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Nov 7, 2023 · Plot structure is the order in which the events of a story unfold. In western storytelling traditions, it’s usually built out of five stages: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
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- Freytag’s Pyramid. Named after a 19th-century German novelist and playwright, Freytag’s Pyramid is a five-point dramatic structure that’s based on the classical Greek tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripedes.
- The Hero’s Journey. Inspired by Joseph Campbell’s concept of the monomyth — a storytelling pattern that recurs in mythology all over the world — The Hero’s Journey is today’s best-known story structure.
- Three Act Structure. Following the old adage that “every story has a beginning, middle, and end,” this popular structure splits a story’s components into three distinct acts: Setup, Confrontation, and Resolution.
- Dan Harmon's Story Circle. Another variation on Campbell’s monomyth structure, the Story Circle is an approach developed by Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon.
- 7-Point Story Structure. Created by Dan Wells, the 7-Point story structure is all about pushing the protagonist from one event to the next. This makes it great for fast-paced, plot-driven stories, and it is my favorite structure for plotting novellas.
- 27-Chapter Method. The 27-chapter method from Kat O’Keefe is sometimes referred to as the 3-Act 9-Block Method. This method divides the story into three acts, then each act into nine blocks, each serving a specific role in the plot.
- Aristotle’s Poetics. From one of the earliest works studying the nature and formation of a story, Aristotle's Poetics takes a character-first approach to crafting a narrative.
- Fichtean Curve. One of the simplest plotting methods, the Fichtean Curve story structure focuses on rising action—consisting of a series of increasingly tense crises—which leads to a climax followed by falling action and a resolution.
Learn how to structure a story with purpose from well-known stories' plot structure, such as The Three Little Pigs, The Odyssey, Cloud Atlas and To the Lighthouse. See how repetition, variation, subplots, circularity and perspective shifts create suspense, surprise and meaning.
- Three-Act Structure. Most of the story structures on this list use some version of the three-act structure, since it basically involves a beginning, a middle and an end.
- Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is a story structure that typically begins with the disruption of the protagonist’s ordinary life by a call to adventure, which they eventually accept.
- Dan Harmon’s Story Circle. Screenwriter Dan Harmon adapted the Hero’s journey to focus more on character arcs, rather than on action. While the hero’s journey puts external challenges and obstacles in the spotlight, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle focuses on internal transformation and change, even though external challenges are present.
- Tragic Plot Embryo. Created by Rachael Stephen, this is an adaptation of Dan Harmon’s story circle in which the character doesn’t learn enough to achieve their desire or goal.
Learn what plot is and how to analyze it using Freytag's pyramid and Booker's meta-plot. Explore the types of plot and see examples from literature and film.
The classic plot structure includes six main elements, all working together to create an engaging narrative with a coherent structure. Let’s take a closer look at each: Exposition: This is where the author establishes the context for the story, including introducing the setting, characters, and essential background information.
