Act II: What Fun and Games Actually Means

20 Guiding Questions for Structuring the Beginning of Act II

Learning Objective: By the end of this post, you will know how to use 20 guiding questions to structure the beginning of your second act.

One of my favorite descriptions of story structure comes from this Film Courage interview with screenwriter Jeffrey Alan Schechter. In the interview, Schechter says that effective stories have protagonists who move through these four archetypes: orphan, wanderer, warrior, and martyr.

In Act I, the protagonist’s Broken Place has forced them to become a literal or metaphorical orphan. Following the Turn into Act II, the protagonist has transformed into a wanderer. As a wanderer, they are searching for the right course of action to achieve their goal while avoiding their fear and ignoring their need. After pursuing their goal in the wrong way, the protagonist arrives at the story’s midpoint and experiences a false victory or a false defeat. Now, they must become a warrior with a new action plan to achieve their goal while facing their fear. Then, following the big surprise that foils their battle plan and turns the story into Act III, the protagonist becomes a martyr as they sacrifice their want or need in order to fulfill the other.

Western storytelling is all about transformation, and effective western stories send their protagonists through each of these four archetypes as the protagonists transform into their final, fully realized selves. To achieve this sense of transformation, Schechter says that each act in three act structure answers a central question:

1. Act I (Orphan): Who is your protagonist?

2. Act IIA (Wanderer): What are they trying to accomplish?

   1. Note: Schechter understands story within the context of four-act structure. I prefer to use three acts: Act I, Act IIA (pre-midpoint), Act IIB (post-midpoint), Act III. Anyway, watch the interview; it’s brilliant!

3. Act IIB (Warrior): Who is trying to stop them?

4. Act III (Martyr): What happens if they fail?

In our Act I series, we discuss 47 guiding questions that can help us structure our stories to establish who the protagonist is. Today, we’re discovering 20 guiding questions that will help us explore the larger Act II question at hand: what is the protagonist trying to accomplish?

In our last craft lesson, we talked about how effective second acts often open with a subplot. After the subplot is introduced, the story returns to the main plotline, and we find our protagonist wandering in search of an action plan to achieve their goal. This part of the story is often referred to as the “promise of the story’s premise” or the “fun and games.” In our free short story revision lesson, we defined the Fun and Games part of Act II with this definition:

The Fun and Games section of the story is often described as “the stuff we see in movie trailers.” Parasite (2019) is about a family that cons a wealthy family by becoming their help. Most of the trailer shows moments where the protagonist, Kiwoo, takes actions to ingrain himself and his family more and more into the lives of the Parks.

Here are the 20 guiding questions that will help you structure a successful fun and games section of your story. As always, take what’s useful to you and your writing life, and leave what’s not.

Fun and Games Guiding Questions