Hello, Mr. Sato here to explain plot structure.
In this video, I'm assuming that you want to write a plot for some kind of story or
maybe identify the plot parts of some story you've read.
It could be any kind of narrative:
a short story, a play, a screenplay, a memoir, or even a novel.
Don't worry, if you've ever heard a story or watched a movie, you can do this.
We'll mainly focus on Freytag's Triangle,
but we'll also touch on other kinds of plot structure.
When teachers talk about plot structure, they usually teach Freytag's Triangle.
I know I do, because Freytag's Triangle is really useful. Most stories will
fit this arc pretty closely. And you can see why it's called a triangle.
So, the six parts of Freytag's Triangle are: 1) exposition
2) main conflict 3) rising action
4) climax 5) falling action
6) resolution or denouement
The first one, Exposition, is the background knowledge that you
need to know in order to understand the story.
Who are the characters? Where is it taking place?
What's going on? What's the situation?
Maybe you've read the book The Hunger Games, or seen the movie,
(the first one, from 2012).
In the beginning of that story, we learn that this young woman, Katniss Everdeen,
is an archer, and a good one too.
We learn about her friends and her 12 year old little sister,
who is really meek and mild.
We learn that these people are living in some
future society where food is scarce for regular people like them,
and that there are these horrible battle-to- the-death sort of games held once a year,
put on by very powerful and wealthy people, like these,
who are definitely not starving.
Before the really exciting part of the plot begins, you have to know all this stuff
or you won't understand.
If you walked into the movie just thirteen minutes late,
you wouldn't really understand everything that was going on.
All that is exposition, the necessary background stuff-- who they are,
where they are, what's going on, that kind of thing. That is exposition.
Now we come to the Main Conflict. Katniss' little sister is chosen
by lottery to fight in the Games.
She obviously doesn't stand a chance of surviving,
so Katniss volunteers to fight in her place.
Now we have a main conflict. And that is: "will Katniss be killed
in the games, or will she kill other people (including her friend, Peeta)
and be the last fighter standing?"
That's the main conflict of the rest of the movie.
The main conflict is the main struggle between opposing forces.
It could be an external conflict, like this one in The Hunger Games
Right? It's a conflict between her and other people.
It's external.
Or it could be an internal conflict, like somebody struggling
with a moral choice of some kind.
Most good stories usually have more than one conflict going on.
Pause: let's go back to exposition for a minute, now that we've established
the main conflict, do you see now why exposition is important?
If you didn't know what the Hunger Games were, you might think, hey, it's a game!
It might be like football! Could be fun! Right?
If you didn't know about Katniss' adorable little sister, you wouldn't know that being
picked for the Game meant her certain death.
If you didn't know Peeta was her friend, you wouldn't understand how horrible it is
that one of them is going to have to kill the other.
If you didn't know she was an archer, you wouldn't be able to infer that
if she can get her hands on a bow,
she might have a good chance of surviving
Beginning writers sometimes don't understand the value
of good exposition and they skimp on it.
Don't do that. That would be a mistake.
The third part of the plot is the rising action.
For the reader, this is the most fun part of the story,
so don't rush through it. In this section, you build suspense.
You make us feel the push and pull of the conflict.
First, it looks like she'll die. Then it looks
like she might survive. Then she's almost killed.
Then she sort of indirectly kills someone else.
It's back and forth tension. That tension is where the fun is.
Some beginning writers-- and I've seen this -- set up their conflict,
and then solve it in the next paragraph! Where's the fun in that?
After the rising action, when the tension is at its highest, you reach the Climax,
this point here at the top. The climax is where the Main Conflict is resolved.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss and her friend Peeta are the last two survivors.
One friend will have to kill the other for the
Game to end. They come up with a creative solution
to avoid this horrible outcome; they will both eat poison berries. They'll both die
together, so neither will have to kill the other. However, having all the fighters
die is not acceptable to the organizers of the Games, so they decide the only
solution open to them is to stop Katniss and Peeta from killing themselves,
end the Game and have two winners. That's the climax.
Now, remember the main conflict was whether Katniss would live or die.
That's the question; the main conflict is the question.
The climax is the answer to the question.
So the climax and conflict should usually match, unless the question has evolved
into something else by the time you get to the climax. A lot of writers do that, too.
Some stories end right there, right after the climax. But there are still
two more steps in Freytag's Triangle.
The next one is called Falling Action. I often tell my students that it's OK to
skip Falling Action. It is a period after the climax where nothing is really happening.
The plot stops for a bit and we feel the repercussions of what just happened.
I think covering the Falling Action
in no more than a sentence or two, or even skipping it entirely can be
a good choice.
The last part is the Resolution or Denouement, a French word meaning
"the untying of the knot." So the Resolution is where you,
the writer, show your reader how the character and the world of this story
have changed as a result of all these events. In The Hunger Games
we see that our main character, Katniss, has been transformed from a hungry
young hunter, who's totally unknown and unimportant to anyone who doesn't
know her, into a huge international media star who now represents Games
she doesn't believe in and, in a surprising paradox, is actually an inspiration
to the increasing number of people who are opposed to these
horrible games. So we see how the events of this story have changed
the main character and changed the world of this story.
