I suffered from this for years and years.

The problem I had was with the thing that’s held up as the most important concept behind a great story…

… the three-act structure.

The hook, the inciting incident, the 1st plot point, the pinch point, the midpoint...

...on and on it goes, leading to a thrilling climax.

It looked so useful.

Everything a great story needed was laid out—often in a lovely graph. And yet, even though I looked at this over and over again, nothing about it helped me become more creative. It didn’t help me solve my non—working documentary story.

Everything I made was still a little predictable and a bad version of other people’s films.

But, because everyone knew it was what every great story needed, I was convinced that the problem was me. To be honest, I felt like a talentless wannabe.

It was only much later that I realised that the problem wasn’t with me. It wasn't because there were really four, or five acts.

It was because I was trying to find the solution to storytelling from the outside in.

You can look at something from the outside and see what it is made of, but observing from the outside tells you very little about how that thing came to be.

If you want to build a house and you see a beautiful building, but nothing that you can see will tell you anything about how you can do the same.

And certainly not the most important thing of all, which is to make sure that the building stays up.

You can wander around and admire how the spaces are laid out, the use of colour on the walls, and the light flooding through the windows.

But the most important - indeed the essential work to make this house happen - is the calculation of the depth of the foundations, the strength of the beams, and which materials to use.

And there are calculations involved — it’s not guesswork or instinct.

The engineer knows what he or she wants to achieve and can calculate to within a millimetre or a degree what is required to make the building happen. There is not a lot of argument amongst engineers - they know what they have to do, and when it makes sense - it just makes sense.

It works.

The three-act structure describes a story from the outside. You can see all those things in films if you watch them. You can even tick them off as they go by, knowing that they are the reason that the film you just watched worked so well.

And yet…

You still have - as a documentary maker - a world of options to construct your story.

Event after event, multiple characters, scenes and incidents that seem important. But nothing in that three-act structure to tell you which of these things really matter. How do you choose what to make your story form, and how do you put it all together to create your own story that is powerful and meaningful?

Taking the building analogy further, there’s something unique about documentary makers…

…you have to be both the engineer and the architect.

You are constructing your own story, not just directing and decorating it.

In drama, you could be a lucky director who is given a great script. You may have good storytelling instincts and know how to make the material you’ve been given come alive. But you will realise that the maker of the story - the engineer of the emotions - is the writer.

Without them, you have nothing.

Documentary makers must do both. You have to take your idea, see what elements are needed to build your story and then have the insight and sensitivity to construct your documentary.

Does this work in the first act, or this, or this, or this.....?

There are an infinite number of choices. That's why one of the most common problems that people come to me with is that they are overwhelmed by their choices.

Whereas, if you work from the inside out, then you are never overwhelmed. When you know what you want to say and why, everything that doesn't matter falls away.

You answer simple questions about your story. You tackle them in a step-by-step manner, and all those story moments - the opening scenes, the acts, the incidents, the path to the climax - appear as if by magic.

They exist because of what you want to say.

It’s a little like the engineer who simply knows how to analyse their idea and build the structure for the final building.

In fact, one of the most interesting things I do with students is show them how the acts, scenes, climax and multiple storylines emerge as they do the work. We can see them float to the surface as their story takes shape.

Get in touch, get hold of a case-study and some other useful free info here. And if you want to talk, get in touch and I'll do what I can to help.

All the best - Nigel