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The three-act structure is perhaps the most common technique in the English-speaking world for plotting stories — widely used by screenwriters and novelists. It digs deep into the popular notion that a story must have a beginning, middle, and end, and goes even further, defining specific plot events that must take place at each stage.

In this post, we dissect the three acts and each of their plot points — using three-act structure examples from popular culture to illustrate each point.

Let’s begin! In three, two, one...

What is the three-act structure?

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The traditional three-act structure includes the following parts:

• Act I - Setup: Exposition, Inciting Incident, Plot Point One
• Act II - Confrontation: Rising Action, Midpoint, Plot Point Two
• Act III - Resolution: Pre Climax, Climax, Denouement

Within each Act is a number of different “beats” — a plot event. According to Aristotle, who first analyzed storytelling through three parts, each act should be bridged by a beat that sends the narrative in a different direction. In Poetics, he posits that stories must be a chain of cause-and-effect beats: each scene must lead into what happens next and not be a standalone 'episode.'

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Now that we know what the three-act structure is, let’s dive into how it works.

PRO-TIP: Have you ever wondered how long your novel should be? Take our short quiz below to find out!

How to use the three act structure

It’s clear that a lot of writers agree that “good things come in threes” when it comes to storytelling. In this section, we’ll dig deeper, breaking each act into three further “beats.” And just so we’re not talking in purely abstract terms, we’ll be using The Wizard of Oz and The Hungers Games as examples throughout (and we've also got a post with more in-depth analysis of trilogy structures).

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Act One: The Setup

Despite being one of three sections in a plot, Act One typically lasts for the first quarter of the story.

Exposition

Act One is all about setting the stage: readers should get an idea of who your protagonist is, what their everyday life is like, and what’s important to them. Of course, nobody’s life is perfect, and the exposition should give readers a sense of the current challenges facing the main character. Their desire to overcome these challenges will inform their overarching character goal.

Plotting your exposition will require you to already have a fairly firm grasp on your character. Prepare yourself with these resources:

Examples
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s home life in Kansas forms the bulk of the exposition. We see that her family are hard-working farmers and that she has a dog she cares for called Toto. We learn that Dorothy feels misunderstood and under-appreciated.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss is introduced as a responsible, determined teenager who hunts illegally to feed her family, which suffers under the rule of the Capitol.

Inciting Incident

This is the catalyst that sets the protagonist’s adventure in motion. The inciting incident is a crucial beat in the three-act story structure: without it, the story in question wouldn’t exist. The inciting incident proposes a journey to the protagonist — one that could help them change their situation and achieve their goal.

Author and editor Kristen Kieffer suggests asking yourself the following questions to help you craft the inciting incident:

• How is my protagonist dissatisfied with their life?
• What would it take for my protagonist to find satisfaction? (This is their goal).
• What are my protagonist’s biggest fears and character flaws?
• How would the actions that my protagonist needs to take to find satisfaction force them to confront their fears and/or flaws?

The catalyst is referred to as the “call to adventure,” and asks your protagonist to push themselves out of their comfort zone. Does it make sense for your character to resist action after the inciting incident? If so, you may want to dedicate a scene (or sequence of scenes) between the plot points — in particular, Inciting Incident and Plot Point One — for your character to reflect on their motivations: how will their life change? How will their journey affect the lives of those around them? What’s at stake if they’re successful? What’s at stake if they fail? Depending on the character, and their core fears and flaws, you may need to raise the stakes so that the character has no choice but to accept.

Examples
Dorothy runs away from home when she feels like her family doesn’t take her concern over Mrs. Gulch’s dislike for Toto seriously. She encounters a Professor who encourages her to return home, where a twister causes Dorothy to be struck in the head by a window. When she wakes up, she’s in The Land of Oz.

Katniss’ beloved younger sister, Prim, is randomly chosen to participate in a televised fight to the death.

PRO-TIP: Did you know that the three-act structure is just one of many story structures that you can use? You can read more about the Hero's Journey and Dan Harmon's Story Circle here — or head here to find three additional models.

Plot Point One

It’s full speed ahead now! No more hemming and hawing for your character: the First Plot Point represents the protagonist’s decision to engage with whatever action the inciting incident has sent their way.

In some novels, the Inciting Incident and Plot Point One happen in the same scene. For instance, in The Hunger Games, Prim’s selection as a tribute is the catalyst. Immediately after, Katniss volunteers herself in her sister’s place, representing her reluctant acceptance of the call to adventure.

