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First, every story has a beginning, middle, and end—with the middle typically taking up a longer period of time than the beginning or end, as shown in Figure 2.1.

FIGURE 2.1 The parts of a story.

Next, every story has a structure, similar to what you see in Figure 2.2. It’s typically called the narrative arc or story arc, which is a chronological series of events.

FIGURE 2.2 A story arc.

While the X-axis in Figure 2.2 represents time, the Y-axis represents the action. In other words, you can visually see in the figure that the story builds in excitement, the pace of its action increases over time until it hits a high point, and the story winds down before it ends. When the story doesn’t wind down and instead ends while the action is still rising or at a peak, the story is called a cliffhanger.

Every narrative arc has specific key plot points and sequences, as shown in Figure 2.3.

Let’s dissect the narrative arc of a story. Narrative arcs are comprised of the following elements:

• Exposition

• Inciting incident or problem

• Rising action

• Crisis

• Climax or resolution

• Falling action or denouement

• End

FIGURE 2.3 Plot points on a story arc.