What do you think is the purpose of the three act sturcture?
I think it's the most primal way to tell a story. When you consider a story that's only two acts, things are good now they're bad or things are bad, now they're good. Something feels off on the rhythm.
But if it goes Good, Bad, Good. Or vice versa, now we have a story. The three act structure is a form that codifies this intuitive feeling of 'thats a basic story'.
Also it helps organize our thoughts in a way that expresses things clearly to the reader, whom we hope to connect with. If all the readers cannot understand our story then it's a problem with the story stucture.
Why do you think this structure is the most popular amongst storytellers across the world
I think the structure is as old as Humanity. We've told oral stories from the time we could. It's an archetypal form, within which a myriad of stories can fit. And for some reason having things in Threes really suits us. Three feels stable.
When a form can encompass such a wide range of stories, and can be used by a majority of the populous, becoming popular is inevitable.
What issues do you think sticking rigidly to the three act structure could cause?
Not all stories have three acts. I'll argue that you need at least three, but often there can be more.
I've studied more screenplay than novel recently, but when it comes to movies, they can have four or five acts, depending on their climax points.
Now a three act is suitable for most basic stories but even I prefer a four act (or three with a mid-act2 climax) structure myself.
The structure is not a formula, it's a form that can help a story gain clarity. It's a principle , not a rule, and so unless you're trying an experiment of Creative Constraint, there's no need to rigidly stick to the structure is the story wants more.
What works can you think of that use the simple three act structure?
Just the simple one? Fairy tales and fables. The simplest and most primal stories.
Consider the boy who cried wolf. Boy was bored, wanted attention; decided to call for a wolf and have everyone run and he has good fun; wolf really shows up, because of his behaviour no one comes and he's eaten.
Most modern novels and movies and certainly tv series have a sophisticated Three act structure. The meat of the story is filled with subplots and stratified sequences within the acts themselves. But a majority of them will fit the three basic acts because it's the archetypal form.
What works can you think of that break the rules of the three act structure.
As mentioned earlier, I don't think the three acts are rules so much as guiding principle, but that's semantics right now. I tend not to like stories that break this form just to comment on it or for the sake of it. Sometimes it feels like the author goes out of their way to be witty or clever or challenging and I'm left confused and unentertained.
The only book I can think of is Cloud Atlas? The whole thing is split in two parts of six stories that you get the first half for in the first half of the book, and it dominos out in reverse for the second half of the book. I guess each individual story had three acts but I'll admit I didn't enjoy the book and not a lot stuck in my brain afterward xD.
Another might be The Handmaid's Tale, which I loved. But only cause at the end it calls into question if the story was told in the proper order to begin with. Still it kind of had that three act rhythm if a bit tweaked.
In screenwriting, the forms that break the Act structure are Minimalism and Anti-plot which I'll admit I did not study upon cause ..I don't like writing that way xD. My best example is probably The Grand Budapest Hotel. Brilliant meandering of a fantastic, basically-a-book-out-to-the-screen tale. It even has a three-deep narrative within narrative setup.
Also possible that all my examples here show three act structure and I just ...really avoid stories that make it hard for me to understand what's going on. (even stories told in reverse -Pulp Fuction, Memento- make sense and have a narrative structure.)
