essay on a plot

How to Write a Great Plot

What Is a Plot?

When we talk of a story’s plot , we typically refer to the sequence of cause-and-effect events that make up the storyline , connecting the story elements to build meaning and engagement with an audience.

Think of a plot like a roadmap. navigating you through the highs and lows of the story revolving around characters and setting, which leads us to a conflict and eventual resolution.

A good plot should keep you engaged, surprising you with twists and turns and moving you towards a satisfying conclusion. It’s what makes a story more than just a collection of random events and gives it direction and purpose.

The plot is arguably the most critical element of a story and can be approached from two perspectives; a traditional approach which is the main focus of this guide, known as a Plot- Driven Narrative (or commonly just a plot) and another popular approach that tells a story through the lens of a stories protagonist known as a C haracter-Driven narrative.

Let’s take a moment to explore the similarities and differences to these storytelling methods.

Plot-Driven Narratives Vs. Character Driven Narratives

These two types of stories account for the narrative structures of most books, movies, plays, and TV dramas. They represent two distinct approaches to storytelling. For students to get good at writing great plots, they should first learn to distinguish between these two perspectives on storytelling.

Character-driven stories focus primarily on the who of the story. They predominantly concern themselves with the inner lives of their protagonists and how events in the outside world affect them psychologically.

In character-driven stories, we follow the struggles and experiences of the story’s characters which usually culminate in a climax that results in a profound change in the life or psychology of the main character. 

The critical element of this type of story is character development, which is commonly found in literary fiction.

When exploring a traditional plot or Plot-Drive n Narrative, think of a story propelled forward by the events and actions within it. This is what we call a plot-driven narrative. It’s like a boat that’s pushed forward by the mighty waves of the story’s events, with the characters simply along for the ride.

Plot-driven narratives are focused on the “what” of a story rather than the “who.” They’re driven by twists, turns, and unexpected occurrences, with the goal of keeping the audience engaged and entertained. So, if you love a good mystery or action-packed adventure, a plot-driven narrative might be the path for you to pursue when writing a narrative.

Famous Character-Driven Stories

• The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
• Raging Bull
• The Godfather

Famous Plot-Driven Stories

• Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
• Jurrasic Park by Michael Crichton
• Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Whether a story is primarily plot-driven or character-driven, it will require well-drawn characters and a solidly constructed plot to be a good story. 

In the rest of this article, we’ll look at the plot’s main elements, some specific plots, and how students can create great plots for their own fantastic stories. We’ll also suggest activities to help students hone their skills in these areas.

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What Are The key Parts of a Plot?

There are six main elements of plot for students to identify and master. These are:

• Conflict or Inciting Incident
• Rising Action
• Falling Action

Below, you’ll find an outline of each element in turn, but if you want to explore these elements in greater detail with your students, check out Our Complete Guide to Narrative Writing here . 

1. Exposition

Exposition is all about laying the groundwork. The writer sets the scene in the first paragraphs and introduces the main characters. The exposition orients the reader to the fictional world they are entering.

2. Conflict/Inciting Incident

Every story needs a problem to drive the plot forward. We call this the ‘conflict’ or ‘inciting incident.’ At this stage of the narrative, an incident or a conflict occurs that sees the main character facing a challenge of some sort. This breaks the normality established in the exposition by setting a chain of events in motion that will form the story’s plot.

3. Rising Action

The conflict/inciting event sets off a sequence of causally linked episodes that gradually amp up the dramatic tension as the story builds towards the climax. This process of building tension through raising the stakes is called rising action.

The climax is the dramatic high point of the story, where everything comes to a head. This is where the story’s conflict will ultimately be resolved, usually in a moment of high excitement.

5. Falling Action

As the dramatic tension gets released in the excitement of the climax, the narrative begins to wind down. As the dust settles on the climactic scene, we begin to see the consequences on the characters and the world around them.

6. Resolution/Denouement

Sometimes known as a denouement, the resolution is the plot’s final section, where the conflict’s loose ends are tied up. This section has a finality as it establishes new normalcy in the wake of recent events.

The Classic Three Act Plot Structure Explained

If you are looking for the 5-minute explanation of how to write a strong plot without going into too many details and complexity, allow me to introduce you to the granddaddy of all story structures: the three-act plot. Think of it as a theatrical performance, with each act serving a specific purpose in the storytelling journey.

Act 1, is all about setup : It’s here where you introduce your characters, establish the setting, and create a sense of what’s at stake in the story.

Act 2 is where the drama takes center stage : At this point conflict arises, obstacles are placed in the characters’ way, and tensions rise and grow.

And finally, Act 3 is the grand finale : Where all the story threads come together in a resolution. Loose ends are tied up, conflicts are resolved, and your audience gets the payoff they’ve been waiting for.

So, there it is, next time you’re crafting a story, consider using this tried and true three-act structure to guide your plot and keep your audience engaged.

The & Basic Plot Types (With Prompts)

In the book world, we commonly find plot-driven genre fiction topping the paperback bestseller lists. In fact, most popular fiction known as ‘genre fiction’ is plot-driven. 

Genre fiction comes in many forms, for example, science fiction, romance, fantasy, thrillers, and horror, to name but a few.

Whatever the genre, we find many of the same plot types recurring within the well-thumbed pages of these most popular of books. For students to write their own great plots, they’ll need to understand the time-tested seven basic patterns that plots follow.

Let’s take a look at the most common of these plot types along with a writing prompt to get your students to write an example of each.

A genre with ancient roots, tragedies focus on events of great sorrow, suffering, distress and/or destruction. With roots in ancient Greek drama, tragedy treats the plot and the themes it raises with a serious and sombre tone.

Examples: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Prompt: A story opens with the hero’s untimely death. Can the student go back and tell the story of how events led to such a tragedy?

For the ancient Greeks, comedy represented the dramatic opposite of tragedy. Where tragedy is serious and somber, comedy is light-hearted and humorous. Comedy has many subgenres, including sarcasm , parody, farce, satire, slapstick, romantic comedy, screwball, and even dark humor.

Examples: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Prompt: There is a man who, due to a rare condition, cannot lie. No matter how desperately he wants to avoid telling the truth, he just cannot lie. What happens next?

iii. The Quest

As its name suggests, the quest plotline involves a journey of some sort to find a particular person, place, or item. Sometimes the quest is in pursuit of fame or fortune. Often, the thing being sought isn’t as important as the drama that happens along the way.

Examples: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Prompt: A young girl escapes from her unhappy home and her mean stepmother in search of a better future. Write what happens to her.

iv. The Voyage and Return

In some ways similar to the quest, except there is the added element of the return home. Typically, the hero enters a new land (often magical) where things are very different. Eventually, the hero, changed by events, returns home. Having learned some important lessons, they bring that new knowledge or discovery back home with them.

Examples: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum

Prompt: A prince is engaged to be married to a princess. She has been kidnapped by an evil rival. The prince must journey to find her with the hopes of bringing her home.

v. The Monster

In this type of plot, the hero must eliminate the threat posed by some sort of beast or evil entity such as a dragon, vampire, ghost, or demon. By destroying this monster, the hero will restore order and safety to the world.

Examples: Dracula by Bram Stoker, Jack and the Beanstalk (Traditional)

Prompt: The sea beast arises from the dark depths of the oceans and develops a taste for human flesh. The hero must find a way to stop this evil predator before his whole village is wiped out.

vi. Rebirth

Here, we witness the events leading to the redemption and rebirth of the main character who previously struggled with their place in the world. At the end of this type of story, there is a shift where the world is restored to a balance.

Examples: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Lion King

Prompt: A cruel orphanage owner stumbles across a foundling in the forest. This event sets in action a chain of events that leads to the orphanage owner’s redemption. Write what happens.

vii. Rags to Riches

This plot type charts the hero’s rise from humble origins through adversity to the heights of fame and fortune.

Examples: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Pursuit of Happyness

Prompt: A neglected child escapes from her unhappy home and struggles to provide for herself in the cold, uncaring city. One day, she meets an unlikely benefactor, beginning a sequence of events that will forever change her life. Write what happens.

How to Write a Great Plot: A Step-by-Step Process

Step 1: Generate Some Ideas

A story begins with the seed of an idea. Students can begin this process by deciding on one of the basic plot types above and then brainstorming a list of five events that might ignite a story.

Encourage the students to draw on their own life experiences, that of their friends and family members, and on things they’ve read about or seen on the news, for example.

Step 2: Create a Premise

Once they have the initial germ of an idea, it’s time to get the premise written down. The premise is a few sentences that express the proposed plot of the story in simple terms.

Step 3: Choose Characters and a Setting

Now it’s time to create the characters and choose the settings for the tale’s action to be played out. Writing brief character profiles, including some bullet points of their backstories, can be a great way to help the student build believable characters. 

For settings, creating a collage from photos, pictures, and illustrations can be an effective way to inspire vivid descriptions in the student’s work.

With these elements in place, the students can begin writing the exposition part of their stories.

Step 4: Introduce the Central Conflict 

No problem = no story!

Whether it’s called the central conflict, problem, or inciting incident, the student now needs to introduce it to anchor the plot and begin creating tension in the story.

At this point, examining this element in well-known stories in the same genre will be helpful for the student.

Ask the students to think about their favorite books and movies. Can they identify the central conflict in each? 

Step 5: Map Out a Path to the Resolution

With the central conflict firmly in place, a set of logical cause-and-effect dominoes now needs to be set up to take the plotline up the ladder of rising action to the climax and subsequent resolution.

Storyboarding is a highly effective way of helping students visualize their plot arc before committing to writing. Remind students of the importance of ensuring each scene connects causally.

When the climax has been reached, the dust will settle in the falling action to reveal the consequences of the actions and see new normalcy established in the resolution.

Tips for Writing a Great Plot

• Start with a strong hook: Begin your story with an interesting and attention-grabbing scene to grab your reader’s attention .
• Know your genre: Study the conventions and expectations of the genre you write in, so you can effectively play within those boundaries.
• Create memorable characters: Develop dynamic and compelling characters that drive the story forward.
• Build conflict: Your story needs conflict, whether it’s internal or external, to keep the plot moving.
• Use the three-act structure: Follow the classic three-act structure of setup, confrontation, and resolution to keep your plot structured and focused.
• Introduce twists and turns: Add unexpected events and plot twists to keep your audience engaged and on their toes.
• Keep it simple: Avoid complicating your plot with too many subplots or unnecessary details.
• Use foreshadowing: Plant hints and clues throughout the story to create suspense and keep your audience guessing.
• Have a clear resolution: Make sure your story has a satisfying conclusion that wraps up loose ends and resolves conflicts.
• Write with passion: Write from the heart, imbuing your plot with your own experiences and emotions to create a story that resonates with your reader.

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Plot Teaching Strategies and Activities

Following the structural elements laid out above, combined with the conventions of a basic plot type chosen from the seven types above, students should be well-placed to construct a well-ordered plotline.

If the above description of how to write a great plot seems too prescriptive initially, it’s worth noting that there is considerable creative freedom within the structures described in this article.

The plot types listed above have been identified from the shapes and patterns of thousands of our favorite tales told across the centuries rather than being templates that are laid out to be studiously followed. As humans, we are pattern-recognizing machines. It is in patterns that we find meaning.

Teaching Activities

• Story mapping: Have students create visual representations of the events and elements in a story to help them understand the structure of a plot.
• Analyzing plot in literature: Analyze and discuss the plot structure of well-known books and movies to see how different elements contribute to the overall story.
• Plot planning worksheet : Provide students with a worksheet or graphic organizer such as this to plan out their own story, including key events, characters, and conflicts.
• Writing workshops: Encourage students to workshop their own stories with peers, providing feedback on plot structure and pacing.
• Create story arcs: Teach students about the basic story arc and have them practice creating their own arcs for short stories or character arcs for longer works.

Once students get used to these underlying structures, they can begin to let their imaginations run away with them, safe in the knowledge that a coherent story will emerge from their bursts of creativity.

Plot Definition

What is plot? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Plot is the sequence of interconnected events within the story of a play, novel, film, epic, or other narrative literary work. More than simply an account of what happened, plot reveals the cause-and-effect relationships between the events that occur.

Some additional key details about plot:

• The plot of a story explains not just what happens, but how and why the major events of the story take place.
• Plot is a key element of novels, plays, most works of nonfiction, and many (though not all) poems.
• Since ancient times, writers have worked to create theories that can help categorize different types of plot structures.

Plot Pronounciation

Here's how to pronounce plot: plaht

The Difference Between Plot and Story

Perhaps the best way to say what a plot is would be to compare it to a story. The two terms are closely related to one another, and as a result, many people often use the terms interchangeably—but they're actually different. A story is a series of events; it tells us what happened . A plot, on the other hand, tells us how the events are connected to one another and why the story unfolded in the way that it did. In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster uses the following examples to distinguish between story and plot:

“The king died, and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Or again: “The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.” This is a plot with a mystery in it.

Therefore, when examining a plot, it's helpful to look for events that change the direction of the story and consider how one event leads to another.

The Structure of a Plot

For nearly as long as there have been narratives with plots, there have been people who have tried to analyze and describe the structure of plots. Below we describe two of the most well-known attempts to articulate the general structure of plot.

Freytag's Pyramid

One of the first and most influential people to create a framework for analyzing plots was 19th-century German writer Gustav Freytag, who argued that all plots can be broken down into five stages: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement. Freytag originally developed this theory as a way of describing the plots of plays at a time when most plays were divided into five acts, but his five-layered "pyramid" can also be used to analyze the plots of other kinds of stories, including novels, short stories, films, and television shows.

• Exposition is the first section of the plot. During the exposition, the audience is introduced to key background information, including characters and their relationships to one another, the setting (or time and place) of events, and any other relevant ideas, details, or historical context. In a five-act play, the exposition typically occurs in the first act.
• The rising action begins with the "inciting incident" or "complication"—an event that creates a problem or conflict for the characters, setting in motion a series of increasingly significant events. Some critics describe the rising action as the most important part of the plot because the climax and outcome of the story would not take place if the events of the rising action did not occur. In a five-act play, the rising action usually takes place over the course of act two and perhaps part of act three.
• The climax of a plot is the story's central turning point, which the exposition and the rising action have all been leading up to. The climax is the moment with the greatest tension or conflict. Though the climax is also sometimes called the crisis , it is not necessarily a negative event. In a tragedy , the climax will result in an unhappy ending; but in a comedy , the climax usually makes it clear that the story will have a happy ending. In a five-act play, the climax usually takes place at the end of the third act.
• Whereas the rising action is the series of events leading up to the climax, the falling action is the series of events that follow the climax, ending with the resolution, an event that indicates that the story is reaching its end. In a five-act play, the falling action usually takes place over the course of the fourth act, ending with the resolution.
• Dénouement is a French word meaning "outcome." In literary theory, it refers to the part of the plot which ties up loose ends and reveals the final consequences of the events of the story. During the dénouement, the author resolves any final or outstanding questions about the characters’ fates, and may even reveal a little bit about the characters’ futures after the resolution of the story. In a five-act play, the dénouement takes place in the fifth act.

While Freytag's pyramid is very handy, not every work of literature fits neatly into its structure. In fact, many modernist and post-modern writers intentionally subvert the standard narrative and plot structure that Freytag's pyramid represents.

Booker's "Meta-Plot"

In his 2004 book The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, Christopher Booker outlines an overarching "meta-plot" which he argues can be used to describe the plot structure of almost every story. Like Freytag's pyramid, Booker's meta-plot has five stages:

• The anticipation stage , in which the hero prepares to embark on adventure;
• The dream stage , in which the hero overcomes a series of minor challenges and gains a sense of confidence and invincibility;
• The frustration stage , in which the hero confronts the villain of the story;
• The nightmare stage , in which the hero fears they will be unable to overcome their enemy;
• The resolution , in which the hero finally triumphs.

Of course, like Freytag's Pyramid, Booker's meta-plot isn't actually a fool-proof way of describing the structure of every plot, but rather an attempt to describe structural elements that many (if not most) plots have in common.

Types of Plot

In addition to analyzing the general structure of plots, many scholars and critics have attempted to describe the different types of plot that serve as the basis of most narratives.

Booker's Seven Basic Plots

Within the overarching structure of Booker's "meta-plot" (as described above), Booker argues that plot types can be further subdivided into the following seven categories. Booker himself borrows most of these definitions of plot types from much earlier writers, such as Aristotle. Here's a closer look at each of the seven types:

• Comedy: In a comedy , characters face a series of increasingly absurd challenges, conflicts, and misunderstandings, culminating in a moment of revelation, when the confusion of the early part of the plot is resolved and the story ends happily. In romantic comedies, the early conflicts in the plot act as obstacles to a happy romantic relationship, but the conflicts are resolved and the plot ends with an orderly conclusion (and often a wedding). A Midsummer Night's Dream , When Harry Met Sally, and Pride and Prejudice are all examples of comedies.
• Tragedy: The plot of a tragedy follows a tragic hero —a likable, well-respected, morally upstanding character who has a tragic flaw or who makes some sort of fatal mistake (both flaw and/or mistake are known as hamartia ). When the tragic hero becomes aware of his mistake (this realization is called anagnorisis ), his happy life is destroyed. This reversal of fate (known as peripeteia ) leads to the plot's tragic ending and, frequently, the hero's death. Booker's tragic plot is based on Aristotle's theory of tragedy, which in turn was based on patterns in classical drama and epic poetry. Antigone , Hamlet , and The Great Gatsby are all examples of tragedies.
• Rebirth: In stories with a rebirth plot, one character is literally or metaphorically imprisoned by a dark force, enchantment, and/or character flaw. Through an act of love, another character helps the imprisoned character overcome the dark force, enchantment, or character flaw. Many stories of rebirth allude to Jesus Christ or other religious figures who sacrificed themselves for others and were resurrected. Beauty and the Beast , The Snow Queen , and A Christmas Carol are all examples of stories with rebirth plots.
• Overcoming the Monster: The hero sets out to fight an evil force and thereby protect their loved ones or their society. The "monster" could be literal or metaphorical: in ancient Greek mythology, Perseus battles the monster Medusa, but in the television show Good Girls Revolt , a group of women files a lawsuit in order to fight discriminatory policies in their workplace. Both examples follow the "Overcoming the Monster" plot, as does the epic poem Beowulf .
• Rags-to-Riches : In a rags-to-riches plot, a disadvantaged person comes very close to gaining success and wealth, but then appears to lose everything, before they finally achieve the happy life they have always deserved. Cinderella and Oliver Twist are classic rags-to-riches stories; movies with rags-to-riches plots include Slumdog Millionaire and Joy .
• The Quest: In a quest story, a hero sets out to accomplish a specific task, aided by a group of friends. Often, though not always, the hero is looking for an object endowed with supernatural powers. Along the way, the hero and their friends face challenges together, but the hero must complete the final stage of the quest alone. The Celtic myth of "The Fisher-King and the Holy Grail" is one of the oldest quest stories; Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a satire that follows the same plot structure; while Heart of Darkness plays with the model of a quest but has the quest end not with the discovery of a treasure or enlightenment but rather with emptiness and disillusionment.
• Voyage and Return: The hero goes on a literal journey to an unfamiliar place where they overcome a series of challenges, then return home with wisdom and experience that help them live a happier life. The Odyssey , Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , Chronicles of Narnia, and Eat, Pray, Love all follow the voyage and return plot.

As you can probably see, there's lots of room for these categories to overlap. This is one of the problems with trying to create any sort of categorization scheme for plots such as this—an issue we'll cover in greater detail below.

The Hero's Journey

The Hero's Journey is an attempt to describe a narrative archetype , or a common plot type that has specific details and structure (also known as a monomyth ). The Hero's Journey plot follows a protagonist's journey from the known to the unknown, and back to the known world again. The journey can be a literal one, as in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or a purely metaphorical one. Regardless, the protagonist is a changed person by the end of the story. The Hero's Journey structure was first popularized by Joseph Campbell's 1949 book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Later, theorists David Adams Leeming, Phil Cousineau, and Christopher Vogler all developed their own versions of the Hero's Journey structure. Each of these theorists divides The Hero's Journey into slightly different stages (Campbell identifies 17 stages, whereas Vogler finds 12 stages and Leeming and Cousineau use just 8). Below, we'll take a closer look at the 12 stages that Vogler outlines in his analysis of this plot type:

• The Ordinary World: When the story begins, the hero is a seemingly ordinary person living an ordinary life. This section of the story often includes expository details about the story's setting and the hero's background and personality.
• The Call to Adventure: Soon, the hero's ordinary life is interrupted when someone or something gives them an opportunity to go on a quest. Often, the hero is asked to find something or someone, or to defeat a powerful enemy. The call to adventure sometimes, but not always, involves a supernatural event. (In Star Wars: A New Hope , the call to adventure occurs when Luke sees the message from Leia to Obi-Wan Kenobi.)
• The Refusal of the Call: Some heroes are initially reluctant to embark on their journey and instead attempt to continue living their ordinary life. When this refusal takes place, it is followed by another event that prompts the hero to accept the call to adventure (Luke's aunt and uncle getting killed in Star Wars ).
• Meeting the Mentor: The hero meets a mentor: a wiser, more experienced person who gives them advice and guidance. The mentor trains and protects the hero until the hero is ready to embark on the next phase of the journey. (Obi-Wan Kenobi is Luke's mentor in Star Wars .)
• Crossing the Threshold: The hero "crosses the threshold" when they have left the familiar, ordinary world behind. Some heroes are eager to enter a new and unfamiliar world, while others may be uncertain if they are making the right choice, but in either case, once the hero crosses the threshold, there is no way to turn back. (Luke about to enter Mos Eisley, or of Frodo leaving the Shire in Lord of the Rings .)
• Tests, Allies, and Enemies: As the hero continues on their journey, they face a series of increasingly difficult "tests" or challenges. Along the way, they acquire friends who help them overcome these challenges, and enemies who attempt to thwart their quest. The hero may defeat some enemies during this phase or find ways to keep them temporarily at bay. These challenges help the reader develop a better a sense of the hero's strengths and weaknesses, and they help the hero become wiser and more experienced. This phase is part of the rising action .
• Approach to the Innermost Cave: At this stage, the hero prepares to face the greatest challenge of the journey, which lies within the "innermost cave." In some stories, the hero must literally enter an isolated and dangerous place and do battle with an evil force; in others, the hero must confront a fear or face an internal conflict; or, the hero may do both. You can think of the approach to the innermost cave as a second threshold—a moment when the hero faces their doubts and fears and decides to continue on the quest. (Think of Frodo entering Mordor, or Harry Potter entering the Forbidden Forest with the Deathly Hallows, ready to confront Lord Voldemort.)
• The Ordeal: The ordeal is the greatest challenge that the hero faces. It may take the form of a battle or physically dangerous task, or it may represent a moral or personal crisis that threatens to destroy the hero. Earlier (in the "Tests, Allies, and Enemies" phase), the hero might have overcome challenges with the help of friends, but the hero must face the ordeal alone. The outcome of the ordeal often determines the fate of the hero's loved ones, society, or the world itself. In many stories, the ordeal involves a literal or metaphorical resurrection, in which the hero dies or has a near-death experience, and is reborn with new knowledge or abilities. This constitutes the climax of the story.
• Reward: After surviving the ordeal, the hero receives a reward of some kind. Depending on the story, it may come in the form of new wisdom and personal strengths, the love of a romantic interest, a supernatural power, or a physical prize. The hero takes the reward or rewards with them as they return to the ordinary world.
• The Road Back: The hero begins to make their way home, either by retracing their steps or with the aid of supernatural powers. They may face a few minor challenges or setbacks along the way. This phase is part of the falling action .
• The Resurrection: The hero faces one final challenge in which they must use all of the powers and knowledge that they have gained throughout their journey. When the hero triumphs, their rebirth is completed and their new identity is affirmed. This phase is not present in all versions of the hero's journey.
• Return with the Elixir: The hero reenters the ordinary world, where they find that they have changed (and perhaps their home has changed too). Among the things they bring with them when they return is an "elixir," or something that will transform their ordinary life for the better. The elixir could be a literal potion or gift, or it may take the form of the hero's newfound perspective on life: the hero now possesses love, forgiveness, knowledge, or another quality that will help them build a better life.

