The rule of thirds for storytelling | The fractal nature of stories
I’ve been asked several times now to explain how to tell stories at different time lengths. For example, how do you tell a story at 120 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 minute, or 6 seconds?
Well, to answer this question requires that we not only understand story structure, but also a powerful storytelling secret:
Stories are fractals.
What I mean is that the same 3-act structure that applies to a story can be seen in each act, each sequence, and even each scene.
This means that the rules for telling a 6 second story are very much the same for telling a 120 minute story. Though, naturally, the longer version is more complicated, as you need to repeat the pattern as the length increases.
This episode is a deep dive into basic story structure and the fundamental mechanics of storytelling.
You’ll learn
A practical definition of a story
Conventional 3 act structure
The purpose and time ratio for each act
The fractal nature of stories
What emotional engagement actually is
Key terms
Story structure - the underlying mechanics and elements of a story that make it work
3 act structure - a conventional story structure based on the introduction, progressive complication, and resolution of the story’s central conflict
Inciting incident - the action or situation that starts the story’s central conflict
Point of no return - when the protagonist crosses the threshold, which irreversibly commits them to the fight. This action takes the story out of act 1 and into act 2.
Progressive complication - how storyteller’s describe act 2. It’s refers to how the central conflict gets more complicated, the drama intensifies, as the story progresses.
Emotional pole shift - how a story moves the audience from positive to negative (or vice versa) emotions in each scene, sequence, act, and globally through the story’s arc
Watch the episode or read the transcript below.
Episode transcript
Transcript
Hey. What's going on, everybody? All right, so we're talking about the rule of thirds of storytelling and how to structure your story no matter what length. Basically several months back, by the time this gets released, several months back. Somebody asked me about how I would go about creating stories at different time intervals. So how do you create a six second story versus a 32nd story versus a one minute long story?
How do you go about doing that? How are you going about actually executing, creating content? Also, in the prior episode, I talked about finding the heart of your story, finding your controlling idea, and then finding your theme from your controlling idea. And once you find those things, you can then create the spine of your story. So if you're wondering, Well, how exactly do I then map out the spine of my story once I have the controlling idea?
Well, first, what you should do is download my Storytelligent™ guidebook, Turn Strangers Into Advocates. You can find a link in the show notes here, or you can go to my website and download it directly from there. Because personally, that's a fantastic guide on basic stories structure, and it'll give you a really great primer on brand storytelling.
Right. So you're welcome. Go get that thing. It's awesome. And then stick around because the rest of this episode, that's what we're getting into before we start getting into the rule of thirds of storytelling and before we start diving into like story structure, we kind of have to first define what a story is. And this is where my irritation starts to go up because I really don't feel like there's a appropriate definition for storytelling.
I cover this in the guidebook, but essentially when you look at the definition of storytelling in the dictionary, the definition will be something along the lines of it's a fictional narrative. It's some sort of like narrative arrangement of events. And then if you're like, Okay, well, that's still vague. What what's a narrative? You're going to find that the definition of a narrative is a story.
So it's like this circular definition where they're using the, the synonyms to define it, and there's no actual definition of what a story is. And this is just quite disappointing. So I took me like five years into my career to actually start figuring this stuff out, you know? But the most common definition you get from a story is that a story has a beginning, middle and an end No kidding.
Right. It's like, wow, great flip in definition, dude. Like anything Time Bound has a beginning, middle and an end. It starts, it runs, and then it stops. You know, like, we're still vague. We still have no idea what the heck we're talking about here. Okay, so and and even if you just say that, you have no idea what that beginning, middle and end is supposed to do for you, okay?
Because even people talk about, oh, well, there's three X in a story. Okay, well, what are those acts do? Right. So that's what we're going to try to get into. So but before we get into that, let's just look at a more accurate and appropriate definition of what a story is. So I believe that a more appropriate definition for a story is something that actually explains what the heck the thing does.
