Rule of three (writing)
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The rule of three is a principle in English writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. From slogans ("Go, fight, win!") to films (The Godfather trilogy), many things are structured in threes. There were three musketeers, three little pigs, three billy goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the three bears, and Three Stooges.
A series of three is often used to create a progression in which the tension is created, then built up, then released. Adjectives are often grouped together in threes in order to emphasize an idea.
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[edit] Comedy
In comedy, it is suggested that maximum humor can be attained by creating a structure in which a joke is set up, the setup is reinforced, and the punchline breaks the pattern.
- How do you get to my place? Go down to the corner, turn left, and get lost.
- I used to own this hot Italian sports car, but it always got me in trouble. It had three gears: "moderato," "allegro," and "mama mia!"
- I know three French words: Bonjour, merci, and surrender.
- Face it, Brian, I'm a bad father, a lousy husband, and a snappy dresser.
The generic three-panel daily comic strip reinforces this principle. The rule of three in comedy also reflects a principle of pattern recognition because a set of three elements has the smallest number of elements that can establish and violate a pattern.
[edit] Story
In storytelling in general, authors often create triplets or structures in three parts. In its simplest form, this is merely beginning, middle, and end. Syd Field wrote a popular handbook of screenwriting, in which he touted the advantages of three act structure over more traditional five act structure used by William Shakespeare and many others.
Vladimir Propp, in his Morphology of the Folk Tale, concluded that any of the elements in a folk tale could be negated twice, so that it would repeat three times.[1] This is common not only in the Russian tales he studied, but throughout folk tales and fairy tales -- mostly commonly, perhaps, in that the youngest son is often the third, but fairy tales often display the rule of three in the most blatant form, a small sample of which include
- Jack and the Beanstalk has Jack climb the beanstalk three times.
- The wicked stepmother visits Snow White in the forest three times before she finally causes her to fall dead
- Rumpelstiltskin spins for the heroine three times
- The hero of The Twelve Dancing Princesses follows them to their ball three times
- In East of the Sun and West of the Moon, the heroine receives three gifts while she is searching for her lost husband; when she finds where he is prisoner, she must use them to three times bribe her way to the hero (the first two times she was unable to tell her story because he lay in a drugged sleep).
- In Cinderella and many of its variants, such as Cap O' Rushes, The Wonderful Birch, and Catskin, the heroine goes to the ball (or other event) three times
- In The Rose-Tree and The Juniper Tree, the dead child, transformed into a bird, receives three gifts that it uses for revenge.
- In Brother and Sister, Brother is transformed into a deer when he drinks from the third stream that their wicked stepmother enchanted, and when Sister is killed by the same stepmother, she visits her child's room three times, being caught and restored the third.
- The hero used magical horses to climb three times to The Princess on the Glass Hill.
- In The Death of Koschei the Deathless, Prince Ivan must watch Baba Yaga's horses three days to receive a horse that can outrun Koschei's.
- In The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird, a woman says she will bear the king three marvelous children; when they reappear, after an attempt by their envious aunts to kill them, their aunts try to kill them by sending them on three quests, after the three marvelous things of the title.
- In The Silent Princess, a prince breaks a peasant woman's pitcher three times, and is cursed; when he finds the title princess, he must persuade her to speak three times.
- In The Love for Three Oranges, the hero picks three magical oranges, and only with the third is able to keep the woman who springs out of it.
In most folklore, there are three tasks which have to be performed to reach a certain goal.
[edit] Music
Musical structure often takes a three-part form. Ternary form, for example, consists of three sections: a theme, a response (or a second theme) and a variation on the first theme - that is, A-B-A. On a more fundamental level, triads (chords consisting of three notes) are the root of almost all Western chordal music.
[edit] Culture
Some cultures use the Rule of Three in their everyday lives.
- It is a traditional Japanese custom to decline a gift twice before receiving it the third time.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, p 74, ISBN 0-292-78376-0