Think of the First Plot Point as the springboard that launches your character into Act Two. Speaking of which…

Examples
Frightened and confused, Dorothy wants to go home and is told by Glinda the Good Witch that the only way is to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City where The Wizard lives. Dorothy decides to follow the Road, and it’s established the Wicked Witch will try to stop Dorothy on her journey.

Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place in the Games — thus pulling her into the heart of the story.

Act Two: Confrontation

Typically the longest of all three sections: Act Two usually comprises the second and third quarters of the story.

Rising Action

Here’s the part where Dorothy waltzes down the Yellow Brick Road to meet Oz who sends her home without a hitch, right?

Nope. This is the part where the protagonist’s journey — or the pursuit of their goal — begins to take form and where they also first encounter roadblocks. The protagonist gets to know their new surroundings and starts to understand the challenges that lay before them. This is the part of the story where you should better acquaint readers with the rest of the cast (both friends and foes) and the primary antagonist. You will also elaborate on the story’s overarching conflict (whether it’s a person or a thing).

As the protagonist starts to learn more about the road ahead, they’ll change and adapt in order to have a better chance of achieving their goal. In this way, the main character is usually more reactionary than proactive in the Rising Action phase.

Examples
Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and Lion. They travel down the Yellow Brick Road, where they encounter obstacles such as apple-throwing trees and sleep-inducing poppies.

Katniss trains to survive the Games. After the Games start, she gathers supplies and runs for her life. Thereupon, she faces many physical dangers before a fearsome group of Tributes discovers and begins to hunt her.

Midpoint

It’s no big surprise that the Midpoint takes place at… drumroll, please… the middle of the story! A significant event should take place here, usually involving something going horribly wrong.

Return to the protagonist’s main goal to establish what this Midpoint event should be. What would have to happen for them to feel that their goal is being directly threatened? What could make the character even more acutely aware of the stakes at hand?

Examples
Dorothy finally reaches the Emerald City and meets with The Wizard — who turns out to be a big disappointment. He initially refuses to meet with them, and when he eventually does, he declines to help them until they bring him the Wicked Witch’s broomstick.

Katniss — having been hunted and trapped by her fellow Tributes — has to take violent action to escape their clutches. This is the event that convinces her to stop running and start fighting to win the Games.

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Plot Point Two

Our poor protagonist has fallen on hard times. They thought they were making headway on their goal and then the Midpoint came and threw them off their rhythm.

Give them some time to reflect on the story’s conflict here. The aftermath of the Midpoint crisis will force the protagonist to pivot from being a “passenger” to a more proactive force to be reckoned with. You might want to plan a sequence here in which the main character’s resolve is bolstered through productive progress on their journey’s goal. Think of Plot Point Two as the pep talk your character needs in order to stand up straight and get ready to meet their antagonist head on. They’ll need this confidence to handle what comes next…

Examples
Dorothy must decide whether to take the risk of heading to the Wicked Witch’s castle or to give up on her chance of going home. She and her companions decide to confront the witch.

Katniss works to destroy the Tribute’s supply cache and kills a Tribute in an effort to protect Rue. She later tracks down Peeta, fights another Tribute for medicine that will heal his injured leg, and makes sacrifices to keep them both alive.

Act Three: Resolution

The final act typically takes up a quarter of the story — sometimes less.

Pre-Climax

Even the strongest knight has weak spots in their armor: their deep-rooted fears and flaws. As the protagonist has been gearing up to meet the antagonist head-on, their main foe has also been getting stronger and is now ready for battle.

Also called “The Dark Night of the Soul,” Act Three starts with the final clash between the protagonist and the antagonist. We’ve experienced the entire journey with the main character — but this is where we get our first glimpse of the antagonist’s true strength, and it usually catches the main character off guard. Even though most readers are aware that the protagonist typically wins the day, we should have some doubt here about how the last act will play out, and if the main character will be okay.

Examples
While on the way to the Wicked Witch’s castle, Dorothy is captured. The Witch finds out that the ruby slippers can’t be taken against Dorothy’s will while she’s alive, so she sets an hourglass and threatens that Dorothy will die when it runs out.

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Katniss realizes that the mutated hounds chasing her bear striking resemblances to deceased Tributes, including those she killed, dredging up trauma Katniss had suppressed to survive.

