Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller ...

's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and sometimes specifically referring to the ordering of the plot: the narrative series of events, though this can vary based on culture. In a

play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ...

or work of

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...

especially, this can be called dramatic structure, which is presented in audiovisual form. Story structure can vary by culture and by location. The following is an overview of various story structures and components that might be considered.

Definition

Story is a sequence of events, which can be true or fictitious, that appear in prose, verse or script, designed to amuse or inform an audience. Story structure is a way to organize the story's elements into a recognizable sequence. It has been shown to influence how the brain organizes information. Story structures can vary culture to culture and throughout history. The same named story structure may also change over time as the culture also changes.

Variations

Three-act structure

The three-act structure is a common structure in classical film and other narrative forms in or associated with the West. First described in the fourth century A.D. by

Aelius Donatus Aelius Donatus (; fl. mid-fourth century AD) was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric. He once taught Jerome, an early Christian Church father who is most known for his translation of the Bible into Latin, known as the Latin Vulgate. N ...

in his commentary on the works of

Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a playwright during the Roman Republic. He was the author of six Roman comedy, comedies based on Greek comedy, Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. A ...

, the form was popularized by Syd Field in '' Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting.'' Based on his recommendation that a play have a "beginning, middle, and end," the structure has been falsely attributed to Aristotle, who in fact argued for a two-act structure consisting of a "complication" and "dénouement" split by a peripeteia. The sections are: The first act begins with setup, where all of the main characters and their basic situations are introduced, as well as the setting. It contains the primary level of characterization for both of these (exploring the characters' backgrounds and personalities, the relationships between them, and the dynamics of the world they live in). This setup is often called the exposition. Later in the first act, the

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a ...

experiences a dynamic event known as the inciting incident (or catalyst). Their initial actions are to deal with this event and attempt to reestablish order. These lead to the first plot point, where the first act ends and a dramatic question is raised; for example, "Will X disable the bomb?" or "Will Y end up with their love interest?" The second act, or confrontation, is considered to be the bulk of the story. Here, the characters' conflict is most developed (particularly between the protagonist and

antagonist An antagonist is a character in a story who is presented as the main enemy or rival of the protagonist and is often depicted as a villain.character arc). This leads to the second plot point, where the second act ends and the protagonist returns to their ordinary world. The third act, or resolution, is when the problem in the story boils over, forcing the characters to confront it, allowing all the elements of the story to come together, leading to the climax, which is the answer to the dramatic question, being hand in hand with the end of the conflict.

Kishōtenketsu

Kishōtenketsu is a structure mainly derived from classic Chinese, Korean, and Japanese narratives. Kishōtenketsu is divided into four sections, which have been defined and used differently by narratives from each of the three cultures where the form is most commonly found. The first section is generally considered an introduction of sorts across all three interpretations, albeit understood by each in a different way. The second may refer to the development, or to a beginning of an action related to self-realization. The third section is based around a turning point, change in direction, reversal, or twist. The fourth and final section concerns itself with a result or conclusion, a consequence thereof, or a 'coming to fruition'.

History

This covers a loose worldwide history of story structure.

European and European Diaspora

The first known treatise on story structure comes from

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

's Poetics. He advocated for a continuous two-act plot: δέσις (desis) and λύσις (lysis) which roughly translates to binding and unbinding, that was not centered on "one individual", but where the characters learn a lesson through negative reinforcement. He believed the Chorus was the most important part of the story. Later scholars such as Horace in '' Ars Poetica'' and

in ''Aeli Donati qvod fertvr Commentvm Terenti: Accendvnt Evgravphi Volume 2'' argued for a five act chorus. Neither specify that five acts should be for the story itself, but for the chorus. Most extant theories of story structure took off in the 19th-20th centuries, the first notable work being Gustav Freytag's ''Die Technik des Dramas'' which was published in 1863. He outlined the basics for what would later become the foundation for the three– and five–act story structures. He outlined the sections of the story as Introduction, Rise, Climax, Return or Fall, and Catastrophe. Georges Polti in '' The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations'' (1895) proposed multiple plot forms in lieu of Freytag's single structure, also making a point of discussing material from cultures that Freytag disparaged. This continued into the 19th century when Selden Lincoln Whitcomb wrote ''A Study of a Novel'' which examines the basis for Silas Marner's plot structure, where he argues for the Line of Emotion on Page 39. He argues that "The general epistolary structure may be partially represented by a graphic design." For this, he posts a proposed design for Miss. Burney Evelina on page 21. He presupposes that stories might have different shapes for those emotions. This leads to diagraming, later described by

Joseph Esenwein Joseph is a common male name, derived from the Hebrew (). "Joseph" is used, along with " Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic count ...

