What is The Three Act Structure?

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The Three Act Structure consist of:

  1. Act I - Setup: Exposition, Inciting Incident, Plot Point One
  2. Act II - Confrontation: Rising Action, Midpoint, Plot Point Two
  3. Act III - Resolution: Pre Climax, Climax, Denouement

"The class began in a surprising way. Vonnegut remarked that last time they had been talking about form, and he walked to the blackboard and drew there a question mark, an exclamation point and a period. He said these bits of punctuation were the outline of a three-act story."

- Richard Todd, New York Times Magazine, 1971