Beauty, the Beast, and the Shining: a study in structure

A decade-and-a-half late rebuttal to a debunking of the 3-Act Structure

It’s been fifteen years now since Film Crit Hulk wrote about the “myth” of the three-act structure. The underlying assumption of the argument was that an act is a propulsion-forward of the story, and a story can have as many acts as you want. Hulk attacked the vagueness of structure theory and solved it by making it more vague. Theoretically, one could have any number of acts, but this is not the reason why. An act is not the smallest cohesive body of storytelling. The eight-sequence story structure, for example, is just the western three-act model. It’s not 8 acts; it’s three, because the sequences work together to form three cohesive parts that play similar roles across many different stories.

There are different formats. Batman v. Superman attempted to use the Jacobean 5-act revenge structure that one sees in Hamlet. The end result was a Youtube video complaining how its 3-act structure was a mess.

Structure was a revelation to me in the 90s, back when it was at its vaguest. It’s been made much more precise over time, and not always to its benefit. In all the time since, many have taken the torch from Syd Field and run with it, and many more have tried, often repackaging the same ideas into different words.

And now it’s my turn. Ha!

Acts are the largest cohesive components of a story, connected by points that don’t just propel the story forward but change the fundamental nature of the story being told. They are an interruption and transformation, and while arguably one could have many acts, with each change, the story risks losing cohesion. A few make the story interesting. Too many make it a jumbled mess.

Society handles this confusion by adopting favored structures and certain changes that are expected and anticipated. The Asian four-act story has the biggest possible change in the middle of the story, revealing a third-act twist that changes the perspective on everything that came before. Anime has made this structure famous in the west, and its fans may recognize similarities in how I explain the western 3-act structure. Our second act isn’t quite that same big twist, but it plays a similar role in temporarily interrupting the story in progress and changing its outcome.

Of additional importance is that the original vagueness of structure served the variety it was trying to capture. As we get more precise, it's tempting to become more prescriptive, demanding stories follow a given model.

For this essay, I’m focusing on my favorite movie for the study of structure, but in choosing a given example, I’m favoring a given model. There will always be other ways of viewing the 3-act structure and other structures one could use.

The Beauty and the Beast model:

In the first act, the main character demonstrates what she wants, fears, believes, regrets, etc. In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991), Belle demonstrates her love for her father and her wish to see him happy. She wants more than life in a provincial town. She longs for adventure and is revolted by the idea of marrying someone like Gaston. She loves to read, and that reading includes the fantasy of meeting prince charming (even though she won’t realize it’s him until chapter three).

The viewer also wants things for her. We want her to be accepted in ways that she isn’t by the townsfolk. We want her mind and imagination appreciated, and at the turning point, when she sacrifices herself for her father’s freedom, we want her bravery rewarded.

Act one sets up all these desires, BUT then the turning point brings us out of act 1 and into act 2. That BUT happens, and THEREFORE everything changes.

She wants her father happy, BUT he’s imprisoned by the Beast, THEREFORE she sacrifices herself for his freedom.

She longs for adventure in the great wide somewhere BUT she’s sacrificed herself; THEREFORE, now she’s a prisoner. We wanted her to be accepted by the townsfolk, but she’s the prisoner of a quick-tempered Beast; THEREFORE, he blames her unhappiness on her attitude instead of the situation he’s created. She feared being trapped in a relationship with Gaston, BUT now she’s the Beast’s captive; THEREFORE she’s on the receiving end of his awkward romantic gestures.

Beauty and the Beast is a love story and ends happily, and therefore the THEREFORES are all negative.

The THEREFORES triggered by the turning’s point’s BUT will lead us into an EXCEPT that introduces either hope, in the case of a happy ending, or dread, in the case of a sad ending.

Before we get into that, however, let’s consider that in act 1 we have a story that’s interrupted. Belle’s story was about wanting more than her hometown. Because it’s working toward a happy ending, we’re going to consider the second half of that story without the interruption, and we’re going to assume a sad ending. Belle is trapped in town, because everything she has is there. Her father’s a wacky inventor, and he’ll never provide a way to anything better. She’s trapped in town and will be trapped into marriage with Gaston. He’s already scheming to make it happen.

If you’re a plotter, you work all this out in advance. If you’re a pantser, you write your way toward the end of act 1, and then you list your main character’s fears and desires. You imagine the ending we’d have if act 2 never happened. If this is a horror story, then the second half of the story act 1 tells is happy and full of hope. If it’s a love story, that imagined ending is sad and loveless.