Climax

The climax signifies the final moments of the story’s overarching conflict. Since the antagonist has just hit the protagonist where it hurts in the previous beat, the protagonist has to lick their wounds. Then they face-off one more time and the main character lays the conflict to rest.

The climax itself is normally contained to a single scene, while the pre-climax typically lasts longer and might stretch over a sequence of events.

Examples
Dorothy throws a bucket of water on the Scarecrow who is on fire. She ends up accidentally dousing the Witch who melts into a puddle. The guards hand the Witch’s broom to Dorothy.

Katniss saves Peeta from Cato, the final tribute whom she later kills as an act of mercy when he is mauled by mutts. When the Gamemakers try to force Katniss and Peeta to fight to the death, they move to commit suicide instead, maintaining their integrity despite the Capitol’s demands.

Denouement

Finally, the dust settles. If the protagonist’s goal is not immediately obtained during the Climax, the denouement is where this should be achieved (or redefined, if their goal changed during Act Three). Along with this, the denouement should also:

• Fulfill any promises made to the reader. Check out our post on Chekhov’s Gun to learn more about this,
• Tie up significant loose ends,
• Underscore the theme, and
• Release the tension built up during the climactic sequences of events.

If you want to learn more about nailing your story’s resolution, check out our post on how to end a story.

Examples
The Scarecrow receives a diploma, the Tin Man receives a “heart,” and the Lion receives a medal of valor. The Good Witch explains that Dorothy has always had the power to go home; she just didn’t tell her earlier because she wouldn’t have believed it. Dorothy taps her ruby slippers and heads back to Kansas to lovingly greet her family.

The Gamemakers cut the game short after realizing Katniss and Peeta’s intent to commit suicide. They are taken to the hospital and later home, where they must put on a show as the winners of the Games, but are ultimately safe — for now.

The three-act structure is just one way to think about a story, so writers shouldn’t feel limited. The benefit of using the three-act structure is that it will help ensure that every scene starts and end with a clear purpose and direction. Even if you don't start outlining your novel with it, if you find yourself struck by pacing issues, it's often useful to fit your story into the three-act structure to see why that might be.

Have you written a novel using the three-act structure? Leave any questions or thoughts on this popular plotting method in the comments below!

“Reckoning” is a new word in food-media vocabulary. For decades, food journalism flourished as a safe, G-rated corner of publishing, an agreeable refuge from the strife of politics and the passions of fiction. In the extended family of literature, gastro-journalism blossomed as the approachable younger sibling to the fiery op-ed and the moody novel. Slick journals like Gourmet or Bon Appétit projected a dinner-table fantasy ideal for suburban daydreams. Recipes, travelogues, and restaurant reviews allowed readers to escape their world without leaving their living room. The field’s rare ventures into the political usually took the form of culinary cheerleading: “Tacos are My Resistance” or “The Vietnamese Sandwich Shop Teaching Dallas how to Hire Differently.” Then George Floyd died. The residual anger from the protests hit the sheltered cradle of food media with blistering volley of accusations about racial inequity. And the reckoning was immediate. In the course of one month, the top editors of both Bon Appétit and the LA Times Food Section (Adam Rapoport and Peter Meehan respectively) were forced to resign, and culinary newsroom discussion abruptly shifted from how to be a better baker to how to be an anti-racist.

These firings followed an uncannily similar cycle. In fact, both ousters started with the same person: wine writer Tammie Teclemariam, who’s quickly becoming the Ronan Farrow of food journalism. On June 8th, 2020, Teclemariam tweeted an old photo of Adam Rapoport from his wife’s Instagram showing Bon Appétit’s editor-in-chief supposedly dressed in brownface for Halloween. That picture opened the grievance floodgates. Brownface was just the beginning as a range of appalling professional revelations began to surface: workplace harassment, racial discrimination, and unequal pay for non-white employees. Numerous current and former contributors jumped onto the public shame wagon. Assistant Food Editor Sohla El-Waylly shared an Instagram essay about being pressured into unpaid video appearances beyond her magazine duties. Priya Krishna tweeted, “I can’t stay silent on this. This is fucked up, plain and simple.” Molly Baz, a white star on the magazine’s YouTube channel, pledged that she would not film any more videos until her “BIPOC colleagues receive equal pay.” That evening, Rapoport took to Instagram to announce he was stepping down as editor. From first tweet to final Instagram, it took exactly 11 hours to move from accusation to execution. Flash forward 21 days to June 29^th when Tammie Teclemariam tweeted a series of allegations about Peter Meehan creating a toxic culture at the LA Times Food Section. Cue confessionals, Twitter outrage, and ultimate resignation. Two days later, Meehan posted a statement that began, “I’m leaving the LA Times” and concluded, “this moment is about [sic] changing, challenging, and making things better.”

