Search results
- Freytag’s Pyramid. Named after a 19th-century German novelist and playwright, Freytag’s Pyramid is a five-point dramatic structure that’s based on the classical Greek tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripedes.
- The Hero’s Journey. Inspired by Joseph Campbell’s concept of the monomyth — a storytelling pattern that recurs in mythology all over the world — The Hero’s Journey is today’s best-known story structure.
- Three Act Structure. Following the old adage that “every story has a beginning, middle, and end,” this popular structure splits a story’s components into three distinct acts: Setup, Confrontation, and Resolution.
- Dan Harmon's Story Circle. Another variation on Campbell’s monomyth structure, the Story Circle is an approach developed by Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon.
- Story Structure
- What Is Story Structure?
- What Are The Different Types of Story Plot Structure?
- Aristotle’s Poetics Dramatic Story Structure
- Who Is Kurt Vonnegut?
- What Are The 6 Main Story Arcs?
- The Classic 3-Act Story Plot Structure
- The 4-Act Story Plot Structure
- Freytag’s 5-Part Dramatic Structure
- Michael Hauge’s 6-Stage Story Plot Structure
If you’ve just begun to dip your toe into the world of creative writing, you may have come across the term “Story Structure.” You may have also encountered its cousin, “Story Arcs.” Or that cousin’s new wife, “Beat Sheet,” who appeared more recently but is always welcome. While these terms can feel foreign, the good news is that they’re all simple ...
In short, story plot structure is the skeleton of your story. The bones are the crux of your characters and their journey. Or, if you prefer a more topographical analogy, story structure is the map that guides you as you write a book. Some people refer to setting up a story structure as “story mapping” for just this reason. Story structure consists...
If you’re wondering how many types of story plots there are, you’re not alone. Academia also wondered, and has since come to terms with at least 6 (but more likely 7, or 9, or 36) basic plots for storytelling. The “how” of writing these stories is story plot structure and comes in just as many forms. Some of the most popular methods for how to plot...
To start, who better than the philosopher Aristotle? And while he focused his analysis of story plot structure on tragedies, the principle works for all types of storytelling. After analyzing various plays, Aristotle realized that a story isn’t just a bunch of different pieces thrown together. A story is one whole unit that works together. Simple e...
The natural next step in this story structure journey is the 6 basic story arcs. Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, first mused upon the shapes of story arcs in the 1940s when he wrote a (rejected) master’s thesis at the University of Chicago. Since then, the idea that different stories have similar story structures has become mainstream...
After Vonnegut turned the complex form of storytelling into digestible graphs (a method we, of course, love), a group of researchers from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide decided to take Vonnegut’s research a step farther in a2016 study on the shapes of story arcs. First, the researchers gathered 1,737 works of fiction from ...
As you may have noticed in some of the descriptions above, the 3-act story structure is a popular plot structure for writing great stories. It is also super easy to wrap your head around.
While bearing many similarities to the classic 3-Act structure, the 4-Act story structure breaks the middle act down into 2. The idea of the 4-Act structure is to split the middle act at the midpoint and force the protagonist in a new direction, or what Aristotle calls areversal. Splitting a story at the midpoint helps create a stronger connection ...
Having gone over 3-Act and 4-Act story structures, the 5-part dramatic structure devised by nineteenth-century Gustav Freytag is our next stop. Unlike the 3-Act and 4-Act structures,the graph lines on Freytag’s pyramid relate to the overall action in the story, not the emotional journey of the protagonist. As you can see in the graph above, Freytag...
Are you starting to feel like a story structure guru?Great! Next, we’re going to tackle the six-part story structure. Okay, it’s more like a 5-key turning point, 6-phase writing structure, but hang with me. While so many points may sound like a lot upfront, Hauge himself assures that: In other words, if you learn this method and decide it works for...
The best plot structures and plot formulas help you at all stages of creating a story: – Brainstorming – Plotting – Outlining – Structuring – Writing – Problem solving – Editing – Re-drafting. You can never consult your plotting method too early or too late.
Jan 24, 2024 · The way you structure a story will impact the pacing, the tension, and how your reader takes in the story. It’s important to stop here and acknowledge the difference between plot and story, as I’ll be using each term throughout this post. Writers often use these terms interchangeably, but your plot isn’t your story, and your story isn’t ...
Jul 24, 2024 · Story structure is the way events are arranged in a story. They help to organize the plot, giving a direction to the story. To understand better, let’s see its broad types: linear and non-linear story structures! 1. Non-linear structures. In many stories, the story structure is like a maze where the events are not presented in the order they ...
Dec 5, 2023 · 3-Act Structure divides the narrative into three parts, or acts. Each of those acts is subdivided into beats: individual events that mark a key event in the plot. Act 1 is the setup: it’s all about setting the stage for the rest of the story to unfold. The Hook.
People also ask
Should you combine two different types of story plot structures?
How many plot points does a story have?
How many types of story plots are there?
Which plot structure should I use?
What are the different types of story structure?
What is the difference between a plot and a story?
Jun 2, 2024 · 3 Classic Story Structure Examples. Understanding the parts of a plot helps you leverage or subvert them in your own writing. Now that we’ve covered the essentials of story structure, let’s look at some of the most common frameworks for novel’s today. Three Act Structure. This straightforward template divides stories into three parts:
