Do you write your novels in acts?

When I started mine I didn't have any real structure and just wrote it. I got to 50,000 words (start to finish, just needed to fill in some detail) and then I read about the four act structure and turning points so I re-jigged the story to fit that a bit better and that confused me no end.

Since then I've read about the three act structure so I'm wondering if anyone here writes in acts and whether they follow three or four acts, and if there is any good advice on this kind of structure anywhere.

Ian McEwan was saying the other day that a five-act structure, as in Shakespeare, 'is quite the pace of a novel'. He also said that his first two novels were about 50,000 (oh, the days when you could get that published!) and 'went rapidly from A to B, with no subplots, like short stories' but things got more complicated as they got longer.

The chapter is my fundamental unit of structure - ten or twelve of them - and it's where I start from. I do sometimes bracket those together into parts, but it's more after the event. ASA's all about storytelling, so the four parts are called 'beginning' 'middle' 'middle' and 'end'.

Emma

The chapter is my fundamental unit of structure

Mine is scenes, which are re-ordered along the MC's time line (chronology) as I near the end.
I've recently found that if I write out the other characters' time lines, where theirs crosses (or has the potential to cross) the MC's it can throw up extra scenes if I need them. It also shows if I have left any characters hanging as I head towards the end.
Apparently, in one of Raymond Chandler's novels he has a minor character, a driver, waiting in a car - and that character is still waiting. When asked about him, Chandler said 'Oh? I forgot about him'.

Sorry, not really an answer about Acts, but beginning, middle and end is important whatever the length of the book - even for childrens Picture Books.


- NaomiM

I definitely write in three acts, but I don't worry about it too much as most of it happens subconsciously.

I should stop reading writing advice - it only confuses me - I was quite happy with my WIP until I read about needing four acts!

I'm suspicious of formulaic recommendations from the 'How to write a novel' brigade. A narrative with sufficient content for a full-length novel will probably fall naturally into recognisable sections. Perhaps on re-working (but only perhaps) these may need to have their boundaries more clearly defined so that they do indeed form 'acts' or 'parts', but it's surely a mistake to try to shoehorn the narrative into some pre-defined rigid structure, unless your own vision for the novel happens to require it (which is also perfectly reasonable).

Chris

So what is a novel in five acts? -
Hero introduced.
Hero sees the girl.
Hero seeks and gets the girl.
Hero loses the girl.
Hero finds the girl again and they live happily ever after?


- NaomiM

I think this kind of analysis can be interesting descriptively, in that if you've got an uneasy sense - or a trusted reader's report - that something's not working, it can be a way of focussing on structural issues. But I think it's frequently disastrous to take this kind of thing as a prescription for writing a 'good' novel.

As always, I think the best how-to-write books are the ones which are actually how-to-read and/or how-novels-work - again descriptive not prescriptive. When it comes to structures of storytelling, Booker's The Seven Basic Plots takes a lot of beating (though it also takes a lot of reading, and can be terribly annoying too).

and can be terribly annoying too

Yes, although it does have the advantage of bouncing off the wall without leaving much of a dent.


- NaomiM

<Added>

(sorry, Emma, couldn't resist. )

True! There's a dent in the wall of the house I used to live in, where Penelope Leach's Baby and Child Care hit...

Emma