This moment is also about something else: Power. The exercise of ousting biased authority figures from positions of influence is a dominant cultural practice, stretching far beyond food media, which looms over public discourse in the age of Twitter. While typically labeled “cancel culture,” I prefer to describe this behavior with the term “expowering.” To clarify, I define “expower” as the practice of consciously seeking to expel troubled leaders from prominent offices in order to make room for new decision-makers (ideally from under-represented groups). During the Trump presidency, expowering grew into a leading tactic for activists in many fields and disciplines. In July 2020, 40 percent of American voters claimed to have participated in so-called “cancel culture,” and 55 percent of voters ages 18–34 said they had helped “cancel” someone. Just in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, advocates ejected top brass at CrossFit, Adidas, Refinery29, Everlane, Riot Games, Reformation, Bleacher Report, Second City, Essence, SFMOMA, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the New York Times editorial page to name a few. This reckoning, however, is not contained to the recent corporate firings but connects to a larger generational modus operandi— because expowering is not just a way of protest, but a way of life that guides how progressive millennials think, feel, and fight for change in a social media century.

To classify this broad generational ethos as “cancel culture” is a vast simplification. I use the verb “power” as the root of my coinage intentionally, because any discussion of the recent turmoil that overlooks the underlying struggle for power has thoroughly missed the point. Campaigns to blacklist a makeup YouTuber and fire a New York Times editor use similar mechanics for extremely different ends. While “canceling” is defined by Lisa Nakamura as a “cultural boycott” withdrawing support from a public figure or brand, we can define “expowering” as a willful effort to destroy public support in order to trigger regime change. To expower, therefore, is a consciously political act—a coup not an embargo. It is about creating systemic change, not individual accountability. By deposing the current powerbrokers, so the logic runs, you open space for new leaders to take the throne—for the marginalized to become the masters. Taken to its logical conclusion, expowering is thus part of a utopian dream envisioning a society without a center and thus without the possibility of hierarchy or domination. “That’s why the ousting of folks like Adam Rapoport and Peter Meehan [is] significant,” argues progressive food writer Alicia Kennedy. “When the baseline stops being the cishet white men… we can maybe have real discussions about power, labor, and capital.” “Canceling someone is an attempt to hold them accountable,” explains Nicole Cardoza of Anti-Racism Daily, “[Yet] we must look beyond the person and hold systems accountable.” To the revolutionary’s eye, expowering is step zero on society’s road to rebirth.

In this sense, expowering represents more than a species of protest but a style of belief common to most college-educated liberals I meet under 40. The explosion of privilege shaming, cultural appropriation debates, and #OscarsSoWhite style critiques show expowering in action. It is a philosophy, a worldview, a mission mindset dedicated to a grand vision of “reckoning” that aims to topple the oppression of today to usher in the equity of tomorrow.

* * *

Where did “expowering” come from? Like all rebellious ideas, expowerment was born from the sins of the previous generation.

Back in the ’70s, a little-known term called “empowerment” was making a name for itself in activist circles with radical demands about increasing the political agency of black and queer people. Soon the concept spread into compatible progressive disciplines such as social work, psychology, and public health. Then the international feminist movement adopted empowerment as their flagship ideal in the ’80s advocating for women in the Third World. During the ’90s, empowerment left the streets to jump into boardrooms, gyms, magazines, and runways. As we moved into the new millennium, the once-edgy concept went full corporate—peddling its upbeat image to sell protein powder, energy drinks, makeup, acne medication, weight-loss spray, and an entire sub-division of publishing. On Amazon, there are now over 10,000 results for books with “empower” in the title. This bibliography charts a timeline of the idea’s decline: in 1976 Richard Neuhaus and Peter Berger penned the political manifesto To Empower People, and in 2019 Christine McCarron sought to Empower Your Inner Millionaire. Today, everyone and everything wants a taste of the power: employees, executives, teachers, parents, doctors, patients, users, and accusers. Apparently, even puppies need more power as PETential training services in Cincinnati preaches “The Value of Empowerment to Our Pets” for a mere $75 an hour. Going from elevating poor women in Peru to rich dogs in Cincinnati, empowerment has drifted a long way from its original mission.

