#serial fiction is unlikely to fit into the ninety minute three act screenplay box. it may have smaller chunks that do

[its-the-blob]

when i took math courses in college, we did a lot of proofs. so how proofs work (I am simplifying this extremely because I am not really a 'math person'. i am just a girl who doesn't trust professors and wanted to take a lot of courses with completely objective grading criteria) - if a thing in math is always true, you write out a bunch of logical statements and construct an argument that shows the thing must always be true. but if you can come up with even one mathematically valid example where the thing stated in the proof doesn't have to be true, you can't prove the statement, because it's not always true. those were my favorite proof assignments because they were short. you write something like (hypothetically) 'I found a situation where 2+2 will equal 5 so i'm not socratically examining this thing for you it's fake' and turn it in and get an A. it's great

anyway this post is about fiction writing, because pretty much any time ever that I see someone confidently assert 'stories always have to do x thing!' (the key word is the always, or the never, or similarly absolutist phrasing) I can find a situation where a work didn't do that thing and it was wildly successful in any way you want to measure success. the thing stated in the proof doesn't have to be true. there is no proof.

There is no 'always' in any art form. There are things that are much more or less likely to be successful, but there are no mathematical proof equivalents. When I see people claiming there are, I usually get the impression that they are relatively new to the craft, and just discovered a new trick, and got excited about it, and that's wonderful!!! And whatever technique they're talking about is probably a really handy one, and they're worth listening to- to an extent. But now they're telling everyone to follow this important new rule they've just discovered. for every story. But that may not be the right choice for a myriad of reasons (an author may not want the effect that technique produces, that effect is achievable other ways, etc).

'Ackshully' some of you may say. 'I am a published author and I've been writing twenty years and' well you just told me (as a random example, totally not thinking of save the cat) there's always a big crisis in the second act of every story, all of them. even though an 'act', itself, is usually a wobbly term because if the work didn't put in act division labels- or even if it did in some cases- different people could look at the end product and reasonably divide it up in different ways. So that makes me suspect a) if you really believe that you're a hack b) if you don't really believe that, you're a grifter selling fake knowledge to people trying to get started with the craft, Or, c) you're not good at teaching writing because teaching and writing are different skills and that's ok, but you should stop teaching. 👍or consider recruiting a statler and waldorf style duo to point out whenever you're wrong