Tonight I was working on developing an idea into some basic outlining for my novel and I tried something new. I had my theme all ready to go, because that's what inspired this idea. I wrote a one liner and the I wrote the story question. I was going to start writing a paragraph for the 1st 2nd and 3rd acts, but when I did I kind of went off track. I started relating the story question to the three acts and came up with the simple theory that the 1st act presents the story question, the 2nd act explains how the protagonist gets the answer for the question, and the 3rd acts shows how he actually answers it. This is probably already a real theory, but it just popped in my head just now. I found I didn't really have to outline anymore because I knew what each act would represent and, because I already had the story in a basic form in my head, I could start writing right away. Anyways, I thought I would share this with you guys, kind of randomly, because maybe some of you have outlining problems (if you do outline) and needed some kind of structure. Hopefully this helps. -Kingzilla
I don't even outline my stories. I let them grown organically on their own. Like Cog said, the three act is just one way of writing novels. It's primarily, though, meant for playwrights, and possibly movie scriptwriters.