That's what the resolution should do. Some stories,
like "The Most Dangerous Game," just imply the resolution
without actually stating it.
That's a little tricky, it's subtle, but it's another way to go if you think
you can pull it off.
And those are the parts of Freytag's Triangle. Most stories you know follow
this pattern with maybe a variation or two.
Like Star Wars puts some of its exposition in a scroll at the very beginning.
Or how some stories will start at a more exciting moment, like at the
beginning of the Main Conflict maybe, and reveal the exposition a little later
in a flashback.
But almost every story you know will follow most of this pattern.
It's a really helpful planning tool for writers.
OK, now, I'll only spend a few minutes talking about other ways to organize plot.
The first one is the Hero's Journey.
We have the scholar Joseph Campbell to thank for this. Every English teacher
I've ever known knows this one. It really isn't all that different from the Triangle,
but its structure is more circular. (With the Hero's Journey,
I always think of Luke Skywalker,
so here I'll say he, not he or she.) The hero starts from a bad place, like
he's suffering in some way. Luke is bored. Some sort of Inciting Incident pushes the
hero forward into his adventure. He gets help from teachers and
other friends along the way. He enters a strange new world,
faces challenges, gives himself over to something
greater than himself, conquers those initial challenges, and then faces the big one,
the Supreme Ordeal.
Sometimes he conquers the enemy ---
and sometimes he loses, he sacrifices himself and then is resurrected,
more powerful than ever, like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Then the hero returns home
to benefit his society in some way. Sometimes he faces more challenges on
the way back home (though this doesn't happen in Star Wars until Episode VI).
All of this could fit in Freytag's Triangle,
but the return home at the end is what makes it a little different.
Plus the Hero's Journey comes with a lot of its own fun elements, but that's
a story for another video.
Kishotenketsu. For the next plot structure, I have to thank
Dr. David Reinhart of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater
whose page on Narrative Structures introduced me to
this concept. I recognized the structure from having read it in books
and seen it in movies, but didn't know it had a name.
This one is called Kishotenketsu, which is Japanese. It has four stages,
which are, logically enough, Ki, sho, ten, and ketsu.
Ki: Introduction (same as exposition, really) Sho: Development
Ten: Twist and Ketsu: Conclusion
One example Dr. Reinhart gives is "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin.
In the first stage, which is called Ki, a young woman --
with a heart condition-- learns that her husband has been killed
in a train accident. We learn who she is and what her situation is.
That's the introduction,g t the stage called Ki.
In the second stage, Sho, we see her thought processes as she goes through
different stages of reaction. First, she weeps,
then she imagines a life without him and sees that her new life could be freer
and less constrained than it has been. Then, she begins to be very happy,
even joyous. This is the development stage.
In the third stage, Ten, there is a plot twist. It's a kind of climax,
but it must be unexpected. In this case,
we learn that there has been a mistake and her husband is not really dead after all.
It's a twist.
In the final stage, Ketsu, the sudden change from joy to-- what? Fear? Grief?
An awareness that she has to go back into the box
she thought she had just been freed from, is a terrible shock. The young woman
drops dead. Ketsu is the conclusion. In this final stage, we look back at the events
and situations of the story and see them now from a different perspective.
A movie example Dr. Reinholt gives is the 2010 movie, Inception.
I think of the classic American stories, "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by
by Ambrose Bierce, and "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.
Certain Twilight Zone episodes come to my mind as well.
Then, there's the episodic plot.
Jonathan Swift's novel, Gulliver's Travels, falls into this category. In longer forms,
like novels, you can have a lot of small challenges-- episodes--
that may be completely unrelated to each other,
with no big climax at the end. The tension rises and falls, over and over.
The main character goes through the story, experiencing all these adventures,
and is sometimes no different at the end than he or she was at the beginning.
TV shows often do this as well.
So we've looked at four ways to structure your story: Freytag's Triangle,
The Hero's Journey,
Kishootenketsu,
and the Episodic form. Here are some time indexes so you
can go back and rewatch the parts that you're interested in.
There are really no hard-and-fast rules regarding plot structure.
But a good story should have a beginning, middle, and end;
I think everybody would agree with that. The Greek philosopher
Aristotle had some very influential ideas about tragedies and comedies.
Edgar Allan Poe had a few short story rules too.
Modern writers in the 20th century broke up these structures and
rearranged them in non-linear ways; for example,
the end of the book might reveal the actual
chronological beginning of the story.
So these structures, these frameworks, are really useful tools for writers who
are planning and outlining their narratives,
especially beginning writers. But don't let the framework
turn into a cage. They're tools, not rules. This is an art form, after all.
The main thing is that you tell a compelling story.
Your teacher may require that you include all the steps as a writing exercise. I've
done that. But otherwise, if it's a good story, no one will care that it was missing
this piece or that one. They'll just remember that it was a good story.
All right, now go have some fun creating your story!