How it works

Characters, Problem, Solution is the plainest version of the three acts on the timeline. Carlson’s chart attributes it to George Lucas, but no primary source has turned up, so the credit is secondhand. The model says a story has three jobs to do, in the order its name gives them. Whoever first framed it this way, it holds up as a check on any outline.

Introduce the Characters takes the first quarter, 0–25%, where the audience learns whom to follow and why they matter. Introduce the Problem occupies the middle half, 25–75%, as the trouble arrives and grows. Solve the Problem fills the last quarter, 75–100%, where the characters solve it or fail in a way that settles it. No turning points are named, and each block hands straight to the next.

Read literally, the model holds the problem back until 25%, the turn into Act Two, while Snyder’s Catalyst comes at 11% and Field’s Inciting Incident at 9%. Its blocks match Wilder’s Tree and Proposition, Argument, Resolution, which Carlson’s chart credits to Hitchcock, also without a traced source. The Tree fills its middle with escalation and Hitchcock’s version with an idea under test. This one puts the problem itself at the center and marks no midpoint or low point.

The model earns its place at the start of outlining, or when a pitch must be told in three lines. Writing one sentence per block is a quick check; if one won’t come, the story isn’t clear yet. Once the blocks hold, it hands off well to a finer structure, such as Field’s Paradigm or Gulino’s Sequence Approach, that can shape the long middle.