How to Apply the Three-Act Structure to Art and Design

Right after college, I apprenticed for a decade in story, art, and cinematography on some of Hollywood’s biggest franchises. It was a marvelous second education.

I had learned to draw in college and in art school—but not like how I needed to draw in order to contribute to a feature film. I studied semiotics and french literary theory in school—but not in the way I needed in order to write a story or land a joke for a broad audience who couldn’t care less what books I’ve read.

Creating something nearly everyone likes is not an exercise in cynicism or reductive low-brow down-talking—it is one of the hardest design challenges you can undertake. It was a good education.

Now, whenever I face a new design challenge (whether it’s an app, a ballet, a painting, fashion, or film), I first get to work understanding the story and the transformation I hope to help create.

What is story?

At the most basic level, story transforms its subject from an initial state to a changed state. Think of this as your beginning and your end. Once upon a time...happily ever after. But what happens in the middle?

The journey moves from conflict through development to resolution.

These three sections—conflict, development and resolution—match exactly the three-act structure from cinema, theatre and literature.

This structure has evolved from Aristotle’s poetics, past Shakespeare’s plays, through modernist literature, right up to today’s summer blockbusters.

This general structure comes in a ton of variations, 1-5 act versions and every conceivable experimental form possible, but the standard form resolves to three-acts reduced to something like this:

Act I: We establish the problem, set the stakes, and find out the trouble has become even worse than we thought.

Problem: An unexplained blip on NASA’s radar is revealed to actually be a runaway asteroid about to hit Earth.

Stakes: It will strike Paris in six months. What will we do?

Even Worse: Oh no! Our original calculations were wrong. It’s moving like nothing we’ve ever seen. It’s not coming in six months, it’s coming in 10 days. And it’s going to hit New York City!

Act II: Then we see initial steps or progress, endure a set-back, and then rise to the second challenge.

First-steps: Don’t worry, we’ve got this! We’ll send a rag-tag crew of unlikely heroes to blast that asteroid back to the void from whence it came.

Set-back: Oh no! While on the surface of the asteroid, setting the explosives, things started to go wrong. This is not going to be as easy as we thought…

Second Challenge: Just when we solved all the set-backs, there’s a new problem—Space Insanity, A Monster, a Second Asteroid!!!—honestly it doesn’t matter what the second challenge is, it just has to come. Homework: See if you can guess the Second Challenge moment in the movie The Meg right before it happens. Don’t worry—you’ll know it when you see it. :)

Act III: We revisit the initial problem at its core, find a solution, and then witness the subject transformed by the experience.

Problem revisited: All the set-backs and the second challenge taught us something about ourselves, taught us how to work together and taught us a key insight—what Aristotle called the Anagnorisis—a dramatic revelation of how we cause our own problems, or how the world truly works, or something about the nature of humankind or in an action film, the one weakness we can exploit in the monster to win

Solution: Armed with the Anagnorisis (the knowledge earned through the struggle) we have a plan and we succeed!

Transformation: Most people would imagine the story ends with solution, but it doesn’t. The story only ends with transformation—for if we aren’t transformed by the experience, then there was no point in the story. Aristotle called this the Katharsis—the emotional release that comes with our new understanding of the world. Spielberg also employs transformation in his movies—usually by including a shot of a re-united family, who used to fight or disagree or take each other for granted, but now know what really matters—they’ve become closer through the shared experience and have becomes transformed by the struggle.

Whether the subject wins or loses determines the difference between comedy and tragedy.

When you are creating a product, a service, an experience, or an app, your customers will also go on a journey. They will also have struggles, set-backs, and second-challenges. Most artists and designers make the mistake of thinking their job is to come up with solutions—this is almost right—your actual job is to both provide a solution to their problems AND to transform them in the process. If the audience doesn’t leave transformed, (a better human, a more satisfied fulfilled, curious, resilient or thoughtful person) then what was the point?

People will forget your product’s features and stats, but they will never forget how your product helped transform them into the people they always wanted to be.