The Rule of Three: What It Is & How to Use It (Writing Advice)
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- Опубліковано 28 лип 2024
- Learn how the Rule of Three can enhance your scenes and stories.
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NOTE: What I talked about today is how the Rule of Three applies to elements that appear/reappear over the course of a scene/story/series.
The Rule of Three can also apply to elements that we see instantly. Things like characters (Three Little
Pigs, Three Musketeers), symbols (the Triforce in Zelda), and themes/phrases ("See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil").
I'm really digging these vids, Brandon. I appreciate you helping out the writing community. I've included (hidden) SW and LotR elements in my stories. Live long and prosper, dude.
"Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out."
One, Two, ... Five
This also applies with Garten of Banban.
Man you get me with that opening line every time. “Get ready, because…”. It always makes me feel unprepared for what I’m about to watch. I think from now on, I should probably get ready for you to say “get ready” right out of the gate. You know, sorta like a pre-get ready get ready. Thanks Brandon!
Hahaha these videos should come with a health warning
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty 🤣. The risk is worth the reward. I’d probably be lost in the writing process without these videos. Keep them coming, I’ll just try to be more prepared next time.
Thanks! Glad the videos are helping
Get ready to get ready!
Whenever he says "Get ready, because.." I really get more excited to watch the video and thwarts my laziness. Wish he was my friend in my daily life so that whenever I feel lazy to write or do anything he will be like "Get ready, because.." and I will jump out of my bed to really get ready to work...lol
In almost every shooting battle (mixed with car/motor/fighter jet chase),
the first shot totally misses the target,
the second shot almost hits the target,
and the third try hits the target and destroys it,
which is quite satisfying this way.
One of my favorite movie: 'Gattaca'. We see the doctor analyze Vincent's DNA. The first time shows us how Vincent's 'trick' is a daily thing. The second time Vincent is forced to falsify the results under pressure and the third time we discover that the doctor always knew that he was in-valid. This made that last time extremely powerful.
(sorry for my English, I'm Italian. I love your channel!
I think it's because 3 represents completion.
A single instance of something doesn't achieve anything important.
2 times establishes a relationahip.
3 is a pattern, and the brain can feel it as finished.
I've found out that 4 times triggers something in the brain that accomplishes the complete opposite of 3, and it's that instead of completing something, it makes it incomplete. I dont know why, but once you see 4 of something it just feels odd.
5 and more times is just repetition
I've seen recommendations that mixing in 2, 4, 5, etc. can keep the rule of 3 from getting stale. Especially if you're writing a sentence that includes a list of items: "The walls were smeared with mud, grease, blood. The floor was covered in broken glass, burger wrappers, cigarette butts, and what looked like ripped-off pencil erasers."
As a GM (Game Master) the over-reliance on the "Rule of 3" makes the adventures PREDICTABLE, which (at least for a practicing GM) is a death-knell to a Campaign. Players INVEST in books, dice, notepads, gaming screens, and snacks to bring to the Table... They're DESPERATE for something different enough to be worth that time... SO you've GOT to keep them on their toes, or the Game deteriorates or breaks up and is forgotten...
Similarly for "serials" or TV-plots. If you're on a Novel, then 3 is probably fine. Same with a short story... BUT if you're filling out a beat-sheet to write a screenplay, you're already in the deep end of a saturated market on THE most popular medium at hand. SO again, being too predictable can work against you... Switching things up so that once in a while it IS "odd" or gives a feeling of "off" just enough to keep the audience on their toes will bring a refreshing sense to your storytelling...
We are humans... and as humans, no matter how comfortable we are with something as a pattern, we LIKE surprises. ;o)
There's a saying, "One is an accident, two is a coincidence and three is a pattern".
@@brianedwards7142 yeah, that too 🤔🤔
In music the most common is to repeat something 2, 4, 8 or 16 times. Those numbers appear a lot in contemporary music at least. Hearing something twice makes it feel complete, and three times incomplete again until you add a fourth. I guess there are differences from one kind of art to the other in this kind of things.
