The Triangular Shape of Stories
Aristotle claimed plots need a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The Roman critic Horace decreed that plays must have five acts. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a German novelist sketched out a triangle shape for plots in what has come to be known as Freytag's pyramid, aka a “dramatic arc.” In this form, the plot consists of six stages, like a steps in a tall mountain that the main character must struggle to climb: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
Generally, the “rising action” stage is where the power of a story lies—the struggles of protagonists to obtain what they want. Although based on five-act plays, this model is often applied (sometimes in a modified manner) to short stories and novels as well. Even though the pyramid is not always easy to use, giving it a try can reveal much about stories.
What is the most essential element of Plot? Conflict.
In fiction, only trouble is interesting. Janet Burroway offers Charles Baxter’s advice: “Hell is story friendly. If you want a compelling story, put your protagonist among the damned.” A story is a power struggle and the protagonist must be or become strong enough to engage the battle because conflict drives change and keeps readers turning pages.
Traditionally, plots have six basic elements: exposition, inciting incident, complications, crisis, climax, and resolution. Let's take a look at these five plot elements in a “top down,” waterfall shape:
Exposition - the story's background material necessary to understand what is going to be happening; often a main character is lacking something desired and wants to move toward fulfilling that goal. A character develops inside a “story arc” that helps people feel sympathy for a character when they “live” in the character’s story world and feel the complexity of their problems.
Inciting incident - As the writer and literary critic John Gardner writes in THE ART OF FICTION: "The [background] situation must be(come) somehow unstable: The character must for some reason feel compelled to act [now], effecting some change, and he must be shown to be a character capable of action.”
Escalating tension, also called stages of conflict, or complications - the obstacles faced by the main character as s/he struggles to reach his/her goal. The obstacles usually will become harder and harder to overcome until the crisis, the most difficult hurdle for the character to surmount. Without these stages of conflicts, we have no storyline, no arc of story, nothing to pull us forward in our reading.
Crisis - the top peak in the story's action--the moment of highest dramatic tension. This is the place in the story where the conflict between the two main forces/characters is the most noticeable, where the reader is most worried about the outcome.
Climax - the scene which presents the story's decisive action; whatever happens here will decide the story’s outcome, one way or another. Sometimes the Crisis and Climax are the same action. Usually the main character's goal(s) will either be achievable after this or will be out of reach.
Popular workshop presenter and author of STORY, Robert McKee says that the "Crisis" is the DECISION a character makes, whereas the "Climax" is the ACTION a character takes based on that decision. Obviously, these two aspects (decision and action) can happen at (virtually) the same time or they can happen separately.
For a powerful example, see W famous sculpture of the biblical David, where we see David just after the Crisis, when he has made the decision to fight Goliath and has picked up the stone, but before the Climax when he will throw the stone, the action that will lead to the final outcome of this story.Resolution or denouement - the outcome of the story--the information that ties up all (or many) of the story's loose ends; the main character has experienced change, has gained what was desired or is satisfied as to why not, or at least has learned something, or at the very least, the reader has learned something.
So how can writers create plots?
Some writers plan the whole plot out before starting the story. We call these writers “Plotters” as opposed to “Pantzers,” who who create the plot as they go long writing, “by the seat of their pants.” Many writers are mixtures of the two types.
At a conference sometime back, the author Simon Wood displayed his intricate spread sheet containing detailed plotting for every scene in one of his novels—I recall there were nearly a hundred rows and about five or six columns in his planning graphic. He said he fills in all in the spaces before he begins, after which he claims the novel practically writes itself.
Simon is what could be called an “extreme" Plotter, but even Pantzers generally turn to plot outlines after they’ve spun out their stories, to sort out what they have wrought and get it organized into an effective plot.
Character and plot are tightly interwoven. You can’t have one without the other, plus it all has to take place in the time and space of a setting.