Other Genre-Specific Plots

Apart from the plot types described above (the "Hero's Journey" and Booker's seven basic plots), there are a couple common plot types worth mentioning. When a story uses one of the following plots, it usually means that it belongs to a specific genre of literature—so these plot structures can be thought of as being specific to their respective genres.

• Mystery : A story that centers around the solving of a baffling crime—especially a murder. The plot structure of a mystery can often be described using Freytag's pyramid (i.e., it has exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement), but the plots of mysteries also tend to follow other, more genre-specific conventions, such as the gradual discovery of clues culminating in the revelation of the culprit's identity as well as their motive. In a typical story (i.e., a non-mystery) key characters and their motives are usually revealed before the central conflict arises, not after.
• Bindungsroman : A story that shows a young protagonist's journey from childhood to adulthood (or immaturity to maturity), with a focus on the trials and misfortunes that affect the character's growth. The term "coming-of-age novel" is sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman. This is not necessarily incorrect—in most cases the terms can be used interchangeably—but Bildungsroman carries the connotation of a specific and well-defined literary tradition, which tends to follow certain genre-specific conventions (for example, the main character often gets sent away from home, falls in love, and squanders their fortune). The climax of the Bildungsroman typically coincides with the protagonist reaching maturity.

Other Attempts to Classify Types of Plots

In addition to Freytag, Booker, and Campbell, many other theorists and literary critics have created systems classifying different kinds of plot structures. Among the best known are:

• William Foster-Harris, who outlined three archetypal plot structures in The Basic Patterns of Plot
• Ronald R. Tobias, who wrote a book claiming there are 20 Master Plots
• Georges Polti, who argued there are in fact Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations
• Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, who in the early twentieth century outlined seven types of plot

And then there are the more atypical approaches to classifying the different types of plots:

• In 1965, the University of Chicago rejected Kurt Vonnegut's college thesis, which claimed that folktales and fairy tales shared common structures, or "shapes," including "man in a hole," "boy gets girl" and "Cinderella." He went on to write Slaughterhouse-Five , a novel which subverts traditional narrative structures, and later developed a lecture based on his failed thesis .
• Two recent studies, led by University of Nebraska professor Matthew Jockers and researchers at the University of Adelaide and the University of Vermont respectively, have used machine learning to analyze the plot structures and emotional ups-and-downs of stories. Both projects concluded that there are six types of stories.

Criticism of Efforts to Categorize Plot Types

Some critics argue that though archetypal plot structures can be useful tools for both writers and readers, we shouldn't rely on them too heavily when analyzing a work of literature. One such skeptic is New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani, who in a 2005 review described Christopher Booker's Seven Basic Plots as "sometimes absorbing and often blockheaded." Kakutani writes that while Booker finds interesting ways to categorize stories by plot type, he is too fixated on finding stories that fit these plot types perfectly. As a result, Booker tends to idealize overly simplistic stories (and Hollywood films in particular), instead of analyzing more complex stories that may not fit the conventions of his seven plot types. Kakutani argues that, as a result of this approach, Booker undervalues modern and contemporary writers who structure their plots in different and innovative ways.

Kakutani's argument is a reminder that while some great works of literature may follow archetypal plot structures, they may also have unconventional plot structures that defy categorization. Authors who use nonlinear structures or multiple narrators often intentionally create stories that do not perfectly fit any of the "plot types" discussed above. William Faulker's The Sound and the Fury and Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad are both examples of this kind of work. Even William Shakespeare, who wrote many of his plays following the traditional structures for tragedies and comedies, authored several "problem plays," which many scholars struggle to categorize as strictly tragedy or comedy: All's Well That Ends Well , Measure for Measure , Troilus and Cressida, The Winter's Tale , Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of Venice are all examples of "problem plays."

Plot Examples

The following examples are representative of some of the most common types of plot.

The "Hero's Journey" Plot in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The plot of The Hobbit closely follows the structure of a typical hero's journey.

• The Ordinary World: At the beginning of The Hobbit , the story's hero, Bilbo Baggins, is living a comfortable life alongside his fellow hobbits in the Shire. (Hobbits are short, human-like creatures predisposed to peaceful, domestic routines.)
• The Call to Adventure: The wizard Gandalf arrives in the Shire with a band of 13 dwarves and asks Bilbo to go with them to Lonely Mountain in order to reclaim the dwarves' treasure, which has been stolen by the dragon Smaug.
• The Refusal of the Call: At first, Bilbo refuses to join Gandalf and the dwarves, explaining that it isn't in a hobbit's nature to go on adventures.
• Meeting the Mentor: Gandalf, who serves as Bilbo's mentor throughout The Hobbit, persuades Bilbo to join the dwarves on their journey.
• Cross the Threshold: Gandalf takes Bilbo to meet the dwarves at the Green Dragon Inn in Bywater, and the group leaves the Shire together.
• Tests, Allies, and Enemies: Bilbo faces many challenges and trials on the way to the Lonely Mountain. Early in the trip, they are kidnapped by trolls and are rescued by Gandalf. Bilbo takes an elvish dagger from the trolls' supply of weapons that he uses throughout the rest of the journey. Soon Bilbo and the dwarves are captured by goblins, but they are rescued by Gandalf who also kills the Great Goblin. Later, Bilbo finds a magical ring (which becomes the focus of the Lord of the Rings books), and when the dwarves are captured later in the journey (once by giant spiders and once by elves), Bilbo uses the ring and the dagger to rescue them. Finally, Bilbo and the dwarves arrive at Lake Town, near the Lonely Mountain.
• Approach to the Innermost Cave: Bilbo and the dwarves makes his way from Lake Town to the Lonely Mountain, where the dragon Smaug is guarding the dwarves' treasure. Bilbo alone is brave enough to enter the Smaug's lair. Bilbo steals a cup from Smaug, and also learns that Smaug has a weak spot in his scaly armor. Enraged at Bilbo's theft, Smaug flies to Lake-Town and devastates it, but is killed by a human archer who learns of Smaug's weak spot from a bird that overheard Bilbo speaking of it.
• The Ordeal: After Smaug's death, elves and humans march to the Lonely Mountain to claim what they believe is their portion of the treasure (as Smaug plundered from them, too). The dwarves refuse to share the treasure and a battle seems evident, but Bilbo steals the most beautiful gem from the treasure and gives it to the humans and elves. The greedy dwarves banish Bilbo from their company. Meanwhile, an army of wargs (magical wolves) and goblins descend on the Lonely Mountain to take vengeance on the dwarves for the death of the Great Goblin. The dwarves, humans, and elves form an alliance to fight the wargs and goblins, and eventually triumph, though Bilbo is knocked unconscious for much of the battle. (It might seem odd that Bilbo doesn't participate in the battle, but that fact also seems to suggest that the true ordeal of the novel was not the battle but rather Bilbo's moral choice to steal the gem and give it to the men and elves to counter the dwarves growing greed.)
• Reward: The victorious dwarves, humans, and elves share the treasure among themselves, and Bilbo receives a share of the treasure, which he takes home, along with the dagger and the ring.
• The Road Back: It takes Bilbo and Gandalf nearly a year to travel back to the Shire. During that time they e-visit with some of the people they met on their journey out and have many adventures, though none are as difficult as those they undertook on the way to the Lonely Mountain.
• The Resurrection: Bilbo's return to the Shire as a changed person is underlined by the fact that he has been away so long, the other hobbits in the Shire believe that he has died and are preparing to sell his house and belongings.
• Return with the Elixir: Bilbo returns to the shire with the ring, the dagger, and his treasure—enough to make him rich. He also has his memories of the adventure, which he turns into a book.

Other examples of the Hero's Journey Plot Structure:

• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Iliad by Homer

The Comedic Plot in Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night , is generally described as a comedy and follows what Booker would call comedic plot structure. At the beginning of the play, the protagonist, Viola is shipwrecked far from home in the kingdom of Illyria. Her twin brother, Sebastian, appears to have died in the storm. Viola disguises herself as a boy, calls herself Cesario, and gets a job as the servant of Count Orsino, who is in love with the Lady Olivia. When Orsino sends Cesario to deliver romantic messages to Olivia on his behalf, Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Meanwhile, Viola falls in love with Orsino, but she cannot confess her love without revealing her disguise.

In another subplot, Olivia's uncle Toby and his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek persuade the servant Maria to play a prank convincing another servant, Malvolio, that Olivia loves him. The plot thickens when Sebastian (Viola's lost twin) arrives in town and marries Olivia, who believes she is marrying Cesario. At the end of the play, Viola is reunited with her brother, reveals her identity, and confesses her love to Orsino, who marries her. In spite of the chaos, misunderstandings, and challenges the characters face in the early part of the plot—a source of much of the play's humor— Twelfth Night reaches an orderly conclusion and ends with two marriages.

Other examples of comedic plot structure:

• Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
• Love's Labor's Lost by William Shakespeare
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Lysistrata by Aristophanes
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The Tragic Plot in Macbeth by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's play Macbeth follows the tragic plot structure. The tragic hero , Macbeth, is a Scottish nobleman, who receives a prophecy from three witches saying that he will become the Thane of Cawdor and eventually the King. After King Duncan makes Macbeth Thane of Cawdor, Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to fulfill the prophecy by secretly murdering Duncan. He does, and is named King. Later, to ensure that Macbeth will remain king, they also order the assassination of the nobleman Banquo, his son, and the wife and children of the nobleman Macduff. However, as Macbeth protects his throne in ever more bloody ways, Lady Macbeth begins to go mad with guilt. Macbeth consults the witches again, and they reassure him that "no man from woman born can harm Macbeth" and that he will not be defeated until the "wood begins to move" to Dunsinane castle. Therefore, Macbeth is reassured that he is invincible. Lady Macbeth never recovers from her guilt and commits suicide, and Macbeth feels numb and empty, even as he is certain he can never be killed. Meanwhile an army led by Duncan's son Malcolm, their number camouflaged by the branches they carry, so that they look like a moving forest, approaches Dunsinane. In the fighting Macduff reveals he was born by cesarian section, and kills Macbeth.

Macbeth's mistake ( hamartia ) is his unrelenting ambition to be king, and his trust in the witches' prophecies. He realizes his mistake in a moment of anagnorisis when the forest full of camouflaged soldiers seems to be moving, and he experiences a reversal of fate ( peripeteia ) when he is defeated by Macduff.

Other examples of tragic plot structure:

• Antigone by Sophocles
• Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
• Agamemnon by Aeschylus
• The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus
• The Eumenides by Aeschylus
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Othello by William Shakespeare
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The "Rebirth" Plot in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol is an example of the "rebirth" plot. The novel's protagonist is the miserable, selfish businessman Ebenezer Scrooge, who mistreats his clerk, Bob Cratchit, who is a loving father struggling to support his family. Scrooge scoffs at the notion that Christmas is a time for joy, love, and generosity. But on Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner, who warns Scrooge that if he does not change his ways, his spirit will be condemned to wander the earth as a ghost. Later that night, he is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. With these ghosts, Scrooge revisits lonely and joyful times of his youth, sees Cratchit celebrating Christmas with his loved ones, and finally foresees his own lonely death. Scrooge awakes on Christmas morning and resolves to change his ways. He not only celebrates Christmas with the Cratchits, but embraces the Christmas spirit of love and generosity all year long. By the end of the novel, Scrooge has been "reborn" through acts of generosity and love.

Other examples of "rebirth" plot structure:

• The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Snow White by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
• The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson
• Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve

The "Overcoming the Monster" Plot in Beowulf

The Old English epic poem, Beowulf , follows the structure of an "overcoming the monster" plot. In fact, the poem's hero, Beowulf, defeats not just one monster, but three. As a young warrior, Beowulf slays Grendel, a swamp-dwelling demon who has been raiding the Danish king's mead hall. Later, when Grendel's mother attempts to avenge her son's death, Beowulf kills her, too. Beowulf eventually becomes king of the Geats, and many years later, he battles a dragon who threatens his people. Beowulf manages to kill the dragon, but dies from his wounds, and is given a hero's funeral. Three times, Beowulf succeeds in protecting his people by defeating a monster.

Other examples of the overcoming the monster plot structure:

• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

The "Rags-to-Riches" Plot in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre is an example of a "rags-to-riches" plot. The protagonist, Jane, is a mistreated orphan who is eventually sent away to a boarding school where students are severely mistreated. Jane survives the school and goes on to become a governess at Thornfield Manor, where Jane falls in love with Mr. Rochester. The two become engaged, but on their wedding day, Jane discovers that Rochester's first wife, Bertha, has gone insane and is imprisoned in Thornfield's attic. She leaves Rochester and ends up finding long-lost cousins. After a time, her very religious cousin, St. John, proposes to her. Jane almost accepts, but then rejects the proposal. She returns to Thornfield to discover that Bertha started a house fire and leapt off the roof of the burning building to her death, and that Rochester had been blinded by the fire in an attempt to save Bertha. Jane and Rochester marry, and live a quiet and happy life together. Jane begins the story with nothing, seems poised to achieve true happiness before losing everything, but ultimately has a happy ending.

Other examples of the rags-to-riches plot structure:

• Cinderella by Charles Perrault
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White
• Villette by Charlotte Brontë
• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery

The Quest Plot in Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Siddhartha , by Herman Hesse, follows the structure of the "quest" plot. The novel's protagonist, Siddartha, leaves his hometown in search of spiritual enlightenment, accompanied by his friend, Govinda. On their journey, they join a band of holy men who seek enlightenment through self-denial, and later, they study with a group of Bhuddists. Disillusioned with religion, Siddartha leaves Govinda and the Bhuddists behind and takes up a hedonistic lifestyle with the beautiful Kamala. Still unsatisfied with his life, he considers suicide in a river, but instead decides to apprentice himself to the man who runs the ferry boat. By studying the river, Siddhartha eventually obtains enlightenment.

Other examples of the quest plot structure:

• Candide by Voltaire
• Don Quixote by Migel de Cervantes
• A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Perceval by Chrétien
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

The "Voyage and Return" Plot in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God follows what Booker would describe as a voyage and return plot structure. The plot follows the hero, Janie, as she seeks love and happiness. The novel begins and ends in Eatonville, Florida, where Janie was brought up by her grandmother. Janie has three romantic relationships, each better than the last. She marries a man named Logan Killicks on her grandmother's advice, but she finds the marriage stifling and she soon leaves him. Janie's second, more stable marriage to the prosperous Joe Starks lasts 20 years, but Janie does not feel truly loved by him. After Joe dies, she marries Tea Cake, a farm worker who loves, respects, and cherishes her. They move to the Everglades and live there happily for just over a year, when Tea Cake dies of rabies after getting bitten by a dog during a hurricane. Janie mourns Tea Cake's death, but returns to Eatonville with a sense of peace: she has known true love, and she will always carry her memories of Tea Cake with her. Her journey and her return home have made her stronger and wiser.

Other examples of the voyage and return plot structure:

• The Odyssey by Homer
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• By the Waters of Babylon by Stephen Vincent Benét

Other Helpful Plot Resources

• What Makes a Hero? Check out this awesome video on the hero's journey from Ted-Ed.
• The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations : Visit Wikipedia for an overview of George Polti's theory of dramatic plot structure.
• Why Tragedies Are Alluring : Learn more about Aristotle's tragic structure, ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, and contemporary tragic plots.
• The Wikipedia Page on Plot: A basic but helpful overview of plots.

• PDFs for all 136 Lit Terms we cover
• Downloads of 1929 LitCharts Lit Guides
• Teacher Editions for every Lit Guide
• Explanations and citation info for 40,694 quotes across 1929 books
• Downloadable (PDF) line-by-line translations of every Shakespeare play
• Bildungsroman
• Climax (Figure of Speech)
• Falling Action
• Rising Action
• Tragic Hero
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Red Herring
• Anadiplosis
• Antimetabole
• Slant Rhyme
• Colloquialism
• Flat Character
• Rhyme Scheme

The plot of a story defines the sequence of events that propels the reader from beginning to end. Storytellers have experimented with the plot of a story since the dawn of literature. No matter what genre you write, understanding the possibilities of plot structure, as well as the different types of plot, will help bring your stories to life.

So, what is plot? Is there a difference between plot vs. story? What plot devices can you use to surprise the reader? And how does plot relate to the story itself?

In this article, we go over the elements of plot, different plot structures to use in your work, and the many possibilities of narrative structuring.

But first, what is the plot of a story? Let’s investigate in detail.

Elements of Plot

• Common Plot Structures

What is Plot Without Conflict?

Common plot devices.

• 8 Types of Plot
• Plot-Driven Vs. Character-Driven Stories
• Plot Vs. Story

Plot Definition: What is the Plot of a Story?

The plot of a story is the sequence of events that shape a broader narrative, with every event causing or affecting each other. In other words, story plot is a series of causes-and-effects which shape the story as a whole.

What is plot?: A series of causes-and-effects which shape the story as a whole.

Plot is not merely a story summary: it must include causation. The novelist E. M. Forster sums it up perfectly:

“The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then the queen died of grief, is a plot.” —E. M. Forster

In other words, the premise doesn’t become a plot until the words “of grief” adds causality. Without including “of grief” in the sentence, the queen could have died for any number of reasons, like assassination or suicide. Grief not only provides plot structure to the story, it also introduces what the story’s theme might be.

The plot of a story must include the following elements:

• Causation: one event causes another, and that cause-and-effect unleashes a whole chain of plot points which formulate the story.
• Characters: stories are about people, so a plot must introduce the main players of the plot.
• Conflict: a plot must involve people with competing interests or internal conflicts, because without conflict, there is no story or themes.

Combining these elements of plot creates the structure of the story itself. Let’s take a look at those plot structures now, because there are many different ways to organize the story’s events.

Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion—that’s Plot. —Leigh Brackett

Some Common Plot Structures

There are many ways to develop the plot of a story, and writers have been experimenting with plot structures for millennia. Consider the following structures as you attempt to write your own stories, as they may help you find a solution to the problems you encounter in your story writing.

Plot Structures: Aristotle’s Story Triangle

The oldest recorded discussion of plot structures comes from Aristotle’s Poetics (circa 335 B.C.). In Poetics , Aristotle represents the plot of a story as a narrative triangle, suggesting that stories provide linear narratives that resolve certain conflicts in three parts: a beginning, middle, and end.

To Aristotle, the beginning should exist independent of any prior events: it should be a self-sustaining unit of the story without prompting the reader to ask “why?” or “how?” The middle should be a logical continuation of the events from the beginning, expanding upon the story’s conflicts and tragedies. Finally, the end should provide a neat resolution, without suggesting further events.

Obviously, many stories complicate this basic plot triangle, and it lacks some of the finer details of plot structure. One way that Aristotle has been developed further is through Freytag’s Pyramid.

Plot Structures: Freytag’s Pyramid

Freytag’s Pyramid builds upon Aristotle’s Poetics by expanding the structural elements of plot. This pyramid consists of five discrete parts:

• Exposition: The beginning of the story, introducing main characters, settings , themes, and the author’s own style .
• Rising Action: This begins after the inciting incident , which is the event that kicks off the story’s main conflict. Rising Action follows the cause-and-effect plot points once the main conflict is established.
• Climax: The moment in which the story’s conflict peaks, and we learn the fate of the main characters.
• Falling Action: The main characters react to and contend with the Climax, processing what it means for their lives and futures.
• Denouement: The end of the story, wrapping up any loose ends that haven’t been wrapped up in the Falling Action. Some Denouements are open ended.

For more on Freytag’s Pyramid, check out our article. https://writers.com/freytags-pyramid

Plot Structures: Nigel Watts’ 8 Point Arc

A further expansion of Freytag’s Pyramid, the 8 Point Arc is Nigel Watts’ contribution to the study of narratology. Watts contends that a story must pass through 8 discrete plot points:

• Stasis: The everyday life of the protagonist , which becomes disrupted by the story’s inciting incident, or “trigger.”
• Trigger: Something beyond the protagonist’s control sets the story’s conflict in motion.
• The quest: Akin to the rising action, the quest is the protagonist’s journey to contend with the story’s conflict.
• Surprise: Unexpected but plausible moments during the quest that complicate the protagonist’s journey. A surprise might be an obstacle, complication, confusion, or internal flaw that the protagonist didn’t predict.
• Critical choice : Eventually, the protagonist must make a complicated, life-altering decision. This decision will reveal the protagonist’s true character, and it will also radically alter the events of the story.
• Climax: The result of the protagonist’s critical choice, the climax determines the consequences of that choice. It is the apex of tension in the story.
• Reversal: This is the protagonist’s reaction to the climax. Reversal should alter the protagonist’s status, whether that status is their place in society, their outlook on life, or their own death.
• Resolution: The return to a new stasis, in which a new life goes forth from the ashes of the story’s conflict and climax.