I think a good example is the game "Devil May Cry 3". The protagonist Dante fights his twin brother three times:
First encounter: Dante loses, which awakens the devil inside of him
Second encounter: They are equal in strength and the fight is interrupted before one can win
Third encounter: Dante finally wins and he mourns the loss of his brother
What's really interesting is that the human brain is so good at pattern recognition that two examples is enough to set up the pattern, which is what gives the third one its impact.
I love your tutorials. Straight to the point. Nothing unnecessary. I've never had to scroll through the intros in your videos, which only proves how great you are at building scripts and that it's worth absorbing your knowledge in building a structure. Thank you and best regards!
The rule of three
Always three there are. A master and a diciple...and the secret deciple of the diciple.
It's true for phrases as well. "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" is better than "the truth and nothing but the truth" or "the truth, the whole truth, the exact truth, and nothing but the truth". For some reason 3 of something is the sweet spot. It's why trilogies are better than tetralogies or another number.
Absolutely. The Rule of 3 is a great technique to use on the sentence-level when writing prose or dialogue
"Truth, Justice, and the American way." I can't unsee it now.
Does your favorite movie contain an example of the Rule of Three? Let us know!
Great tutorial and it really shows how incredible the original trilogy was. I've always been aware of the rule of three intuitively, but being conscious of it, crafting it carefully, can truly create a deeper connection between the story and the reader I never considered before. Thank you for this.
Thanks for watching!
In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin cuts off Dooku's head in the first act, then Mace Windu's hands in the second act, and finally he gets his limbs cut off by Obi-Wan in the final act.
I think, in Jaws, there are three conversations between Brody and the Mayor about shutting down the beaches. The first one is after the first death, of the woman at the beginning, the second is on the ferry, where Brody is told to say its a boating accident, and the third one is Just before Quint takes Brody and Hooper out on the Orca, where the Mayor is cracking up, and realises he should have shut the beaches.
Brandon, I have been watching your channel for a couple of months, and the thing that consistently impresses me is how useful your advice is. I have read a lot of writing how to articles, and some are good but most are mediocre to bad. Your videos are more useful than most because your advice feels more organic and less like someone building a "mousetrap" device to write a story, concoct a plot, write dialogue or create a meaningful character. I have started taking notes on your videos because of the richness and brevity of your teachings. Keep up the great work. (and I bought your books.)
I love this channel. It has been such a massive help. You cover so many specifics that make me go "I was looking for that!".
Cheers, mate.
Thrilled to hear it! Thanks for watching
Thanks for another insightful video Brandon. Got me thinking a lot about this rule now. I liked your Star Wars lightsaber example with the sacrifice layer. I can see a similar formula with the Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame snaps. First Thanos snaps in IW; then he tells young Gamora that his “snap” cost him everything. Then Professor Hulk snaps in Endgame to bring everyone back, but this snaps costs the life of Black Widow through her self-sacrifice, Hulk’s arm which is injured severely, and the opportunity for Thanos to travel to the future and destroy Avengers HQ. Finally, Tony Stark snaps away Thanos and his armies to save the universe, but in doing so recognizes that this action will cost his own life. You could also make a case that a fourth snap (second chronologically) executed by Thanos in the beginning of Endgame also qualifies because he sacrifices the stones so that his actions cannot be undone. He even states that this snap almost killed him, foreshadowing the outcome of the movie’s climax. This snap doesn’t quite carry the weight, cinematically, as the others, but it does demonstrate the severity of the snap. To recap, the audience witnesses the devastation and power of the first snap, the finality and hopelessness of the second snap (if you count it), the hope and success to bring everyone back from the third snap, and the ultimate victory and heroism of the fourth snap. All with their own set of sacrifices, the most powerful and emotional being the “I am Ironman” snap.
