ABSTRACT
You’ve probably heard of three-act structure: stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end. Aristotle first analyzed and articulated this as basic “dramatic structure,” but he didn’t invent it. It evolved out of the way our brains process information and organize experience into systems of meaning. Our earliest myths and legends follow this structure. Novelists, dramatists, poets, essayists and speechwriters have always used it. Audiences generally expect and respond to it. In fact, they often expect and require it. If a story feels confusing, boring or pointless, it’s likely that a structural element is weak or missing. Storytelling is really a way of guiding the audience through an imaginary experience: pushing the right button at the right time to elicit particular responses (curiosity, sympathy, indignation, amusement, horror, desire, 38suspense, relief, etc.). For this imaginary experience to work, the audience needs to get the pieces of the story in the right order. You’ll encounter a variety of terms for these elements, but their functions are simple and clear. Here we’ll call them the setup, rising actio. and resolution.