So a story is a character who wants something and then endures a series of obstacles in order to get what they want. Okay, so that's like your first level definition of what a story is. And I believe a story does a second thing underneath that which a story makes a promise to the audience that it's going to take them on a journey in order to make good on that promise.
Okay. And so within both of those definitions, if you line them up over top of each other, we're actually now starting to tease out a more accurate view of what that beginning middle and end actually do.
So conventional three act structure, right? If we could just start there, a conventional three act structure of storytelling, act one. All right. Act one is essentially and and each act takes a specific amount of time to tell Okay. So your act one that should be 25% of your total time that your story takes act two should be about 50% and act three should be another 25%.
Okay. 25, 50, 25 and act one. Essentially what's happening is you're providing the introduction, right? You're introducing the setting, you're introducing the theme, you're introducing your characters. You're, you're helping to paint a picture of what this world looks like. You're giving a sense of the status quo, right? This is what current the current situation is that we're leading our audience to.
We're helping our audience to get their bearings, get their footing right. And this can be done in a if you're doing a film or a video, this can be done really quickly. If you also leverage visuals to help to communicate this and you're not having people say everything. All right. But but that's essentially what you're doing. You're providing an introduction.
You're providing this, you're showing the audience the situation. You're helping them get their bearings, understand what's going on. When you move from act one into act two. What happens is it's called the inciting incident takes place. The inciting incident is that moment within a story where the complication of the story, the conflict of the story formally begins. All right.
And and when the inciting incident happens, okay. There's going to be a moment of no return when the main character can't avoid this conflict anymore. And the hero has to cross a threshold crossed the point of no return. Where where like as they move out into this journey, into the conflict, that they can't move back from the conflict.
They've crossed a line. Okay. Think in The Lord of the Rings, there's literally a moment where there where Sam is like, this is the farthest from from Hobbiton that I've ever been, the farthest from the ship I've ever been. Right. Like. Like, that's that's their point of crossing that threshold. They're there at that point of no return. Okay?
What happens is every story is driven by conflict, okay? Like conflict is the driving force that pushes the story forward. It's what keeps the interest. The tension holds attention. Right. Because it's a character who wants something, who endures a series a series of obstacles in order to get what they want as we enter into Act two. That is when we are witnessing our character endure these series of obstacles what happens as you move into Act two is that the conflict progressively complicates.
Second, act two is called the Progressive Complication. It's a conflict case over time. What happens is, and it's a series of obstacles, so what happens is these obstacles become increasingly difficult and frustrating one after the other, after the other, forcing the character to make more and more difficult and sacrificial decisions in order to get to get past them.
Right. And and with each decision that they make, we're getting a sense of their true character and who they truly are. Okay. But that's what's happening in Act two and Act two. You're the comp. The conflict is essentially building to a climax. And this climax of the conflict happens in the midpoint of Act two, and that climax forces a turn right where where it's almost like the direction we thought we were going.
It suddenly is upended. And now we have a new direction we're heading. Usually what happens after the climax is the heroes have to regroup, right? They've been fighting one battle, but suddenly realize, oh, darn, we've got to now fight this other battle. Or they're overpowered and they're like, Dag blasted. We got to regroup and figure out how to actually fight this battle we're fighting.
The stakes are higher. We're in a new situation and now. But now we need a better plan and we need some help, right? So they have to regroup at that time and then rebuild. Okay. And then going into act three is when they're they're now ready to face that threat head on and they enter into that arena. So as you move into act three, it's usually when you're entering into that final arena where the final confrontation is going to take place.
And so throughout Act three, you're having that final confrontation then, right? And then you have that resolution where the character finally overcomes these obstacles in order to get what they want. And so and act two, if I can just go back to that, that's when you're going on that journey, right? So and act one, you're making a promise, right?
You're promising to the audience, you're stating the theme if you think back to the controlling idea thing, like you're providing your controlling idea as a proof, right? You're stating the negative portion of the theme promising that you're going to take them on a journey in order to prove that positive portion of the theme. Right? And then as you're going through act two, that your journey right?
