Welcome back, writers! It’s Monday again, and Emancipation Day atop that! Which is a new enough holiday that I think I’ll just forgo any break and work like normal. Especially since I really want to be writing Axtara – Magic and Mayhem right now.
But I can’t do that today until we’ve gotten today’s Being a Better Writer post up, so we’re going to dive in here and get talking about writing.
Well, almost. First, I am going to respond to a comment but make it a full bit of the “news” catchup. Last week in the update post I noted that I’d started the opening of Axtara 2 over, setting aside the first two chapters I’d written in favor of a smoother, hopefully better opening and recap. Which led to a comment from a reader asking if they would possibly see that cut content put up on Patreon as a supporter reward. And to that I say … Maybe.
Effectively, I say this because some of the opening is getting recycled, while some is getting reborn in a way that is far different to how it appeared in the first go around. In other words, sharing that content might introduce new side characters that in the new version behave very differently, or moments that are much smoother in exploration with the current Axtara 2 draft. So while I’m not saying “No” at all … I am saying “Wait a bit longer.” I need to get further into this draft of Axtara 2 to know what’s well and truly gone, and has no harm in sharing, and what would merely be a spoiler for the actual book, which I’d rather save until we’re close to Axtara’s next adventure coming out.
So yeah, not quite yet. There are a few smaller pieces of it that, depending on the next few chapters of the current draft, however, will either be worth sharing in the original form, or just as they came up in the current project.
However … if you Patreon Supporters are itching for more Axtara content, I would hint that you may want to go over to Patreon and type “Ryax” into the search bar for my posts, whereupon you’ll be given all four parts of A Trial for a Dragon, a short story (for given definitions of short; it’s about 60 pages) set in the Axtara universe following our banker’s older brother Ryax. I know, I know, it’s not the loveable banker, but … Well, let’s just say I’d want to read A Trial for a Dragon before reading Axtara 2. It’s not key, but it’s certainly a bonus (and I’m already looking at ways to get A Trial for a Dragon out into the world before Axtara 2 hits.
Okay, that ended up being more news than I planned. Let’s dive into today’s post, then.
So, today’s post actually went on the list due to another Being a Better Writer post. A few months back, many of you will recall a very unique post on “Nintendo’s Rule of Three” and how it could be applied to writing. Which is a fantastic post you should definitely read (more on that in a bit), but it also at the time of writing prompted a quick check of the BaBW archives and a note made on the next Topic List of “Hey, cover the classic bit on three being a “magic number.”
This only became more amusingly apparent when another site linked to the post on “Nintendo’s Rule of Three,” encouraging people to read it, only for a large discussion of sorts to start in the comments from a host of people who all quickly made it apparent that they hadn’t read the post, but thought it was discussing three being a “magic number.”
Which, I stress again, it was not, at least not in this way. Go check that post out if you haven’t, because it’s an interesting one. Or at least open it in a new tab to read after we tackle today’s topic. Which we’re going to hit right after the jump, and that’s now.
So this is a bit of an odd topic, since it isn’t as if there’s an actual rule that says “Hey, things come in threes.” No one is going to teach you that in a writing class, save with the exception of a three-act structure.
And yet, three as a number shows up all over in fiction and storytelling. Classical fairy tales and myths, even across cultures, for example, often have the protagonist face a trial three times, or three different trials, or meet with their obstacle three times … etc etc.
It’s a common theme. Sometimes we notice it, such as when a prince is given three trials by a king, and then three rewards, etc etc, but sometimes it’s not quite as apparent but still there, such as when a character repeats an action three times over the course of a chapter in different ways, but each time showing the same skill. Or repeats an arc phrase three times. Or names a character.
We could fill this post with examples, too. From classical fairytales to myths to movies to games, three is a number that shows up everywhere.
So what is it with this sort of repetition? Why three?
Well, I thought about various ways to put this, but then it was actually another comment on the topic I saw that I believe put best to explain why three is such a common “theme number” across fiction (as well as reality). Because three is the smallest number you can have that implies a repeating pattern.
Once? It’s just something that happened. Twice? Well, the second time could have been a fluke. But a third time?
In addition, this third time is also what we as humans seem “wired” to react to. There are a lot of posts on this topic who note that “three” for a lot of brains gets our mind to pay attention and remember it. Hear someone’s name once, and it’s a name. Hear it twice, and our mind takes note but that’s it. Three times, however (and according to some; realize that what I’m saying here is far from an exact science) seems to trigger something in the human mind that says “take notice.” Which probably ties into this “this is the smallest pattern you can have by math” bit, but it means that as humans, we seem inclined to want to see things come in at least threes.
Which, if you’ve read mythology, folklore, and fairy tale from around the world … really seems to pan out. Cultures that are thousands of miles apart, with no contact between them, will have stories and tales in which a protagonist sets out on some journey and faces three trials, or must overcome three obstacles, or face some other variation of the number three. Which again, seems to support that our brains are wired to see this sort of “threeness.” We like threes.
But why? From a story context, why three? What makes three trials before a “happily ever after” more gripping than two trials, or even one trial?
A quick aside here: I’m not saying every story will have “three trials,” but it may inside that trial have “three encounters,” or “three moments of conflict,” etc. We really like this number. Sands, for fun take a look at some short stories you enjoy and really remember, and you may find that if you count up little bits and pieces of the story, a lot of them come in threes.