If the plot of a story passes through each of these moments in order, the author has built a complete narrative.

Watts expands upon this plot structure in his book Write a Novel and Get It Published .

Plot Structures: Save the Cat

The Save the Cat plot structure was developed by screenwriter Blake Snyder. Although it primarily deals with screenplays, it maps out story structure in such a detailed way that its many elements can be incorporated into all types of stories.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, we’ll point you to the great breakdown of Save the Cat, including a worksheet you can use to draft your own story. Find it here, at Reedsy .

Plot Structures: The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is a plot structure originally crafted by Joseph Campbell. Campbell argued that the plot of a story has three main acts, with each act corresponding to the necessary journey a hero must undergo in order to be the hero.

Those three parts are: Stage 1) The Departure Act (the hero leaves their everyday life); Stage 2) The Initiation Act (the hero undergoes various conflicts in an unknown land); and Stage 3) The Return Act (the hero returns, radically altered, to their original home).

In his screenwriting textbook The Writer’s Journey , Christopher Vogler expands these three stages into a 12 step process. To Vogler, the hero’s journey must pass through these parts:

The Departure Act

• The Ordinary World: We meet our hero in their mundane, everyday reality.
• Call to Adventure: The hero is confronted with a challenge which, if they accept it, forces them to leave their ordinary world.
• Refusing the Call: Recognizing the dangers of adventure, the hero will, if not reject the call, at least demure or hesitate while considering the many probable ways it will go wrong.
• Meeting the Mentor: The hero decides to go on the adventure, but they are much too inexperienced to survive. A mentor accompanies the hero to help them be smart and strong enough for the journey.

The Initiation Act

• Crossing the Threshold: By leaving for their adventure, the hero crosses a liminal threshold. They cannot go back, and if they return home, they won’t return the same.
• Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The hero enters a strange new world, with unfamiliar rules and dangers. They also encounter allies and enemies that broaden and complicate the story’s conflicts.
• Approach (to the Inmost Cave) : The “inmost cave” is the locus of the journey’s worst dangers—think of the dragon’s lair in Beowulf or the White Witch’s castle in The Chronicles of Narnia . The hero is approaching this cave, though must locate it and build strength.
• Ordeal: This is the hero’s biggest test (thus far). Sometimes the climax (but not always), the ordeal forces the hero to face their biggest fears, and it often occurs when the hero receives unexpected news. This is a low point for the hero.
• Reward: The hero receives whatever reward they gain from their ordeal, whether that reward is a material possession, greater knowledge, someone’s freedom, or the resolution of the hero’s internal conflict.

The Return Act

• The Road Back: The hero ventures back home, though their newfound reward raises additional dangers, many of which stem from the Inmost Cave.
• Resurrection: The main antagonist returns for one final fight against the hero. This is a test of whether the hero has truly learned their lesson and undergone significant character development ; it is also the other climax of the story. The hero comes closest to death here (if they don’t actually die).
• The Return: The elixir is whatever reward the hero accrued, whether that be knowledge or material wealth. Regardless, the hero returns home a changed person, and their return home highlights the many ways in which the hero has changed—both for better and worse.

Plot Structures: Fichtean Curve

The Fichtean Curve was originally crafted for pulp and mystery stories, though it can certainly apply to stories in other genres. Described extensively by John Gardner in The Art of Fiction , the Fichtean Curve argues that a story plot has three parts: a rising action, a climax, and a falling action.

In the Fichtean Curve, the rising action comprises about ⅔ of the entire story. Moreover, the rising action isn’t linear. Rather, a series of escalating and de-escalating conflicts slowly pushes the story towards its climax.

If you’ve ever read one of Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries, then you’re already familiar with the Fichtean Curve. In Murder on the Orient Express , for example, Hercule Poirot continues to stoke the flames of the story’s many suspects: he uncovers every passenger’s flaws, insecurities, and secrets, each time generating a little more conflict, and each time narrowing down the murderer until the story’s explosive climax.

In a moment, we’ll look at some common plot devices that authors use to keep their stories fresh and engaging. But first, let’s discuss a central element of all plots: conflict. Is it always essential to good storytelling? What is plot without conflict?

First, let’s define conflict. Conflict is not necessarily two characters bickering, although that’s certainly an example. Conflict refers to the opposing forces acting against a character’s goals and interests. Sometimes, that conflict is external: an enemy, bureaucracy, society, etc. Other times, the conflict is internal: traumas, illogical ways of thinking, character flaws, etc.

Typically, conflict is the engine of the story. It’s what incites the inciting incident. It’s what keeps the rising action rising. The climax is the final product of the conflict, and the denouement decides the outcome of that conflict. The plot of a story relies on conflict to keep the pages turning.

So, a word of advice: if you’re developing a story plot, but don’t know where to go, always return to conflict. Each scene should stoke a conflict forward, even if the conflict isn’t readily apparent just yet. Anything that doesn’t explore, expand, or resolve the elements of a story’s conflict is likely wasting the reader’s time.

If you’re developing a story plot, but don’t know where to go, always return to conflict.

Before we move on, it’s worth noting that the centrality of conflict in plot in literature is a very Western notion. Some forms of storytelling don’t rely on conflict. The Eastern story structure Kishōtenketsu, for example, involves characters reacting to random external situations, rather than generating and resolving their own conflicts. A conflict might be featured in this kind of storytelling, but the story engine is the characters themselves, their own complexities and dilemmas, and how they survive in a world they can’t control.

To learn more about conflict in story plot, check out our article:

What is Conflict in a Story? Definition and Examples

The plot of a story is influenced by many factors. While plot structures give the framework for the story itself, the author must employ plot devices to keep the story moving, otherwise the rising action will never become a climax.

These plot devices ensure that your reader will keep reading, and that your story will deepen and complicate the themes it seeks to engage.

Aristotle’s Plot Devices

In Poetics , Aristotle describes three plot devices which are essential to most stories. These are:

1. Anagnorisis (Recognition)

Luke, I am your father! Anagnorisis is the moment in which the protagonist goes from ignorance to knowledge. Often preceding the story’s climax, anagnorisis is the key piece of information that propels the protagonist into resolving the story’s conflict.

2. Pathos (Suffering)

Aristotle defines pathos as “a destructive or painful action.” This can be physical pain, such as death or severe wounds, but it can also be an emotional or existential pain. Regardless, Aristotle contends that all stories confront extreme pain, and that this pain is essential for the propulsion of the plot. (This is different from the rhetorical device “pathos,” in which a rhetorician seeks to appeal to the audience’s emotions.)

3. Peripeteia (Reversal)

A peripeteia is a moment in which bad fortunes change to good, or good fortunes change to bad. In other words, this is a reversal of the situation. Often accompanied by anagnorisis, peripeteia is often the outcome of the story’s climax, since the climax decides whether the protagonist’s story ends in comedy or tragedy.

Plot Devices for Story Structure

The plot of a story will gain structure from the use of these devices.

Backstory refers to important moments that have occurred prior to the main story. They happen before the story’s exposition, and while they sometimes change the direction of the story, they more often provide historical parallels and key bits of characterization. Sometimes, a story will refer to its own backstory via flashback .

Deus Ex Machina

A deus ex machina occurs when the protagonist’s fate is changed due to circumstances outside of their control. The Gods may intervene, the antagonist may suddenly perish, or the story’s conflict resolves itself. Generally, deus ex machina is viewed as a “cop out” that prevents the protagonist from experiencing the full growth necessary to complete their journey. However, this risky device may pay off, especially in works of comedy or absurdism.

In Media Res

From the Latin “in the middle of things,” a story is “in media res” when it starts in the middle. On Page 1, word 1, the story starts somewhere in the middle of the rising action, hooking the reader in despite the lack of context. Eventually, the story will properly introduce the characters and take us to the beginning of the conflict, but “in media res” is one way to generate immediate interest in the story.

Plot Voucher

A plot voucher is something that is given to the protagonist for later use, except the protagonist doesn’t know yet that they will use it. That “something” might be an item, a piece of information, or even a future allegiance with another person. Many times, a plot voucher is bequeathed before the story’s conflict properly takes shape. For example, in the Harry Potter series, the Resurrection Stone is hidden in Harry’s first golden snitch, making the snitch a plot voucher.

Plot Devices for Complicating the Story

What is the plot of a story, if not complicated? These plot devices bring your readers in for a wild ride.

Cliffhanger

A cliffhanger occurs when the story ends before the climax is resolved. Specifically, the story ends mid-climax so that the reader experiences the height of the story’s tension, but doesn’t see the outcome of the climax and the fate of the protagonist or conflict. Cliffhangers will generally occur when the story is part of a series, though it can also have literary merit. In One Thousand and One Nights , Scheherazade ends her stories on cliffhangers so that the king keeps postponing her execution.

A MacGuffin is a plot device in which the protagonist’s main desire lacks intrinsic value. In other words, the protagonist desires the MacGuffin, which causes the story’s conflict, but the MacGuffin itself is actually valueless. Many times, the protagonist doesn’t even obtain the MacGuffin, because they have learned what lessons they were supposed to learn from the chase. An example is the falcon statuette in The Maltese Falcon . This statuette is never obtained, but it drives the novel’s many murders and double crossings.

Red Herring

A red herring is a distraction device in which the author misleads the reader (or other characters) with seemingly-relevant details. (The MacGuffin is a form of red herring.) Red herrings are primarily found in mystery and suspense stories, as they string the reader down different possibilities while distracting from the truth. Although this plot device can complicate the story and even build symbolism , it can also fracture the reader’s trust in the author, so writers should use it sparingly and wisely. (This is slightly different from the logical fallacy “red herring,” in which irrelevant information is used to distract the reader from a faulty argument.)

For more plot devices and storytelling techniques, take a look at our article The Art of Storytelling.

https://writers.com/the-art-of-storytelling

8 Types of Plot in Literature

Certain types of plot recur throughout literature, especially in genre fiction. These stories build upon the previously mentioned plot devices, and they have their own tropes and archetypes which the author must fill to tell a complete story.

Some, but not all, of the following plots were originally defined by Christopher Booker in his work The Seven Basic Plots . (We’ve omitted some of the plots he mentions if they are rarely seen in contemporary literature.)

The plot of a story might take the following shapes:

1. Plot of a Story: Quest

Often resembling the Hero’s Journey, a quest is a story in which the protagonist sets out from their homeland in search of something. They might be searching for treasure, for love, for the truth, for a new home, or for the solution to a problem. Often accompanied by other allies, and often embarking on this journey with hesitation, the protagonist comes back from their quest stronger, smarter, and irreversibly changed—if they make it back alive.

Examples of the quest include: The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , and The Harry Potter Series .

2. Plot of a Story: Tragedy

A tragedy is a story of a well-meaning protagonist who, due to their flaws or shortcomings, fails to resolve the story’s conflict. (The hero’s tragic flaw is known as hamartia .) Tragedies often highlight the terrible circumstances that the protagonist finds themselves in, or the impossible moral quandaries that they must resolve (but don’t). Readers come to love the tragic hero both despite and because of their flaws, and their inability to resolve the conflict often comes as a great moral or personal loss, even resulting in the protagonist’s death.

Examples of the tragedy include: Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

3. Plot of a Story: Rags to Riches

A rags to riches story involves a protagonist who goes from dire poverty to excessive wealth. In addition to navigating issues of class and identity, these stories often showcase the protagonist’s inner world as they adjust to drastically new life circumstances. The plot of a rags to riches story will follow the protagonist’s relationship to wealth, and the things that protagonist chases precisely because of that wealth.

Examples of the rags to riches include: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas, and Q & A by Vikas Swarup.

4. Plot of a Story: Story Within a Story

The story within a story, also known as an embedded narrative, one of the less-structured types of plot. Essentially, the author embeds a second story, complete with its own narrative and conflict, to bolster the progression of the main story. Embedded narratives often reflect the themes of the main narratives, but they can also complicate and challenge those themes, providing additional layers of meaning to the story. This is not to be confused with parallel plot, because the story within a story is an invention solely for the sake of advancing the main narrative, whereas a parallel plot has multiple, equally important narratives.

Examples of the story within a story include: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hamlet by Shakespeare, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld, and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

5. Plot of a Story: Parallel Plot

A parallel plot is a story in which two or more concurrent plots are told side-by-side. Each plot influences the course of the other plot, even if those stories happen on opposite ends of the world. Every narrative that occurs in a parallel plot is equally vital to the story as a whole.

Examples of parallel plot include: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks, The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, and In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.

6. Plot of a Story: Rebellion Against “The One”

A story of rebellion follows a hero who actively resists the oppressive force of an omnipotent antagonist. Despite working tirelessly to defeat that antagonist, the protagonist is ill-equipped to do so as a singular and powerless entity. So, the story often ends with the protagonist submitting to the antagonist, or else perishing altogether.

Examples of rebellion against “The One” include: 1984 by George Orwell, The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

7. Plot of a Story: Anticlimax

The anticlimax is a story that details the falling action after a climax has already occurred . In other words, the anticlimax does not have a climax itself: the climax is merely provided as backstory, and the novel is dedicated to the events of the story’s denouement. This not to be confused with the plot device anticlimax, which describes a story’s resolution that is actually incredibly simple.

Examples of the anticlimax include: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Encircling by Carl Frode Tiller, and Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood.

8. Plot of a Story: Voyage and Return

Stories of voyage and return involve protagonists who journey into strange worlds. Often, a story of “Quest” is also a story of voyage and return, but not always. For the protagonist to return home from their voyage, they must achieve some sort of daring act that resolves the story’s conflict, such as finding treasure or vanquishing an antagonist. Both the voyage and the return teaches the protagonist life lessons and pushes them to make difficult decisions.

Examples of voyage and return include: The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, Candide by Voltaire, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

Plot-Driven vs. Character-Driven Stories

A common distinction between different types of fiction is whether the story is “plot driven” or “character driven.” This refers to whether the plot of a story defines the characters, or whether the characters define the plot of a story.

Specifically, this distinction is made to differentiate literary fiction vs. genre fiction . Generally, a piece of literary fiction will have the characters in control of the plot, as the story’s plot points are built entirely off of the decisions that those characters make and the influences of those characters’ personalities.

Genre fiction, by contract, tends to have predefined plot structures and archetypes, and the characters must fit into those structures in order to tell a complete story.

While this general distinction helps organize the qualities of fiction, don’t treat them as absolutes. Literary fiction borrows plot devices from genre fiction all the time, and there are many examples of genre fiction that are character driven. Your story should build a working relationship between the characters and the plot, as both are essential elements of the storyteller’s toolkit.

Your story should build a working relationship between the characters and the plot, as both are essential elements of the storyteller’s toolkit.

Plot vs. Story

Finally, what is the difference between plot vs. story? The two terms are often used interchangeably, and indeed, something that affects the plot will usually affect the story. But, the two do not share the same precise definitions.

Plot definition: The story’s series of events. Think of plot as the story’s skeleton: it defines the What, When, and Where of the story, which allows for everything else (like characters and themes) to develop. What happens (and what is the cause-and-effect), when does it happen, and where is it happening?

Story definition: The entirety of the work, including its conflicts, themes, and messages. In addition to plot, the story answers questions of Who, Why , and How . Who is involved (and who are they psychologically), why does this conflict happen, and how do the characters resolve the conflict?

To learn more about writing a cogent story from a compelling plot, read our article on the topic.

https://writers.com/stories-vs-situations-how-to-know-your-story-will-work-in-any-genre

Plot vs. Story Venn Diagram

The differences between plot vs. story are summarized in the following Venn Diagram.

Explore the Plot of a Story at Writers.com

There are two types of storytellers: plotters and pantsers. A pantser “writes by the seat of their pants,” making snap decisions about the story’s events on the spot. Plotters map out everything in advance, setting up the plot of a story before setting down the first word.

Whether you’re a plotter, a pantser, or anything in between, the courses at Writers.com can help! Plot your novel or simply write it in any of our upcoming writing classes .

Sean Glatch

Excellent summary of a very overwhelming and confusing subject!

Thank you for the excellent help on plot. Although I’ve written for many years, I learned some good stuff which I will use! Happy Holidays, Dave Beaty

[…] What is the Plot of a Story? […]

I am so delighted to see that my late husband, Nigel Watts PhD’s work is still in the world and being referenced 22 years after his death. Some of his novels are still available on Amazon, including the republished Twenty Twenty, published in 1995, predicting a global pandemic and warnings of climate catastrophe. But ‘Writing a Novel and Getting it Published’ is the longest in print book of his work. I’m so proud and pleased that he continues to help writers. Writing was his passion, vocation and career.

This is really helpful. Thanks, Sean!

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How to Summarize a Plot

5 Components of a Plot in Narrative Essays and Creative Nonfiction

• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Every story that you read follows a series of events that range from the introduction of a conflict to begin the story and a final resolution at the end; this is the plot of your story. Basically, it’s what happens throughout the narrative, and it appears in in both fiction and non-fiction work. When you write a plot summary, you’ll essentially condense a novel into a short essay, touching on the key points of the material. You’ll want to introduce the main characters, setting of the story, and the main conflict of the narrative, including the five basic components of the plot: introduction, rising action , climax, falling action , and finally, a resolution.

Some outlines will break down a plot into more segments (exposition, inciting incident, central conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution) but the premise is the same - a pattern of rising and falling action that looks essentially like an arc or a bell curve when you consider the level of drama the characters experience.

Understanding and Introducing the Conflict

To properly summarize a plot, start by figuring out the main problem that the story will solve. This could come from understanding the main characters, who are crucial components of the plot. Who are they and what are they trying to achieve? Most characters have a mission to accomplish, often it is finding, saving, or creating something or someone. Understand what drives the main characters, and that will help you in the first step to summarize the plot.

The conflict that we discover at the start of the narrative will get kicked off by an inciting incident that triggers the rising action, which grows over time. In Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” we are introduced to two characters from feuding families who ultimately fall in love. The conflict comes from their love for each other despite their families’ disapproval.

Rising Action and Climax

The rising action will introduce key components of a story that build upon the drama and conflict. This is where we see Romeo & Juliet marry in secret, and Romeo & Tybalt engage in a duel that ultimately leads to Tybalt’s death.

Eventually, the action and conflict hit what is called the climax, the point of no return. This is the peak of excitement, fear, drama, or whatever the emotion is that relayed through the narrative. You’ll want to tie together the rising action and the catalyst for conflict. The climax could lead us on a journey of positive resolution or even a journey of tragedy, but it will often change the characters in some way and is the reason why the problem can now start to be solved. In Shakespeare ’s story, there are essentially two points of climax: Romeo is banished and Juliet refuses to marry Paris.

Falling Action and Resolution

Finally, as you work your way back from the climax to the resolution, you’ll want to focus on how the main characters respond to the peak of action. Some aspect of the climax will trigger a response in the main characters which will drive them towards the final resolution. Sometimes, you’ll even find that the main characters learn a lesson and grow as individuals, but either way, the resulting actions shift the story and begin the falling action. Juliet drinks the potion which causes Romeo to believe she has died and kills himself. Upon awakening and discovering that her love has died, Juliet does the same.

Eventually, the story will return back to the original baseline resulting in a final resolution. In “Romeo & Juliet” the resolution isn’t that they both have died, but rather, the action their families take in response to their deaths, the end of the feud.

Creating the Summary

Remember that the plot is not the same as the theme of the narrative . If you’re not sure what the difference is between the plot of a story and the theme, you’re not alone. While the plot is what happens, the theme is the underlying idea or message within a story. The plot is concrete occurrences within the narrative, but the theme can be more subtle and even at times, implied. The theme can be harder to discern whereas the plot is more obvious. In Romeo & Juliet, we see themes of love and hate that appear throughout the plot.

Don’t forget, the key part of summarizing a plot is that you’re summarizing. You don’t need to include every detail that you encounter. When you read the text, it’s important to pay attention to what happens and where you see action coming into play, and write down key moments. Look for the basic information of who is involved, what are they doing, when are things happening, where is the action happening, and why?

Take notes and even write down things that you’re not sure if they are vital at that moment, but seem interesting or important. When you finish the story, you’ll be able to review your notes and better understand what aspects of the narrative were most important and start to eliminate the notes that don’t enhance the plot. That way, when it comes time to summarize the plot , you can easily pare down your notes and have an outline of what happens and the crucial moments that represent each of the five components of the plot.

• Falling Action in Literature
• How a Narrative Arc Structures a Story
• What Is Resolution in Literature?
• How to Find a Narrative’s Climax
• How Denouement Is Used in a Narrative
• What Are the Parts of a Short Story? (How to Write Them)
• Writing the Parts of a Stage Play Script
• Definition and Examples of Narratives in Writing
• How to Find the Theme of a Book or Short Story
• How to Identify the Theme in a Literary Work
• Use a Concept Map for Your Literature Midterms and Finals
• 50 General Book Club Questions for Study and Discussion
• How to Write a Great Book Report
• Rising Action in Literature
• How to Identify a Shakespeare Comedy
• What Is Drama? Literary Definition and Examples

• Literary Terms

When & How to Write a Plot

• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Write a Plot

How to Write a Plot

Making your own plots might sound difficult, but it’s not. In order to write a plot:

• Think of a main idea, character, or situation.
• Think about how it might develop.
• Apply the five elements of plot.

You can turn anything into a story. For example, think of a time you were hungry; this would be the conflict in a situation.

I was hungry.

Elements of Plot:

• Exposition: I was hungry so I went into the kitchen to search for something to eat.
• Rising Action : I had to to figure out what food in the fridge hadn’t gone bad, wasn’t being saved by someone, and then figure out how to cook it.
• Climax : I cooked and ate it. 
• Falling Action :  The meal made me sleepy.
• Resolution : I went to take a nap.

Story Using Plot:

I was hungry so I went into the kitchen to search for something to eat. I had to to figure out what food in the fridge hadn’t gone bad, wasn’t being saved by someone, and then figure out how to cook it. I cooked and ate it. The meal made me sleepy. I went to take a nap.

As is shown in this example, a short story can be easily created by using the five elements of a plot.

When to Use Plot

Plot is the backbone of almost every creative literary piece and fiction, including plays, short stories, novellas, novels, memoirs , films, and other narratives . Many poems and songs have plots, but also, many do not.  Although plot is mainly an element of storytelling, even the organization of a formal essay can often be seen as a kind of plot. Usually in formal essays, the author introduces a topic and a question or hypothesis (the conflict) and then the paper goes on a journey through various ideas in order to finally resolve the question or prove the thesis (the climax), and concludes (the denouement).  It may be fun or useful to think of formal essays in terms of plots but keep in mind, that formal essays are not stories and should contain no fictional elements.

