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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 list of notions strives to strengthen the first act of a five-act structure.

• How do the scenes in the first act chase your protagonist up a tree? How does it push him into a conflict situation?
• How does the first act set up trouble brewing? Things may settle for a bit after the disturbance, but then a glimpse of greated trouble coming or hovering.
• How does the first act set up the stakes for the whole story?
• What scenes of the first act deepen the stakes? How do they deepen the conflict until it explodes so that the story moves into the second act?
• Is there imminent danger in the first act of the story so as to bond with the lead?
• How do you make the reader believe the threats to the protagonist in this act are real?
• How do you make the reader fear for the safety of the characters?
• How do you make clear what the characters stand to lose in the coming conflict?
• How is the protagonist’s need to change explored?
• Somewhere in the first act, can you have the protagonist make an argument against the lesson they learn by the end of the story?
• What reasons do you give early on to the readers to care about the characters?
• See how do you illustrate this about the important characters: who are these people? What is the essence of their personalities? What are their core beliefs (even more particularly, what are the beliefs that will be challenged or straightened throughout the book)?
• What is your hero’s world view, goals, values, problems, etc. prior to the First Plot Point?
• When the story opens, is the lie/flaw making the protagonist’s life miserable? If so, how?
• This is the time to lavish some extra attention on the Lie, because within the Lie is always where we discover what is at stake for the protagonist. What horrible things will happen to him and his world if the Lie isn’t overthrown?
• What is the antagonist doing during this act?
• Can you place the characters where something bad is happening, or about to happen?
• Try to focus on only giving the information that is strictly necessary to understand the current situation.
• Audiences prefer their heroes to get out of trouble in the second act using talents they already displayed in the first act. Even heroes who seem to be starting from scratch are actually adapters. They find ways to use skills from a completely different job to surmount their current problem.