Storytelling in Theory - The Game Maker's Companion: Game Development - page 183

The Three-Act Structure
There's a classic pattern that you will have seen, perhaps without even realizing it, a hundred
times. It is called the Three-Act Structure . This form dates all the way back to the ancient Greek
amphitheatres with its tragedies and comedies, and Aristotle (a clever Greek philosopher type)
was the first to formulate this idea. Most books, films, and theater plays follow this structure and
it can be used in games with good results, too.

Act 1
This is where the story begins. The main character is introduced, establishing who he is, where he
comes from, and so on. Usually, this is also were the problem is presented, something that makes
it impossible for the hero to keep living his normal life. We call it the point of no return. The hero
has now lost his normal life and must go on; straight into Act 2.

Act 2
Here, the challenges begin in earnest. This is usually the longest act and can easily take up half
the story. The hero sets out on his journey with a clear goal. He is put through a series of
challenges and trials and he will meet new friends and enemies. At the end of the act, the hero
finally reaches his intended goal, what should be the climax of the story, but then there's another
turning point; a twist, the hero discovers that he has been wrong, or that things have now
changed. What he has been seeking turns out to be either not what he believed it would be, or no
longer what he desires. So right after the high point, we see disappointment, a low point. It was all
in vain.

Act 3
The hero must now show what he is really made of. He has been tried and tested in Act 2. He now
truly understands what is at stake, and with new strength, he sets out to conquer a harder set of
challenges and a last final battle in which he proves he has grown since the beginning of the story.
The true climax comes here, close to the end, and the last bit of the story is about tying up all the
loose ends and explaining what just happened. We often get to see the hero in his new normal
world, which can be the same one he left in the beginning, only now he sees it with entirely new
eyes.

The Hero's Journey
Another useful guide is a structure called the Monomyth, put together by Joseph Campbell in a
60-year old book called The Hero of a Thousand Faces . Campbell's book isn't actually a
storytelling guide, but rather an exploration of myths from all over the world and how they share
the same structure. He called it the Monomyth and also explored how archetypical characters
(child, hero, mentor, sage,and so forth) fit into this structure. Many years later, a man named
Christopher Vogler read this topic and realized how useful it was as a guide to scriptwriters. He
wrote a simple leaflet briefly outlining the structure and it became so popular in Hollywood that
he later expanded it to a complete book called The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.
Vogler extracted 12 stages of a story from the Monomyth and called it The Hero's Journey . Some
stories have all of them, some miss a few out, some jumble up the order of them, but if you find
that your story loses its momentum in the middle or the ending doesn't feel quite right, then
going through these stages can help you spot what might be missing. The 12 stages are:
• The Ordinary World