, who directly cited him, but argued that the diagram was supposed to be used only for short stories. He follows Selden Lincoln Whitcomb's recommendations and says that the parts are incident, emotion, crisis, suspense, climax, dénouement, conclusion. This diagram was copied and explained one for one by Kenneth Rowe almost verbatim, in Kenneth Rowe's ''Write That Play'', though no credit was given to Joseph Esenwein. The plot structure was then used by Death of a Salesman author Arthur Miller. However, the coining for "Exposition" as the first part goes to earlier author, Rev. J.K. Brennan, who wrote his essay "The General Design of Plays for the book 'The Delphian Course'" (1912) for the

Delphian Society The Delphian Society was a national organization that promoted the education of women in the United States. This organization was founded around 1910 in Chicago. History The Delphian Society takes its name from the historical Oracle of Delphi of ...

. Exposition, not Introduction nor "Incident" are used as the first part. This leads to

Percy Lubbock Percy Lubbock, Order of the British Empire, CBE (4 June 1879 – 1 August 1965) was an English man of letters, known as an essayist, critic and biographer. His controversial book ''The Craft of Fiction'' gained influence in the 1920s. Life Perc ...

who wrote ''The Craft of Fiction'' in 1921. He argued that there were too many story structures in the time period which made it harder to study academically, and thus proposed that conflict should be at the center of all stories, using such works as ''War and Peace'' by

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...

. He also advocated for

Death of the Author "The Death of the Author" () is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes' essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of relying on the intentions and biography of an au ...

in his work. He made a concentrated effort to look at conflict at the center of stories. Writers such as E. M. Forster and

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

diasgreed with him, the latter of which wrote in November 1923: "This is my prime discovery so far; & the fact that I've been so long finding it, proves, I think, how false Percy Lubbock's doctrine is--that you can do this sort of thing consciously." She went back and forth on the work throughout her life. She thus wrote some bits on their own treaties. Gertrude Stein also later contributed to the general feel of stories by promoting stream-of-consciousness and supported much of Literary Modernism and looking at writing as a look into psychology. This was furthered by

Lajos Egri Lajos N. Egri (June 4, 1888 – February 7, 1967) was a Hungarian-American playwright and teacher of creative writing. He is the author of ''The Art of Dramatic Writing'', which is widely regarded as one of the best works on the subject of play ...

who advocated for using psychology to build characters in The Art of Dramatic Writing, published 1946. He also examines character through the lens of physiology, sociology and psychology. However, there was a rise in structuralism in the mid-to-late 20th century with such thinkers as

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ...

, Vladimir Propp, Joseph Campbell, and Northrop Frye, who often tried to find a unifying idea for story structure and how to academically study it. For example, Joseph Campbell tried to find one unifying story structure for myth, Roland Barthes further argued for the Death of the Author theory and Propp tried to find a story structure for Russian folktales. In Northrop Frye's '' Anatomy of Criticism'', he deals extensively with what he calls myths of spring, summer, fall, and winter: * Spring myths are comedies, that is, stories that lead from bad situations to happy endings.

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's '' Twelfth Night'' is such a story. * Summer myths are similarly

utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', which describes a fictiona ...

n fantasies such as

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

's '' Paradiso''. * Fall myths are tragedies that lead from ideal situations to disaster. Compare ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

, Othello'', and ''

King Lear ''The Tragedy of King Lear'', often shortened to ''King Lear'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his ...

'' and the movie '' Legends of the Fall''. * Winter myths are

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

s; for example,

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

's '' 1984'',

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley ( ; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction novel, non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the ...

's '' Brave New World'', and

Ayn Rand Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; , 1905March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system which s ...

's novella ''

Anthem An anthem is a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the national anthems of countries. Originally, and in music theory and religious contexts, it also refers more particularly to sho ...

''. In Frye's ''Great Code'', he offers two narrative structures for plots: * A U-shaped structure, that is, a story that begins with a state of equilibrium that descends to disaster and then upward to a new stable condition. This is the shape of a comedy. * An inverted U-shape structure, that is, a story in which the protagonist rises to prominence and descends to disaster. This is the shape of tragedy. Lajos Egri is then credited in Syd Field's last edition of ''The Foundations of a Screenwriting'' published in 1979. The book argued for three acts, not five, and had no peak in the final diagram. This idea of a universal story structure fell out of favor with poststructuralism. Theorists such as

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...

and Jacques Derrida asserted that such universally shared, deep structures were logically impossible. At the same time that Literary Structuralists rose with story structure, there were also

Postmodernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...

