Home: Writing for Comic Books: Chapter Two - Plot and Story Construction: Classic Three Act Structure

Chapter Two
Plot and Story Construction
(cont'd)

CLASSIC THREE ACT STRUCTURE

• ACT ONE--THE BEGINNING

  In journalistic writing, people are taught that the first paragraph of their article must answer the five Ws. The beginning of your story should address them as well. Where are we? When is the story happening? Who are the characters? What is happening? Why should the reader care?

  In the long run, the last question in the above list is the most important. Why should your readers care? The beginning of your story must pose some kind of emotional investment in the circumstances being portrayed--there must be some element to which they can relate and/or they will want to see played out. Right from the start, you need to pose an intriguing question that will engage the reader and make him or her want to keep reading the story. In your standard 22 page comic book, that question should be posed by the end of the third page, if not sooner. And, before you answer that question, you must pose a second one. If you answer the first question before posing another, then why should the reader keep reading? This is key to emotional investment.

  In stories where it is assumed that the readers already have some investment in the lead characters (the memory element that is important to all serial fiction), putting those characters in some kind of dilemma is a great place to start. However, I would caution you that every comic is someone's first exposure to the characters, so you should not rely too heavily on the reader's supposed foreknowledge of the characters and their conflicts to create the emotional investment.

  The other key question that you must pose to yourself--if not immediately to the reader as this can be one of the driving questions--is "What do your characters want?" This is what will motivate all the action. Therefore, right from the start, the characters must have some goal to achieve.

  Sometimes, the most exciting way to begin a story is in medias res. Yes, it's another one of those concepts that come to us from Greek theater. It literally means "in the middle of things." Starting with the characters already in action creates a sense of urgency. Then, as events play out, you can fill in the gaps via conversations, circumstances, or flashbacks that explain how the characters found themselves in the initial dilemma. This was a frequent device used by Stan Lee (and all his collaborators like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, et. al.) during Marvel's heyday. These stories often would start an issue of a comic with the heroes completing an adventure, thereby introducing them, their goals, and their powers, then as that adventure ended, a new one would begin.

  Every story beings with an inciting incident (sometimes called the catalyst). This is the action that has happened that gets the entire story rolling--the first link in the chain of events. To mix my metaphors, it's the first domino that falls, knocking over all the rest. (And here is where I personally prefer not to use the term catalyst, as to my way of thinking a catalyst can be a person or an action.)

  In some cases, the inciting incident happens before the story begins. Using a murder mystery for example, the story may begin with the discovery of the body, but it was the murder that sets the mystery into motion. (Or, you could take it even further back and say that the victim's actions may have led to his or her untimely demise.) In this case, the quest for the murderer and/or the reason behind the murder may be the main plot, but that does necessarily have to be true.

  The brilliant filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock referred to that thing all his characters wanted--be it the solution to the mystery, the secret plans, the jewelry, the mysterious stranger, the inciting incident--as the "MacGuffin", a term he borrowed from his friend, writer Angus MacPhail. The characters' pursuit of the MacGuffin was what motivated their actions and drove the plot, but the actual, physical MacGuffin was secondary (and sometimes never seen by the audience or found by the characters) to the events. It exists as a plot device that allows the audience to see into these characters' lives, hopes, dreams, and weaknesses, the true meat of the story.

  The first act introduces us to the key players of the story and lays out the core conflict. With the protagonist and the conflict established, we introduce the first major complication of the story, then move on to the second act.

  All told, the beginning or first act of the story should not take up more than 25% of the entire length of the story, although 25% is pushing the upper limit when your dealing with a lengthy story. Think of it this way: when you're watching a TV show or watching a videotape, if what you're watching doesn't engage your interest in the first few minutes (maybe fifteen or twenty for a feature length movie that you've paid good money to rent), chances are you will change the channel or turn it off.

  The same is true with a comic book. In a twenty-two page story, if you can't engage the reader's interest in the first three to five pages, it's unlikely you'll ever engage their interest. This is a particularly sensitive issue when it comes to buying the comic. If someone looking at it in a store can't get interested in the first few pages, they're unlikely to buy the comic.

• ACT TWO--THE MIDDLE (RISING ACTION)

  The basic structure to any story is that you set a goal for your protagonist and then put things in the way of the character achieving his or her goal. These obstacles are minor complications and they make up the second act or middle of your story. Each minor complication on the way to the climax of the story should be bigger and fraught with more danger/consequences than the last. Often, complications result in reversals--where the tables are turned on the protagonist making it more difficult for the character to reach his or her goal.

  This is rising action. If the incidents do not build on top of each other and keep raising the stakes, then the reader will lose interest. This is what provides the story with forward impetus, building a sense of momentum to the inevitable climax if the story.

  Each complication has a minor climax. Just as a story builds to its main climax from which the lead characters or the audience has learned something, the same is true of the minor climaxes. Following each minor climax, there should be a brief period of falling action. This allows the audience a chance to catch their breath and absorb what they've just witnessed. I look at it this way: the resolution of each minor climax comes with some kind of cost or reversal, and the falling action examines that cost.

  If you keep building complication upon complication without any resolution, you will leave the audience exhausted, and the subsequent complications and climaxes will have a lesser impact because you have not let them lower their defenses again.

  There may be times when you want to leave the audience breathless for a while, and that's perfectly valid. You may want to pile a dozen complications on top of each other to build tension, but it becomes important to release that tension at some point or else you'll over-saturate the audience's senses (and this is not senses-shattering in the good way). Once you've done that, nothing you do will have any impact. The collected complications may then overshadow your climax, robbing it of its dramatic impact.

  The climax of the story is the biggest complication or the crisis. Everything in your story should lead inevitably to this moment. To me, this is the decision or action that protagonist must make from which there is no turning back--nothing will ever be the same again. The second act ends with the climax.

  Note what I just said above: the second act ends with the climax. The story does not end with the climax.

• ACT THREE--THE END

  Following the climax must come the resolution to the crisis, followed by the denouement where we see why the decision/action mattered, what was learned, and/or what has changed. This is the end of the story. If there was no cost to the final action, if no one has learned something, if nothing has changed, then you've cheated your audience. Why else did they stick around for the entire ride if there was no pay off?

  There are some examples of stories where the denouement comes before the protagonist takes the climactic action. Nicholas Meyer's marvelous film Time after Time is an excellent example of this. Without giving away the end of the story, I will say that the lead character understands what the implications of his actions will be just before he takes action. This is perfectly acceptable, although sometimes difficult to pull off and have the audience feel fulfilled by the story. Generally speaking, the audience needs an opportunity to release tension that's been built up by the story along with the main characters with whom they've come to identify.

  This release of tension is called catharsis (quantified by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in Poetics), and it's an important element to almost every story. There are exceptions to this, as there are to all rules governing art. Sometimes the writer's point is to keep the audience tense so that on completion of the story, the audience is forced to confront their feelings rather than being told what to feel by the writer through his or her characters. This can be a very powerful tool when used well.