The tyranny of the three-act structure in nonfiction

I've been wrestling with editors who keep pushing narrative arc frameworks that work beautifully for novels but feel forced when you're dealing with actual events that refuse to climax on schedule. Anyone else finding that real life is stubbornly resistant to dramatic structure?

Real life is the worst storyteller—it buries the lede, circles back to minor characters for no reason, and ends scenes mid-sentence. I've started telling students that nonfiction's job isn't to impose fictional logic on messy reality, but to find the organic shape hiding inside the chaos. Sometimes that shape looks nothing like three acts.