Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Story Structure
Story Structure
● Conflict: Character’s car is being tailed on a ● Conflict: The bank is being robbed / Character
creepy back road is extremely jaded
● Complications: character tries to get away, but ● Complications: Character antagonizes
encounters obstacles with each attempt. Each robbers with progressive intensity
attempt is more intense than the one before it ● Crisis: Character is shot / character’s jaded
(progressive complications). past flashes through his brain
● Crisis: Driver traps character in an abandoned ● Resolution: Character dies / Character
barn; Character takes action to escape changes in the sense that he remembers life
● Resolution: Character drives home safely was purer when he was not jaded.
● An inciting incident kicks off your plot. Now we have a clear conflict.
● The progressive complications work in a series of cause and effect.
○ That inciting incident happened (cause), so this next thing happens (effect)
○ Because that last thing happened (in itself a cause), this other thing happens (effect)
○ And it goes on and on until your crisis and resolution
● Example plot:
○ Woman (main character) witnessed daughter being attacked by dog (cause and inciting incident)
○ Woman kills dog (effect)
○ (because of that effect) woman fights with dog owner (cause to following effect) and the dog
owner threatens to burn her house down
○ (because of effect) woman hires vigilanties to protect her house (cause to the following effect)
and the vigilanties go off the rails and burn dog owner’s house down.
○ Etc. etc. etc. --- notice how the complications progress (get more intense)
But wait...
“But wait...I’ve read stories that don’t follow this structure!”
--And side note, those stories you’re referring to probably follow this structure in some subtle
capacity more than you think.
Runways...or...where does your story begin?
● A runway is something you want to avoid
Think of it this way...You’re writing a story about a librarian who will be taken
hostage by a library patron. If this is a ten-page story, and the hostage situation
doesn’t develop until page four, what have you really be writing those first four
pages? Could some of that exposition be peppered in throughout the story after
having the hostage situation kick off at the top of page two? Or even in
paragraph one?