So then, why the three. Why three trials, or three conflicts, three stages to a conflict, etc? Why not just one and done?
I think it goes back to this “pattern” thing mentioned earlier. If our protagonist goes out and faces one obstacle and overcomes it, then gets the reward, our brains are inclined to think “cool, they got the reward, and that’s that.”
What if they face two obstacles? Well, sure, maybe they got their “happily ever after,” but we still might think “Well, you did it. Okay.”
But three? Three is a pattern. Three tells us, in some way, that the protagonist would keep overcoming obstacles. That if a fourth exists after the end of the story, or a fifth, or a sixth, they’ll try to overcome that too.
It’s that pattern reinforcement. If our protagonist stands up for the little guy once, it suggests that they might do such the next time, and it lays a groundwork in our audience’s brain in that favor, but it doesn’t prove they will. When they do a second time, we now have two examples of them doing a thing, but that’s still not proof to our brain that the behavior will continue.
Three is a pattern. Three says that our protagonist values standing up for the little guy when it happens, and they’re going to keep doing it. It suggests that even when we’re not looking, that behavior will hold true.
Okay, that’s a lot of words for what’s actually pretty straightforward: Three’s a pattern, and we like patterns, as they tell our brain “Hey, this will keep being like this.”
So then, with that in mind, three really is kind of a “magic number,” so … How can we use this in our writing? How can we make this “magic number” work for us?
The obvious answer is, of course, to just drop threes into our plot. Three challenges, three acts, etc. But that’s the easy answer.
What if we want to utilize this in a, shall we say, smoother fashion? How can we use this concept of three being a “magic number” outside of obvious answers?
For example, how could we use it to punch up an action sequence? Well, rather than just saying “action here” we could consider how we’re going to use threes to make the action memorable. If three of something implies a pattern but sticks in a reader’s head, we could use that to make something about an action sequence stand out.
For example, let’s do … a car chase. Our protagonist is fighting in the back of a truck while another character is driving. Now, what elements do we want our reader to remember? Obviously we can do one-off moments of dialogue and scene, but what if we want the harrowing terror of the careening vehicle to stand out? Well, we could, during the fight, in three different ways, show how chaotic the screeching vehicle is. For example, we could have the protagonist grab onto the side of the truck as they screech around a corner, then later be thrown to the side and barely recover (along with whoever they’re fighting if it’s a fist-fight) as the truck does this a second time, and then third we could have the vehicle go over a bump and throw everything in the back into the air.
Each of these could be a line or even just a reaction from the protagonist as they do battle, and we could continue to have references to the truck’s motion here and there, but with three of them, the reader’s brain would go ‘Hey, there’s a pattern to this vehicle weaving all over.”
Do we want our character to demonstrate some aspect of their personality? We can reinforce it by having it be shown or told or given in three different ways. None of these have to be the same, mind, as long as the core thing they represent is given. Going back to the old fairy tales, the point of a protagonist overcoming three challenges wasn’t just for the fun of having three challenges (sometimes they were like DLC challenges, if we’re honest, in that they were just the same challenge again with a new wrinkle), but to show that the protagonist wouldn’t ever give up, would listen to their mentor/secret advisor, or whatever they did in those three challenges was consistent with their character.
Three is just a good core number for repetition, for anything we want our readers to know or understand about a setting, a character, or a place.
Now again, I’m not saying we need to repeat the same thing three times. If our character is in a desert, we don’t need to show three times a cactus, or have a character say “This desert is hot” three times.
But we can show that in three different ways. We have our character lament the heat and dryness as the sun beats down on them. We capture their boot grinding against the dusty sand a paragraph later. Then we have them observe in a later paragraph still a small desert lizard run across a path.
We could do more, clearly, and each would serve to keep reinforcing and showing that setting. But three is the number where the pattern is formed. Three is where our audience’s mind is most likely to go “Aha!” and form a picture that sticks and stays.
We can do this for any aspect of character, setting, or story. We can show that the evil empire is feared by having three different instances in an opening chapter that show fear from people, or hesitance. We can show that a character is flightly by showing them flitting from thing to thing over the course of a story. Or in a single blitz. One will form a pattern immediately, the other will tease it out to the reader over the whole course. There exists a lot of direction for this.
Now, with this all said, I’m not saying you need to sit down and think “Do I have three of everything?” Some things, such as one-off lines or moments that stand out by virtue of being singular and unique. We don’t always need three.
But we can use this quirk of human sapience for key elements. Maybe we want to make a character pop, so during our planning we think of three ways they can show a key element of their being we want the audience to grasp, and then work those into the opening chapter. Maybe we want to make a scene more vivid, and so we work in three setting elements that then build a “pattern” in the reader’s mind of “Oh, this is what is going on” so that they don’t neglect it during a discussion between our characters.
In other words, we shouldn’t always be applying three as a magic number. We don’t need to. Much of the time you’ll even find it happens organically as you write.
But, but … For that one scene where you’re determined to make an element pop, or come to the reader’s awareness, or show a pattern that will be clear or important … Three is indeed the magic number.
Good luck. Now get writing.
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