Academy of Wisdom
Build the foundations of three-act structure, character arcs, conflict design, and visual storytelling
From Aristotle to Syd Field — dissect the three-act structure, the backbone of every story.
Objectives
- Understand the three acts (Setup, Confrontation, Resolution) and the function of each
- Identify the role of Plot Points and the Midpoint
- Apply three-act analysis to actual films
In the fourth century BC, Aristotle declared in *Poetics* that "every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end." Twenty-four centuries later, the principle stands unchanged.
Syd Field applied this principle specifically to Hollywood screenwriting in his 1979 book *Screenplay*. His paradigm — Setup (Act 1), Confrontation (Act 2), Resolution (Act 3) — became the standard framework for screenwriting education worldwide.
Subsequent theorists — Robert McKee, Blake Snyder, Christopher Vogler — all built their own systems on top of this three-act skeleton. Understanding structure is the starting point of screenwriting craft.