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Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following questions may help in developing the general structure.

• Brainstorm the specific strategies and actions your hero will take to confront and antagonistic force (villain, threat or obstacle) standing in his way.
• Write down a summary of what your hero does in pursuit of the goal, the major campaigns and efforts and confrontations he must navigate along the path toward resolving the dramatic question.
• What is the antagonist’s plan in each act, what maneuvers does he execute to prevent the protagonist from achieving his goal? For each global goal in each act for the protagonist there should be a counterpoint by the antagonist(s).
• How does the story consist of a great crisis, worked out through a series of minor crises?
• How does this story involve characters being thrown into a world that represents the opposite of everything they believe and stand for?
• Sometimes it’s easier to think of the structure in question-and-answer form. Q: What are the worst possible consequences of Macbeth’s decision to kill the King of Scotland? A: The massed ranks of his former allies will march upon him seeking revenge. Good structure will deliver a crisis point that forces the protagonist to choose between their old and new selves.
• The beginning sets something up. It makes something move. What is a story trying to set up? The end, of course. The key to an effective beginning is that it must contain the seeds of your future climax.
• How could the story start at the moment the problem becomes acute?
• How would this story’s inciting incident embody all the characteristics the protagonist lacks?
• Do away with the overly vague concept of the “inciting incident” and replace it with three specific parts: the long-standing personal problem, the intimidating opportunity, and the unexpected conflict that arises from pursuing that opportunity. Together these form what I call “the challenge”.
• Rather than start with a happy status quo that gets ruined by an inciting incident, most stories begin the opposite way: The hero starts out with a long-standing social problem, and the inciting incident (even if it’s something horrible) presents itself as an opportunity to solve that problem.
• Does the hero discover an intimidating opportunity to fix the problem? Simply restoring the status quo is never a strong motivation. In real life, as a general rule, our crises are not just temporary accidents that must be undone but crucial opportunities to fix long-standing problems. To build sympathy, the opportunity should be obviously intimidating. This shouldn’t be a no-brainer decision, but to avoid losing empathy, the full size of the potential conflict should not be immediately apparent.
• Could you make sure that the inciting incident of the story is personal enough, that it isn’t defined externally? Otherwise the heroes would merely be reacting to outside events instead of choosing to act based on their volatile personal psychology.
• First Plot Point preliminary: a definitive reaction to the first plot point will shape your character’s arc. You know you’ve found the right First Plot Point when it drags your character out of his former complacency and puts his feet on the path toward destroying his Lie–even though he probably won’t realize that’s what’s happening and, indeed, may be actively fighting that destination. Whether he realizes it or not, he has committed himself to change, even though he may still be trying to change in the wrong way.
• How will the First Plot Point create a new world in which the character will be “punished” for acting according to his Lie?
• A big crash usually happens at the midpoint. Not only does this change everything in terms of the external situation, but it slams the hero into a radically new outlook. The first half of a story can often be summarized as “the easy way,” and the second half as “the hard way”.
• How would the midpoint contain the very essence of the quality the protagonist lacks, the opposite of their initial state, the “truth” of what they’re looking for, the hidden elixir in the enemy’s cave?
• Could you make it so by halfway through, your heroes are making it up on the fly?
• What happens (or will happen) in the climax of the novel that will show why your concept and kicker are unique and compelling?
• Do your story’s beginning and ending contrast each other strongly enough?
• If your protagonist had to face the events of the Climax in the beginning of the story, would he react to them in the same way he does at the end? If he would, something is seriously wrong with your story.
• How do you misdirect the lowest points, the cliffhangers, or even the climaxes of each act? How do you make them impossible, or at least set up events in ways that make the reader feel that the story could have gone a different way?
• Every roadblock, every obstacle, every setback, should escalate in difficulty. Start small and keep building.
• Write a list of unexpected changes that might occur.