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Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, and you have determined the general structure, you could strengthen the scaffolding further by relying on a five-act structure. The original three-act structure suffers from issues regarding the second act, which is the bulk of the story yet it’s treated as if it were the same length as the first and third acts. The five-act structure divides the second act into three, relying on a mid-story turning point as the main mast of the tale.

The following is a list of points that should be nailed for a satisfying first act in a five-act structure (or in a three-act structure for that matter).

• Introduce the major characters, giving the reader an idea of who they are, their emotional makeup, and the weight they carry in the story.
• Devise the characteristic moment for your protagonist:
  • How does it accomplish several tasks:
    • Introduce your protagonist.
    • (Probably) reveal your protagonist’s name.
    • Indicate your protagonist’s gender, age, nationality, and possibly his occupation.
    • Indicate important physical characteristics.
    • Indicate his role in the story (i.e., that he is the protagonist).
    • Demonstrate the prevailing aspect of his personality.
    • Hook readers’ sympathy and/or their interest.
    • Show the protagonist’s scene goal.
    • Indicate the protagonist’s story goal.
    • Demonstrate, or at least hint at, the protagonist’s lie.
    • Influence the plot, preferably directly, but at the very least in a way that foreshadows later events.
  • To do this, select an event that will:
    • Make the protagonist appealing to readers.
    • Introduce both his strengths and weaknesses.
    • Build the plot.
  • What important personality trait, virtue, or skill best sums up your protagonist?
  • How can you dramatize this trait to its fullest extent?
  • How can you dramatize this trait in a way that also introduces the plot?
  • How can you demonstrate your protagonist’s belief in his lie?
  • Can you reveal or hint at his ghost?
  • How can you use this scene to reveal the thing he wants most?
  • Does your protagonist’s pursuit of both the overall goal and the scene goal meet with an obvious obstacle (i.e., conflict)?
  • How can you share important details about your protagonist (name, age, physical appearance) quickly and unobtrusively?
  • Don’t settle for anything less than spectacular for your Characteristic Moment. This is your opportunity to create a fun and effective scene that will introduce readers to your character in a way the’ll never forget–and from which they won’t be able to look away.
• Show us the hero’s situation, goals, worldview, and emotional state prior to the launch of the path that lies ahead.
• Show us setting, time, place, and (as necessary) some backstory.
• Develop the normal world of the story:
  • People are largely defined by the microcosms in which they live. We are inevitably shaped by our surroundings, either because of the ways we fit in or the ways we don’t. Just as inevitably, we are defined by our surroundings because they reflect our choices and limitations. How we came to be someplace, why we choose to remain there, or why we are forced to remain even if we don’t want to–all these factors reveal interesting facets of our personalities, values, strengths and weaknesses.
  • How does it do this: the Normal World plays a vital role in grounding the story in a concrete setting. Even more important, the Normal World creates the standard against which all the personal and plot changes to come will be measured. Without this vivid opening example of what will change in your character’s life, the rest of the arc will lack definition and potency.
  • Is it a place in which the character has found contentment–or at least complacency?
  • The point is that the Normal World is a place the protagonist either doesn’t want to leave or can’t leave. It’s the staging ground for his grand adventure.
  • Think of the Normal World as a symbolic representation of your character’s inner world. The Normal World dramatizes the Lie and Character Beliefs. It empowers the character in that Lie, giving him no reason to look beyond it. Only when the Normal World is challenged or abandoned at the First plot Point is the protagonist’s belief in that Lie shaken.
  • Does it present one set of challenges, which the protagonist finds himself unequipped to deal with until after he’s experienced life beyond the Normal World?
  • In creating your story’s Normal World, first ask yourself what kind of world will provide the most logical backstory for why your character believes the Lie. Then consider how to enhance the Normal World by making it the comfiest place ever for that Lie to continue its existence. note, however, this does not mean it necessarily has to be a comfy place for your protagonist. Sometime she may seem outwardly comfy, while, deep down, the Lie is making him miserable.
  • How can you create a Normal World that will best contrast the “adventure world” to follow in the next acts?
  • You want to strive for the most dramatic contrast possible between the worlds, in order to provide your character with as much incentive as possible to enact this change.
  • What setting will open your story?
  • How will this setting change at the First Plot Point?
  • How does the Normal World dramatize or symbolize your character’s enslavement to the Lie?
  • How is the Normal World causing or empowering the Lie?
  • Why is your character in the Normal World?
  • If your character doesn’t want to leave the Normal World, what is helping him mask the discomfort caused by his Lie?
  • If your character wants to leave, what’s stopping him?
  • If the Normal World is a legitimately good place, how will the protagonist need to change in order to appreciate it?
• The first act’s highest calling is to introduce and set up the story elements in such a way that when the First Plot Point arrives, it is reinforced by stakes, emotional empathy, the shadow of an emerging antagonistic force, and foreshadowing of other elements that await down the road.
• What kind of thesis about the normal world of the characters this act poses, for which the rest of the story will be an antithesis?
• Represent the overall range of change of your hero in the story. This frame gives you the structural “journey” your hero will take. As when starting at the endpoint of your hero’s development by figuring out his self-revelation, we returned to the beginning to set his weakness and need and desire, we must use the same process when determining the plot. Establish the endpoint of the plot first.
• What will my hero learn at the end?
• What does he know at the beginning? What does he believe?
• What is he wrong about at the beginning?
• Is there an event from the past that still haunts the hero in the present? An open wound that is after the source of the hero’s psychological and moral weakness. Could think of it as the hero’s internal opponent. The great fear that is holding him back from action. Acts as a counter desire: the hero’s desire drives him forward, his ghost holds him back.
• In some stories, it could be that a ghost is not possible because the hero lives in a paradise world. The hero begins free, but an attack will change that.
• Try to withhold as much information as possible about the hero, including the details of his ghost.
• Weakness: the hero has one or more character flaws that are so serious they are ruining his life. They come in two forms: psychological and moral. Could have both.
• Inner person is damaged in some way. The moral one causes someone else to get hurt.
• If he has a moral weakness, how does he have a direct negative effect on someone else? Is he clearly hurting at least one person at the beginning of the story?
• Need: what the hero must fulfill in order to have a better life. It almost always requires that he overcomes his weakness by the end.
• Problem: the trouble or crisis your hero faces at the very beginning of the story. He is aware of the crisis but doesn’t know how to solve it. The problem is usually an outgrowth of the hero’s weakness and is designed to quickly show that weakness to the audience. Should be present at the beginning, but it is far less important than weakness and need.
• Set up the dramatic action and the underlying conflict that will run throughout the story.
• Foreshadow as necessary, including the presence (perhaps implied, maybe in the reader’s face, your call) of the antagonist (dramatic tension).
• Make us care about the hero through the establishing of stakes.
• Make sure you establish the underlying stakes and the personal demons attached to the First Plot Point decision before it hits.
• Hook the reader (compelling premise).
• Introduce the concept of the story (compelling premise and dramatic tension).
• How does it manage to get the readers involved?
• Have you come up with the most powerful and memorable combination of inciting event and key event so that they will fuel the entire story?