Or to put it in plain terms: empowerment has failed—at least in the mind of millennials. In practice, the concept has proven better at selling seminars than fighting poverty. Despite undeniable advances in LGBT and women’s rights, stark disparities continue to exist for minorities across professional, legal, and economic outcomes. Empowerment as a policy feels like a botched Boomer compromise to many young activists. And the “expower” movement emerges as a fierce millennial counter-reaction to this half-century of failed promises and tepid policies.

Besides millennial recoil, the other indispensable element in expowerment’s ascent is social media. As a strategy, expowering is built for the digital world. Social media enables the tactic by facilitating mass discussion and mobilizing opinionated mobs with an appetite for outrage and retribution. Additionally, the ubiquity of smartphone technology allows people’s actions and opinions to be constantly recorded, which turns platforms such as Twitter and Instagram into inadvertent case files that can be investigated for potential evidence of prejudice. In this way, social media functions as both the crime scene and the courthouse in call-out culture—where you can locate the smoking gun and pass the guilty verdict in the same convenient location.

It is important to emphasize that the expowering process usually starts with a visible sign of bias or bigotry. The challenge of fighting abstract ideas like “systemic racism” is demonstrators need concrete manifestations of the enemy to oppose. Therefore, progressives look for personal embodiments of abstract problems, visible forms of invisible bias. This embodiment fallacy warps digital activism by incentivizing socially conscious liberals to seek inflammatory evidence of prejudice as a beneficial goal in itself. In the emotional turbine of Internet outrage, a single brownface picture has more firepower than a thousand crooked tax returns. Insensate numbers like hiring data or contract details can stoke the flame of scandal but not start it.

Upon closer examination, the process of expowering can be broken down into a clear three-step cycle that operates like cultural clockwork.

1. Inciting incident (the smoking gun): An explosive piece of media displaying someone’s private transgressions ignites Internet scrutiny. The inciting incident is usually an offensive photo, video, quote, or email screenshot that draws the energy of online anger into its orbit. Like moths to the flame, the digital rage mobs and hate junkies flock to the blaze of scandal hungry for blood.
2. Group confessional (open mic accusations): The initial indiscretion kicks off a torrent of accusations and confessionals. Old and current acquaintances step forward to share horror stories about past grievances with the wrongdoer. Current associates are pressured to make a public disavowal; signatories for open letters are collected. Online sleuths scour through the offender’s old posts searching for further evidence of bigotry to fuel the outrage.
3. Third-party petition (I’m telling the teacher): When the list of allegations reach a critical mass, public wrath turns into a call for public accountability—usually a petition or appeal to a third-party (campus administration or HR departments) to fire the offender. The fury and volume of these demands pick up steam until a sacrificial firing may seem like the only way to appease Twitter bloodthirst.

At this point, the process hits a crossroads and each case waits for its own independent resolution—because there is no guarantee that even the worst abuses will receive reprimand. While Rapoport and Meehan were forced out, many other culprits managed to wait out the storm. It’s a question of bad-PR tolerance. That’s the problem: the tactic possesses no hard authority in itself but relies on lobbying outside parties to intervene. In practice, it’s vastly more effective at targeting leaders of institutions that run on cultural capital rather than real capital (ideal for magazines, museums, and universities but not banks and Republicans). And when those third parties don’t care about maintaining a fashionably progressive public image, the maneuver becomes completely and utterly ineffective—like radio ads for the deaf.

Despite these shortcomings, the emotional appeal behind expowerment is undeniable. “I’ve experienced some of the highest highs of my life this week when Adam [Rapoport] resigned,” confided Sohla El-Waylly. “I finally felt… like now, finally, things might change.” For a generation of activists fed up with the hollow gradualism of neoliberal social agendas, expowerment offers the thrill of immediate change. The slow advances of incremental policy—from diversity hiring to anti-bias regulations—do not make fulfilling narrative goals. No one writes a Hollywood script about a 1.5 percent increase in the minority home ownership rate. But expowering gives the instant rush of victory. Validation that your words matter. Change you can see and hear. Proof that in the Eternal War between Wrong and Right—your side is winning.

* * *

I started writing this essay five years ago. At the time, student protests over racial justice had just compelled high-profile resignations at Yale and the University of Missouri. Since then, I’ve tracked the tactic’s ascendancy from college activists to the #MeToo firings up through the George Floyd protests. Every week, more evidence strengthens the case that expowerment is not a passing anomaly but a permanent evolution in public dialogue. In fact, I expect its influence will only continue to grow in the coming years as the principles of expowering are codified into HR departments and institutional bylaws—so the conversation should shift from arguing about whether or not it’s good to debating how it should be guided.