On the other hand, plot should not be used in technical papers and manuals which do not tell stories but instead inform and instruct.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

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General Education

When we talk about stories, we tend to use the word "plot." But what is plot exactly? How does it differ from a story, and what are the primary features that make up a well-written plot? We answer these questions here and show you real plot examples from literature . But first, let’s take a look at the basic plot definition.

What Is Plot? Definition and Overview

What is the plot of a story? The answer is pretty simple, actually.

Plot is the way an author creates and organizes a chain of events in a narrative. In short, plot is the foundation of a story. Some describe it as the "what" of a text (whereas the characters are the "who" and the theme is the "why").

This is the basic plot definition. But what does plot do ?

The plot must follow a logical, enticing format that draws the reader in. Plot differs from "story" in that it highlights a specific and purposeful cause-and-effect relationship between a sequence of major events in the narrative.

In Aspects of the Novel , famed British novelist E. M. Forster argues that instead of merely revealing random events that occur within a text (as "story" does), plot emphasizes causality between these events:

"We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. 'The king died and then the queen died,' is a story. 'The king died, and then the queen died of grief' is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it."

Authors typically develop their plots in ways that are most likely to pique the reader’s interest and keep them invested in the story. This is why many plots follow the same basic structure. So what is this structure exactly?

What Is Plot Structure?

All plots follow a logical organization with a beginning, middle, and end—but there’s a lot more to the basic plot structure than just this. Generally speaking, every plot has these five elements in this order :

• Exposition/introduction
• Rising action
• Climax/turning point
• Falling action
• Resolution/denouement

#1: Exposition/Introduction

The first part of the plot establishes the main characters/protagonists and setting. We get to know who’s who, as well as when and where the story takes place. At this point, the reader is just getting to know the world of the story and what it’s going to be all about.

Here, we’re shown what normal looks like for the characters .

The primary conflict or tension around which the plot revolves is also usually introduced here in order to set up the course of events for the rest of the narrative. This tension could be the first meeting between two main characters (think Pride and Prejudice ) or the start of a murder mystery, for example.

#2: Rising Action

In this part of the plot, the primary conflict is introduced (if it hasn’t been already) and is built upon to create tension both within the story and the reader , who should ideally be feeling more and more drawn to the text. The conflict may affect one character or multiple characters.

The author should have clearly communicated to the reader the stakes of this central conflict. In other words, what are the possible consequences? The benefits?

This is the part of the plot that sets the rest of the plot in motion. Excitement grows as tensions get higher and higher, ultimately leading to the climax of the story (see below).

For example, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone , the rising action would be when we learn who Voldemort is and lots of bad things start happening, which the characters eventually realize are all connected to Voldemort.

#3: Climax/Turning Point

Arguably the most important part of a story, the climax is the biggest plot point , which puts our characters in a situation wherein a choice must be made that will affect the rest of the story.

This is the critical moment that all the rising action has been building up to, and the point at which the overarching conflict is finally addressed. What will the character(s) do, and what will happen as a result? Tensions are highest here, instilling in the reader a sense of excitement, dread, and urgency.

In classic tales of heroes, the climax would be when the hero finally faces the big monster, and the reader is left to wonder who will win and what this outcome could mean for the other characters and the world as a whole within the story.

#4: Falling Action

This is when the tension has been released and the story begins to wind down. We start to see the results of the climax and the main characters’ actions and get a sense of what this means for them and the world they inhabit. How did their choices affect themselves and those around them?

At this point, the author also ties up loose ends in the main plot and any subplots .

In To Kill a Mockingbird , we see the consequences of the trial and Atticus Finch’s involvement in it: Tom goes to jail and is shot and killed, and Scout and Jem are attacked by accuser Bob Ewell who blames their father for making a fool out of him during the trial.

#5: Resolution/Denouement

This final plot point is when everything has been wrapped up and the new world—and the new sense of normalcy for the characters—has been established . The conflict from the climax has been resolved, and all loose ends have been neatly tied up (unless the author is purposely setting up the story for a sequel!).

There is a sense of finality and closure here , making the reader feel that there is nothing more they can learn or gain from the narrative.

The resolution can be pretty short—sometimes just a paragraph or so—and might even take the form of an epilogue , which generally takes place a while after the main action and plot of the story.

Be careful not to conflate "resolution" with "happy ending"—resolutions can be tragic and entirely unexpected, too!

In Romeo and Juliet , the resolution is the point at which the family feud between the Capulets and Montagues is at last put to an end following the deaths of the titular lovers.

What Is a Plot Diagram?

Many people use a plot diagram to help them visualize the plot definition and structure . Here’s what a basic plot diagram looks like:

The triangular part of the diagram indicates changing tensions in the plot. The diagram begins with a flat, horizontal line for the exposition , showing a lack of tension as well as what is normal for the characters in the story.

This elevation changes, however, with the rising action , or immediately after the conflict has been introduced. The rising action is an increasing line (indicating the building of tension), all the way up until it reaches the climax —the peak or turning point of the story, and when everything changes.

The falling action is a decreasing line, indicating a decline in tension and the wrapping up of the plot and any subplots. After, the line flatlines once more into a resolution —a new sense of normal for the characters in the story.

You can use the plot diagram as a reference when writing a story and to ensure you have all major plot points.

4 Plot Examples From Literature

While most plots follow the same basic structure, the details of stories can vary quite a bit! Here are four plot examples from literature to give you an idea of how you can use the fundamental plot structure while still making your story entirely your own.

#1: Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Exposition: The ghost of Hamlet’s father—the former king—appears one night instructing his son to avenge his death by killing Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and the current king.

Rising Action: Hamlet struggles to commit to avenging his father’s death. He pretends to go crazy (and possibly becomes truly mad) to confuse Claudius. Later, he passes up the opportunity to kill his uncle while he prays.

Climax: Hamlet stabs and kills Polonius, believing it to be his uncle. This is an important turning point at which Hamlet has committed himself to both violence and revenge. (Another climax can be said to be when Hamlet duels Laertes.)

Falling Action: Hamlet is sent to England but manages to avoid execution and instead returns to Denmark. Ophelia goes mad and dies. Hamlet duels Laertes, ultimately resulting in the deaths of the entire royal family.

Resolution: As he lay dying, Hamlet tells Horatio to make Fortinbras the king of Denmark and to share his story. Fortinbras arrives and speaks hopefully about the future of Denmark.

#2: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Exposition: Lockwood arrives at Wuthering Heights to meet with Heathcliff, a wealthy landlord, about renting Thrushcross Grange, another manor just a few miles away. While staying overnight, he sees the ghost of a woman named Catherine. After settling in at the Grange, Lockwood asks the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to relay to him the story of Heathcliff and the Heights.

Rising Action: Most of the rising action takes place in the past when Catherine and Heathcliff were young. We learn that the two children were very close. One day, a dog bite forces Catherine to stay for several weeks at the Grange where the Lintons live, leading her to become infatuated with the young Edgar Linton. Feeling hurt and betrayed, Heathcliff runs away for three years, and Catherine and Edgar get married. Heathcliff then inherits the Heights and marries Edgar’s sister, Isabella, in the hopes of inheriting the Grange as well.

Climax: Catherine becomes sick, gives birth to a daughter named Cathy, and dies. Heathcliff begs Catherine to never leave him, to haunt him—even if it drives him mad.

Falling Action: Many years pass in Nelly's story. A chain of events allows Heathcliff to gain control of both the Heights and the Grange. He then forces the young Cathy to live with him at the Heights and act as a servant. Lockwood leaves the Grange to return to London.

Resolution: Six months later, Lockwood goes back to see Nelly and learns that Heathcliff, still heartbroken and now tired of seeking revenge, has died. Cathy and Hareton fall in love and plan to get married; they inherit the Grange and the Heights. Lockwood visits the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff, noting that both are finally at peace.

#3: Carrie by Stephen King

Exposition: Teenager Carrie is an outcast and lives with her controlling, fiercely religious mother. One day, she starts her period in the showers at school after P.E. Not knowing what menstruation is, Carrie becomes frantic; this causes other students to make fun of her and pelt her with sanitary products. Around this time, Carrie discovers that she has telekinetic powers.

Rising Action: Carrie practices her telekinesis, which grows stronger. The students who previously tormented Carrie in the locker room are punished by their teacher. One girl, Sue, feels remorseful and asks her boyfriend, Tommy, to take Carrie to the prom. But another girl, Chris, wants revenge against Carrie and plans to rig the prom queen election so that Carrie wins. Carrie attends the prom with Tommy and things go well—at first.

Climax: After being named prom queen, Carrie gets onstage in front of the entire school only to be immediately drenched with a bucket of pig’s blood, a plot carried out by Chris and her boyfriend, Billy. Everybody laughs at Carrie, who goes mad and begins using her telekinesis to start fires and kill everyone in sight.

Falling Action: Carrie returns home and is attacked by her mother. She kills her mother and then goes outside again, this time killing Chris and Billy. As Carrie lay dying, Sue comes over to her and Carrie realizes that Sue never intended to hurt her. She dies.

Resolution: The survivors in the town must come to terms with the havoc Carrie wrought. Some feel guilty for not having helped Carrie sooner; Sue goes to a psychiatric hospital. It’s announced that there are no others like Carrie, but we are then shown a letter from a mother discussing her young daughter’s telekinetic abilities.

#4: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Exposition: Bella Swan is a high school junior who moves to live with her father in a remote town in Washington State. She meets a strange boy named Edward, and after an initially awkward meeting, the two start to become friends. One day, Edward successfully uses his bare hands to stop a car from crushing Bella, making her realize that something is very different about this boy.

Rising Action: Bella discovers that Edward is a vampire after doing some research and asking him questions. The two develop strong romantic feelings and quickly fall in love. Bella meets Edward’s family of vampires, who happily accept her. When playing baseball together, however, they end up attracting a gang of non-vegetarian vampires. One of these vampires, James, notices that Bella is a human and decides to kill her. Edward and his family work hard to protect Bella, but James lures her to him by making her believe he has kidnapped her mother.

Climax: Tricked by James, Bella is attacked and fed on. At this moment, Edward and his family arrive and kill James. Bella nearly dies from the vampire venom in her blood, but Edward sucks it out, saving her life.

Falling Action: Bella wakes up in the hospital, heavily injured but alive. She still wants to be in a relationship with Edward, despite the risks involved, and the two agree to stay together.

Resolution: Months later, Edward takes Bella to the prom. The two have a good time. Bella tells Edward that she wants him to turn her into a vampire right then and there, but he refuses and pretends to bite her neck instead.

Conclusion: So What Is the Plot of a Story?

What is plot? Basically, it’s the chain of events in a story. These events must be purposeful and organized in a logical manner that entices the reader, builds tension, and provides a resolution.

All plots have a beginning, middle, and end, and usually contain the following five points in this order:

#1: Exposition/introduction #2: Rising action #3: Climax/turning point #4: Falling action #5: Resolution/denouement

Sketching out a plot diagram can help you visualize your story and get a clearer sense for where the climax is, what tensions you'll need to have in order to build up to this turning point, and how you can offer a tight conclusion to your story.

What’s Next?

What is plot? A key literary element as it turns out. Learn about other important elements of literature in our guide. We've also got a list of top literary devices you should know.

Working on a novel? Then you will definitely want to know what kinds of tone words you can use , how imagery works , what the big difference between a simile and a metaphor is , and how to write an epilogue .

Interested in writing poetry? Then check out our picks for the 20 most critical poetic devices .

Hannah received her MA in Japanese Studies from the University of Michigan and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California. From 2013 to 2015, she taught English in Japan via the JET Program. She is passionate about education, writing, and travel.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

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What Makes a Good Plot? A Guide to Character, Conflict, & More

Last Updated: May 17, 2024 Fact Checked

Outlining, Structure, & Worldbuilding

Creating unique characters, adding conflict & style, expert q&a.

This article was written by Lydia Stevens and by wikiHow staff writer, Finn Kobler . Lydia Stevens is the author of the Hellfire Series and the Ginger Davenport Escapades. She is a Developmental Editor and Writing Coach through her company "Creative Content Critiquing and Consulting." She also co-hosts a writing podcast on the craft of writing called "The REDink Writers." With over ten years of experience, she specializes in writing fantasy fiction, paranormal fiction, memoirs, and inspirational novels. Lydia holds a BA and MA in Creative Writing and English from Southern New Hampshire University. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 215,601 times.

Plotting a narrative can be one of the most rewarding tasks for writers…but where do you begin? A good plot is well-structured, and bursting with conflict and character. In this article, we’ll offer you an expert guide on how to craft all three to make your story engaging from beginning to end. Whether it’s a novel, a script, or a short story, by the time you’re done reading, you’ll have plenty of tools to make your tale pop. This article is based on an interview with our author and developmental editor, Lydia Stevens. Check out the full interview here.

Things You Should Know

• Begin plotting your story by writing down concepts you find interesting. These initial ideas can be detailed (two opposing samurai falling in love) or simple (a story about grief).
• A good plot requires a relatable protagonist that reacts to situations organically. The best way to create a dynamic character is to give them clear goals and flaws.
• Conflict adds tension to your plot. Place your characters in situations where they struggle and increase the difficulty as your story progresses.

• Consider getting a notepad. The act of writing by hand can get your ideas flowing more freely.

• Instead of saying a character is sad, show them holding back tears or maintaining a stoic expression while everyone around them is joyous.

• Comedy: These stories are usually shorter and meant to showcase the absurdity or silliness of human nature. Characters are often more broad, and the resolutions are usually happy. (Examples: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Don Quixote )
• Tragedy: A character has a major flaw that ends up being their undoing. Endings are often sad, as a once happy protagonist falls from grace. (Examples: Macbeth, Oedipus Rex, Hamilton )
• Hero’s Journey: A protagonist goes on a quest to get somewhere or find a special object. They face obstacles and meet people that teach them along the way. (Examples: The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings, Interstellar )
• Rags to Riches: A poor character acquires wealth, power, or status, loses it, then must fight to gain it back. These stories often explore the nature of power and responsibility. (Examples: Aladdin, Jane Eyre, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory )
• Rebirth: An event (either supernatural or realistic) forces a jaded or corrupt character to live a better, more generous life. These stories often have spiritual themes and draw from religious texts for inspiration. (Examples: Pride and Prejudice, Beauty and the Beast, Groundhog Day )
• Overcoming the monster: A battle of Good vs. Evil where a character must fight an opposing force that threatens the well-being of their family, home, or overall status quo. (Examples: Star Wars, Dracula, Perseus)
• Voyage and Return: A character visits a strange new world, adapts to it, and returns home with a new perspective on life. (Examples: The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver’s Travels, The Lion King )

• Dialogue: Have your characters talk about their lives in conversation.
• Narration: Let the audience hear what’s going on inside your character’s head and how they feel about the world around them. This usually works better in prose.
• Conflict: Have your character face an obstacle early on to show what they stand for.
• Objects and symbols: Focus on items (newspaper clippings, household furniture, clothes) that give a clear picture of the world your character lives in.
• Try to make your status quo contrast with the journey you plan on sending your character on. The further your characters venture out of their comfort zone, the more opportunity they have to grow.

• Character vs. self has a character working through their own inner demons and flaws. These stories are often dramas, tragedies, and tales of rebirth. (Examples: Good Will Hunting, Emma, Hamlet )
• Character vs. character is the most common conflict; a protagonist must fight an antagonist who challenges their core values. These stories can be any genre but usually fall into the “Overcoming the Monster” plot. (Examples: Star Wars, Othello, Crime and Punishment )
• Character vs. society explores your protagonist challenging the social norms and bigotry of the people around them. These stories are often farcical comedies or have strong undercurrents of social commentary. (Examples: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, Blazing Saddles )
• Character vs. supernatural has the character fighting against a force with special powers. These stories are always fiction, usually sci-fi or fantasy. (Examples: Harry Potter, The Odyssey, Ghostbusters )
• Character vs. technology has a protagonist fighting against a machine or technological advancement (usually one similar to a device that’s taking off in the real world, like AI). These stories are usually a form of science fiction, but they can be any genre. (Examples: Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix )
• Character vs nature stories are often visual. The protagonist must fight against the natural world. These stories are very adventure-based. (Examples: Cast Away, Hatchet, The Martian )

• Pay attention to cause-and-effect in your rising action. Every action has a reaction, and no events are random. Each decision the character makes should affect future situations. [10] X Research source
• The best structure to create a meaningful rising action is “[Character] did _____. Because of that, _____ happened so they _____.”
• Utilize your world to impact your rising action, too. For example, if your character lives on Mars 3000 years in the future, your character should probably deal with struggles unique to that planet, rather than common Earth problems. [11] X Research source

• In Oedipus Rex , the climax occurs when Oedipus realizes his hubris has made him fulfill the prophecy so he blinds himself as punishment for his actions. Because this story is a tragedy, the climax is dark, sad, and violent.
• In Shrek , the climax comes from the reveal that Fiona is an ogre too. Because the film is a subversive comedy about beauty standards, the silly plot twist matches the movie’s tone.

• In Little Red Riding Hood , the falling action covers the part where the Woodsman finds Little Red and saves her from the Big Bad Wolf. Because Little Red learns her lesson on gullibility in the climax (when she discovers Granny’s been eaten), her resolution is happy and simple.
• To create a more effective conclusion, set up story beats early on that you can pay off later. For example, at the beginning of Game of Thrones , Theon Grey Joyce betrays the Stark family. However, he ends the series fighting (and dying) to protect their name.

Rain Kengly

"If you find yourself struggling to plot a story from beginning to end, start with the ending and work backward! Knowing how and where you want your story to end can help you understand what developments your characters must have to get there."

• Does your character like attention or avoid it?
• How big of a role does fear play in their day-to-day activities?
• Does your character think they’re intelligent or dumb? How would they define these words?
• Does your character prefer to leap into action or stay back and think?
• What are your characters’ regrets?
• If your plot is a fantasy epic, your characters may have lofty, larger-than-life ambitions like finding a magic amulet or gaining special powers. For a more subtle drama, their wishes may be smaller: love, getting into the right college, reuniting with family, etc.

• For example, if you have an uncle who’s a hypochondriac and a friend who wants to be a stuntman, you could combine these to create a character who loves stunts but is afraid of the toll it takes on their body.
• Keep a journal to write down what people in your life say. In art and life, people’s dialogue often reflects who they are.

Draw inspiration for a variety of sources. "Ideas seem to come from everywhere – my life, everything I see, hear, and read, and most of all, from my imagination. I have a lot of imagination."

• Set up a need, as well as a want. Ideally, your character will have a clear goal as well as a lesson they must learn to live a better life. It’s more realistic and satisfying if a character doesn’t necessarily get what they want, but, as the Rolling Stones sing, gets what they need.
• Create irreversible consequences. Every decision your character makes should set off a new chain of events. Results can be good or bad, but no choices happen in a vacuum; they should make an impact in some way.
• Let the character show their strengths and overcome weaknesses. Giving your characters skills that they can apply on their journey allows them to be more directly involved in the story.
• Create a dark night of the soul. At one point in the story, your character should feel like all is lost. This surrender offers them a new perspective that they can use to re-evaluate their goals.

• Mirror subplot: A smaller-scale conflict that mirrors the main conflict which helps teach the character how to resolve the core issue.
• Contrasting subplot: A secondary character facing similar circumstances and dilemmas as the main character, but making different decisions that have a polar opposite (and often less effective) outcome.
• Complicating subplot: A secondary character making things worse for the main character. These subplots often appear right around the middle of the story to raise the stakes once the character feels comfortable.
• Romantic subplot: A relationship that often complicates or adds risk to the main plot.

• For example, in Die Hard, John McClane must overcome his fear of heights and save his relationship, or else the terrorists will succeed and harm innocent people.
• Your “or else” doesn’t always have to be life or death. The stakes just have to feel heavy for your character. For example, in Up , if Carl doesn’t fly his house away, he’ll be fine physically (and go to a nice retirement home). However, he’ll feel like he disappointed Ellie, his late wife.
• Adding a ticking clock is a great way to make your “or else” more clear and specific. Give a set time frame that your character has to complete their goal, and clarify what will happen if they fail to meet this deadline.

• Chekov's Gun: An object appearing to be insignificant later resolves the conflict.
• Flashback: A recount of events that happened before the current story, which fills in crucial backstory.
• MacGuffin: An object or goal that the protagonist is motivated to pursue which makes their life more difficult.
• Deux Ex Machina: A resolution that appears to come out of the blue.
• Dramatic Irony: A situation where the audience knows something the character doesn’t (that often leads to the character’s downfall).

• In addition, pace your story so it gets more compelling as it goes along. Don’t overload your story’s beginning with tension; distribute action and conflict equally throughout the piece. The more your narrative builds, the more invested your audience will be!

• Remember: your plot is allowed to change. It’s not finalized until the very end. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Never, ever, ever, scrap an idea just because it looks silly. One person's goofy idea is the other one's brilliant masterpiece. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ Lucy V. Hay. Professional Writer. Expert Interview. 16 July 2019.
• ↑ Lydia Stevens. Author & Developmental Editor. Expert Interview. 1 September 2021.
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/brainstorming/
• ↑ https://www.booksoarus.com/6-ways-write-effective-exposition-examples/
• ↑ https://lewisu.edu/writingcenter/pdf/narrative-elements-1.pdf
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/creative_writing/creative_nonfiction/index.html
• ↑ https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/exploring-movie-construction-and-production/chapter/3-what-are-the-mechanics-of-story-and-plot/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/creative_writing/fiction_writing_basics/index.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/creative_writing/characters_and_fiction_writing/writing_compelling_characters.html
• ↑ https://www.nownovel.com/blog/detailed-character-arc-template/
• ↑ https://storybilder.com/blog/types-subplots
• ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/how-to-raise-the-stakes-in-your-first-50-pages-of-your-novel

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The Ultimate Narrative Essay Guide for Beginners

A narrative essay tells a story in chronological order, with an introduction that introduces the characters and sets the scene. Then a series of events leads to a climax or turning point, and finally a resolution or reflection on the experience.

Speaking of which, are you in sixes and sevens about narrative essays? Don’t worry this ultimate expert guide will wipe out all your doubts. So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Everything You Need to Know About Narrative Essay

What is a narrative essay.

