On Prisms and Triangles (by Joslyn Chase)

There’s a fascinating mechanism hardwired into our human behavior that engages interest, boosts retention, and provides a satisfying sense of closure in many a life situation. I’ll call this phenomenon The Rule of Three and apply it, for our purposes, to writing and telling a story.

I use the term “rule” loosely since there are few, if any, rock-hard rules to writing and the three that once existed are lost to history, as pointed out by Somerset Maugham. There is, however, a trove of time-honored traditions so ingrained in our culture and consciousness that calling upon them invokes power while ignoring them may constitute a missed opportunity.

Or worse.

So let us embark on an exploration of The Rule of Three, that we may discover, examine, and enjoy this intriguing device. (see what I did there?)

Consider: do things really happen in threes? Or does it just seem that way because the convention is so firmly embedded in our cultural expectations? It’s everywhere.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Blood, sweat, and tears.

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Comedy writers understand the inherent power of Three and know how to wield it with impeccable timing. Here’s Dave Barry serving it up:

“I should be a happy man. I have all the elements of a good life: a loving family, a nice home, a dog that doesn’t pee indoors without a good reason.”

Here’s another example with a mystery/crime twist from Laura Kightlinger:

“I can’t think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name, or how you met, or why they’re dead.”

And one more, from The Dick Van Dyke show—a waitress serving a bald man:

“Can I get you anything? Cup of coffee? Doughnut? Toupee?”

I challenge you to find a political speech of more than three minutes that isn’t rife with examples. Take this, from Benjamin Disraeli:

“There are three kinds of lies—lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Or this sage advice for speakers, from Franklin Roosevelt:

“Be sincere. Be brief. Be seated.”

And harking back to my high school humanities class, a literary instance from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Lend me your ears.”

And since we’re on the subject of literature and entertainment, how about Goldilocks and The Three Bears, The Three Musketeers, or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

I remember watching a Sesame Street sketch as a child, with a catchy tune by The Talking Heads that still plays in my mind. It’s about a cartoon creature named Seymour caught up in a story that has a beginning, middle, and an end.

In writing, we often use the three-act structure. We employ three try-fail cycles in a buildup to the climactic scene.

We can use The Rule of Three to establish a pattern and then break it to instill a sense of unease or outright surprise in the stories we tell.

We can use it to direct reader attention, emphasizing what we want them to remember by keeping it within the three-part structure. Or—a nifty tool for those of us who write mysteries—we can use it to hide in plain sight what we want our readers to forget.

Thus, we can play fair, providing that vital clue, but burying it in the fourth position out of a list of five. People tend to remember the first, second, and last items in a list, so a catalog of just three items sticks in the memory, while a longer list leaves a lot of scope for hiding information.

And think of the potential for deepening character dynamics. With just two characters, A interacts with B and B interacts with A. But when you add a third character, possibilities for conflict sprout like dandelions after a spring rain.

Writers through the ages have used the power of Three to create memorable and compelling stories. There’s the triangle of Elizabeth Bennett, Mr. Darcy, and George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. Rick, Ilsa, and Laszlo in Casablanca.

And what if the writers of the movie Ghost had left out Oda Mae? Instead, they created a gap between Sam and Molly that only Oda Mae could fill, adding the dimension and conflict that makes the film so enjoyable to watch.

And much of what we experience as a result of The Rule of Three—both on the part of the reader and the writer—occurs on a subconscious level, making it all the more powerful.

I bring all of this up because The Rule of Three is what prompted me to write my story, “Delivering the Egg MacGuffin,” which I’m delighted to see appearing in the July/August 2024 issue of AHMM.

I took a writing workshop based on exploring The Rule of Three in storytelling. The assignment at the end of the class was to write a story using what we learned. I leave it to you to read my Egg MacGuffin story and discover what I did with The Rule of Three, but I want to tell you about one very obvious way I used the device because it involves a subject I find fascinating—perspective.

A story should be told from the perspective, or Point of View, of the character best positioned to communicate that story to readers. But this doesn’t look the same for every story.

One story may feature a single POV character relating the entirety of the tale, while another story may be told by multiple characters through their own points of view. Add to this another dimension—when I am reading or writing a story, I am keenly aware that other characters, besides the one “speaking,” have their own lives, their own stories, viewed through their own prisms.

And sometimes, those stories must be told.

In “Delivering the Egg MacGuffin,” I give readers the story of a single event from three different viewpoints, each one peeling back a few layers to reveal more about what actually happened.

I’m intrigued by the concept of differing perspectives, as in the movie Rashomon, where Kurosawa uses the technique to reveal the complexities of human nature. Four people give their account of the same incident—a murder—and each is accurate in its way and yet quite different.

I used the same sort of idea when I wrote my first two novels. In Nocturne in Ashes, my main character, Riley Forte, is trapped in an isolated community with a killer after the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Rainier. She teams up with a cop, but their distress call is cut short when cell towers and radio communications fail. Three days pass before help arrives.

In my original plans for the book, the sheriff’s deputies who respond to their call had their own point of view chapters, but there was so much to tell in this five-hundred-page thriller that I had to cut their subplot from the final version.

However, Chief Deputy Randall Steadman and his partner, Frost, screamed to have their story told. That’s when I created their paraquel—not a prequel or sequel, but a story happening alongside another story, touching briefly at a few points and centered on the same major event, but distinct and thrilling in its own right.

That’s how Steadman’s Blind was born.

It may be true that there’s nothing new under the sun and every story has already been told. Perhaps all we can offer, as writers and storytellers, is our own voice, imagination, and perspectives as we craft our stories the best way we know how, using techniques like The Rule of Three to engage, entertain, and thrill our readers.

That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.