Like all cultural impulses, expowering can take healthy and unhealthy forms—and outlining the difference is vital. Its potential benefits are immense. Properly applied, expowering can dismantle discriminatory work practices, open positions for under-represented voices at major institutions, hold bad actors accountable, and pressure the white middle-class to prioritize inclusion and equity.

The instinct, however, can also feed some unhealthy habits. While most critiques focus on its damage to free speech and open debate, expowering poses an equal danger to its advocates and issues. First of all, expowering encourages a “personification fallacy” that treats individual wrongdoers as the breathing embodiments of an abstract injustice (Louis CK = sexism). This makes disciplining offenders a proxy for dismantling systemic inequities, which pushes activists toward targeting symptoms rather than causes of injustice. Such a conflation risks misdiagnosing the source of a problem, and thus mislocating the site of any potential solution, like treating arthritis with finger surgery.

Secondly, the intoxicating feedback loop of expowering often instills a taste for retribution in activists that can quickly turn a hunger for change into a craving for vengeance. The dopamine rush of public protest and the instant feedback of social media collide to create an addictive high in call-out culture—the euphoric feeling of progress in motion—that’s reinforced by short-term results. When unhealthy, expowering seeks out targets to satisfy this appetite—to maintain the high—and when there are no worthy wrongdoers available that day, the instinct can degenerate into punishing dissent rather than prosecuting abuse.

These two distortions—the personification fallacy which warps the targets of expowering and the retributive instinct which warps the motivations of expowering—threaten to derail the larger pursuit of justice. Without deliberate resistance, it is easy for advocates to internalize a dangerous cognitive distortion equating punishment with progress. In this way, the unhealthy form of expowering resembles a type of political instant gratification for the impatient millennial where advocates can enjoy the pleasure of progress today and postpone the labor of reform to tomorrow.

But reform is a long game with very different rules than revolution. To explain this, let us return to the Bon Appétit saga for a case study in the limits of expowering. A month after Adam Rapoport’s resignation, columnist Ruth Gebreyesus triumphantly editorialized “This Wave of Reckoning in Food Media is Different.” She argued that the current generation is driven by a “hunger for systemic change that’s unsatiated by sacrificial firings” and demands a “deracination [that] will completely refigure our lives.” A month later on August 6th, after weeks of blistering bad press on systemic racism at Condé Nast, three contributors of color—Priya Krishna, Sohla El-Waylly, and Rick Martinez—simultaneously announced their departure from Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel for not receiving fair contracts. The following day, the only two black members of the magazine’s editorial staff gave their notice. “I refuse to be part of a system,” Krishna explained, “that takes advantage of me while insisting I should be grateful for the scraps.” Then on August 27th, Condé Nast named Dawn Davis, a black executive with a decorated publishing career, as Bon Appétit’s new editor-in-chief.

This cycle of reckoning and half-reform is an exhaustingly familiar routine. I’ve watched it play out many times in many institutions: the initial firing, the employee outrage, and the conciliatory new hire who is usually a woman, person of color, or both. There is always a call for anti-bias training and the announcement of some “bold” equity initiative (a council, class, or committee). Yet after the dust settles, the institution always remains; the power persists just with different faces piloting the control—because representation at the top can coexist with inequity at the bottom. Such complications and incongruities do not have a place in the sweeping stories of “total deracination” and “systemic overhauls” favored by the progressive punditry. But the fact that in case after case in these scandals, the figureheads change while the systems remain should be a cause for concern—or at least reflection. Yet reflection is the exact state of mind that the furor of expowering denies.

What do these contradictions tell us? Reckoning does not necessarily lead to reform; the moral clarity of revolution does not translate to the political complexity of recovery—and might actively impede it. What is needed to break free from this gridlock is a second set of techniques designed to finish the restorative work expowering initiated. Expowering is a transitional measure since you cannot fire your way to equity. And unless advocates devote the same intensity to developing the tools of reform as the weapons of reckoning, the movement for justice in 21st century America may remain a story of punishment in search of progress.

Theodore Gioia is a critic living in San Francisco. His work has appeared in the Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the American Scholar. You can read his work at www.theodoregioia.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @theodoregioia.