I just started a 1-week online course “Transformation: The Protagonist’s Arc.” Received this question from one of my students Randall:

I am also on a quest to learn more about the origins of the timing and placement of turning points and other major plot points and what they contain; WHY do most successful movies have the major events happen WHEN they do, WHY almost at the same percentage of time in the story timeline, regardless of the story? I get the universality of the hero’s myth / journey; but I do not get why we see the almost invariable timing of the points. Is is because they mimic our lives? Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy– viz we started seeing it in films at one time and then writers simply wrote in the events at set times, so that we see those events in stories not at such plot points in time.

And here’s my response:

You know you’ve opened a Pandora’s box with this line of inquiry, yes? Because it’s an area that is much speculated on with – at the end of the day – likely no firm answer. Given that caveat, here’s my take.

A story almost by definition has three parts: Beginning, Middle, End. This makes sense to me on the face of it. Go back in time to the earliest storytellers, a group of cave people perhaps, gathered around the fire. The tribe leader is speaking, recounting how he knew the tribe was hungry, and so he went out on a quest to get food. Finding a mastodon, he attacked and chased the creature for hours, finally felling the beast. Then he returned with meat for the tribe.

Let’s break down that story:

Beginning: The tribe is hungry, so Tribal Leader goes out on a quest to find food.
Middle: He battles the mastodon eventually killing it.
End: He returns home with food for the tribe.

I would argue that those three movements or “acts” (as we call them as narrative elements) constitute the basic structure of every story.

Here is what Aristotle said:

“A whole [story] is that which has beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that which is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally something else after it; an end is that which is naturally after something itself, either as its necessary or usual consequent, and with nothing else after it; and a middle, that which is by nature after one thing and has also another after it. A well-constructed Plot, therefore, cannot either begin or end at any point one likes; beginning and end in it must be of the kind just described.”

In my view, those three movements are inherent to the essence of story, a part of its very fabric. And that pattern is repeated throughout nature and human culture:

Birth / Life / Death

Thesis / Antithesis / Synthesis

Father / Son / Holy Ghost

You note “The Hero’s Journey,” Joseph Campbell’s articulation of the story that is reflected in all stories. Here’s how he describes it in his own words:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Three movements: Beginning, Middle, End.

We can argue how it is that the 3-Act Structure came to be the key paradigm for screenwriting, but just given the nature of culture and even nature itself, there is, I think you can argue, a way in which it, as you say, “mimics our lives.”

Cut to Syd Field, the dean of all screenwriting gurus. His book, “Screenplay: The Foundation of Screenwriting,” which was published in 1984, is the first book (to my knowledge) to articulate a screenplay paradigm. At its foundation is 3-Act Structure. But there’s also something he calls a “plot point”:

“It [a plot point] is any incident, episode or event that hooks into the action and spins it around into another direction.”

He goes onto say:

“There are many plot points in a screenplay, but in the creation of the story line, the most important are Plot Point I and Plot Point II. The four elements of structure, beginning, Plot Point I, Plot Point II and the ending, will always hold your story in place.”

So now you’ve got four narrative elements to a story:

* The Beginning

* Plot Point I (the end of Act One)

* Plot Point II (the end of Act Two)

* The Ending

After reading a zillion scripts, Field noted that these plot points tended to land in pretty much the same spot in script after script:

P. 1-5: Beginning

P. 25-27: PPI

P. 85-90: PPII

P. 115-120: Ending

This is from his original paradigm. Field has evolved his screenplay paradigm over time to include other major plot points.

My own version of a screenplay structural paradigm has 10 Major Plot Points:

ACT ONE

1-5: The Opening
10-15: The Hook
25-30: The Lock

ACT TWO

40-45: First Major Test
55-60: Transition
70-75: Second Major Test
85-90: All Is Lost

ACT THREE

90-100: On The Defensive
100-110: On The Offensive
110-120: Final Struggle / Denouement

Or if you prefer, there is Joel Silver’s “Whammo” theory (which he supposedly got from producer Larry Gordon): That is in every action movie, something has to go “whammo” in the plot every 10 pages.

What all of that speaks to is something significant needs to happen periodically and often in a script, or else the reader’s attention / interest will flag.

The popular sequence approach is essentially the same thing as any major plot point approach to screenplay structure, but instead of focusing on the plot points, the big events that spin the action, the sequence approach focuses on, well… the sequences. That is the action between the plot points. In my view, it’s just a different way of saying pretty much the same thing.

Now we can argue the fine points of any / all of this stuff all day long, but there’s a bigger point to be made: A writer can craft a perfectly sound story structure, but if a reader doesn’t find the story’s characters compelling, in particular the Protagonist, then the structure doesn’t mean sh*t.

A screenplay is a blueprint for producing a movie. Therefore structure is a critical concern for any screenwriter. Although 3-Act Structure has come under some assault of late, it is still the common paradigm embraced in Hwood.

Moreover I believe those three movements — Beginning, Middle, End — are inherent to the very essence of story.