I think the line "love you 3000" from Endgame is also a good example, only in a smaller scale. The callbacks when done well feel amazing despite its stakes. Another example is in the 2015 movie Room. In the beginning of the movie the young boy says hi to all the furniture and stuff in the small room, then at the end he says good bye to the same things, or whatever's left of it. It made for a very powerful scene imo. My favorite use of this is probably in T2, with the whole asta la vista, no problemo type lines. it wasn't necessarily said 3 times but it still worked.
Yeah, I can't remember how often T2 used "Hasta la vista/No problemo" but there's no denying the impact of the late-game payoff with that one
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty Yeah, I meant it in a smaller scale. Not in a direct impact with plot, but more of a nice callback. It doesn't have much of an impact on the story itself but still makes the moment more memorable. The dialogues themselves weren't used that many times, I think, but the banter/chemistry between the characters itself was and it carried on throughout the movie resulting in a very satisfying ending. I haven't seen Starwars so I wasn't fully sure I understood what you meant in the video but I hope I was close.
This technically isn’t a movie, but I still think that the rule of three applies here. In super Mario 64 you have three different encounters with Bowser. And I think the game does a good job here. The first time you face Bowser in the game is very easy he doesn’t do much other than walk slowly, occasionally breathe fire and jump. All you have to do is swing him by the tail into one of the bombs on the side of the map and you win.
The second time you face Bowser is in a different setting and he’s learned 2 new moves. If you’re too far away from him, he can run at you, and at the start of the encounter, he jumps really high lands on the platform and the platform shifts to a vertical angle, and you have to run in the opposite direction in order to stay on. It’s still the same. You have to swing him by the tail onto one of the bombs on the side of the map in order to win only this it’s harder to get behind him as he moves a bit faster when turning. I take this encounter as it’s telling you that it’s gonna get harder each time you encounter him.
And then the last time your face him is once again a different setting and this time he has two different moves. He can jump up high like last time, but instead of bending the platform down, he sends a shockwave across-the-board. If he shoots fire up into the air, it splits into little puffs across the map making it harder to maneuver. Not to mention, running behind him is darn near impossible because of how fast he turns. Just like the last time he can still run at you if you get too far away. And the platform you’re standing on, can fall apart if he lands on certain spots. Just like last time, you have to swing him by the tail into the bombs but this time you have to do it three times in order to win. After you’ve done it twice he stomps on the ground and breaks the platform so it’s no longer a circle, it’s a star shaped platform now. This makes it especially difficult to swing him into the bombs, because there is no bomb that’s near an edge, by that I mean one of the points on the stars, you have to actually throw him and hope he lands on a bomb. Once you’ve done that, you win. The ending of the game is initiated and this game gives you a heck of a good ending. I don’t know it just feels like a complete journey to me.
I'd like to point out that comedy is very beholden to this rule and I direct you to Arrested Development for a never-ending supply of examples.
Very useful video, and I love it when you use Star Wars as a reference. Everyone knows it.
Brandon is right. It's because the 3rd time is the charm...
Superman 2 has 3 big bads in the end.
In The Last Boyscout, Bruce Willis got sucker punched twice, then killed the guy on the third incident.
In Nutty Professor, Sherman was introduced to Buddy on the first drink of the serum.
The second drink he started having fun.
By the third drink he had figured out how to get rid of Sherman forever.
In Kill Bill, the bride is introduced to the wooden boards and it hurts her hands.
Her intermediate stage shows her unbothered by the pains.
Her last interaction with the boards is when she breaks through the coffin.
There are 3 storms in Big Trouble in Little China.
If I remember correctly, in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, the invention destroyed an apple on the first zap, inadvertently shrunk a couch, then finally shrunk the kids when they walked in on it turned on...
In Set it Off, they robbed the first bank nervously, robbed the second bank with confidence, and by the third bank they were ambushed.
My favourite Star Wars film. I like when you make example of it. Great channel.
Thanks!