And so you're you're basically like you're you're proving your hypothesis with a series of point, counterpoint point counterpoint. Okay. Just cycling through that stuff. And then when you get into act three, that's when you communicate, you conclude your argument basically, and then you deliver the, the lasting positive expression of that theme or negative expression of that theme. Like I said, if it's a tragedy Act one is 25%.
What's happening in Act one is you're providing the status quo, you're introducing the characters, you're introducing the setting, you're giving the audience a sense of what this world is like, okay. The inciting incident starts that conflict, and then the hero makes a decision at the point of no return, crosses that threshold into into facing this conflict head on.
Okay. When you get into act two, that's when your conflict progressively complicates. There's two halves of Act two that are separated by the climax of the conflict. Okay. And when you hit that climax, there's a turn. You think you're going in one direction and things complicate, and now you're in a completely different situation. You basically you didn't you didn't anticipate your situation to look like this, or a mystery like a stone is unturned.
And the mystery is different than you thought it was. There's some sort of a turn. There's some sort of a twist where the the main character has to regroup, right? They've got to change up their plan. They've got to regroup. They got it. They got to, like rebuild. And then after they've regrouped and rebuild, still finding all of these other encountering all these other complications still journeying through it.
Right. They then enter into the final arena. Okay. And then that's when we get into act three, the final 25% right. And then that's when you're closing out your argument. You're wrapping up your conflict, the final encounter is happening and the story is resolved. All right. That that's your story structure, okay? Your bait, your basic story structure. That's your basic story.
Structure, stories, in essence, are fractal in nature. There's a rule of thirds to storytelling. So just how stories have that three act structure and yeah, you can, you can argue that, oh, okay, there's actually four acts within that. Or, or you can tease something out and be like, Oh, really? Five it doesn't matter. All right? Like, like there's a rule of I'm saying there's a rule of thirds.
That's what I'm going with. There's a rule of thirds, right? There's a three act structure, two storytelling. But stories themselves follow a rule of thirds. So if you zoom in from that, from that vantage point, if you would zoom in to your act one, what you would notice is there's actually three acts of your act one act one is actually broken up into three sub sub acts and those acts follow that same that same formula.
They follow that same system, they follow that same arc, same thing for the four act two globally, as well as for the first and second halves of Act two. They both follow a a triptych in a sense, and the same thing for Act three now as you focus in even more into the actual like scenes, right, that you'll start to notice that scenes themselves have this same pattern.
They follow this same rule of thirds where there's the introduction the progressive complication and the resolution you're going through conflict, right? And so conflict requires struggle. Struggle is expressed in tension of emotional pulls right? So tension between positive and negative or negative in double negative or positive and double positive, right? Like like that's the that's the tension that that is building as the conflict is progressing.
So as you're moving through your story, you're moving through emotional pulls, right? And it's that emotional tension that creates this momentum and interest that when I talk about what engaging is, when people talk about engagement, okay, like something was emotionally engaging, that's what they're actually describing. They're actually talking about this emotional tug of war that's happening to us internally as the audience.
This story is literally having an emotional tug of war with us, and that's what is getting us locked in and engaged. This is why, if you can reference back to the the previous episode, I talk about primal emotions primal emotions get even deeper. Therefore, the pull of that tug of war is more intense. Okay. So that's why when you watch certain stories certain stories that are primal, they leave an impact on you emotionally because they really do get at your core right so so that pull shift is necessary and required for each scene like and it's necessary and required for each act and globally across the entire story.
So if your story ends on a positive note, most likely it begin on a somewhat negative situation. Let's just think about Cinderella. For example, Cinderella starts, she's in a broken home. She uses on her hands and he's cleaning out the the cinders in the fireplace. It ends. She's a princess, married to a prince. Okay. That is a a global emotional pull shift that happens over the entire arc of the story.
