Structure in a novel (part 5)
Paul B wrote some great feedback to part 2 of this series:
Over the last year, DWM has run various articles about “how to write Doctor Who properly”, or analysing the best and worst bits of storytelling in the show. One point made was that the shows preferrence for 4-part stories clashed with the natural/Greek 3 act structure. The result is usually a “flabby” episode 3, where everyone runs around achieving nothing, because all the groundwork has already been laid for part 4 but it can’t happen yet!This even shows up when just listening to the musical score of, say, “The Leisure Hive”: The music spends the whole of episode 3 just re-stating people’s themes as they appear, interspersed with lots of “creeping around corridors” music… but nothing actually happens ’til the last couple of minutes, building to the cliffhanger, and bang we’re into episode 4, where all the action is.
The four part format of Doctor Who and the classic Greek 3 act structure seem to be at odds with one another. Part 4 of this series reproduced a diagram found in Philip Gerard’s book (”Writing a book that makes a difference”) and noted that it hides a major element of good novel structure. All three of the books referenced so far - Gerard, Marshall and Vogler - all agree on the relative size of the 3 acts of the story. First and third acts combined should be the same length as the middle act. That is, the story should be broken into 4 parts with the middle act twice the size of parts 1 and 3. For example, Gerard says
Most long works conform to an implicit three-act template (as with any general principle, there are plenty of variations and exceptions to this structure)
- Act one, the setup - one quarter of the book
- Act two, the main action - one half of the book
- Act three, the finale - one quarter of the book
Each act ends with a climax; the climax escalate toward the act three climax, which is the climax of the book. In principle, act three tends to be the shortest - sometimes very short - the fastest paced, the most extreme action at the highest emotional and dramatic pitch.
The payoff points (1 and 2) that occur in acts 2 and 3 are for minor crisis points in the plot. There is a major crisis at the very middle of act 2 that should only be resolved through the concerted efforts of our hero in act 3. If we divide up the overall story by where the crisis points come we end up with 4 equally sized segments, one of which remains unresolved until the very end; each of the first three parts end with a cliffhanger ending.
So, what of the noted weak episode 3? Well, surely the characters have a plan by that point in the story and are beginning to implement it? Act 2 should have an endpoint that leads into act 3, a crisis - possibly the failure of the plan or the big-bad-nasty thwarting the safe attempt to clear problems up. This would force the hero to take the dangerous road to save the day.
A close examination of the crafting of story structure reveals quite a strong compatibility between the classical 3 act structure and the 4 part story with cliffhanger endings we see in Doctor Who. That in part probably contributes to the amazing longevity of the show and its stories, with the fault for weak 3rd episodes laying at the door of poor storytelling by a subset of the writers.