Building a Story: Three Act Structure
Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Heroic Public SpeakingMichael Port, Amy Port
Building a Story: Three Act Structure
Lesson 13 from: FAST CLASS: Heroic Public SpeakingMichael Port, Amy Port
Lessons
Steal the Show
04:52 2The Principles of Performance
14:08 3Communicating Without Words
04:16 4Find Your Voice: Breathing
26:37 5Find Your Voice: Build your Voice
04:52 6Working On Your Speech
10:52 7Finding Your Big Idea!
13:56 8Sorting Your Big Idea
04:32Lesson Info
Building a Story: Three Act Structure
Now three extracts. We're gonna review three Act structure Because a story falls into a three act structure. It has a beginning, a middle and an end and the beginning is the situation. This is when you get the exposition, it's the setup and then there's a conflict that's act two, something goes wrong, there's a big problem And then Act three is a resolution and it ends. Boy meets girl boy and girls fall in love and then have a horrible fight. Boy kills girl. There's Othello. Yeah, it doesn't always have a happy resolution by the way. Not every story ends well. So often a story has an arc. So a play has an arc, A film has an arc. Each character has an arc. That's the term that's used. It's the first thing you look for as an actor is what's my arc? What is the journey my character takes I want where they end up to be different than where they started and where they started needs to be here and where they end needs to be here. So there's somewhere to go. And this doesn't mean it's good or...
bad. This just means different, different. And so you're looking for that when you're creating, when you're writing, when you're organizing your ideas. So if it's a curriculum based approach the beginning, maybe there's no clients. The world is a bad, bad, bad place and the end, the world is filled with clients. There's a beautiful, abundant secure place. That's an arc. That's a contrast the think Big Revolution. If you look at that 16 minute excerpt, you can, you can even see an arc in that excerpt, even if you don't see the whole 60 minute presentation. If for those at home, if you look at Youtube, you look at think Big Revolution, you'll see this arc at the beginning, there's this character who's a little bit weak and a little bit insecure and doesn't do what he say he's going to do. Then he goes into this scene where he fights with the voices of judgment in his head and he's really low and he thinks he's bad and stupid, he'll never be like these really great people and then he goes into being real, being really said, you know what, I just got to be real. Do you see how we're now going? We're starting to move up, I gotta be real. This is gonna be really hard. This is where the big conflict is, am I willing to be real? He is willing to be real. So then all of a sudden great things start happening. Love starts coming into his life. Fun starts coming into his life. So there's an arc for the character and there's an arc for the show. So each small story that we tell should have some sort of situation, conflict and resolution. The overall presentation that we're giving should have situation might have lots of conflict throughout and then the resolution. So if you look at book yourself solid as a curriculum presentation, the situation is set up and then the conflict occurs again and again and again and again. You don't have a red velvet rope policy. So what does that mean The conflict as you're working with all these people that drain your energy that make you feel worthless, that make you feel like you want to do bodily harm to someone. That's a conflict. And then the next is you don't understand why people buy what you're selling. There's another conflict, we've got to solve this one and in each one there's a situation of conflict as a resolution and they keep building a building a building until the very end. And if you look at a short story, I'll use a story from book yourself solid as an example, because many people at Creativelive have seen that, and many of you have seen that, I tell An Aesop's fable and embellished. Aesop's fable about an old man, a little boy in a donkey. Well, I'm not gonna tell you right now, we don't have time for that. But if you want to see it go by book yourself solid and creative live and you'll see it. So, the doggie story has the situation, there's an old man, a little boy in a donkey, so you set it up, you know, there's this old man and you don't have to go like this, but you're just a little bit of you're right, there's this old man, you know, there's this little boy and there's a donkey, that's it, that's all the setup, you're gonna start to see them and what happens, they want it, they want to go to town, they want to go to town, They haven't been able to go to town because of this conflict. This is why, but they finally decide to go why, I don't know, maybe they saw a great motivational speaker, you know, and so you can play and now there's a, there's a reason that didn't think that gets them over that, but they have conflict after conflict after conflict. This group laughs at them because of this, This group ridicules them because of this boom boom boom boom boom. And then finally, the story has a resolution which is very unhappy resolution, but it's all to prove a particular point. And the point of that story is if you try to please everyone, you might as well kiss your ass goodbye. But it's all set up, it's all set up to get their situation conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict resolution.
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