We dive deeper into each of these five stages in this article on story structure. Denouement: the wrapping up of the whole story.Falling Action: The bridge between the climax and the resolution in which subplots and mini-conflicts are resolved.Climax: The moment of peak tension in a story - in other words, what everything else builds up to.Rising Action: In which a series of events (usually triggered by an inciting incident) escalates and sets the rest of the story in motion.Exposition: The de-facto introduction that brings out the story’s cast of characters and plants the seeds of conflict.One of the most prevalent theories for a universal plot structure comes from German novelist Gustav Freytag, who proposed a five-stage architecture for all stories: Therefore, if plot is the “what” of a story, its structure is “how” the author chooses to tell it. PRO-TIP: To learn more, you can read this post on how to start a story and how to end a story. There's a reason why no good story has its climax at the start - or resolves its major conflicts in the middle and spends the last half filling in the exposition! On the contrary, it’s the structure that determines the order of events, racks up the tension, and sets the peaks and plateaus of the story. This takes us straight to plot structure: the organization of events in a story. If you’re exposed to a lot of stories, you’ll notice that most of them - from Westworld and Jane Eyre to your grandma’s favorite anecdote - will share a similar architecture: one with a clear beginning, middle, and end. To get it closer to being a story, we need to consider its partner-in-crime: the plot structure.Ĭlick to tweet! Identifying the plot structure You might be thinking that that sounds very similar to a recitation of events. Chersti Nieveen, editor of multiple NYT bestsellers We as humans have become increasingly story aware-especially within the internet age, where countless stories are only a click away-and readers come to a story with high expectations, both on the conscious and subconscious level. It is a key element of establishing your book in the literary community and into the hearts of readers. But the king died and then the queen died out of grief is one because it reveals a causality in the sequence of scenes. The king died and then the queen died, for instance, is not a plot, as E.M. There usually must be a cause-and-effect relationship between the events and the plot points. Some will say that if characters are the who and theme is the why, then the plot is the what of the story. Of course, plot is one of storytelling’s major pillars. Generally, a plot in fiction builds up to a climax and ends in a resolution at the finish of the story. Plot is the sequence of connected events that make up a narrative in a novel. But before we get that far, let’s first define plot. This post is here to help make sure that you don’t lose the plot when you’re writing your own story. Storytelling theory is packed with confusingly similar terms - and as you get further into the nuts and bolts of writing narrative, it helps to know the difference. A high school girl discovers love from an unexpected source: a centuries-old vampire.īut what about a, b, and d? Well, strictly speaking, those are a mix of themes and premises, but the confusion is entirely understandable. A king dies and then the queen dies out of grief.ĭ. An immigrant comes to the United States to start a new life.Ĭ. A boy finds a new family in a traveling circus run by orphans.ī. So, what is a plot in fiction? Let's check your understanding with a pop quiz: which of the following is the best example of a plot?Ī.
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