# Do different act structures have an impact on audience appreciation of a story?

**URL:** <https://discuss.dramatica.com/t/do-different-act-structures-have-an-impact-on-audience-appreciation-of-a-story/885>\
**Category:** Dramatica Theory\
**Created:** [February 13, 2017, 3:26am UTC](https://discuss.dramatica.com/t/do-different-act-structures-have-an-impact-on-audience-appreciation-of-a-story/885 "2017-02-13T03:26:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Audz](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex010/user_avatar/discuss.dramatica.com/audz/32/2061_2.png) [@Audz](https://discuss.dramatica.com/u/Audz)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 3:26am UTC](https://discuss.dramatica.com/t/do-different-act-structures-have-an-impact-on-audience-appreciation-of-a-story/885/1 "2017-02-13T03:26:08Z")

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Hey all!

I was reading through back-entries on this site (as you do) and came across an interesting post about how act structure works in Dramatica:

> **[What is the significance of the "Plot Progression Visualizations/ Dynamic Act...](https://discuss.dramatica.com/t/what-is-the-significance-of-the-plot-progression-visualizations-dynamic-act-schematics/257?u=audz)**
>
> Many of the story analyses on the site have diagrams at the bottom labeled “Plot Progression Visualizations/ Dynamic Act Schematics”. They seem to visually describe the story’s OS, MC, IC and RS throughlines within the 4 act structure. But beyond...

So I think it’s fascinating that Dramatica can predict linear act structure for a Grand Argument Story based on a complete storyform, given the progression of various throughlines as either bump-bumb-bump, bump-slide-bump, or slide-bump-slide, leading to either a four act structure, a three act structure, or a two-act structure, but I’m still wondering what to make of this information; i.e. what is the consequence from the point of view of Audience Appreciation of structuring a story in one of these three ways (two, three, or four acts, respectively)?

There seemed to be some suggestion in that initial post chain (if I remember correctly) that we might term hairpin-based structures (slide-bump-slide) as “rise-fall” narratives, which makes a certain amount of sense, but which also seems a bit prescriptive (must all such narratives feel like they end “down,” so to speak?). And I’m all on board for four-act structures “feeling” more episodic then three act structures would, but still-- I wonder if there might be deeper implications to picking one of these structures over another for a given storyform. Perhaps three-act structures feel more subjectively “close” to the characters than four act structures do, for example. No idea, just spitballing, but I’m curious to hear other thoughts!

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**Author:** ![jhull](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex010/user_avatar/discuss.dramatica.com/jhull/32/3_2.png) [@jhull](https://discuss.dramatica.com/u/jhull)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 7:58pm UTC](https://discuss.dramatica.com/t/do-different-act-structures-have-an-impact-on-audience-appreciation-of-a-story/885/2 "2017-02-20T19:58:40Z")

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“Rise-fall” can also be “fall-rise”. My experience so far is that three-act structures do not feel more subjectively “close” to characters than four-act structures. In fact, it seems like I run into more and more predominantly two-act structures than anything else.