Great example Brandon! Thanks. I always look forward to your videos. I read somewhere that psychologically, the rule of three goes: One time is nothing. A bird flies into your living room window and breaks its neck and dies. Okay, weird, but that kind of stuff happens. Twice is a coincidence. The next day, it happens again. Man, that's weird. Did I clean my windows really well? Do I need to put a sticker up or something? Three times, that means something. It's intentional (at least in fiction). Another bird died today. Wow! What's going on? I'm starting to get a little creeped out!
Spot-on example
In the Dark Knight I was annoyed that we only got 2 stories about how the Joker got his scars. I really felt like we needed a third one.
Lucky thing Luke was the third to do the trench run. So he didn't have to establish danger or prove how hard it was or anything
I love this because it helps with "throwing rocks" but you know there's a defined, timed payoff for it, i.e. Try/Fail; Try/Fail; Try/Succeed.
This is the top UA-cam writing tips channel, but I really wish you would use more examples from actual written works and fewer movie examples. After all, it's the writing we are here for :)
And there is a similar rule,
I don't know its name, it can be something like
"Rule of showing only the SECOND instance":
If a character spills drink into 2 glasses for a lady and for himself, it would be too long and boring to show both events,
so only the spilling of the 2nd drink is shown (it's even edited so that only the END of the 2nd spilling is shown),
and then the character gives one glass to the lady, and they can drink.
This method keeps the story fast, the boring parts are not shown unnecessarily.
Aliens: first encounter in the sub-basement, second encounter in Operations, third encounter takes two parts, first in the Queen's chamber (not really a fight, just the setup) and then the fight aboard the Sulaco.
What a great video.. makes me appreciate the OT so much more, and gives me a lot of ideas for my story. Thank you!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
As a Sith Lord myself, I only respect the Rule of Two
I used to thought it was only two times, the introduction and the payoff so when you are at an important scene you avoid a Deus-Ex Machine because you introduced something before so it doesn't come out of nowhere
Great video, thank you!
Only three there are. No more. no less.
Thanks Brandon. You always present such useful tips, and the "Rule of Three" is no exception. I think it could be a powerful technique in my own writing, but I'm afraid it might be possible to overuse it. At some point the reader might catch on to the game.
I suppose one's own intuition should be one's guide, here, and I suppose you could just avoid using the Rule of Three for the same class of element more than once. For example, use it just once for objects and just once for lines of dialog or for setting, etc. Maybe I just answered my own question:) Anyway, maybe you could add something to this?
Thanks! If you're worried about overusing the Ro3, try mixing in the Rule of 4/5/etc. now and then
Not just my favourite ...they all do.
Bro I didn’t know the Sith updated the rule of two to be more modern
Can see the Rule of Three introduced in critically-aclaimmed anime series such as Steins;Gate.
Okabe leads the development towards the construction of a time-leap machine, but is confronted by the grim aspect or the potential danger that comes with recklessly dealing with trying to play God with the world through time traveling.
Okabe is first led to be aware of this by:
1) Introduction: Human is dead - Okabe and Daru, his sidekick, hacks into CERN to make use of their LHC to compress data that is equivalent to the size of the brain. They stumbled upon confidential documents that were found to be the results of previous time traveling experiments. The result? Anyone who traveled inside Kerr Black Holes are killed in the process due to being compressed into a gelatin like substance. Basically a reference on how useless information could come out of a black hole that cannot be analyzed at all means.
2) Develop - Two consecutive death threat messages - Okabe receives two anonymous messages that turned to disturbing despite being vague due to implying that he was crossing dangerous territory. The images sent adds the horror too.
3) Payoff - Now comes the end, where this "dark side" reveals itself and nonchalantly kills Okabe's closent friend, which also turned out to be the biggest reason why Okabe started to act like a mad scientist in the first place. By taking what was the most precious to him, he is then given an epiphany on the consequences of dwelling into the forbidden side of science in a casual manner without taking things seriously. To punish him more, he realizes through time leaping to the past 48 hours ago again and again and again, that his friend's death is deterministic due to causality.
Thanks. I knew about this in marketing but never considered it can also be powerful in narrative works.