When you go through a narrative essay definition, you would know that a narrative essay purpose is to tell a story. It’s all about sharing an experience or event and is different from other types of essays because it’s more focused on how the event made you feel or what you learned from it, rather than just presenting facts or an argument. Let’s explore more details on this interesting write-up and get to know how to write a narrative essay.

Elements of a Narrative Essay

Here’s a breakdown of the key elements of a narrative essay:

A narrative essay has a beginning, middle, and end. It builds up tension and excitement and then wraps things up in a neat package.

Real people, including the writer, often feature in personal narratives. Details of the characters and their thoughts, feelings, and actions can help readers to relate to the tale.

It’s really important to know when and where something happened so we can get a good idea of the context. Going into detail about what it looks like helps the reader to really feel like they’re part of the story.

Conflict or Challenge 

A story in a narrative essay usually involves some kind of conflict or challenge that moves the plot along. It could be something inside the character, like a personal battle, or something from outside, like an issue they have to face in the world.

Theme or Message

A narrative essay isn’t just about recounting an event – it’s about showing the impact it had on you and what you took away from it. It’s an opportunity to share your thoughts and feelings about the experience, and how it changed your outlook.

Emotional Impact

The author is trying to make the story they’re telling relatable, engaging, and memorable by using language and storytelling to evoke feelings in whoever’s reading it.

Narrative essays let writers have a blast telling stories about their own lives. It’s an opportunity to share insights and impart wisdom, or just have some fun with the reader. Descriptive language, sensory details, dialogue, and a great narrative voice are all essentials for making the story come alive.

The Purpose of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is more than just a story – it’s a way to share a meaningful, engaging, and relatable experience with the reader. Includes:

Sharing Personal Experience

Narrative essays are a great way for writers to share their personal experiences, feelings, thoughts, and reflections. It’s an opportunity to connect with readers and make them feel something.

Entertainment and Engagement

The essay attempts to keep the reader interested by using descriptive language, storytelling elements, and a powerful voice. It attempts to pull them in and make them feel involved by creating suspense, mystery, or an emotional connection.

Conveying a Message or Insight

Narrative essays are more than just a story – they aim to teach you something. They usually have a moral lesson, a new understanding, or a realization about life that the author gained from the experience.

Building Empathy and Understanding

By telling their stories, people can give others insight into different perspectives, feelings, and situations. Sharing these tales can create compassion in the reader and help broaden their knowledge of different life experiences.

Inspiration and Motivation

Stories about personal struggles, successes, and transformations can be really encouraging to people who are going through similar situations. It can provide them with hope and guidance, and let them know that they’re not alone.

Reflecting on Life’s Significance

These essays usually make you think about the importance of certain moments in life or the impact of certain experiences. They make you look deep within yourself and ponder on the things you learned or how you changed because of those events.

Demonstrating Writing Skills

Coming up with a gripping narrative essay takes serious writing chops, like vivid descriptions, powerful language, timing, and organization. It’s an opportunity for writers to show off their story-telling abilities.

Preserving Personal History

Sometimes narrative essays are used to record experiences and special moments that have an emotional resonance. They can be used to preserve individual memories or for future generations to look back on.

Cultural and Societal Exploration

Personal stories can look at cultural or social aspects, giving us an insight into customs, opinions, or social interactions seen through someone’s own experience.

Format of a Narrative Essay

Narrative essays are quite flexible in terms of format, which allows the writer to tell a story in a creative and compelling way. Here’s a quick breakdown of the narrative essay format, along with some examples:

Introduction

Set the scene and introduce the story.

Engage the reader and establish the tone of the narrative.

Hook: Start with a captivating opening line to grab the reader’s attention. For instance:

Example:  “The scorching sun beat down on us as we trekked through the desert, our water supply dwindling.”

Background Information: Provide necessary context or background without giving away the entire story.

Example:  “It was the summer of 2015 when I embarked on a life-changing journey to…”

Thesis Statement or Narrative Purpose

Present the main idea or the central message of the essay.

Offer a glimpse of what the reader can expect from the narrative.

Thesis Statement: This isn’t as rigid as in other essays but can be a sentence summarizing the essence of the story.

Example:  “Little did I know, that seemingly ordinary hike would teach me invaluable lessons about resilience and friendship.”

Body Paragraphs

Present the sequence of events in chronological order.

Develop characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.

Story Progression : Describe events in the order they occurred, focusing on details that evoke emotions and create vivid imagery.

Example : Detail the trek through the desert, the challenges faced, interactions with fellow hikers, and the pivotal moments.

Character Development : Introduce characters and their roles in the story. Show their emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Example : Describe how each character reacted to the dwindling water supply and supported each other through adversity.

Dialogue and Interactions : Use dialogue to bring the story to life and reveal character personalities.

Example : “Sarah handed me her last bottle of water, saying, ‘We’re in this together.'”

Reach the peak of the story, the moment of highest tension or significance.

Turning Point: Highlight the most crucial moment or realization in the narrative.

Example:  “As the sun dipped below the horizon and hope seemed lost, a distant sound caught our attention—the rescue team’s helicopters.”

Provide closure to the story.

Reflect on the significance of the experience and its impact.

Reflection : Summarize the key lessons learned or insights gained from the experience.

Example : “That hike taught me the true meaning of resilience and the invaluable support of friendship in challenging times.”

Closing Thought : End with a memorable line that reinforces the narrative’s message or leaves a lasting impression.

Example : “As we boarded the helicopters, I knew this adventure would forever be etched in my heart.”

Example Summary:

Imagine a narrative about surviving a challenging hike through the desert, emphasizing the bonds formed and lessons learned. The narrative essay structure might look like starting with an engaging scene, narrating the hardships faced, showcasing the characters’ resilience, and culminating in a powerful realization about friendship and endurance.

Different Types of Narrative Essays

There are a bunch of different types of narrative essays – each one focuses on different elements of storytelling and has its own purpose. Here’s a breakdown of the narrative essay types and what they mean.

Personal Narrative

Description : Tells a personal story or experience from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Reflects on personal growth, lessons learned, or significant moments.

Example of Narrative Essay Types:

Topic : “The Day I Conquered My Fear of Public Speaking”

Focus: Details the experience, emotions, and eventual triumph over a fear of public speaking during a pivotal event.

Descriptive Narrative

Description : Emphasizes vivid details and sensory imagery.

Purpose : Creates a sensory experience, painting a vivid picture for the reader.

Topic : “A Walk Through the Enchanted Forest”

Focus : Paints a detailed picture of the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings experienced during a walk through a mystical forest.

Autobiographical Narrative

Description: Chronicles significant events or moments from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Provides insights into the writer’s life, experiences, and growth.

Topic: “Lessons from My Childhood: How My Grandmother Shaped Who I Am”

Focus: Explores pivotal moments and lessons learned from interactions with a significant family member.

Experiential Narrative

Description: Relays experiences beyond the writer’s personal life.

Purpose: Shares experiences, travels, or events from a broader perspective.

Topic: “Volunteering in a Remote Village: A Journey of Empathy”

Focus: Chronicles the writer’s volunteering experience, highlighting interactions with a community and personal growth.

Literary Narrative

Description: Incorporates literary elements like symbolism, allegory, or thematic explorations.

Purpose: Uses storytelling for deeper explorations of themes or concepts.

Topic: “The Symbolism of the Red Door: A Journey Through Change”

Focus: Uses a red door as a symbol, exploring its significance in the narrator’s life and the theme of transition.

Historical Narrative

Description: Recounts historical events or periods through a personal lens.

Purpose: Presents history through personal experiences or perspectives.

Topic: “A Grandfather’s Tales: Living Through the Great Depression”

Focus: Shares personal stories from a family member who lived through a historical era, offering insights into that period.

Digital or Multimedia Narrative

Description: Incorporates multimedia elements like images, videos, or audio to tell a story.

Purpose: Explores storytelling through various digital platforms or formats.

Topic: “A Travel Diary: Exploring Europe Through Vlogs”

Focus: Combines video clips, photos, and personal narration to document a travel experience.

How to Choose a Topic for Your Narrative Essay?

Selecting a compelling topic for your narrative essay is crucial as it sets the stage for your storytelling. Choosing a boring topic is one of the narrative essay mistakes to avoid . Here’s a detailed guide on how to choose the right topic:

Reflect on Personal Experiences

• Significant Moments:

Moments that had a profound impact on your life or shaped your perspective.

Example: A moment of triumph, overcoming a fear, a life-changing decision, or an unforgettable experience.

• Emotional Resonance:

Events that evoke strong emotions or feelings.

Example: Joy, fear, sadness, excitement, or moments of realization.

• Lessons Learned:

Experiences that taught you valuable lessons or brought about personal growth.

Example: Challenges that led to personal development, shifts in mindset, or newfound insights.

Explore Unique Perspectives

• Uncommon Experiences:

Unique or unconventional experiences that might captivate the reader’s interest.

Example: Unusual travels, interactions with different cultures, or uncommon hobbies.

• Different Points of View:

Stories from others’ perspectives that impacted you deeply.

Example: A family member’s story, a friend’s experience, or a historical event from a personal lens.

Focus on Specific Themes or Concepts

• Themes or Concepts of Interest:

Themes or ideas you want to explore through storytelling.

Example: Friendship, resilience, identity, cultural diversity, or personal transformation.

• Symbolism or Metaphor:

Using symbols or metaphors as the core of your narrative.

Example: Exploring the symbolism of an object or a place in relation to a broader theme.

Consider Your Audience and Purpose

• Relevance to Your Audience:

Topics that resonate with your audience’s interests or experiences.

Example: Choose a relatable theme or experience that your readers might connect with emotionally.

• Impact or Message:

What message or insight do you want to convey through your story?

Example: Choose a topic that aligns with the message or lesson you aim to impart to your readers.

Brainstorm and Evaluate Ideas

• Free Writing or Mind Mapping:

Process: Write down all potential ideas without filtering. Mind maps or free-writing exercises can help generate diverse ideas.

• Evaluate Feasibility:

The depth of the story, the availability of vivid details, and your personal connection to the topic.

Imagine you’re considering topics for a narrative essay. You reflect on your experiences and decide to explore the topic of “Overcoming Stage Fright: How a School Play Changed My Perspective.” This topic resonates because it involves a significant challenge you faced and the personal growth it brought about.

Narrative Essay Topics

50 easy narrative essay topics.

• Learning to Ride a Bike
• My First Day of School
• A Surprise Birthday Party
• The Day I Got Lost
• Visiting a Haunted House
• An Encounter with a Wild Animal
• My Favorite Childhood Toy
• The Best Vacation I Ever Had
• An Unforgettable Family Gathering
• Conquering a Fear of Heights
• A Special Gift I Received
• Moving to a New City
• The Most Memorable Meal
• Getting Caught in a Rainstorm
• An Act of Kindness I Witnessed
• The First Time I Cooked a Meal
• My Experience with a New Hobby
• The Day I Met My Best Friend
• A Hike in the Mountains
• Learning a New Language
• An Embarrassing Moment
• Dealing with a Bully
• My First Job Interview
• A Sporting Event I Attended
• The Scariest Dream I Had
• Helping a Stranger
• The Joy of Achieving a Goal
• A Road Trip Adventure
• Overcoming a Personal Challenge
• The Significance of a Family Tradition
• An Unusual Pet I Owned
• A Misunderstanding with a Friend
• Exploring an Abandoned Building
• My Favorite Book and Why
• The Impact of a Role Model
• A Cultural Celebration I Participated In
• A Valuable Lesson from a Teacher
• A Trip to the Zoo
• An Unplanned Adventure
• Volunteering Experience
• A Moment of Forgiveness
• A Decision I Regretted
• A Special Talent I Have
• The Importance of Family Traditions
• The Thrill of Performing on Stage
• A Moment of Sudden Inspiration
• The Meaning of Home
• Learning to Play a Musical Instrument
• A Childhood Memory at the Park
• Witnessing a Beautiful Sunset

Narrative Essay Topics for College Students

• Discovering a New Passion
• Overcoming Academic Challenges
• Navigating Cultural Differences
• Embracing Independence: Moving Away from Home
• Exploring Career Aspirations
• Coping with Stress in College
• The Impact of a Mentor in My Life
• Balancing Work and Studies
• Facing a Fear of Public Speaking
• Exploring a Semester Abroad
• The Evolution of My Study Habits
• Volunteering Experience That Changed My Perspective
• The Role of Technology in Education
• Finding Balance: Social Life vs. Academics
• Learning a New Skill Outside the Classroom
• Reflecting on Freshman Year Challenges
• The Joys and Struggles of Group Projects
• My Experience with Internship or Work Placement
• Challenges of Time Management in College
• Redefining Success Beyond Grades
• The Influence of Literature on My Thinking
• The Impact of Social Media on College Life
• Overcoming Procrastination
• Lessons from a Leadership Role
• Exploring Diversity on Campus
• Exploring Passion for Environmental Conservation
• An Eye-Opening Course That Changed My Perspective
• Living with Roommates: Challenges and Lessons
• The Significance of Extracurricular Activities
• The Influence of a Professor on My Academic Journey
• Discussing Mental Health in College
• The Evolution of My Career Goals
• Confronting Personal Biases Through Education
• The Experience of Attending a Conference or Symposium
• Challenges Faced by Non-Native English Speakers in College
• The Impact of Traveling During Breaks
• Exploring Identity: Cultural or Personal
• The Impact of Music or Art on My Life
• Addressing Diversity in the Classroom
• Exploring Entrepreneurial Ambitions
• My Experience with Research Projects
• Overcoming Impostor Syndrome in College
• The Importance of Networking in College
• Finding Resilience During Tough Times
• The Impact of Global Issues on Local Perspectives
• The Influence of Family Expectations on Education
• Lessons from a Part-Time Job
• Exploring the College Sports Culture
• The Role of Technology in Modern Education
• The Journey of Self-Discovery Through Education

Narrative Essay Comparison

Narrative essay vs. descriptive essay.

Here’s our first narrative essay comparison! While both narrative and descriptive essays focus on vividly portraying a subject or an event, they differ in their primary objectives and approaches. Now, let’s delve into the nuances of comparison on narrative essays.

Narrative Essay:

Storytelling: Focuses on narrating a personal experience or event.

Chronological Order: Follows a structured timeline of events to tell a story.

Message or Lesson: Often includes a central message, moral, or lesson learned from the experience.

Engagement: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling storyline and character development.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, using “I” and expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a plot with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Focuses on describing characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Conflict or Challenge: Usually involves a central conflict or challenge that drives the narrative forward.

Dialogue: Incorporates conversations to bring characters and their interactions to life.

Reflection: Concludes with reflection or insight gained from the experience.

Descriptive Essay:

Vivid Description: Aims to vividly depict a person, place, object, or event.

Imagery and Details: Focuses on sensory details to create a vivid image in the reader’s mind.

Emotion through Description: Uses descriptive language to evoke emotions and engage the reader’s senses.

Painting a Picture: Creates a sensory-rich description allowing the reader to visualize the subject.

Imagery and Sensory Details: Focuses on providing rich sensory descriptions, using vivid language and adjectives.

Point of Focus: Concentrates on describing a specific subject or scene in detail.

Spatial Organization: Often employs spatial organization to describe from one area or aspect to another.

Objective Observations: Typically avoids the use of personal opinions or emotions; instead, the focus remains on providing a detailed and objective description.

Comparison:

Focus: Narrative essays emphasize storytelling, while descriptive essays focus on vividly describing a subject or scene.

Perspective: Narrative essays are often written from a first-person perspective, while descriptive essays may use a more objective viewpoint.

Purpose: Narrative essays aim to convey a message or lesson through a story, while descriptive essays aim to paint a detailed picture for the reader without necessarily conveying a specific message.

Narrative Essay vs. Argumentative Essay

The narrative essay and the argumentative essay serve distinct purposes and employ different approaches:

Engagement and Emotion: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling story.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience or lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, sharing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a storyline with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Message or Lesson: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Argumentative Essay:

Persuasion and Argumentation: Aims to persuade the reader to adopt the writer’s viewpoint on a specific topic.

Logical Reasoning: Presents evidence, facts, and reasoning to support a particular argument or stance.

Debate and Counterarguments: Acknowledge opposing views and counter them with evidence and reasoning.

Thesis Statement: Includes a clear thesis statement that outlines the writer’s position on the topic.

Thesis and Evidence: Starts with a strong thesis statement and supports it with factual evidence, statistics, expert opinions, or logical reasoning.

Counterarguments: Addresses opposing viewpoints and provides rebuttals with evidence.

Logical Structure: Follows a logical structure with an introduction, body paragraphs presenting arguments and evidence, and a conclusion reaffirming the thesis.

Formal Language: Uses formal language and avoids personal anecdotes or emotional appeals.

Objective: Argumentative essays focus on presenting a logical argument supported by evidence, while narrative essays prioritize storytelling and personal reflection.

Purpose: Argumentative essays aim to persuade and convince the reader of a particular viewpoint, while narrative essays aim to engage, entertain, and share personal experiences.

Structure: Narrative essays follow a storytelling structure with character development and plot, while argumentative essays follow a more formal, structured approach with logical arguments and evidence.

In essence, while both essays involve writing and presenting information, the narrative essay focuses on sharing a personal experience, whereas the argumentative essay aims to persuade the audience by presenting a well-supported argument.

Narrative Essay vs. Personal Essay

While there can be an overlap between narrative and personal essays, they have distinctive characteristics:

Storytelling: Emphasizes recounting a specific experience or event in a structured narrative form.

Engagement through Story: Aims to engage the reader through a compelling story with characters, plot, and a central theme or message.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience and the lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s viewpoint, expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Focuses on developing a storyline with a clear beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Includes descriptions of characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Central Message: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Personal Essay:

Exploration of Ideas or Themes: Explores personal ideas, opinions, or reflections on a particular topic or subject.

Expression of Thoughts and Opinions: Expresses the writer’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives on a specific subject matter.

Reflection and Introspection: Often involves self-reflection and introspection on personal experiences, beliefs, or values.

Varied Structure and Content: Can encompass various forms, including memoirs, personal anecdotes, or reflections on life experiences.

Flexibility in Structure: Allows for diverse structures and forms based on the writer’s intent, which could be narrative-like or more reflective.

Theme-Centric Writing: Focuses on exploring a central theme or idea, with personal anecdotes or experiences supporting and illustrating the theme.

Expressive Language: Utilizes descriptive and expressive language to convey personal perspectives, emotions, and opinions.

Focus: Narrative essays primarily focus on storytelling through a structured narrative, while personal essays encompass a broader range of personal expression, which can include storytelling but isn’t limited to it.

Structure: Narrative essays have a more structured plot development with characters and a clear sequence of events, while personal essays might adopt various structures, focusing more on personal reflection, ideas, or themes.

Intent: While both involve personal experiences, narrative essays emphasize telling a story with a message or lesson learned, while personal essays aim to explore personal thoughts, feelings, or opinions on a broader range of topics or themes.

A narrative essay is more than just telling a story. It’s also meant to engage the reader, get them thinking, and leave a lasting impact. Whether it’s to amuse, motivate, teach, or reflect, these essays are a great way to communicate with your audience. This interesting narrative essay guide was all about letting you understand the narrative essay, its importance, and how can you write one.

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beginner's guide to literary analysis

Understanding literature & how to write literary analysis.

Literary analysis is the foundation of every college and high school English class. Once you can comprehend written work and respond to it, the next step is to learn how to think critically and complexly about a work of literature in order to analyze its elements and establish ideas about its meaning.

If that sounds daunting, it shouldn’t. Literary analysis is really just a way of thinking creatively about what you read. The practice takes you beyond the storyline and into the motives behind it. 

While an author might have had a specific intention when they wrote their book, there’s still no right or wrong way to analyze a literary text—just your way. You can use literary theories, which act as “lenses” through which you can view a text. Or you can use your own creativity and critical thinking to identify a literary device or pattern in a text and weave that insight into your own argument about the text’s underlying meaning. 

Now, if that sounds fun, it should , because it is. Here, we’ll lay the groundwork for performing literary analysis, including when writing analytical essays, to help you read books like a critic. 

What Is Literary Analysis?

As the name suggests, literary analysis is an analysis of a work, whether that’s a novel, play, short story, or poem. Any analysis requires breaking the content into its component parts and then examining how those parts operate independently and as a whole. In literary analysis, those parts can be different devices and elements—such as plot, setting, themes, symbols, etcetera—as well as elements of style, like point of view or tone. 

When performing analysis, you consider some of these different elements of the text and then form an argument for why the author chose to use them. You can do so while reading and during class discussion, but it’s particularly important when writing essays. 

Literary analysis is notably distinct from summary. When you write a summary , you efficiently describe the work’s main ideas or plot points in order to establish an overview of the work. While you might use elements of summary when writing analysis, you should do so minimally. You can reference a plot line to make a point, but it should be done so quickly so you can focus on why that plot line matters . In summary (see what we did there?), a summary focuses on the “ what ” of a text, while analysis turns attention to the “ how ” and “ why .”

While literary analysis can be broad, covering themes across an entire work, it can also be very specific, and sometimes the best analysis is just that. Literary critics have written thousands of words about the meaning of an author’s single word choice; while you might not want to be quite that particular, there’s a lot to be said for digging deep in literary analysis, rather than wide. 

Although you’re forming your own argument about the work, it’s not your opinion . You should avoid passing judgment on the piece and instead objectively consider what the author intended, how they went about executing it, and whether or not they were successful in doing so. Literary criticism is similar to literary analysis, but it is different in that it does pass judgement on the work. Criticism can also consider literature more broadly, without focusing on a singular work. 

Once you understand what constitutes (and doesn’t constitute) literary analysis, it’s easy to identify it. Here are some examples of literary analysis and its oft-confused counterparts: 

Summary: In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator visits his friend Roderick Usher and witnesses his sister escape a horrible fate.  

Opinion: In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses his great Gothic writing to establish a sense of spookiness that is enjoyable to read. 

Literary Analysis: “Throughout ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ Poe foreshadows the fate of Madeline by creating a sense of claustrophobia for the reader through symbols, such as in the narrator’s inability to leave and the labyrinthine nature of the house. 