But even throughout the scenes, you're going to notice that, like, scene to scene, it's shifting pulls. If one scene starts negative, it's most likely that that scene's going to end positive. Okay. And the following scene, the following scene and the acts themselves are going to move have their own sort of global pole shift because stories are fractal in nature, and they follow this rule of thirds where you introduce the conflict, you progress the conflict, the conflict complicates, and then the conflict, and then there's a turn, and then it resolves right and then throughout that, there's some sort of emotional tension that you're pulling the audience through.
So if you're thinking about how do I structure a story at 30 seconds or say a story at 6 seconds, you're really applying this structure to each time frame. That's what you're doing. You're thinking about like, Okay, how does this time frame, how does this structure work within 6 seconds, you know, versus how how is it going to work within 30 seconds?
So I don't even know what 25% of six is because I'm bad at math. What does that 1.4 to 5 seconds? 1.5 seconds, right? It's got to go really fast because it's 6 seconds, you know, like you're trying to like pull people into the story really quickly, like give them very fast visual cues about where they are. You're probably not trying to tell a complex story.
You're probably an eye. You even mean like visually complex. Like like you're you're trying to get something very quick. So in order to to communicate something very quick in 6 seconds, you're relying on established meaning and and you're going to be relying on, on kind of like playing off of what what the audience already understands and already knows. Okay.
Because you want you want to get that contextual information out of the way really, really fast because you don't have enough time to get that information set. Okay. And then and then it's like you're going to have to have some sort of conflict, but it's a really quick conflict, you know, and then there's a really quick resolution. 6 seconds is probably great for, for comedy, you know, but it's probably going to be real difficult to like tell like a hyper emotional story in 6 seconds unless you're leveraging, you know, like archetypes and, and known social things.
Like a parent passing or, or like you're getting that you're good at real, real, like intimate, emotional things, you know, so it's a lot easier to tell a longer story because you have a lot a lot more time, obviously, to put to use that framework. Okay. The challenge really happens when you're talking about like, how do I tell a 25 minutes story, you know, how do I tell a, an hour long story?
Okay. Because then your pattern is complicating. It's almost like the, the moment you take this this framework beyond to two to 5 minutes, you now have to like cycle through that framework and work within its complexity, like because now you're working with specific scenes, right? And you're working with specific specific movements and sequences. And then you're, you're probably then building towards acts right?
And so it's like you're going to have to make sure to like appropriately structure your story to that longer time frame because it's going to be more difficult and more complicated. My thought processes actually would be simpler to tell small to tell shorter stories because you're not having to complicate that framework. It's like once you get outside of a minute, now you're working with maybe multiple different scenes right now you can do multiple scenes in a minute.
There's commercials that do multiple scenes, but it's like you're almost saying like as you stretch that time frame, like now there's opportunity to complicate that rule of thirds structure, complicate that introduction, complicate like complication resolution. Okay, all right. I definitely recommend that you read a couple of books. The one of my favorite books about storytelling is Robert Nikki's story I mean, it's the quintessential kind of like complete storytelling Bible.
If you if if we could say that. All right. Like, so story by Robert McKee. Highly recommend you check that out. A second one is Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Save the Cat isn't as nearly as deep a story but it's it's almost like a complementary piece that fills in gaps that Robert McKee doesn't really get into.
And as a marketer and as a brand storyteller, Save the Cat is actually really helpful because it's all about like building a sellable story, which is really great. The other one I would like to recommend to you, if you're like really want to get deep in the weeds and be in are you? And if you're a super story nerd, check out the story grid by Sean Coyne that is awesome.
It's just like, oh my gosh, so, so, so good. It really helps you to understand just even more how much stories are actually fractal in nature, because not only is there things going on externally, there's a journey going on internally, multiple layers. All right. So check that out. And and if you haven't yet, definitely download my storyteller agent guide book Turning Strangers into advocates.
Kind of like a real simple, basic understanding of, hey, this is what a story is, this is how it's a reflection of life, and this is how you can apply it to your marketing messages. As always, if you have any questions you can reach me on Instagram or Twitter at Storyteller Agent or just send me a message directly on the website: McNabbstorytelling.com. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next one. Take care