Here’s a simple way to remember the basics of Act II: Part 1—the second quarter of your book or script:
Team, Training, Tests
THE TEAM is the friends, relatives, colleagues, and/or experts that will help the hero/ine get their DESIRE.
The hero/ine’s TEAM will be introduced in the second act if they haven’t already been introduced in Act I—and Act II:1 is where we’ll get to know and love them.
In fact there is often an entire sequence you could call ASSEMBLING THE TEAM, which often comes early in the second act: the hero/ine has a task and lines up a group of specialists to get it done. Action movies, spy movies, and caper movies very often have this step, and it often lasts a whole sequence. But this can go for any genre! There’s almost always a sense of assembling a team in the first act or first half of the second act.
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