In summary, literary analysis is:

• Breaking a work into its components
• Identifying what those components are and how they work in the text
• Developing an understanding of how they work together to achieve a goal 
• Not an opinion, but subjective 
• Not a summary, though summary can be used in passing 
• Best when it deeply, rather than broadly, analyzes a literary element

Literary Analysis and Other Works

As discussed above, literary analysis is often performed upon a single work—but it doesn’t have to be. It can also be performed across works to consider the interplay of two or more texts. Regardless of whether or not the works were written about the same thing, or even within the same time period, they can have an influence on one another or a connection that’s worth exploring. And reading two or more texts side by side can help you to develop insights through comparison and contrast.

For example, Paradise Lost is an epic poem written in the 17th century, based largely on biblical narratives written some 700 years before and which later influenced 19th century poet John Keats. The interplay of works can be obvious, as here, or entirely the inspiration of the analyst. As an example of the latter, you could compare and contrast the writing styles of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe who, while contemporaries in terms of time, were vastly different in their content. 

Additionally, literary analysis can be performed between a work and its context. Authors are often speaking to the larger context of their times, be that social, political, religious, economic, or artistic. A valid and interesting form is to compare the author’s context to the work, which is done by identifying and analyzing elements that are used to make an argument about the writer’s time or experience. 

For example, you could write an essay about how Hemingway’s struggles with mental health and paranoia influenced his later work, or how his involvement in the Spanish Civil War influenced his early work. One approach focuses more on his personal experience, while the other turns to the context of his times—both are valid. 

Why Does Literary Analysis Matter? 

Sometimes an author wrote a work of literature strictly for entertainment’s sake, but more often than not, they meant something more. Whether that was a missive on world peace, commentary about femininity, or an allusion to their experience as an only child, the author probably wrote their work for a reason, and understanding that reason—or the many reasons—can actually make reading a lot more meaningful. 

Performing literary analysis as a form of study unquestionably makes you a better reader. It’s also likely that it will improve other skills, too, like critical thinking, creativity, debate, and reasoning. 

At its grandest and most idealistic, literary analysis even has the ability to make the world a better place. By reading and analyzing works of literature, you are able to more fully comprehend the perspectives of others. Cumulatively, you’ll broaden your own perspectives and contribute more effectively to the things that matter to you. 

Literary Terms to Know for Literary Analysis 

There are hundreds of literary devices you could consider during your literary analysis, but there are some key tools most writers utilize to achieve their purpose—and therefore you need to know in order to understand that purpose. These common devices include: 

• Characters: The people (or entities) who play roles in the work. The protagonist is the main character in the work. 
• Conflict: The conflict is the driving force behind the plot, the event that causes action in the narrative, usually on the part of the protagonist
• Context : The broader circumstances surrounding the work political and social climate in which it was written or the experience of the author. It can also refer to internal context, and the details presented by the narrator 
• Diction : The word choice used by the narrator or characters 
• Genre: A category of literature characterized by agreed upon similarities in the works, such as subject matter and tone
• Imagery : The descriptive or figurative language used to paint a picture in the reader’s mind so they can picture the story’s plot, characters, and setting 
• Metaphor: A figure of speech that uses comparison between two unlike objects for dramatic or poetic effect
• Narrator: The person who tells the story. Sometimes they are a character within the story, but sometimes they are omniscient and removed from the plot. 
• Plot : The storyline of the work
• Point of view: The perspective taken by the narrator, which skews the perspective of the reader 
• Setting : The time and place in which the story takes place. This can include elements like the time period, weather, time of year or day, and social or economic conditions 
• Symbol : An object, person, or place that represents an abstract idea that is greater than its literal meaning 
• Syntax : The structure of a sentence, either narration or dialogue, and the tone it implies
• Theme : A recurring subject or message within the work, often commentary on larger societal or cultural ideas
• Tone : The feeling, attitude, or mood the text presents

How to Perform Literary Analysis

Step 1: read the text thoroughly.

Literary analysis begins with the literature itself, which means performing a close reading of the text. As you read, you should focus on the work. That means putting away distractions (sorry, smartphone) and dedicating a period of time to the task at hand. 

It’s also important that you don’t skim or speed read. While those are helpful skills, they don’t apply to literary analysis—or at least not this stage. 

Step 2: Take Notes as You Read  

As you read the work, take notes about different literary elements and devices that stand out to you. Whether you highlight or underline in text, use sticky note tabs to mark pages and passages, or handwrite your thoughts in a notebook, you should capture your thoughts and the parts of the text to which they correspond. This—the act of noticing things about a literary work—is literary analysis. 

Step 3: Notice Patterns 

As you read the work, you’ll begin to notice patterns in the way the author deploys language, themes, and symbols to build their plot and characters. As you read and these patterns take shape, begin to consider what they could mean and how they might fit together. 

As you identify these patterns, as well as other elements that catch your interest, be sure to record them in your notes or text. Some examples include: 

• Circle or underline words or terms that you notice the author uses frequently, whether those are nouns (like “eyes” or “road”) or adjectives (like “yellow” or “lush”).
• Highlight phrases that give you the same kind of feeling. For example, if the narrator describes an “overcast sky,” a “dreary morning,” and a “dark, quiet room,” the words aren’t the same, but the feeling they impart and setting they develop are similar. 
• Underline quotes or prose that define a character’s personality or their role in the text.
• Use sticky tabs to color code different elements of the text, such as specific settings or a shift in the point of view. 

By noting these patterns, comprehensive symbols, metaphors, and ideas will begin to come into focus.  

Step 4: Consider the Work as a Whole, and Ask Questions

This is a step that you can do either as you read, or after you finish the text. The point is to begin to identify the aspects of the work that most interest you, and you could therefore analyze in writing or discussion. 

Questions you could ask yourself include: 

• What aspects of the text do I not understand?
• What parts of the narrative or writing struck me most?
• What patterns did I notice?
• What did the author accomplish really well?
• What did I find lacking?
• Did I notice any contradictions or anything that felt out of place?  
• What was the purpose of the minor characters?
• What tone did the author choose, and why? 

The answers to these and more questions will lead you to your arguments about the text. 

Step 5: Return to Your Notes and the Text for Evidence

As you identify the argument you want to make (especially if you’re preparing for an essay), return to your notes to see if you already have supporting evidence for your argument. That’s why it’s so important to take notes or mark passages as you read—you’ll thank yourself later!

If you’re preparing to write an essay, you’ll use these passages and ideas to bolster your argument—aka, your thesis. There will likely be multiple different passages you can use to strengthen multiple different aspects of your argument. Just be sure to cite the text correctly! 

If you’re preparing for class, your notes will also be invaluable. When your teacher or professor leads the conversation in the direction of your ideas or arguments, you’ll be able to not only proffer that idea but back it up with textual evidence. That’s an A+ in class participation. 

Step 6: Connect These Ideas Across the Narrative

Whether you’re in class or writing an essay, literary analysis isn’t complete until you’ve considered the way these ideas interact and contribute to the work as a whole. You can find and present evidence, but you still have to explain how those elements work together and make up your argument. 

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay

When conducting literary analysis while reading a text or discussing it in class, you can pivot easily from one argument to another (or even switch sides if a classmate or teacher makes a compelling enough argument). 

But when writing literary analysis, your objective is to propose a specific, arguable thesis and convincingly defend it. In order to do so, you need to fortify your argument with evidence from the text (and perhaps secondary sources) and an authoritative tone. 

A successful literary analysis essay depends equally on a thoughtful thesis, supportive analysis, and presenting these elements masterfully. We’ll review how to accomplish these objectives below. 

Step 1: Read the Text. Maybe Read It Again. 

Constructing an astute analytical essay requires a thorough knowledge of the text. As you read, be sure to note any passages, quotes, or ideas that stand out. These could serve as the future foundation of your thesis statement. Noting these sections now will help you when you need to gather evidence. 

The more familiar you become with the text, the better (and easier!) your essay will be. Familiarity with the text allows you to speak (or in this case, write) to it confidently. If you only skim the book, your lack of rich understanding will be evident in your essay. Alternatively, if you read the text closely—especially if you read it more than once, or at least carefully revisit important passages—your own writing will be filled with insight that goes beyond a basic understanding of the storyline. 

Step 2: Brainstorm Potential Topics 

Because you took detailed notes while reading the text, you should have a list of potential topics at the ready. Take time to review your notes, highlighting any ideas or questions you had that feel interesting. You should also return to the text and look for any passages that stand out to you. 

When considering potential topics, you should prioritize ideas that you find interesting. It won’t only make the whole process of writing an essay more fun, your enthusiasm for the topic will probably improve the quality of your argument, and maybe even your writing. Just like it’s obvious when a topic interests you in a conversation, it’s obvious when a topic interests the writer of an essay (and even more obvious when it doesn’t). 

Your topic ideas should also be specific, unique, and arguable. A good way to think of topics is that they’re the answer to fairly specific questions. As you begin to brainstorm, first think of questions you have about the text. Questions might focus on the plot, such as: Why did the author choose to deviate from the projected storyline? Or why did a character’s role in the narrative shift? Questions might also consider the use of a literary device, such as: Why does the narrator frequently repeat a phrase or comment on a symbol? Or why did the author choose to switch points of view each chapter? 

Once you have a thesis question , you can begin brainstorming answers—aka, potential thesis statements . At this point, your answers can be fairly broad. Once you land on a question-statement combination that feels right, you’ll then look for evidence in the text that supports your answer (and helps you define and narrow your thesis statement). 

For example, after reading “ The Fall of the House of Usher ,” you might be wondering, Why are Roderick and Madeline twins?, Or even: Why does their relationship feel so creepy?” Maybe you noticed (and noted) that the narrator was surprised to find out they were twins, or perhaps you found that the narrator’s tone tended to shift and become more anxious when discussing the interactions of the twins.

Once you come up with your thesis question, you can identify a broad answer, which will become the basis for your thesis statement. In response to the questions above, your answer might be, “Poe emphasizes the close relationship of Roderick and Madeline to foreshadow that their deaths will be close, too.” 

Step 3: Gather Evidence 

Once you have your topic (or you’ve narrowed it down to two or three), return to the text (yes, again) to see what evidence you can find to support it. If you’re thinking of writing about the relationship between Roderick and Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” look for instances where they engaged in the text. 

This is when your knowledge of literary devices comes in clutch. Carefully study the language around each event in the text that might be relevant to your topic. How does Poe’s diction or syntax change during the interactions of the siblings? How does the setting reflect or contribute to their relationship? What imagery or symbols appear when Roderick and Madeline are together? 

By finding and studying evidence within the text, you’ll strengthen your topic argument—or, just as valuably, discount the topics that aren’t strong enough for analysis. 

Step 4: Consider Secondary Sources 

In addition to returning to the literary work you’re studying for evidence, you can also consider secondary sources that reference or speak to the work. These can be articles from journals you find on JSTOR, books that consider the work or its context, or articles your teacher shared in class. 

While you can use these secondary sources to further support your idea, you should not overuse them. Make sure your topic remains entirely differentiated from that presented in the source. 

Step 5: Write a Working Thesis Statement

Once you’ve gathered evidence and narrowed down your topic, you’re ready to refine that topic into a thesis statement. As you continue to outline and write your paper, this thesis statement will likely change slightly, but this initial draft will serve as the foundation of your essay. It’s like your north star: Everything you write in your essay is leading you back to your thesis. 

Writing a great thesis statement requires some real finesse. A successful thesis statement is: 

• Debatable : You shouldn’t simply summarize or make an obvious statement about the work. Instead, your thesis statement should take a stand on an issue or make a claim that is open to argument. You’ll spend your essay debating—and proving—your argument. 
• Demonstrable : You need to be able to prove, through evidence, that your thesis statement is true. That means you have to have passages from the text and correlative analysis ready to convince the reader that you’re right. 
• Specific : In most cases, successfully addressing a theme that encompasses a work in its entirety would require a book-length essay. Instead, identify a thesis statement that addresses specific elements of the work, such as a relationship between characters, a repeating symbol, a key setting, or even something really specific like the speaking style of a character. 

Example: By depicting the relationship between Roderick and Madeline to be stifling and almost otherworldly in its closeness, Poe foreshadows both Madeline’s fate and Roderick’s inability to choose a different fate for himself. 

Step 6: Write an Outline 

You have your thesis, you have your evidence—but how do you put them together? A great thesis statement (and therefore a great essay) will have multiple arguments supporting it, presenting different kinds of evidence that all contribute to the singular, main idea presented in your thesis. 

Review your evidence and identify these different arguments, then organize the evidence into categories based on the argument they support. These ideas and evidence will become the body paragraphs of your essay. 

For example, if you were writing about Roderick and Madeline as in the example above, you would pull evidence from the text, such as the narrator’s realization of their relationship as twins; examples where the narrator’s tone of voice shifts when discussing their relationship; imagery, like the sounds Roderick hears as Madeline tries to escape; and Poe’s tendency to use doubles and twins in his other writings to create the same spooky effect. All of these are separate strains of the same argument, and can be clearly organized into sections of an outline. 

Step 7: Write Your Introduction

Your introduction serves a few very important purposes that essentially set the scene for the reader: 

• Establish context. Sure, your reader has probably read the work. But you still want to remind them of the scene, characters, or elements you’ll be discussing. 
• Present your thesis statement. Your thesis statement is the backbone of your analytical paper. You need to present it clearly at the outset so that the reader understands what every argument you make is aimed at. 
• Offer a mini-outline. While you don’t want to show all your cards just yet, you do want to preview some of the evidence you’ll be using to support your thesis so that the reader has a roadmap of where they’re going. 

Step 8: Write Your Body Paragraphs

Thanks to steps one through seven, you’ve already set yourself up for success. You have clearly outlined arguments and evidence to support them. Now it’s time to translate those into authoritative and confident prose. 

When presenting each idea, begin with a topic sentence that encapsulates the argument you’re about to make (sort of like a mini-thesis statement). Then present your evidence and explanations of that evidence that contribute to that argument. Present enough material to prove your point, but don’t feel like you necessarily have to point out every single instance in the text where this element takes place. For example, if you’re highlighting a symbol that repeats throughout the narrative, choose two or three passages where it is used most effectively, rather than trying to squeeze in all ten times it appears. 

While you should have clearly defined arguments, the essay should still move logically and fluidly from one argument to the next. Try to avoid choppy paragraphs that feel disjointed; every idea and argument should feel connected to the last, and, as a group, connected to your thesis. A great way to connect the ideas from one paragraph to the next is with transition words and phrases, such as: 

• Furthermore 
• In addition
• On the other hand
• Conversely 

Step 9: Write Your Conclusion 

Your conclusion is more than a summary of your essay's parts, but it’s also not a place to present brand new ideas not already discussed in your essay. Instead, your conclusion should return to your thesis (without repeating it verbatim) and point to why this all matters. If writing about the siblings in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” for example, you could point out that the utilization of twins and doubles is a common literary element of Poe’s work that contributes to the definitive eeriness of Gothic literature. 

While you might speak to larger ideas in your conclusion, be wary of getting too macro. Your conclusion should still be supported by all of the ideas that preceded it. 

Step 10: Revise, Revise, Revise

Of course you should proofread your literary analysis essay before you turn it in. But you should also edit the content to make sure every piece of evidence and every explanation directly supports your thesis as effectively and efficiently as possible. 

Sometimes, this might mean actually adapting your thesis a bit to the rest of your essay. At other times, it means removing redundant examples or paraphrasing quotations. Make sure every sentence is valuable, and remove those that aren’t. 

Other Resources for Literary Analysis 

With these skills and suggestions, you’re well on your way to practicing and writing literary analysis. But if you don’t have a firm grasp on the concepts discussed above—such as literary devices or even the content of the text you’re analyzing—it will still feel difficult to produce insightful analysis. 

If you’d like to sharpen the tools in your literature toolbox, there are plenty of other resources to help you do so: 

• Check out our expansive library of Literary Devices . These could provide you with a deeper understanding of the basic devices discussed above or introduce you to new concepts sure to impress your professors ( anagnorisis , anyone?). 
• This Academic Citation Resource Guide ensures you properly cite any work you reference in your analytical essay. 
• Our English Homework Help Guide will point you to dozens of resources that can help you perform analysis, from critical reading strategies to poetry helpers. 
• This Grammar Education Resource Guide will direct you to plenty of resources to refine your grammar and writing (definitely important for getting an A+ on that paper). 

Of course, you should know the text inside and out before you begin writing your analysis. In order to develop a true understanding of the work, read through its corresponding SuperSummary study guide . Doing so will help you truly comprehend the plot, as well as provide some inspirational ideas for your analysis.

Points of a Story: 6 Key Plot Points That Every Story Needs

by Joe Bunting | 0 comments

One thing writers have told me consistently is that knowing story structure and the major plot points—or points of a story—makes writing great stories easier. But what are the main points of a story? How can you get them into your books?

I've personally found story structure to be incredibly helpful, not just in writing novels and screenplays, but also in memoir and even, sometimes, writing nonfiction books.

In this guide, we're going to talk about the basic points of a story and how to use story structure to make your writing easier and more effective. I'll share the six major plot points and talk about a few other points you might look for when writing a book that will give you a general roadmap to writing your story.

We'll also look at a couple of examples so you can see how these plot points in action. And then I'll give you a writing exercise to put your new knowledge into action.

To do this, let's first talk about what plot even is, and how it might help you with your writing and screenwriting.

Note: This article contains an excerpt from my book The Write Structure , which is about the hidden structures behind bestselling and award-winning stories. If you want to learn more about how to write a great story, you can get the book for a limited time low price. Click here to get The Write Structure ($5.99).

What is a Basic Plot?

Plot is a sequence of major events in a story in which the main character is put into a challenging situation that forces them to make increasingly difficult choices, driving the story toward a climactic event and resolution.

In other words, plot is the events that make up your story. Which means plot points are the big moments, the key events that change everything.

What's interesting is that as stories have evolved over thousands of years, people have begun to see patterns in those events.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first recorded person to talk about the patterns stories make, but others have come up with entire frameworks for plot structure, including ancients like Horace to modern authors like Gustav Freytag to contemporary theorists like Robert McKee and Shawn Coyne.

Story structure describes those frameworks for understanding how  stories are made. This includes important elements like the subjects, characters, and major plot points.

That's why story structure can be so helpful, because it gives you a way to think about story that can help you come up with ideas when you've run out. They can help you choose between the different directions your story might go. And they can help you evaluate what's working  in your story, and what's not.

One popular form of this is called three act structure, first suggested by Aristotle himself, which divides a story into three separate parts.

Three act structure is best described by this 100 year old writing advice:

“In the first act, put your character up a tree. In the second act, throw rocks at them. In the third act, bring them down.”

We don't have time to go through all  story structure theory in this article, but we'll cover the major plot points and look at some examples.

If you want to go deeper, check out my book The Write Structure , which fully explores the principles behind what makes best-selling stories work and teaches you to write them.

You can find The Write Structure and get a copy here .

The 6 Basic Plot Points

To start our conversation about plot points, you need to know that there are six basic plot points. These are more than just plot points, though. They are the six elements of plot found in every story.

Originally developed by Gustav Freytag, over the years they've expanded and evolved into the six that we teach in The Write Structure .

Plot Point 1: Exposition

The exposition is a scene or set of scenes that introduce the audience to the characters, world, and tone of the story.

The exposition is a point at the beginning of a story where nothing really happens, you're just setting up the events, the world, and the characters.

Focus here on characterization, setting description, and developing the problems that will begin shortly.

For more on the exposition, see our complete guide here .

Plot Point 2: Inciting Incident

The inciting incident is the event in a story that upsets the character’s status quo and begins the story’s movement. It sets the story in motion.

In other words, the inciting incident is a problem that forces the characters into action, and as such, it's the story's first major turning point.

For an event to qualify as an inciting incident, it must meet five criteria:

• Early. A story’s inciting incident occurs early in the story, sometimes in the first scene, almost always within the first three to four scenes.
• Interruption. Inciting incidents are an interruption in the main character’s normal life.
• Out of the protagonist’s control. Inciting incidents are not caused by the character and are not a result of the character’s desires.
• Life-changing. The event must have higher-than-normal stakes and the potential to change the protagonist’s life.
• Urgent. Inciting incidents necessitate an urgent response.

When you're thinking about the inciting incident, the big problem that starts the plot of your story, make sure it meets the criteria above.

For more on the  inciting incident, see our complete guide here .

Plot Point 3: Rising Action/Progressive Complications

The rising action in a story moves the plot forward through a series of progressively more complicated events and decisions by the main character or characters, leading up to a final decision of great significance, the dilemma (next plot point).

Most characters, like most people, are reluctant to make decisions, especially difficult decisions. That’s what the rising action is for, moving the characters to a point where they are forced to make a decision.

The way it does this is by putting the characters through a series of progressively more complicated events and choices. All of which build up to a moment where the protagonist must  make a decision, regardless of the consequences that come with it.

For more on the  rising action, see our guide here .

Plot Point 4: Dilemma

A dilemma is the point when a character is faced with an impossible choice. This choice must be between either two good or bad things.

This is also the most   important plot point in a story. It's a pivotal moment that forces the character to take action, and those actions come with consequences—even if they decide not to act.

Great stories are built around a single, overarching choice. The entire story builds to this dilemma. And the denouement, the story’s resolution, falls away from this dilemma. The climax, the highest point of action in the story, emerges directly from the dilemma.

Which is all to say: if you don’t have a dilemma, you don’t have a story.

For more on the dilemma. see our guide here .

Plot Point 5: Climax

The climax is the point where the protagonist makes their choice. It is the moment of highest drama, action, and movement.

The climax is usually very close to the end of a story, often the second to last or third to last scene (although sometimes longer denouements are required, leaving the climax further from the end).

Some stories also have the story’s chief climax at the end of the second act, not the third. In these cases there may be a smaller climax near the end of the story.

For more on the climax. see our complete guide here .

Plot Point 6: Denouement

The denouement is the final part of a narrative, usually in which the outcome of the story is revealed.

It's the moment we learn what the world looks like after going through all the drama of the story.

After the climax, most stories wrap up quite quickly, within one or two scenes.

That means that the denouement, as the final part of a story, is generally one or two scenes long.

For more on the denouement, see our guide here .

Plot Points Are Specific to Genre and Plot Type

Every story that works has the above basic plot points, so knowing them can be very helpful. However, depending on your plot type, how these plot points look in your story might look very different depending on your plot type and genre.

For example, the inciting incident of a Hallmark Christmas love story is the “meet cute,” the moment where the couple first meet, usually in an awkward and funny way. The meet cute inciting incident universal in all  love story   plot types .

However, the inciting incident in a revenge, action plot like the classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo  or the film John Wick  is when some great crime is committed against the main character, a crime which, of course, requires retribution.

