Three-act structure template

• Act I — ordinary world, want and need, inciting incident, debate, plot point 1.
• Act II — new world, first attempt, midpoint, consequences, all is lost, plot point 2.
• Act III — the plan, the climax, the resolution, and the image that shows the change.
• Notes — threads to plant and pay off, characters who need an arc, scenes you suspect are filler.

1. Download the file.
2. Open the editor, choose Import, and pick the .md file — or open it in Obsidian, Typora or any text editor.
3. Replace the italic prompts with your own text. Leave the ones you cannot answer as questions; those are the beats that need thinking, and they are more useful visible than absent.
4. Write the draft in a separate document. Revise the outline after the draft; the first version is a hypothesis.

An outline is a document you will edit for months and open in whatever tool is to hand. Markdown is a text file that survives every app change, diffs cleanly if you keep it in Git, and imports into the editor without conversion. It also prints as a plain list if you want a page beside the keyboard.

It will not tell you whether the story is any good, and it is not a beat sheet with page numbers — those belong to screenwriting. If you outline by moving index cards, a tool with a corkboard (Scrivener) will serve you better than a file; the Scrivener alternatives page is blunt about that.

• Character profile — want, need, the lie they believe, and the arc.
• Essay outline — thesis, evidence, counterargument, conclusion.