model. Which act structure is best for your story may depend on which story element you’re foregrounding: action or event (three-act), character (four-act), or world (five-act). This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but there’s no real reason to set up your character to fail this many times unless there’s something complex or especially interesting about the problem the protagonist is facing; this is best supported by complexities in the world.
Exploring the world is likely to be among the central goals of five-act story structures.
I use amended versions of this template on the fantasy trilogy I’m insistently hammering out, because there’s a lot of context to discover about the magic system within the world—but the story could be functionally preserved as an action-adventure with a three-act structure. I would basically just omit the first try-fail cycle (Act II) and move the midpoint to a different locale so the whole plot moved along much more quickly.
If I did that, the world they were exploring would be about a third of the size; the B-plot would follow very quickly from the first act in a way that feels rushed to think about; and the C-plot would be cut altogether. It would be doable, but it would cut almost everything about the story that’s fun to think about. Genre convention supports spend this much time muddling around establishing an engaging backstory, and that allows me to spend more time in the world and give the characters a more expansive, arduous journey, hopefully resulting in better payoff for fantasy readers.
But that’s not to say a fleshed out three-act structure couldn’t do it just as well. Experiment with structure. Take everything I’ve said, put it in a blender, and see what shakes.
This is the last post on structure I currently have planned, though I have some posts on character creation, worldbuilding, and outlining coming up that might flesh out these ideas. Remember that scaffolding is only as useful if it enables the plot to flourish. If your feeling is that it’s getting cut off at the knees, try a different structure. Try none at all. Pants the first draft. As long as you put something on the page.
You’ve been reading OUT OF CHARACTER.