Spend enough time in a screenwriting classroom, a writer’s room, or right here on Stage32, and you will bump into the three-act structure. It is treated like an unbreakable law of physics. Setup, confrontation, resolution. The bedrock of Syd Field. The gospel of Blake Snyder. This framework assumes a world where actions have clear reactions, where time moves forward, and where a protagonist can solve their problems through decisive action.

I want to argue that this paradigm is failing us. It is obsolete software trying to run a modern operating system, one that underwent a massive update. Streaming algorithms fundamentally reshaped how audiences consume narrative. The linear broadcast schedule died, replaced by an endless, modular scroll. The weekly act break lost its power. Then came the political shocks of 2016 and the rapid rise of algorithmic feeds, moments that effectively shattered our collective belief in linear historical progress. The three-act structure is a relic of an older, more optimistic age. It assumes the world makes sense. We need to retire it.

Dominoes Versus Networked Chaos

Traditional screenplays map causality like a line of falling dominoes. One pushes the next. Our world doesn't work like that anymore. We operate in networked chaos, where causality is non-linear and consequences are distributed. The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once attempts to map this new reality. Its structural logic is closer to what the philosopher Gilles Deleuze called a rhizome. A rhizome has no center, no true beginning or end; any point can connect to any other point.

But the screen demands honesty. Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert do not abandon us to pure structural anarchy. They smuggle in a very traditional humanist anchor to keep the narrative comprehensible: the emotional reconciliation between a mother and daughter.

The Necessary Trojan Horse

Does this disprove my whole argument? Are these writers just brilliantly subverting an old formula rather than inventing a new one?

The answer is both. Radical work relies on the ghost of the old structure to make its deviations meaningful. These new forms do not exist in a vacuum. They gain their power precisely because our brains are wired for the very domino logic they are dismantling. The mother-daughter anchor in Everything Everywhere is the necessary Trojan horse. It is the payment you give the audience to keep them grounded while you completely warp the structure around them.

Building Traps Instead of Ladders

Even when contemporary screenwriters stick closer to the old blueprint, they use it to build traps rather than ladders. Think back to the golden age of prestige TV that paved the way for the current era. Shows like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos still relied heavily on escalation. Walter White climbed a ladder of violence. Tony Soprano circled a drain of anxiety. Both used modified three-act structures across their seasons.

Jesse Armstrong's Succession (2018 to 2023) uses those exact same mechanics to expose individual agency as a lie, but the real target of his critique is the audience.

The three-act structure trains us to expect a satisfying payoff for individual grit. We spend four seasons watching the machinery of a definitive climax being built, eagerly anticipating a singular winner. Armstrong uses our own expectations to set a bear trap. When Tom Wambsgans wins through total passivity and systemic inertia, and Shiv Roy immediately reverses her decisive third act choice in the back of a car, Armstrong isn't just denying the characters catharsis. He is denying it to us. He proves that individual choice is a fiction when you are trapped inside a system, and he uses our deep-seated faith in the three-act structure to make us feel that trap closing.

Time as a Space You Can Scroll Through

The 2022 adaptation of Pachinko discards linear chronology entirely. Watching it feels like keeping too many browser tabs open. You exist in 1910s Korea and 1980s Japan simultaneously. History does not march forward here. It just exists. It hovers in the margins of the screen.

Director Kogonada discards the strict, forward moving chronology of traditional screenwriting for what we might call an algorithmic chronotope. The show bounces between eras not to build toward a twist or a temporal reunion, but to treat time as a space you can scroll through. A jar of kimchi in the 1980s mirrors a moment in the 1930s. The structure mimics the way we actually process history and memory now. We jump between contexts based on thematic resonance rather than chronological sequence. There is no central climax because the show is not built on escalation. It is built on accrual. The turning points are not actions taken by the characters, but visual intersections that shift our understanding of the family's trauma.

Toward Topological Screenwriting

So where does a working screenwriter go from here? If the three-act structure is failing us, what do we replace it with?

We need to start thinking about topological screenwriting. Topology is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved through continuous deformation.

Think of a coffee mug and a donut. Structurally, they are the same shape because they both have one hole. You can stretch and mold one into the other without tearing it.

In a topological narrative, the shape of the story can stretch, warp, and loop across timelines or dimensions, but the underlying emotional fabric holds together. This requires a fundamental shift in how you outline. In a traditional script, a turning point is an action. The protagonist makes a choice. The plot pivots. In a topological script, a turning point is an intersection. It is a sudden realization of scale.

Imagine you are outlining a thriller. A traditional three-act approach dictates that the midpoint raises the stakes by introducing a new obstacle. A topological approach dictates that the midpoint pulls the camera back. It shows the protagonist they are not moving down a straight line at all, but are trapped inside a loop or a system. You do not advance the plot. You reveal the shape of the prison. You stretch the donut into a mug, but the emotional truth remains intact.

Your Audience Is Already Ready for the Donut

Screenwriting theory is currently stuck in a defensive crouch. Development executives still ask for page-ten inciting incidents and page-fifty-five midpoints because it provides a false sense of security. But the writers creating the most vital screen work of the past decade are already bypassing this structure. They are warping it into a trap in Succession, stretching it across multiple timelines in Pachinko, and grounding chaotic webs in simple emotional anchors in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

The audience is already primed for these new structural logics. They scroll through non-linear feeds every single day. Their brains are ready for the donut. It is time our screenwriting pedagogy stopped forcing the clay into a rigid, outdated mug.

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Got an idea for a post? Or have you collaborated with Stage 32 members to create a project? We'd love to hear about it. Email Ashley at blog@stage32.com and let's get your post published!

Please help support your fellow Stage 32ers by sharing this on social. Check out the social media buttons at the top to share on Instagram @stage32 , Twitter @stage32 , Facebook @stage32 , and LinkedIn @stage-32 .