Three-act structure
A narrative framework that divides a story into setup, confrontation, and resolution, organizing events around a central conflict and its outcome.
Inciting incident: An event that disrupts a story’s initial situation and sets its central action in motion. It launches the conflict that carries a story from setup into confrontation.
Five-act structure: A dramatic framework that organizes a story into five successive parts. It subdivides dramatic progression more finely than the three-act framework.
Screenwriting: The craft of writing scripts for films, television, and other screen media. The framework is widely used to organize screen stories.
Poetics (Aristotle): Aristotle’s treatise on poetry and drama, including its account of plot and tragic action. Its emphasis on a beginning, middle, and end is often linked to later act models.
Dramatic tension: Suspense or emotional pressure created by uncertainty about a story’s outcome. The framework sustains tension by escalating conflict toward a decisive turning point.
Plot point: A significant event that redirects a narrative or changes its central situation. Major plot points mark transitions between the framework’s acts.
Freytag's pyramid: A model of dramatic structure describing exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Its five-part arc differs from the framework’s three broad acts.
Beat sheet: A concise outline of a story’s major dramatic moments in sequence. Writers use beat sheets to place key events across the acts.
Aelius Donatus: A fourth-century Roman grammarian whose commentary transmitted classical ideas about dramatic form. A later tradition attributes the three-part division of plays to his commentary.
Narrative pacing: The rate at which a narrative presents events and allows them to unfold. Act proportions shape how quickly setup, confrontation, and resolution arrive.