and Post-postmodernism, which often argued about the nature of stories and what, if existing, story structures could be. Some authors, such as John Gardner, advocated for the use of both, such as in ''The Art of Fiction'' (1983). Ideas of this got shared over the next few decades, which lead to writers such as Blake Snyder, who in Save the Cat contributed language such as "Story Beats". However, other story structures became more widely known in the 2010s-2020s, when European and European diaspora writers became aware of story structures such as kishotenketsu, which was said to be used in films such as Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Categories

Most forms of narrative fall under two main categories: linear narrative and nonlinear narrative. Other forms also include interactive narration, and interactive narrative. *Linear narrative is the most common form of narration, where events are largely portrayed in a chronological order telling the events in the order in which they occurred. * Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative, or disrupted narrative, is a narrative technique where events are portrayed out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern. * Interactive narration refers to a work where the linear narrative is driven by, rather than influenced by, the user's interaction. *

Interactive narrative Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a narrative's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and sometimes specifically referring to the ordering of the plot (n ...

is a form of fiction in which users are able to make ''choices'' that influence the narrative (for example, through alternative plots or resulting in alternative endings) through their actions.

Linear narrative

Flashbacks, often confused with true narratives, are not strictly linear, but the concept relies upon a fundamentally linear understanding of the narrative. An example would be '' Citizen Kane'' by

Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American director, actor, writer, producer, and magician who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is among the greatest and most influential film ...

. Although some films appear to open (very briefly) with the ending, flashback movies almost immediately jump back to the very beginning of the story to proceed linearly from there. Usually the film will proceed past the supposed "ending" shown at the beginning of the movie.

Nonlinear narrative

Cinema can only provide the illusion through broken narrative, a famous example of this being the 1994 film '' Pulp Fiction''. The film is ostensibly three short stories, which, upon closer inspection, are actually three sections of one story with the

chronology Chronology (from Latin , from Ancient Greek , , ; and , ''wikt:-logia, -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the deter ...

broken up; Quentin Tarantino constructs the narrative without resorting to classic "flashback" techniques. An even more ambitious attempt at constructing a film based on non-linear narrative is Alain Resnais's 1993 French film '' Smoking/No Smoking''. The plot contains parallel developments, playing on the idea of what might have happened had the characters made different choices. Outside of film, some novels also present their narrative in a non-linear fashion. Creative writing professor Jane Alison describes nonlinear narrative "patterns" such as spirals, waves, and meanders in her 2019 book ''Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative''. The chapters of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's novel Before We Visit the Goddess are not arranged based on the linear sequence of events, but rather in a way that fulfills certain literary techniques. This allows the characters in the novel to have a believable life timeline while still employing the techniques that make a story enjoyable.

Interactive narration

In works of interactive narration there is only one narrative, but the method of delivery requires the user to actively work to gain the next piece of the narrative, or have to piece the parts of narrative that they have together in order to form a coherent narrative. This is the narrative approach of some modern video games. A player will be required to reach an objective, complete a task, solve a puzzle, or finish a level before the narrative continues.

Interactive narrative

An interactive narrative is one which is composed with a branching structure where a single starting point may lead to multiple developments and outcomes. The principle of all such games is that, at each step of the narrative, the user makes choices that advance the story, leading to a new series of choices. Authoring non-linear narrative or dialogue thus implies imagining an indefinite number of parallel stories. In a

gamebook A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Each narrative typically does not ...

, readers are told to turn to a certain page according to the choice they wish to make to continue the story. Typically, the choice will be an action rather than dialogue. For example, the hero hears a noise in another room and must decide to open the door and investigate, run away, or call for help. This kind of interactive experience of a story is possible with video games and books (where the reader is free to turn the pages) but less adapted to other forms of entertainment. Improvisational theatre is similarly open-ended, but of course cannot be said to be authored.

Graphic narrative

A simple graphic narrative, such as in comics, has four stages: an introduction of the characters and a description of a situation; the introduction of a problem, unexpected opportunity, or other complication into the situation; a resolution in the form of a partial or complete response to the problem by one or more of the characters; and the denouement, the aftermath of the response that makes clear the success, partial success, non-success, or uncertain success of the response. This fourth stage may also show how the original situation has changed due to what has taken place in the Complication and Resolution stages of the narrative. In a simple narrative, the four stages appear in order. That is, the sequence of the telling or presentation follows the chronology of the told. In a more complex story, the order of the telling may vary. For instance, such a story may begin with the Denouement and then present the Situation, Complication, and Resolution in a flashback. But this is not the case with a simple narrative.

References

{{Narrative Literary theory Parts of the narrative structure