One, two, three. How to write fiction counting up to three. Three is a magic number

“Three times the tabby cat meowed. Three and one more the hedgehog cries begging. It is time. Lets round the wide cauldron and final the filters on the red embers…[1]”

And as witches do, we count. We spell with a primal number —or prime. In three we divide “arches”, “cycles” or “plots”.

There you have the queen, in sleeping gown and knitting shirts standing on a pyre about to smoke. The king asks: “Are you a witch?”. The queen makes a line of her lips. She is busy getting herself some blisters out of nettle threads. He asks again. That’s two. And three. The flaming torch goes to the Wood when eleven swans zoom above the queen’s head. Little by little feathers twist by and by. Eleven princes, one of them with a wing for an arm, rescue the queen. Their sister. If you count well, those are twelve siblings. A multiple of three.

Twice can fail a hero. Third, the fail becomes comedy (or our epic doom since readers are gone, fed up of failures) or a magnificent plot if they’re successful. Three is the number of fairy tales according to Joseph Cambpell, the writer of The thousand faces of the hero.  

Even before Aristotle, the many authors of tragedies and comedies —some of them now unknown, had already settled the ideal number of acts in three. Three was the one. Or the minimum to our satisfaction. Thus, narrative is not binary.

Nonetheless, it is of a secret fandom.

The Twilight agent in the shadows, ready to save the day without the reader noticing.  Besides the minimal of acts, it is representative of the most proper number of main characters: main character plus stand in-love interest-pet-companion and third, villain or antagonist.

Three are the musketeer. Three are the companion of Dorothy along the yellow brick path: the lion, the can man and the scarecrow. Three are the witches left when the evil witch is smashed under the house.

Abracadabra and magic comes forth.

¿Do you know another magical number? Yes, the one of liking, subscribing and comment. Three! And the cat owns raggedy feet for the story to begin all over again[2].

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[1] Free adaptation by Mario B., teacher in charge of Theatre club  in CB no. 1 El Rosario. Yep, Macbeth. Yep, that bloody Englishman.

[2] Y el gato tiene pies de trapo para que te lo cuente otra vez.