Whenever screenwriters debate stories, we are always standing in front an immortal dilemma: to follow or not to follow the three-act structure, which is a model used in narrative fiction that divides a story into three parts (acts), often called the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Resolution.
I think this three-act structure was modeled over time by looking at the stories that lived in our collective memories and trying to understand why they are simply memorable. I feel like there’s no way we can run away from this structure as it is the natural way events unfold before our eyes. When you watch the TV, read the newspaper, chat with a friend, you can easily notice a pattern in all these news bulletin stories, accidents, and daily life events. They start with a standard setting, get interrupted by an incident, a big event happen, then it gets followed by consequences and eventually some sort of closure.
I personally can not name a great film that does not have these three even when they are not presented in the most traditional way. Sometimes your inciting incident comes before the beginning, or your obstacles are symbolic rather than obvious, or your climax is a change in the mood and the point of view rather than a huge shift in events. Sometimes the whole approach of telling your story is non-linear, such as many immortal films such as ‘Pulp Fiction, Memento, Babel..etc’ and even then, you would have the three acts but not in their typical order.
In my opinion, it is safe to say that the three-act structure represents the rules of playing the storytelling game, you can always play freely, creatively, and differently if you understand them well, and find your way around making use of them, not for the sake of just ‘having’ them there in your script, but because this structure is effective and can do justice to your story. In short, its a necessity rather than a tradition.
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