Three-act story structure

A survival mechanism orders the world into cause – effect – conclusion.

David Mamet – Three Uses of the Knife

I’m reading ‘Trip to the Moon’ by John Yorke, my old commissioning colleague at Channel 4. He actually used this quote from American playwright David Mamet in his previous book, the excellent ‘Into the Woods’, and includes it again in this new book about “understanding the true power of story”. He uses it to show how the three-act structure is central to the way that humans naturally think and deal with the mess of everyday life. Yesterday I delivered a lecture at the request of the International Emmys about story in factual programming and documentary. For that I went back to the principles of why we tell stories at all and included the central need that we as humans have to impose some kind of order on the chaos of our existence, spinning on this piece of rock through the universe. That’s much in line with John’s central argument – I actually wrote the material my lecture of yesterday was based on several years ago for an MDes (Master’s) course I was commissioned to deliver at Ravensbourne (film school) – to write that course I went back to core principles over that summer and enjoyed thinking through why we tell stories. I opened yesterday’s lecture with a clip of storytelling round a campfire: Joe Strummer of The Clash, who loved a good campfire, at Glastonbury telling the story of a pet chicken who almost got torched on a giant wooden cross (how Joe became a vegetarian). John’s entertaining new book and putting together that lecture, which was called The Power of Story, are a welcome reminder of why what we do in telling stories is so useful to ourselves and others.

highly recommended!

Here’s something I wrote on this topic seven years ago – reason No.3 for telling stories is the countering chaos one discussed above https://aarkangel.wordpress.com/2018/12/24/story-structure/