Every storyteller worth their salt knows the three-act structure, the beginning (protasis), middle (epitasis), and end (catastrophe) from Aristotle’s theory of drama. Then Shakespeare converted this into a slightly more complex division. The exposition (or prologue), the rising action, the climax, the falling action and resolution (or denouement) are the five story elements of the “narrative arc”.

Now, while plays and poetry are quite different from novels, the overall story element is still the same. But it is vastly different to analyze between the two. I could not imagine reading Alighieri’s Divine Comedy if it weren’t written in its classic narrative poem format. Ironically, Alighieri used a three-act structure for his epic saga.

So why did plays so often use the five-act structure? And how did it become a filmmaking cornerstone?

To answer the first question, we should first examine the five acts.

The five-act structure turns each of these story elements into acts themselves and is just a bit more complex than the three-act structure.

ACT I (Protasis)

Here is where we set up the exposition. Introduce who your characters are, what they want, and where they are. This can be done quite easily with narration and to explain who knows who and how. In some cases, the narrator (often 1st person) only explains their own past and upbringing and will get to the other characters quite later (e.g. the opening scene of Goodfellas).

Exposition isn’t always about the characters. Sometimes the setting itself will get more development than the characters do at first. Maybe this is because some settings can easily allow the audience to feel like they are a part of the world, and they get a sense of the story’s mood and aesthetics very early on (e.g. Spirited Away, Dune, Mud). 

That can more often than not be a deciding factor for whether or not a person will want to read your story. Not only that, but it also can be such an ambiguous exposition that you leave the reader begging for answers as they’ve already invested so much into the setting. Readers will already be drawn if your prose is clean and there’s a good story to be found, but setting your story up in this way will have them HOOKED.

Some writers start their story in medias res, “in the middle of things”, where they allow the action to guide the narrative, and implicitly show what characters are important through their actions. A reader should always get a sense of what the future conflict will be from Act I alone, even if not explicitly stated.

ACT II (Epitasis)

The rising action starts to form here, building off the exposition and building towards the climax. This can happen in a number of ways.

If your story follows a typical “hero’s journey”-type format, this will usually be where the journey begins, and your hero sets out and will encounter their first foe/obstacle and usually involves a new environment.

If your story isn’t linear, Act II can go one of two ways, the past or future, and this will either give a clear understanding either of what happened prior to Act I, or will propel us into what happens after Act V.

Act II can simply be the conflict or a series of conflicts that set up the protagonist’s development. You can also introduce a lot of minor characters here.

ACT III (Epitasis)

This is the turning point of the whole story, usually represented as a crossroads for the protagonist where a decision is made. This will build into the climax. In a story with a two-act structure, this is the point where the entire plot will begin to shift, mold, and take form, and we start to see where the story is finally heading. 

Try not to overload Act III with even more conflicts and concepts as it may interfere with Act IV’s climax. Only exceptions I would consider is when writing a series of books, since then other conflicts are stretched out over longer prose, but even then, for the first book in the series, I would recommend still keeping it simple for the sake that not all publishers will accept a book that is ‘too confusing’. Like all things in life, there’s exceptions, but like other things in life, don’t always assume yourself to be the exception.

If you want tension and suspense building gradually in the novel, this is the point of the book where you want to ramp that up several notches.

ACT IV (Catastrophe)

The novel reaches the climax of the conflict, and you move into the falling action. The consequences of someone’s actions, the aftermath, the result, the scenes that signify just how everything unfolds will come in this act.

ACT V (Catastrophe)

You want a memorable ending. You want that closed-book feeling after reading where the reader needs a moment to process everything and feel content with the work. Even well written endings can’t guarantee every reader will pop the book closed and immediately tell all their bookworm friends about it, since most conclusions hardly make everyone happy, but all you have to do is make sure the ending aligns with the themes of the book and what you were building towards.  It’s all about tone and moral in the fifth act.

Some authors can lose their audience when attempting a subversion of expectations or some mind-bending plot twist that they unintentionally contradict their own story themes and subsequently betray their readers. Even if you’ve written 90% of a really great work, if that finale isn’t satisfying, you can lose the audience you worked so hard to hook. What happened to Game Of Thrones alone should be alarming enough for writers to know just how quickly an audience can abandon a series they seemingly loved.

If you want more resources and references into the five-act structure, see this blog from the Nashville Film Institute.

Other major films implement a nine-act structure or a two-act structure. It all really depends on the story, but five should be considered the standard for the very reason that follows each of the five story elements to the ‘T’. There is also the idea of the ‘Act 0’ which offers the backstory, or prologue, setting up Act I, rather than having this be a part of Act I itself.

Should your novel use a five-act structure the same way as a screenplay? My answer would be: it depends. Your story could naturally fit into any such structure, but I believe the five-act has grown into becoming the most widely adapted and common because of how easy it is to follow and isn’t as complex as a nine-act. If you want your novel to eventually become a screenplay, the five-act would also be advantageous in that aspect, but really there is no one right or wrong way to structure your story, as long as you understand your themes and what matters to the story.