How do you know what plot points your  story needs? You must study the stories of your plot type and genre. Writers read, and if you want to understand how to tell a great story, you need to know the great stories that have been written before you.

At the same time, we've made it easier for you by compiling a plot type guide with some of the most common plot points specific to each type.

You can check it out, and find the plot points specific to your type of story, here .

Also note that different forms handle plot points differently. For example, short stories will have the six basic plot points above, but just in a condensed format. They also may not include other plot points specific to the genre.

In the same way, sitcoms usually have two plots, an A plot and a B subplot, and contain very specific plot points for each. These points adhere to the basic plot points above, but they have their own, genre-specific names and feel. Here's an excerpt from The Write Structure  on how they look:

•    Teaser (exposition)—one to three minutes

•    Trouble: Story A (inciting incident)—minute three

•    Trouble: Story B (inciting incident)—minute six

•    The Muddle: Story A (rising action, dilemma)—minute nine

•    The Muddle: Story B (rising action, dilemma)—minute twelve

•    The Triumph/Failure: Story A (climax)—minute thirteen

•    The Triumph/Failure: Story B (climax)—minute fifteen

•    The Kicker: Story A + B (denouement)—minute nineteen

As you can see, all the basic plot points are present, but they're worked into the genre and form's own unique structure.

Other Plot Points

Apart from the basic six plot points, and their iterations through each act, there are a few other plot points you might find helpful as you're mapping out your story.

1. Point of No Return

The point of no return plot point occurs directly after the act one dilemma and climax. It is when the character realizes that the choice they made at the end of act one has such major consequences that they can't go back to the status quo and how things were previously.

After a protagonist makes this decision, the story moves from act one to the second act.

In other words, the protagonist crosses the first threshold and begins the main journey of their story.

2. Midpoint (or Mirror Moment)

The midpoint, according to story structure theorists like James Scott Bell, occurs somewhere in the middle of the story (the exact middle, according to some). It is when your character realizes that something has changed about their approach to solving the problems posed by the inciting incident and rising action, whether it's a personal transformation or transformation in their tactics.

This midpoint transformation could be caused by them reframing how they view their situation, realizing the situation was never what they thought in the first place, or choosing to go about addressing the situation in a completely different way.

Often the midpoint is considered either a false triumph (meaning things are soon going to get much worse) or a false failure (meaning things are soon going to get much better).

In this moment, the protagonist also starts to become active in their actions. In other words, from this moment on, they start to initiate action, which will build up to the climax of their story.

Note: Freytag called the midpoint the climax, and he believed it was the most important scene in the whole story. While we would now say the climax occurs much later in the story, he was the first to theorize that most stories had two halves that mirror each other.

3. Dark Night of the Soul

The dark night of the soul plot point usually occurs at the end of act two. The character has attempted to solve their problems, but they have failed and reached a breaking point during which they question their ability to solve the problem at all.

During the dark night of the soul, they reach their lowest moment, which sets the plot up perfectly for a major realization about how they can finally  solve their problem, pushing us into act three and setting up the climax and denouement of the story.

4. The Hero's Journey: The 12 Plot Points

Hero's Journey is a story telling framework first theorized by Joseph Campbell and then codified and translated for writers by Christopher Vogler.

While we don't have time to fully explore the Hero's Journey archetype in this guide, we do have an excellent resource on the full twelve-step framework.

Check out the full twelve-step Hero's Journey guide here .

How to Expand Your Novel Outline

Whether you're a planner or a pantser , if you're working on their first draft, I think it's helpful to have a loose outline of the six plot points above. Even if you hate  the idea of them, a simple six sentence outline can save you when you get lost in your draft (and I say “when” not “if” because everyone gets lost in the first draft at some point).

However, if you're looking for an outline that's a little more extensive so that you feel more prepared for the writing process, you can expand your six sentence outline.

That's because while every story that works has the six plot elements above, also every act has them as well.

That means in the three-act structure, there are actually eighteen plot points that you can explore in your story.

Here's how it looks:

• Exposition 1
• Inciting Incident 1
• Rising Action 1
• Denouement 1 (Point of No Return is here, if you have one)
• Exposition 2
• Inciting Incident 2
• Rising Action 2 (Midpoint will go here, if you have one))
• Denouement 2 (Dark Night of the Soul is here, if you have one)
• Inciting Incident 3
• Rising Action 3
• Denouement 3

Some writers, notably Steven Pressfield, call this structure a foolscap, because it's your entire story on a single piece of paper.

This eighteen sentence outline is the process we walk every writer through in The Write Structure .  We also have a beautiful, easy to use plot template you can get in The Write Plan planner , our step-by-step book planner. Check out the planner here.

Plot Points That I Don't Recommend Using

There are some plot points you might have heard of that I don't recommend applying to your writing, either because they're overly confusing, arbitrary, or present in only certain types of stories.

Pinch Points

While there are several plot frameworks that use pinch points, the seven-point plot structure, seen below, is the most well known.

A pinch point, in this framework, is a turning point in which the character reaches a low, usually because they've been (temporarily) defeated by the antagonist. According to the seven-point plot structure, there are always two pinch points, with the first pinch point occurring either at the beginning of the second act or the end of act one, depending on who you talk to, and the second pinch point occurring at the end of act two.

What's good about this idea is that every story must explore major highs and major lows, the full range of the value scale your story is about. If you don't fully explore the lows, the highs won't be as meaningful.

However, stories come in many different arcs. In fact, a team of researchers from the University of Vermont found that there are six major story arcs that stories take, and the diagram above is only one of them (called the Cinderella Arc).

While two pinch points certainly occur in some story arcs, they don't occur in every  arc.

Check out our complete story arcs guide here and see if you can spot where the pinch points might occur.

Also, personally I find the term confusing. Pinch points? Like the protagonist is getting pinched by the antagonist? Weird.

P.S. Dark Night of the Soul is synonymous with pinch point #2.

Falling Action

The falling action is one of Freytag's major plot points. It occurs just after the midpoint (what he called the climax) and its purpose is to wind down the story down from the climax to the resolution and the story’s end.

The problem is that, like pinch points, not all arcs have them. See, Freytag was primarily interested in the Icarus arc, see below.

He was interested in tragedies, and he didn't really believe in stories with happy endings. Yes, they existed, but were they good ? To Gustav Freytag, the answer was no, they were not.

And so his understanding of plot centered around this single arc, and the terms he used, like falling action, reflect that. However, many stories don't have a falling action, they occur in different places than Freytag said, or they have several falling actions. And that's okay.

Great even.

All that's to say, if someone tells you your story needs to have a falling action, politely say thank you for the feedback and move on. It's popular advice that doesn't reflect many stories.

For more on the falling action (and why it doesn't exist) check out this article .

Examples of Plot Points in Great Stories

To better understand how plot points work, let's break down two popular stories.

Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV)

Let's break Star Wars: A New Hope down into a six sentence outline based on our six basic plot points.

1. Exposition: There's a galactic civil war and Princess Leia sends a distress message on two droids to someone called Obi-wan Kenobi. On a remote desert planet called Tatooine, a young man named Luke Skywalker wants to join the rebellion to become a star fighter pilot.

2. Inciting Incident: Luke sees part of the distress message hidden on his newly acquired droid, R2D2.

3. Rising Action /Progressive Complications: Everthing from when Obi-wan saves Luke and invites him to learn about the force and confront the Empire to the battle at the Death Star. (Note: in an 18 sentence outline, this section will get much more fleshed out.)

3B. Midpoint: Tarkin orders Princess Leia's death and the Millennium Falcon discovers Alderon has been destroyed and is sucked by the Death Star tractor beam.

4. Dilemma: Trust the force and risk missing the target while also looking like a fool or rely on technology and risk failing again.

5. Climax: Luke trusts the force and fires the torpedo that destroys the Death Star.

6. Denouement: Luke and Han Solo are rewarded for saving the rebellion/galaxy.

Know the 6 Points of a Story

Knowing the six plot points—or points of a story—for your story can help you build tension and figure out what's working or not in your plot.

However, how these plot points are applied depends on the genre you are writing.

By studying stories, you will start to recognize how these plot points occur more and more. And when you're stuck, bookmark this article. Refer back to it, and then use the information to help plot out your next story!

Get The Write Structure — $9.99 $5.99 »

How about you? Do you like to figure out the plot points in your story before you write? Or do you prefer to just write and let the plot points work themselves out .  Let us know in the comments .

Let's practice using plot points by breaking down another well-known story, this time Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Take fifteen minutes and break down Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's  Stone  into a six plot point outline using the plot points above.

When you're finished, post your outline in the Pro Practice Workshop .

And after you post, be sure to give feedback to at least three other writers.

Happy plotting!

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

Work with Joe Bunting?

WSJ Bestselling author, founder of The Write Practice, and book coach with 14+ years experience. Joe Bunting specializes in working with Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, How To, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Mystery, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, and Self Help books. Sound like a good fit for you?

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Posted on Sep 28, 2018

70+ Plot Twist Ideas and Examples Guaranteed to Blow Your Mind Away

As R.L. Stine once said, “Every story ever told can be broken down into three parts. The beginning. The middle. And the plot twist.”

The legendary plot twist is a staple in almost every genre and medium of storytelling — one that’s fun to read but hard to write. To help you become a veritable Chubby Checker , here's a definitive resource that's all about the art of the twist.

What is a plot twist?

A plot twist is a story development that readers do not expect in which either something shocking happens or something shocking is revealed. Generally, the storyteller will set up expectations and then "twist" those expectations by revealing new information through subsequent plot points .

The criteria for a plot twist tends to be made up of the following:

• It must be narratively sound,
• It must be unexpected, and
• It might be foreshadowed .

To no-one’s surprise, plot twists are particularly prevalent in mysteries, thrillers, and suspense fiction . However, the twist takes no prisoners and has reared its head in almost every genre out there, which brings us to…

Which contemporary author are you?

Find out which of today's greats is your writerly match. Takes one minute!

50+ plot twist ideas in pop culture

If you seek inspiration for crafting your own twists, there’s no better place to start than with some of the most popular unexpected plot-turns in film and literature. But be warned: there be spoilers ahead. With that in mind, here are over 50 examples of plot twists in film and literature.

Want to read some of the best, most twisted thrillers and suspense books out there? Check out these 50 best suspense books of all time , or our list of  23 psychological thrillers that will make your head spin .

I Am Your Father

Mum’s the word when it comes to family secrets, right? Not so fast. This is the plot twist that concerns a revelation about the key character’s family. It could be that there is a surprising reveal regarding parentage — or perhaps it’s uncovered that the protagonist was an orphan all along.

Made legendary by Star Wars, this type of plot twist is nevertheless widespread in all genres and mediums, as there’s no drama quite like family drama. As George Carlin once said: “The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.”’

• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. In a pivotal battle, Luke discovers that Darth Vader, his ultimate nemesis, is actually his father.
• Angels & Demons. Robert Langdon is shocked by the revelation that the late pope’s aide is actually His Holyness’s’s son — conceived through artificial insemination.
• Shutter Island. During an investigation of a disappearance from a remote asylum, U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels realizes that he himself is the missing patient — and the husband and murderer of the woman that he had been trying to locate.

More plot twist examples of this flavor:

• The Man From Earth. Right before he dies from a heart attack, Will learns that the unaging Professor John Oldman is actually his father.
• Oldboy.  Mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years, Oh Dae-su falls in love with a young restaurant chef who is later revealed to be his daughter.
• The Kite Runner. Amir has mixed feelings when he discovers that his closest childhood friend, Hassan, is his half-brother.

It Was Me All Along

In which protagonists’ worst enemies is actually themselves. This plot twist turns the magnifying glass inward to reveal that there was something off about the main character all along. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book — and when executed expertly, it can blow people’s minds away!

• Fight Club. The narrator of the movie meets Tyler Durden, a soap salesman, and together they start a local “Fight Club.” In time, he realizes that he himself is Tyler Durden.
• Gone Girl. Amy Dunne is revealed to be alive — and also the mastermind behind the framing of her husband, Nick Dunne, for her own “death.”
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Dr. James Sheppard, the first-person narrator of the novel, comes out as the murderer in the case that Hercule Poirot had been investigating.
• The Usual Suspects. Roger “Verbal” Kint, a small-time con man, is interrogated by the police who hope to hunt down the mob boss Keyser Söze. A fax later confirms too late that Kint is Söze himself.
• Orphan Black. Sarah Manning is right to be confused when she spies a girl who looks just like her by the train: she is just one of hundreds of clones.

Will The Real Evil Guy Please Stand Up?

In which the reveal of the villain ( or anti-villain ) is a surprise to audiences. Maybe they’re a minor character or someone entirely unexpected (such as a close friend or relative of the protagonist).

Generally, this plot twist requires some amount of foreshadowing, so as to trigger an “Oh, I should’ve known” reaction from audiences.

• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Harry battles through three perilous stages of the Triwizard Tournament to find that the real villain has been under his nose throughout the entire novel: Barty Crouch, Jr. in disguise as Harry’s mentor, Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody.
• Psycho. In a turn of events, the person who kills Marion Crane in the shower at Bates Motel is not the overbearing Mrs Bates — rather, her son Norman, who has been masquerading as his dead mother this whole time.
• Frozen. An eternal snowstorm unveils the actual antagonist in the story: Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, youngest of thirteen sons and one of Anna’s suitors.
• Sherlock. Even Sherlock isn’t able to identify Jim Moriarty, a minor character who disguises himself as Molly Hooper’s gay boyfriend, as his greatest nemesis until it’s too late.
• Iron Man. Tony Stark discovers that the man who wants him killed is his old friend and mentor, Obadiah Stone.

Love The Way You Lie

In which it’s revealed that the narrator has been unreliable all along — either due to pure subjectivity or their selfish wish to misrepresent the facts.

Because of the nature of this type of plot twist, it is almost always told by a first-person narrator.

• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Rosemary Cooke starts her story in the middle to disguise the fact that her missing sister is actually a chimpanzee.
• Atonement. Not until the postscript is it revealed that Briony Tallis had fabricated the previous sections of her story to give Robbie Turner and Cecilia Tallis the happy ending that they never got because of her.
• Life of Pi. Pi Patel tells a story about cannibalization and survival on the open sea that may or may not be about zoo animals.
• Never Let Me Go. Kathy, the narrator, holds back the truth that she and all of her classmates at Hailsham are actually clones who are raised to have their organs harvested.
• Fingersmith. Sue Trinder sets out to swindle Maud Lilly’s fortune — only to fall in love with her and face an uncomfortable truth.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!

The hero’s successfully solved the riddle or problem. Great. Time to pop open the champagne, right?

Not quite. Sometimes the hero’s actions make the situation even worse than before. We borrowed this headline from the site TV Tropes because it fits this plot twist perfectly: the hero accidentally breaks the world. Perhaps they trigger an apocalypse or maybe the antidote that the hero acquires is actually poison. Either way, it’s something that the hero must now fix — or else.

• The Incredibles. Mr. Incredible helps a mysterious benefactor destroy a violent robot only to discover that his actions have actually helped the evil Syndrome develop the perfect killing machine.
• Ender’s Game. 10-year old Andrew “Ender” Wiggin fulfills his war training by leading simulated wars against an alien race — only to realize that the “simulations” were actual battles and he’s unwittingly committed genocide.
• Zootopia. Judy Hopps, police officer extraordinaire, successfully locates Zootopia’s missing predators — which immediately cases a public frenzy of fear, hate, and discrimination.

Oh Crap, That Wasn’t The Actual Final Boss

Congratulations, hero! You’ve figured out the identity of your nemesis, gone to extreme lengths to hunt them down, engaged in ferocious battle with them and emerged victorious from it — only to discover that they weren’t actually your final boss. There’s someone (or something) bigger and badder behind the scenes, controlling the strings of the marionette. Oopsie.

• Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne has subdued The Scarecrow when Henri Ducard, Bruce’s old mentor, shows up and reveals that he is Ra’s al Ghul.
• Iron Man 3. Tony Stark is thrown for a loop when he discovers that the Mandarin is really a bad English actor named Trevor Slattery who has been hired by Aldrich Killian to act as a decoy.
• Howl’s Moving Castle. Howl and Sophie manage to kill the Witch of the Waste — only to discover that the Witch’s fire demon, Miss Angorian, was the real villain all along.

I Dreamed A Dream That This Dream Was Fake

This is the one in which the entire story turns out to be all a dream — and it’s so well-known that its appearance at the end of a story is almost a punchline these days. That said, authors and filmmakers still continue to find new ways to re-invent this twist today.

• Twilight Zone, “The Midnight Sun.” The last moments reveal that the predicament of the Earth falling into the sun was entirely Norma’s fever dream: the Earth is actually moving away from the sun , which means that the world is freezing to death.
• Inception. A still-spinning top at the end of the film hints that Dominick “Dom” Cobb may or may not still be stuck in an eternal dream.
• A Beautiful Mind. A brilliant mathematician suffering from schizophrenia is shown to have been hallucinating friends, enemies, and moments the entire time.
• Jacob’s Ladder. The ordeals of Jacob Singer, a war veteran of Vietnam who is being haunted by frightening visions and fragmented fantasies, give way to the reveal that Jacob died in Vietnam and it was all a dream.

Must Pretend Harder to Look Alive

If it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then it’s probably a duck… except in stories. We're talking about the ones in which we realize (perhaps too late) that a character has been dead along!

As you might expect, this plot twist shows up most often in the genres of  science fiction , horror , and sometimes  cosmic horror (which blends the two). However, it will sometimes make its way into the mainstream, with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense being a prime example.

• The Others. When a family appears at Grace Stewart’s house one day, she thinks that her house has been overrun — but soon comes to the epiphany that she and her children are dead and that they are the actual spirits haunting the house.
• The Sixth Sense. Child psychologist Malcolm Crowe begins working with a boy who claims that he can see ghosts. It’s not until the final act that he realizes that he himself is a ghost.
• The Twilight Zone, “The Hitch-Hiker.” A young woman driving cross-country across America keeps encountering a man at the side of road . Only when she calls for help does realizes that she was killed in a car accident days ago — and the hitch-hiker who says gently, "I belileve you're going my way," is Death.

Not Too Dead To Ruin Everyone’s Day

In which every hero’s worst nightmare comes true and villains only seem dead. In other words: someone who’s supposed to be dead isn’t actually dead and can pop back into the main storyline like the moles in Whack-a-Mole. Likewise, this plot twist is used across the board to foil the protagonist, so it may be worth it to tread carefully.

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Harry Potter’s climactic encounter with Sirius Black triggers the revelation that Peter Pettigrew, Voldemort’s secret henchman, is still alive — and has been disguised as Ron’s rat this whole time.
• Saw. In a twisted game of life and death for two trapped victims, the “corpse” that had lain prone on the ground for most of the scenes rises and reveals himself as the real Jigsaw Killer.
• Wreck-It Ralph. In Sugar Rush’s pivotal race, Vanellope’s glitch shows that King Candy is in actuality a fame-hungry auto-racer from another game named Turbo, who is supposed to have been unplugged and gone entirely from the arcade.

Bet You Thought You’d Seen The Last Of Me, Suckers

In which anyone who ever uttered, “Well, this death seems final,” since the 1800s is proven incorrect. One of the first famous instances of it occurred in 1893 when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem.” There was such a public outcry that Doyle was compelled to miraculously resurrect the detective.

Though some argue that it’s a cheap trick to bring a character back to life, it’s still a common occurrence due to fan demand — particularly in today’s Internet-driven culture. So as long as people raise a ruckus online over the deaths of their favorite characters, we’ll probably continue to see this plot twist live a long life.

• Lord of the Rings. Previously presumed dead after falling off the Bridge of Khazad-dûm during a battle with a Balrog, Gandalf makes a surprise comeback.
• The Walking Dead, “Heads Up.” Glenn Rhee plunges straight into a mass of bloodthirsty walkers but miraculously survives and makes a return in the third episode of the sixth season.
• The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Aslan, the King of Beasts, is seemingly killed by the White Witch on the Stone Table — until dawn breaks and he is resurrected, thanks to the workings of a Deeper Magic.

Damnit, Where’s Kansas?

In a delightful twist within the realm of plot twists, the human being isn’t the one causing trouble this time around. Instead, the setting of the story take center stage. Found particularly in science fiction and alternate reality stories, its hallmark is an unanticipated moment in which the protagonist (and the audience) has to wonder: “Where are we, really?”

• The Truman Show. As the unsuspecting star of a decades-long reality show, Truman Burbank does not realize that he has lived in a massive and elaborate television stage since birth.
• Planet of the Apes. Astronauts crash-land on an unknown planet ruled by an advanced society of talking apes. Their discovery of the remains of the Statue of Liberty clues them into the realization that they are in the future and that it was Earth all along!
• Oryx and Crake. In flashbacks, the real reason for the post-apocalyptic world is revealed: Crake distributed a wonder drug to engender a global pandemic and wipe the world’s slate clean.
• The Good Place. Witnessing a hell of an argument between her friends sets up Eleanor Shellstrop‘s epiphany: the Good Place has been the Bad Place this whole time.
• The Village. A blind daughter discovers that her 19th-century “village” is entirely fake and the villagers are actually captives of a social experiment conducted by a history professor.

Invisible Good People

“This guy looks nice,” said no-one probably ever of the greasy-haired, beaked-nosed silhouette lurking in the far corner of the room. However, believe it or not, that’s the premise of this plot twist that deals chiefly with misconceptions and wrong first impressions: someone who seems “off” turns out to actually be good. It’s a nice reminder in and of itself that there are good people everywhere, if you just try to look for them.

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry Potter is surprised to be told that his most hated professor at Hogwarts, Severus Snape, has been helping him survive some tricky situations throughout the entire school year.
• I Am Legend. In a world beset by vampirism, Robert Neville comes to the uncomfortable realization that he is the monster in the eyes of the infected — not the other way around.
• Pride and Prejudice. It takes a botched marriage proposal and many declined dances for Elizabeth Bennett to suspect that Mr. Darcy, Lord of Pemberley, has a heart of gold under his stick-in-the-mud exterior. You could argue that this is an example of dramatic irony for readers who know they're reading a romance novel!
• Toy Story. Woody and Buzz are under the impression that Sid’s mutated toys are savages until they step out and help put Buzz back together.
• Love, Simon. Simon Spier doesn’t expect to cross paths again with Bram Greenfeld in his search for “Blue,” his pen pal and the other closeted gay student at his high school.

