Surviving Act Three
In writing and in life
Exciting news! I’ll be teaching some online writing classes with the lovely folks over at
. The first up is a class to kick-start your writing habit on February 13 at 7:00 EST. Check it out here along with a whole roster of great writing classes for the new year.Sure, it’s easy to think of your life as a story. The hard part is that we don’t know how it will end. I mean, in one sense, the ending is a foregone conclusion. We’ll die. The end. The hard part is we don’t know what will happen between now and then. This is also, not surprisingly, the problem with writing.
I’m currently sitting at about 44,000 words on the novel I’ve been drafting since mid-December. This is, quite frankly, breakneck speed at which to be writing a novel. Also, it feels excruciatingly slow. At this pace, if I’m aiming for about 70,000 words, I could have a full draft by mid-February. Or I could get bogged down in the third act, where I am right now, and never find my way out. As with life, there’s just no telling. Except, for sure, I will eventually die.
I think almost anyone who’s written a novel would agree that the third act is the hardest part. At the beginning of the novel, you’re carried along by novelty and momentum. You’re building up to the midpoint, this disaster that is inevitably coming for your protagonist. You’re making more and more trouble for them and there’s a certain delight that comes with that. Ooh, what else can go wrong? It feels sort of like being the wizard behind the curtain, pushing all the buttons and pulling all the levers to see what happens next.
You’re also getting to know your characters. You’re figuring out who they are. Yes, it’s annoying that the thing you figure out about your character on page 85 means that you’ll probably have to go back and change some things on page 22. But early on, those annoyances are small. They’re tolerable. In fact, you might even have the energy to go back and change them quickly while you’re still moving forward, watching that word count tick ever upward.
Then you reach Act Three1. The dark night of the soul. The long middle. Let’s just say it—you reach the shitty part. The space between the very shittiest thing that has happened to your character and the place where they bounce back from the shittiest thing or at least some resolution about the shittiest thing happens. This distance—between what some people call the midpoint and the climax—is so, so, fucking long.
It’s not so long in pages or word count. Probably, it’s about 1/5 of the novel? 1/6? Maybe even less? It’s not even so long in terms of chronological time. I mean, maybe in the novel you’re writing your protagonist languishes in Act Three for decades. God help you and your protagonist if that’s the case.
Act Three is long because it is the darkest part of the novel. If it’s a mystery you’re writing, Act Three is after the sleuth/detective thought they had the murder all figured out and then realize they’re wrong. They’re facing that failure and now, on top of that, the mayor and the police commissioner are trying to pull them off the case. Also, maybe they’re a recovered alcoholic and they start drinking again. Their ex threatens to stop them from seeing their kids. Then someone else gets killed.
Get the point? It’s ugly, the third act. On the surface things are getting worse and worse. But deep down, somewhere, your character is also getting closer to the change they need to make in order to get through to the climax. They’re getting closer to the change (or lack of change) that is the whole point of the fucking novel in the first place. But they’re not there and watching them get there or shepherding them toward that moment it is its own kind of suffering.
Why, you might ask, does there have to be an Act Three at all? I mean, if you’re a reader, you might recognize Act Three as the most tedious part of the book. If it’s a romance, it’s the part where you’re whispering, “Oh, just realize you’re in love and have sex, already.” If it’s a road trip novel, you want them to just arrive. “Throw the fucking ring in the volcano, already, Frodo!” If you’ve felt a strong urge while reading a book to smack the character around and scream, “Get over yourself!” this probably happened in Act Three.
Act Three, as well as being dark and full of suffering, is also boring as fuck, because suffering often is boring. I guess that adds to the suffering part. Act Three is like your character is one of those robot vacuum cleaners, stuck in the corner behind the couch, banging endlessly against the wall but never escaping. And, sure, that can be entertaining to watch for a while. But not for long.
So why does there have to be an Act Three in the first place? I don’t know. I didn’t make the rules. That’s just how it goes. I suspect that if you tried to write a book without an Act Three, people would find it very unsatisfying. It’s the shape we’re accustomed to our stories coming in, though I’m also interested in how this would apply to non-Western modes of story-telling. Maybe it’s possible there to say, “Fuck Act Three!” I don’t know.
I think maybe in the particular narrative form I’m working in, Act Three is necessary because the character has to earn the ending. In Act One and Act Two, things are mostly going well. I mean, not really well, because things are also going to shit, but it at least seems like your character is on top of it. They can handle the ways in which things are going to shit. In Act Three, they lose all control. What a hard thing to watch. What a hard thing to create.
I think Act Three is necessary because we’re not particularly motivated to change when things are going well. When everything is hunky-dory, we accept the status quo. Yeah, we’re fine. Everything is fine. It’s unlikely that any of us are much motivated to change until the world is on fire.
Yes, in case you’ve been wondering, I suspect we might be in a big, cluster-fuck of an Act Three right now in our communal lives. Shit is on fire. It’s time to change. Act Three is about suffering and chaos. Here we are. What are we going to do now?
At the same time you reach Act Three in writing a novel, those little things you’ve realized you need to change or that might not work have gone from a small, slightly annoying list to an avalanche of shit. Seriously. I keep a document that’s called “To-Do,” as I’m drafting and sometimes it feels like it might become longer than the novel itself. If you are even mildly compulsive, the idea of leaving all that crap unfixed becomes like an itchy collar, scratching at the back of your neck. Uncomfortable. Difficult to ignore.
So now you’re suffering and bored and being asked to change but resisting it and also you have this itchy collar at the back of your neck AND you are beginning to think that none of this was such a great idea in the first place. I mean, why the fuck are you even writing a novel? Who do you think you are? Like, someone with ideas and stories other people would like to read? What a dumbass.
Yeah. Act. Fucking. Three.
At least for me, the only way through is forward. I know other writers go back and revise endlessly while they’re drafting. I’m going to throw this out there—George R. R. Martin is probably this type of writer. Enough said. See where that’s got him.
I allow myself 2-3 times to go back to the beginning and read through. Okay, maybe 4. Five times max I’m allowed to go read through it all again, mostly to assure myself that I am not a dumbass and that I do, in fact, have ideas and stories that other people might want to read. Also to remember what the hell the cat’s name was. That was so many chapters ago.
I’ve been through quite a few Act Three’s in my writing life. They’re hard, but at least as the author, I’m in control. Sometimes I can give my character a moment of levity. A little breather before the next body shows up. And I know I’ll get through, even if it’s messy. Most of the time, I have a general idea where we’re headed. I know who did it. I know where we need to end up.
In real life, we’re not that lucky. In real life, Act Three fucking sucks. Who wants to a be a robot vacuum cleaner beating against the wall? No one. None of us want that. We want to know how it’s going to end. We want an answer that’s more concrete than, “Well, you’ll die.” We want a happy ending. Maybe we pretend we’re all literary fiction and above that, but deep down, we want a happy ending.
Maybe Act Three exists because the birth of all things is painful and messy. Perhaps also a little boring. And chaotic. Scary as fuck. Act Three is scary as fuck.
Act Three doesn’t last forever. Nothing ever does. The story has to end, one way or the other. Remember the part where we all die? So does everything. Stars. Trees. People. Relationships. The universe. Regimes. Governments. Everything dies. Everything changes. That’s certain. It’s just the living through it that’s messy as fuck.
Unsurprisingly, there are different ways of laying out the three-act structure of story-telling or a plot. In my version, Act Three includes what happens after the mid-point of the story, the bridge between the mid-point and the climax.