Yep, it can apply to anything where information is transferred to an audience
the last of us
-joel fails to protect his daughter during the apocalypse
-joel is cold to ellie, eventually becomes protective of her
-joel carries ellie much like he did his daughter and saves her by killing the fire flies
The Three Musketeers, Honor, Love, Wealth, Athos, Aramis, Porthos, Revenge, Duty, Power , Milady, Rochefort, Richlieu. Introduce - Queens Necklace, Develop - Assasination of Buckingham, Payoff - The sentencing of Milady.
This is helpful advice, however I think that it is hard to accomplish for new authors (or like I like to call myself, wannabe author) because we have little to no experience. For example, I want to introduce a new magic system in my work. The problem is how do I do that? How can I introduce it? How much information can I give to the audience? How can I develop it; how can I expand the magic system (I am aware this part is very subjective and cannot easily be answered) and what is considered a satisfying payoff?
I guess the latter two rules are easier to write since they solely rely on the introduction and development respectively, but I assume the rule of three can succeed only if the introduction is done right?
Introducing and executing a magic system will depend on the story and the writer... Best advice I can give you is to try and fail in your own writing. Write a story with a magic system and see how it works in practice; then seek beta-readers for feedback and learn from your mistakes. You'll likely struggle with it, but you'll learn from those mistakes and write better magic systems over time.
Another thing... You don't have to limit your magic system to the Rule of 3. It can be the Rule of 17 if you need to develop it again and again before the final payoff---just make sure you don't bore your audience with repetition.
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty thank you
Great channel! My question: how do you describe your MC in an immersive POV without having them do the cliche of looking in a mirror?
Have the character look at someone else and do a comparison ("My sister has the same wiry hair as me, but she dyes it blonde...")
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty brilliant, thanks.
Can you do a video on a trio of characters?
Maximum effort
Love your videos
If I could suggest a topic, could you give advice on writing war stories?
What specifically would you like to see in such a video?
I find the two hardest parts of a good war story are:
1. Giving the characters a good tie to the war plot.
2. The structure of how a war unfolds and shapes the world .
For context, my MC is a soldier who will eventually defect because he realizes the corruption of his leaders. He is then branded a deserter and hunted by many of the characters who used to be his close friends.
Thanks Brandon your advice is always concise and very helpful
@@jeielcool Thanks! I'll see if I can come up with a good video for this
Where would we see this in the Fellowship of the Ring?
The 3 Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo and Chico) were better when the 4th (Zeppo) left the act. Zeppo appears in their first two films, but he didn't really add anything. For real low brow, the 3 Stooges. Always 3 - there was always Larry and Moe - the 3rd Stooge was a key element.
You know, I watched the first Star Wars lots of times along the years, but I get really annoyed about how non-sensical the torpedo shot to destroy the Death Star works. I mean, it is a hole on the surface of the space station, and the rebels are supposed to shot parallel to the surface and it works?!? The torpedo basically gives a 90 degree turn towards the hole?!? It would make much more sense if the rebel fighters needed to approach the hole from its perpendicular, and it would make it risk because, say, there were a lot of turrets and there was almost no opening or blind spot. Or, alternatively, if they really wanted to keep the trench run, the exhaust port could be in the dead end of a trench, so the hole would be on a wall perpendicular to the "ground" here, and the fighters could simple shot straight ahead.
You're an awesome teacher. Do you do any zoom classes? Or personal one on ones?
Thank you! I only do UA-cam at this time
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty thanks for the vids and keep them coming bro! Much appreciated
Mike from NYC
@@Michaelmuq Thanks! Please tell others about the channel
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty will do
Harry Potter and magic, multi-layer rules of 3
Wait... Darth Vader is Luke's father!!?!! 😮
😂
#SpoilerAlert
thanks for spoiling it! 😡
😄
Love this channel, although I hope you will use less examples of Star Wars in the future (sorry, not my cup of tea 😉)
Thanks! SW is my go-to, but I'll keep that in mind
it took chapter 3 in my comic to set the tone lmao
Haha there you go. It even applies to your writing process