BUT something happens to interrupt that story and bring us into act 2, and there, our main character’s fortune’s change; the ending of our story is transformed. If there’s a mystery to be solved, the interrupted story of act 1 is an unsolvable crime that will forever go unpunished. If there’s a star war to fight, the interrupted story of act 1 is about a farm boy whose obligations to his family hold him back. He stays home. Nothing changes that season or any season thereafter. He’ll marry a local girl and inherit the farm and occasionally dream of the hologram princess and the wizard who said he’d have to learn to use the Force if he was to come with him to Alderan.

Without the transition introducing that BUT, nothing changes, but in that second act, a new ending is forged.

In a tale with an unhappy ending, the story in act one is hopeful, BUT it’s interrupted, THEREFORE creating an even better situation, EXCEPT dread begins to shine through.

In a tale with a happy ending, the story in act one is hopeless, BUT it’s interrupted, THEREFORE creating an even worse situation, EXCEPT hope begins to shine through.

Belle is a prisoner of the beast, which is a hopeless and lonely situation, EXCEPT she makes friends with the inhabitants of the enchanted castle and Beast makes his first attempts to control his temper.

The negative THEREFORE wrestles with the positive EXCEPT up until the midpoint, at which point that negativity explodes. The Beast’s temper gets the best of him, Belle attempts to escape, an act that will doom Beast to his monstrous form. Her escape is thwarted by wolves, and without rescue, she will die in the woods.

The negativity of the THEREFORE reaches its climax, and is countered with the positivity we’ve seen hinted at in the EXCEPT. Beast saves Belle from the wolves, and instead of leaving Beast to die from his wounds, Belle helps him onto her horse and takes him back to the castle–an act that means her return to the castle as well, another sacrifice, echoing the turning point. Now instead of sacrificing her freedom to save her father, that same sacrifice saves Beast.

Act one asks a question: will Belle be trapped forever as Beast’s prisoner. The midpoint is a failed attempt to answer that question, but then re-contextualizes it in a way that moves us into the second half of act 2. The question is successfully answered at the end of act 2, where its transition is Beast releasing Belle because of his love for her. She is no longer his prisoner, but now he has doomed himself to remain a beast.

Meanwhile, the midpoint asks its own question which is answered in the climax, and that question and answer define the genre of the story. Will Beast and Belle fall in love?

As we’ve seen, however, that question and answer don’t exist in isolation. Act 1 set up a tragic tale of a girl who wants adventure but is doomed to a loveless marriage. The first half of act 2, sets up an even more tragic story where she’s to spend the rest of her life as the prisoner of a literal monster. Hope brings us the possibility that Beast can learn to love and be selfless. That hope is the journey that is the second half of act 2.

The EXCEPT that was hinted at in act 2a develops into its fullness in act 2b, and that EXCEPT is the promise of the story. We were promised a love story between a woman and a monster, and now we get it. In Batman Begins we are promised a story in which, well, Batman begins. We saw hints of that in his training, but at the midpoint he becomes Batman for the first time.

As we transition out of Act 2, we are thrust back into the story of Act 1, but now, our main character has been transformed by the journey of Act 2, and although the interrupted story resumes, its outcome is changed by that transformation.

Before the resolution of the story comes the dark night of the soul, a moment I’ve greatly misunderstood. I shared a recent insight online which led to others sharing their deep knowledge and fundamentally shifting my understanding of story. The driving motivations of the main character are often talked about in terms of their want vs. their need. The dark night of the soul is the climax of the character’s want.

Belle sings about her desire for adventure, but the story shows us her true need is to protect her father. This is extended in her relationship with Beast into a need to protect those she loves.

With want and need, there is also “the lie the character believes.” In this case, I suspect that the lie Belle believes is that her personal sacrifice can save her father. In truth, it nearly destroys him, something she realizes at the end of act 2. Because love has transformed Beast, he releases her to what she wants: freedom to save her father.

Belle has two desires that, for most of the story, are mutually exclusive, and the need that will win out is her protection of her father. It’s in her nature to sacrifice herself for him, even though that’s not what he wants, and it won’t provide the end result she desires. If she hadn’t sacrificed herself to Beast, she would have done so to Gaston and for fundamentally the same reasons.

She has her freedom, but her father is in danger. In saving her father, Beast is put in danger–and although she can’t physically save Beast, her love transforms and restores him.

In her dark night of the soul, she reveals the existence of Beast in order to prove her father’s sanity and once again save him from imprisonment. She is unintentionally sacrificing Beast, but she’s also sacrificing herself once more, because their relationship and her love for him has proven to be her need.

We talk about these events as story beats, and like the beating of a heart, it’s easy to mistake them for a singular moment. Beast “dies” in the end, much the way Baloo “dies” at the end of The Jungle Book, but that instant of seeming tragedy is the climax of the dark night of the soul, not its entirety.