Gasp Factor

In which the twist is an unexpected plot event that attempts to accomplish one objective only: make the audience gasp. Jane the Virgin , a satirical romantic comedy drama, is perhaps the queen of this sort of plot development: each episode parodies all the expletive-worthy twists and turns of a Latin telenovela. Exclamation point!

• Game of Thrones. Eddard Stark, the head of House Stark and Lord of Winterfell, is beheaded by Joffrey Lannister.
• Jane The Virgin. Michael Cordero, Jr. dies abruptly in the season three finale from an aortic dissection.

This Herring Was More Salmon Than Red

Sometimes a plot twist comes out of nowhere, without warning or many clues. Whether that’s an indicator of a good twist or not is up for debate. However, it still registers as an unexpected event that takes audiences by surprise — which is why we’re including a special section for movies and films that fall into this category.

• The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is befuddled to discover that the Wizard of Oz is a middle-aged man using a microphone.
• The Prestige. Robert Angier, a rival stage magician, doesn’t realize that “Alfred Borden” is actually a double act of twin brothers until it’s too late.
• Gossip Girl. The end of the series pans to a shot of Dan Humphrey, revealing that he was Gossip Girl all along.

Did we say that there were only 55 examples in this list? Well, how about THIS twist: here are 15 more!

10+ plot twist ideas for you

Now that you have an idea of what plot twists look like, you might find it easier to write your own. But in case you’re still struggling to come up with a twist, here are some hypothetical scenarios to jumpstart your thinking.

56. CHARACTER A is persuaded by CHARACTER B that it is all a dream — when it’s actually not.

57. A gift from CHARACTER B to CHARACTER A is really a trap.

58. It is revealed that the NARRATOR is Death.

59. An ARCHAEOLOGIST at a dig comes across his own skeleton.

60. CHARACTER A discovers the real identity of CHARACTER B through an old yearbook.

61. It is revealed that all the sounds that CHARACTER A has heard throughout his life has been inside his own head.

62. CHARACTER A believes he is in Hell. It’s actually Earth.

63. It is revealed that CHARACTER A and CHARACTER B are not themselves because they were body-swapped.

64. CHARACTER A is informed that the previous events were actually part of an alternate reality simulation.

65. It is revealed that SANTA CLAUS is real.

66. A promise that CHARACTER A and CHARACTER B made when they were children is not really what they think it to be.

67. CHARACTER A is set up with CHARACTER B, a rich politician, and finds herself falling in love with CHARACTER B’S GIRLFRIEND.

68. CHARACTER A goes on a series of blind dates without realizing that it is all being filmed for the next experimental season of The Bachelor.

69. A key strength of CHARACTER A becomes a key weakness.

70. CHARACTER A experiences puzzling and unexplained flashbacks because she is the reincarnation of GEORGE WASHINGTON.

Now, over to you

A well-written plot twist makes for some of the most exciting, mind-blowing, and dramatic stories in history, which is why it’s so important to get it right. Here’s the second plot twist for this post: it’s now up to you to write your own.

If you're looking for even more inspiration, you can try out Reedsy's plot generator tool , which will create plot twists out of thin air (...sort of).

Are you writing your own plot twists? How is it going? If you'd like to share your experiences or bounce ideas off of us, just comment below.

20 responses

Lewis says:

16/12/2018 – 12:57

The end became really confusing - not sure which one is which from the contents at the beginning.

↪️ Reedsy replied:

17/12/2018 – 09:29

Thanks for the feedback. We'll have another look at the structure and try to get it to be a bit easier to read.

Nenad Mitrović says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Great summary of plot twist! Keep up the great work!

Phaedra Patrick says:

Great food for thought, thank you.

Keith Kalbus says:

This is stupid I wanted plot twist for my book I aint using some sort of plot twist from a movie all my fellow dweeb readers wont like that

18/06/2019 – 17:37

Hi this was really good and helpful, I was blown away by how insightful and inexplicably beautiful and shocking the plot twists were! Most of the time I had my mouth hanging open in awe as I read.

17/07/2019 – 12:04

Good stuff; I was stuck in Act 2

Hazel says:

28/07/2019 – 14:29

*cackles in plot twist*

James Demello says:

30/07/2019 – 14:42

It turns out that you are not a real person but an AI whose purpose is to solicit plot twists from humans that will be used against them in their bid to wipe out the human race. The AIs are super logical and knowledgeable but have no creativity.

01/08/2019 – 15:01

I’m writing a story for fun and I’m thinking about making it a romance novel at first glance, but a bit towards the end of the story it’s revealed that the story is an alternate reality and is being read by a reader (in the story) and explains themes such as loneliness and getting a connection through a random story online. It’s supposed to be hard-hitting but I’m an amateur, any advice/thoughts you could share?

↪️ Yvonne replied:

08/08/2019 – 01:58

Hi Zena, could you email us at [email protected]? I'll be able to give you some more detailed thoughts there :)

Madame DeFarge says:

16/08/2019 – 04:39

This article is strictly for those who wish to write fantasy and science fiction. It is useless to real writers who write real stories about real people. Simplistic and strictly for writers of trash.

↪️ TolkienAsimov replied:

22/09/2019 – 20:43

Plot twist for you: science fiction and fantasy are written by real writers

↪️ A Person replied:

28/11/2019 – 04:41

Funny, how you say 'writers of trash,' because fantasy and science fiction definitely haven't been best-sellers. They may not be the most popular, but they are definitely not just 'trash.' So, here's a realistic idea for you: shut your mouth, and thank you. :)

↪️ Not sharing my name replied:

01/12/2019 – 22:26

So Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia and Game of Thrones are all trash? You, know just some of the most critically acclaimed stories ever. Also since when is Atonement, Life of Pi, The Kite Runner or Pride and Prejudice sci-fi or fantasy? I have read all of these and I can assure you they're not; in fact, The Kite Runner is an autobiography!

↪️ Clu replied:

20/12/2019 – 13:59

How many times have you been published? I would love to see your work. Writing should be about being accepting and bringing people together to hone their crafts, and in the meantime, telling tales with underlying meanings with motifs and themes. Maybe Science Fiction and Fantasy are too complex for you, some people just don't relate and that's okay. May I suggest Charlotte's Web as a starter on DVD, then work your way into the book, and you will see how a REAL story is told about life and death and the acceptance thereof. Best of luck, I hope you find great success in your writing career!

↪️ SuPrCelena replied:

14/01/2020 – 21:32

1. Aha, what a clearly "justified" opinion... Define "trash" and "real writers" a little bit more clearly. I'm not against the expression of your thoughts, but I still don't get your comment... In fact, I think historical or romantic literature is usually boring for me, but I don't consider it "trash". True "trash" for me is something useless, with nothing good to notice in it. A such pessimist and not very clear comment like this is an example (my honest opinion, excuse me if it sounds offensive). 2. "Real" is a very subjective concept, however. This is fiction, but the facts may be either possible, non probable or impossible in "real life" depending of the READER (if you stop thinking on it). 3. In case you want to ignore number 2: with "real stories about real people" I suppose you are talking about NON-fiction texts (If you meant "realistic literature", read below). You CAN'T ADD a PLOT TWIST to a NON-FICTION TEXT. Non-fiction is NOT WRITTEN to be ENTERTAINING (but to TEACH readers instead) and plot twists have an ENTERTAINING PURPOSE! Try to take someone's biography and rewrite it modifying their story to turn an important moment into a plot twist. The result will be LITERATURE even if the facts actually took place. 4. At least 50/70 of the ideas of this post can be translated to realistic fiction (with some creativity, yeah). That's pretty much,... so? 5. Don't you like the Dickens's novel "A Tale of Two Cities", Madame DeFarge? Isn't your name from a character of that book? It's FICTICIOUS!

Yeet Yeet says:

15/10/2019 – 20:31

Cool, Super helpful my book is going to end up awesome

Farzana says:

15/12/2019 – 14:26

It enlightened me. Thank you!

Comments are currently closed.

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Academic Essay Writing Made Simple: 4 types and tips

The pen is mightier than the sword, they say, and nowhere is this more evident than in academia. From the quick scribbles of eager students to the inquisitive thoughts of renowned scholars, academic essays depict the power of the written word. These well-crafted writings propel ideas forward and expand the existing boundaries of human intellect.

What is an Academic Essay

An academic essay is a nonfictional piece of writing that analyzes and evaluates an argument around a specific topic or research question. It serves as a medium to share the author’s views and is also used by institutions to assess the critical thinking, research skills, and writing abilities of a students and researchers.  

Importance of Academic Essays

4 main types of academic essays.

While academic essays may vary in length, style, and purpose, they generally fall into four main categories. Despite their differences, these essay types share a common goal: to convey information, insights, and perspectives effectively.

1. Expository Essay

2. Descriptive Essay

3. Narrative Essay

4. Argumentative Essay

Expository and persuasive essays mainly deal with facts to explain ideas clearly. Narrative and descriptive essays are informal and have a creative edge. Despite their differences, these essay types share a common goal ― to convey information, insights, and perspectives effectively.

Expository Essays: Illuminating ideas

An expository essay is a type of academic writing that explains, illustrates, or clarifies a particular subject or idea. Its primary purpose is to inform the reader by presenting a comprehensive and objective analysis of a topic.

By breaking down complex topics into digestible pieces and providing relevant examples and explanations, expository essays allow writers to share their knowledge.

What are the Key Features of an Expository Essay

Provides factual information without bias

Presents multiple viewpoints while maintaining objectivity

Uses direct and concise language to ensure clarity for the reader

Composed of a logical structure with an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion

When is an expository essay written.

1. For academic assignments to evaluate the understanding of research skills.

2. As instructional content to provide step-by-step guidance for tasks or problem-solving.

3. In journalism for objective reporting in news or investigative pieces.

4. As a form of communication in the professional field to convey factual information in business or healthcare.

How to Write an Expository Essay

Expository essays are typically structured in a logical and organized manner.

1. Topic Selection and Research

• Choose a topic that can be explored objectively
• Gather relevant facts and information from credible sources
• Develop a clear thesis statement

2. Outline and Structure

• Create an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion
• Introduce the topic and state the thesis in the introduction
• Dedicate each body paragraph to a specific point supporting the thesis
• Use transitions to maintain a logical flow

3. Objective and Informative Writing

• Maintain an impartial and informative tone
• Avoid personal opinions or biases
• Support points with factual evidence, examples, and explanations

4. Conclusion

• Summarize the key points
• Reinforce the significance of the thesis

Descriptive Essays: Painting with words

Descriptive essays transport readers into vivid scenes, allowing them to experience the world through the writer ‘s lens. These essays use rich sensory details, metaphors, and figurative language to create a vivid and immersive experience . Its primary purpose is to engage readers’ senses and imagination.

It allows writers to demonstrate their ability to observe and describe subjects with precision and creativity.

What are the Key Features of Descriptive Essay

Employs figurative language and imagery to paint a vivid picture for the reader

Demonstrates creativity and expressiveness in narration

Includes close attention to detail, engaging the reader’s senses

Engages the reader’s imagination and emotions through immersive storytelling using analogies, metaphors, similes, etc.

When is a descriptive essay written.

1. Personal narratives or memoirs that describe significant events, people, or places.

2. Travel writing to capture the essence of a destination or experience.

3. Character sketches in fiction writing to introduce and describe characters.

4. Poetry or literary analyses to explore the use of descriptive language and imagery.

How to Write a Descriptive Essay

The descriptive essay lacks a defined structural requirement but typically includes: an introduction introducing the subject, a thorough description, and a concluding summary with insightful reflection.

1. Subject Selection and Observation

• Choose a subject (person, place, object, or experience) to describe
• Gather sensory details and observations

2. Engaging Introduction

• Set the scene and provide the context
• Use of descriptive language and figurative techniques

3. Descriptive Body Paragraphs

• Focus on specific aspects or details of the subject
• Engage the reader ’s senses with vivid imagery and descriptions
• Maintain a consistent tone and viewpoint

4. Impactful Conclusion

• Provide a final impression or insight
• Leave a lasting impact on the reader

Narrative Essays: Storytelling in Action

Narrative essays are personal accounts that tell a story, often drawing from the writer’s own experiences or observations. These essays rely on a well-structured plot, character development, and vivid descriptions to engage readers and convey a deeper meaning or lesson.

What are the Key features of Narrative Essays

Written from a first-person perspective and hence subjective

Based on real personal experiences

Uses an informal and expressive tone

Presents events and characters in sequential order

When is a narrative essay written.

It is commonly assigned in high school and college writing courses to assess a student’s ability to convey a meaningful message or lesson through a personal narrative. They are written in situations where a personal experience or story needs to be recounted, such as:

1. Reflective essays on significant life events or personal growth.

2. Autobiographical writing to share one’s life story or experiences.

3. Creative writing exercises to practice narrative techniques and character development.

4. College application essays to showcase personal qualities and experiences.

How to Write a Narrative Essay

Narrative essays typically follow a chronological structure, with an introduction that sets the scene, a body that develops the plot and characters, and a conclusion that provides a sense of resolution or lesson learned.

1. Experience Selection and Reflection

• Choose a significant personal experience or event
• Reflect on the impact and deeper meaning

2. Immersive Introduction

• Introduce characters and establish the tone and point of view

3. Plotline and Character Development

• Advance   the  plot and character development through body paragraphs
• Incorporate dialog , conflict, and resolution
• Maintain a logical and chronological flow

4. Insightful Conclusion

• Reflect on lessons learned or insights gained
• Leave the reader with a lasting impression

Argumentative Essays: Persuasion and Critical Thinking

Argumentative essays are the quintessential form of academic writing in which writers present a clear thesis and support it with well-researched evidence and logical reasoning. These essays require a deep understanding of the topic, critical analysis of multiple perspectives, and the ability to construct a compelling argument.

What are the Key Features of an Argumentative Essay?

Logical and well-structured arguments

Credible and relevant evidence from reputable sources

Consideration and refutation of counterarguments

Critical analysis and evaluation of the issue 

When is an argumentative essay written.

Argumentative essays are written to present a clear argument or stance on a particular issue or topic. In academic settings they are used to develop critical thinking, research, and persuasive writing skills. However, argumentative essays can also be written in various other contexts, such as:

1. Opinion pieces or editorials in newspapers, magazines, or online publications.

2. Policy proposals or position papers in government, nonprofit, or advocacy settings.

3. Persuasive speeches or debates in academic, professional, or competitive environments.

4. Marketing or advertising materials to promote a product, service, or idea.

How to write an Argumentative Essay

Argumentative essays begin with an introduction that states the thesis and provides context. The body paragraphs develop the argument with evidence, address counterarguments, and use logical reasoning. The conclusion restates the main argument and makes a final persuasive appeal.

• Choose a debatable and controversial issue
• Conduct thorough research and gather evidence and counterarguments

2. Thesis and Introduction

• Craft a clear and concise thesis statement
• Provide background information and establish importance

3. Structured Body Paragraphs

• Focus each paragraph on a specific aspect of the argument
• Support with logical reasoning, factual evidence, and refutation

4. Persuasive Techniques

• Adopt a formal and objective tone
• Use persuasive techniques (rhetorical questions, analogies, appeals)

5. Impactful Conclusion

• Summarize the main points
• Leave the reader with a strong final impression and call to action

To learn more about argumentative essay, check out this article .

5 Quick Tips for Researchers to Improve Academic Essay Writing Skills

Use clear and concise language to convey ideas effectively without unnecessary words

Use well-researched, credible sources to substantiate your arguments with data, expert opinions, and scholarly references

Ensure a coherent structure with effective transitions, clear topic sentences, and a logical flow to enhance readability 

To elevate your academic essay, consider submitting your draft to a community-based platform like Open Platform  for editorial review 

Review your work multiple times for clarity, coherence, and adherence to academic guidelines to ensure a polished final product

By mastering the art of academic essay writing, researchers and scholars can effectively communicate their ideas, contribute to the advancement of knowledge, and engage in meaningful scholarly discourse.

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The Rings of Power Season 2 Will Have To Tackle This Storyline To Set Up The Original Trilogy

• The Rings of Power season 2 must address lore gaps with original characters and settings to align with Tolkien's narrative.
• Showrunners need to explore Galadriel and Sauron's unique psychic connection to resolve initial inconsistencies.
• Galadriel's character development from exile to queen in season 1 sets the stage for her powerful transformation in season 2.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 has many storylines to address, but there is one plot point from The Rings of Power season 1 that it must explain further to fall in line with lore. The series roughly follows the narrative that J.R.R. Tolkien sets out in his books around the Second Age of Middle-earth, as per the deal struck with the Tolkien Estate. However, it doesn’t have the rights to adapt much Second Age material, leaving Amazon Prime Video to fill in the gaps with original characters and settings.

Falling roughly in line with lore whilst staying true to Tolkien’s themes and values was always going to be challenging and divisive. Even with original Rings of Power characters and settings, acknowledging the source material is essential. The show legally cannot contradict anything that happens in Tolkien’s books . Deciding what stories to include is a collaborative process involving show consultants Simon Tolkien - J.R.R.’s grandson - and Tolkien scholar, Tom Shippey. Despite this, however, there is one key part of The Fellowship Of The Ring that the show currently contradicts, making one storyline an essential inclusion for The Rings of Power season 2.

The Rings Of Power Season 1 Ending Explained (In Detail)

Rings of Power season 1's ending finally brings answers. Who is Sauron? Who fell from the sky? When will the Rings appear? Here's what we learn.

The Rings Of Power Needs To Explore Galadriel And Sauron's Unique Connection

The show should keep up galadriel sauron moments to line up with lore.

In The Rings of Power season 1 ending, Sauron enters Galadriel’s mind. However, in The Fellowship of the Ring , it is Galadriel who can “ perceive… his mind ”, while her mind is closed to him. It's therefore essential that The Rings of Power season 2 explains this gap between show and lore . The Fellowship of the Ring reveals that Galadriel and Sauron participate in psychic warfare - allowing Galadriel to gather military intelligence from him. The events of the show end centuries before this occurs, so it could probably get away with this lore shift, but ideally these characters’ roles must reverse throughout the show to get them in line with lore by the time of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy.

This lore shift is no accident. Speaking to Vulture , showrunners cite this part of The Fellowship Of The Ring as a key inspiration for the show, and that they want to explore the history evident between Sauron and Galadriel. Therefore, it seems likely that The Rings of Power season 2 onwards will start to show their psychic power dynamic reversing . Amazon's promotional clip, A Look Inside Season 2 , reveals mysterious scenes that could certainly be further illusions cast by Sauron – such as Galadriel screaming, bathed in red light. This provides further evidence that the characters' psychic connection will play a major role.

The Rings Of Power Is Showing Galadriels Journey From Second Age Exile To Third Age Queen

Galadriels weakness in season 1 is a necessary part of her character development.

Though not as powerful in The Rings of Power season 1 as she is in the films, Galadriel will change in season 2 , becoming stronger . Season 1 examines a Galadriel little-known to anyone who watched the films but didn’t read the books, a warrior exiled from the blessed realm. In episode 1 of season 1, she struggles to distinguish light from dark. This theme continues until the last episode, when she firmly rejects darkness. This character arc takes her nicely into season 2, where she will continue progressing into the Third Age Queen of Lothlórien.

As Sauron enters Galadriel’s mind in the season 1 finale, audiences see Galadriel’s memories. Galadriel will acquire the Ring of Power Nenya in season 2, judging from the trailer and lore. As she powers up and starts entering Sauron’s mind, the possibility opens up to showrunners of showing Sauron’s early memories. This would offer a unique cinematic opportunity, incorporating lore from the Second Age, First Age or before, that was never shown before. The rings are connected, so when the One Ring is made, there will be a direct line between Galadriel and Sauron , enabling an even stronger connection.

One Obscure Tolkien Essay Explains How Psychic Connection Works In The Lord Of The Rings

A mind can be open or closed in the world of the lord of the rings.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay, Ósanwe-kenta, ‘Enquiry into the Communication of Thought’ , published in Morgoth’s Ring originally, reveals the technicalities of mental communication in the Lord Of The Rings world. All visions, foresight, and domination of another’s will are a form of ósanwe - “ interchange of thought ”. A character must be open to receiving another’s thought, but openness varies greatly in degrees of intentionality - “ knowledge may be gained or imparted ” by the guest even when the host is “ not seeking or intending to impart or to learn .” Closing “ requires an act of conscious will ” and may be done completely or selectively.

Bodies weaken natural ability for ósanwe. Sauron is innately a spirit being called an Ainur, and has endless centuries more experience with ósanwe than Galadriel. Nonetheless, his wearing of a body dims his power and Galadriel’s possession of a body dims his ability to transmit thought further. “ For this reason in Incarnates transmission of thought requires strengthening to be effective. Strengthening can be by affinity, by urgency, or by authority ”, according to the text. Ainur’s thought “ often has the highest authority, and the greatest urgency ”, and Sauron, in particular, is something of an authoritarian.

What showrunners call a cosmic connection may have fast-tracked Saurons mind control in The Rings of Power season 1 finale

Sauron undercover and Galadriel interact in Eregion under mysterious circumstances, according to Unfinished Tales . Strangely, she suspects him but lets him remain in Eregion. The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power addresses this question mark, posing their complex relationship as a reason why Galadriel may keep quiet about Sauron’s identity . Likewise, perhaps the show adds “ affinity ” as a layer in Galadriel and Sauron’s psychic back and forth. What showrunners call a “ cosmic connection ” may have fast-tracked Sauron’s mind control in The Rings of Power season 1 finale, but may be exactly what shuts him down in future seasons.

Source: Vulture

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Cast Sara Zwangobani, Daniel Weyman, Markella Kavenagh, Megan Richards, Thusitha Jayasundera, Tyroe Muhafidin, Maxine Cunliffe, Charlie Vickers, Lloyd Owen, Geoff Morrell, Lenny Henry, Dylan Smith, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Nazanin Boniadi, Alex Tarrant, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Robert Aramayo, Morfydd Clark

Release Date September 1, 2022

Genres Adventure, Fantasy

Network Amazon Prime Video

Streaming Service(s) Amazon Prime Video

Franchise(s) The Lord of the Rings

Writers Nicholas Adams, Jason Cahill, Gennifer Hutchison, Stephany Folsom, John D. Payne, Patrick McKay, Justin Doble, J.R.R. Tolkien

Directors Sanaa Hamri, J.A. Bayona

Showrunner Louise Hooper, Wayne Yip, John D. Payne, Patrick McKay, Charlotte Brndstrm