Act 2b is the story’s promise through the EXCEPT, and in the transition into act 3, that promise has a climactic moment but incomplete fulfillment. Beast learns to love and so releases his prisoner. Belle returns home, but either her father is to be doomed to the asylum or she will be doomed to marry Gaston. She escapes both by dooming Beast to an assault by the villagers.

In Batman Begins, the transition into act 3 is the return of Ra’s al Ghul and the plot to destroy Gotham. We’ve had the promise of Batman’s adventures fulfilled, but now, the master he took pity on has returned to doom the city.

The pattern I’ve described has been BUT, THEREFORE, EXCEPT, and now the Act 3 transition brings us to another BUT. The growth of act 2 is interrupted, and the conflict of act 1 resumes. THEREFORE all is lost, EXCEPT the growth in act 2 has changed our characters. That change is what saves the day.

In a sad ending, all that would be reversed. They escape the ruin of act 2b through a transition into hope and, therefore all seems saved, except the character degradation of act 2 becomes the ruin of everything.

This is Jack’s arc in Kubrick’s version of The Shining, but while Jack is the main character, he is not the main protagonist. Danny and Wendy are the co-protagonists, and through them we still have a happy ending.

The movie’s Jack is an abusive father and hateful husband whose natural inclinations are turned up to eleven by the influence of the hotel. If you don’t like the movie, I didn’t either at first, so many years ago, but bear with me all the same.

Act 1 is about getting to know the hotel that will be their home. Through Danny, there’s the warning that the hotel isn’t somewhere they want to be. Wendy believes and hopes Jack won’t go back to drinking and that Danny's injury is a one-time fluke. She’s nervous and covering for Jack in front of the doctor. The family needs a new start, and she’s willing to ignore Danny’s concerns to give the family that chance.

We go into the turning point carrying the dread of what’s to come, but The Shining is a horror movie, so the act 1 transition brings us into a light and hopeful moment.

BUT they take the job. THEREFORE, when act 2 begins with them having been in the hotel for a month, Wendy’s fears seem unfounded and her hopes appear justified. Jacks’ happy. She admits to being afraid of the place at first, but the place has grown on her too.

The first half of The Shining’s second act is about dread replacing that hope. It culminates in Jack’s nightmare and the attack on Danny in room 237, for which Wendy blames Jack. Like Beauty and the Beast, the midpoint is a two-punch: the set up and the turn. Beauty flees only to be trapped by the wolves in her set-up. Jack wakes from a nightmare to be blamed for physically hurting his son. He’s been verbally abusive, but now he feels like the victim.

The turn in these turning points are Beast arriving to rescue Belle and the arrival of Lloyd the ghostly bartender to rescue Jack from his sobriety.

Each of these turning points is bookended. The Beast catches Belle with the magic rose and loses his temper on one side. On the other, the two sit peacefully before the fire as she nurses his wounds. Here, Danny enters room 237 and arrives downstairs covered in bruises. On the other side of the turning point, Wendy arrives with the story that there’s a mad woman in 237, and Jack goes to check it out. These bookends highlight the change the midpoint has brought.

With The Shining, the promise of the movie is Jack’s descent into madness and culminates in the moment that Wendy discovers his manuscript; Jack attacks, and Wendy knocks him upside the head and down the stairs. The personal transformation for Wendy is that she’s forced to face her fears and fight back. She couldn’t do that in act 1, and the story would have been one in which she and Danny don’t survive being locked up with an abusive father and husband. Act 3 returns us to that story, but now Wendy’s better equipped to protect her boy.

A dark night of the soul seems redundant in a horror movie. That being said, I believe it begins with Wendy awakening to Danny screaming “Redrum!” and doesn’t end until she holds Danny again after he emerges triumphant from the hedge maze. She wants to protect her family, but what she needs is to protect her son. Remember that even after the initial fight, she’s still taking care of Jack, promising to send someone back for him.

The turning points that bring us into and out of the second act mirror one another in each movie. Belle is taken prisoner in one and released in the other. Jack has visited the hotel but now he moves in, and this is bookended with the hotel, which has been visiting Jack, now moves into him.

The midpoint asks the question: can Wendy protect her son? The climax answers that in the affirmative. As co-protagonist, Danny does much to save himself, but after defending herself against Jack, she provides the means for Danny’s escape while she’s stuck and within a hair’s breadth of his rage. And Danny survives because of the time he spent with her while Jack was too busy. (He knows the maze and Jack doesn’t.)

As we close this study, it’s important to address the other reason we’re considering the movie version of The Shining instead of the book. The three-act structure can be informative, but it’s more important to film than to literature. Long ago, I read that structure mattered most to plays. Films had a little more wiggle room, and books had even more. Certain events don’t have to happen on a certain page. If you’re stuck or something isn’t working, structure can help, but story reigns supreme, and that can be hard to remember.

Use the tool. Don’t let the tool use you.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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