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Story and structure for creative writers
46
Plot, crisis, resolution
With ideas from Janet Burroway, Heather Sellers, and other writers
Sources:
- Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, 4th Edition, Pearson
- Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and Ned Stuckey-French, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, 8th Edition, Pearson
- Heather Sellers, The Practice of Creative Writing, 3rd Edition, Bedford/St. Martin’s
“… in literature, only trouble is interesting. Only trouble is interesting. This is not so in life. Life offers periods of comfortable communication, peaceful pleasure, and productive work, all of which are extremely interesting to those involved. But passages about such times make for dull reading..... The pattern of trouble and the effort to overcome it is repeated in every story on a larger or smaller scale."
--Janet Burroway
Trouble
What's the story?
- Without trouble, crisis, instability, complexity, there really won't be much of a reason for your poem, story, essay, or play to exist. You've got to have a story, and every story needs a structure.
- Think of your own life. How often do you talk about perfect moments and retell the story of the perfect day? But when crisis, trouble hits, we want to tell and retell what happened, either because it’s funny, scary, etc.—it gets people’s attention.
Plot
- Exposition/ unstable equilibrium
- Rising action: conflict arrives
- Moments of crisis: complications arise and a power struggle that builds in intensity. There may be several peaks in the action when resolution seems near but then moves out of hand.
- Climax/ crisis action: the moment of greatest tension or importance, scene that presents a story's decisive action or event; the "turning point"
- Falling action
- Resolution
- Return to stability (maybe)
Plot
Plot
(Janet
Burroway)
Plot
(Janet
Burroway)
Terms to know
- in medias res
- flashbacks
- foreshadowing
Story vs. Plot
"A story is a series of events recorded in chronological order. A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance. A story gives us only “what happened next,” whereas plot’s concern is “what, how, and why,” with scenes ordered to highlight the workings of cause and effect." --Janet Burroway
- “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)
Stories ask why and how, not just what...
Obstacle
What creates trouble is the obstacle or antagonist.
Internal
or
external
- External conflict comes from outside of the character and can be a person, a setting, a situation, etc.
- Internal conflicts come from struggles within when a character struggles to reconcile competing desires, needs, obligations, or parts of themself.
- Conflict in a story can be both internal and external.
Crisis
John L’Heureux says, "A story is about a single moment in a character’s life when a definitive choice is made, after which nothing is the same."
The crisis is an epiphany, an “aha” moment; it could be succe...
The crisis is what precedes an epiphany, what causes an “aha” moment; it could be success or failure, but it’s the moment of greatest change for the character, after which her life, situation, beliefs, perspective is completely different. The climax is the change itself.
Internal change manifested in action
Internal change manifested in action
"In many contemporary novels, the true territory of struggle is the main character’s mind, and so the real crisis action must occur there. Yet it is important to grasp that any mental reversal that takes place in the crisis of a story must be triggered or shown by an action. The slipper must fit. It would not do if the Stepmother just happened to change her mind and give up the struggle; it would not do if the Prince just happened to notice that Cinderella looked like his love. The moment of recognition must be manifested in an action."
--Janet Burroway
For example, imagine a story about two brothers on...
For example, imagine a story about two brothers on a fishing trip; the protagonist is angry and annoyed at his older brother for most of the trip, but he realizes at the end of the story that they are bound by love and family history.
(Janet Burroway)
Suddenly Larry remembered their father and realized that Jeff was very much like him.
(Janet Burroway)
Jeff reached for the old net and neatly bagged the trout, swinging round to offer it with a triumphant, “Got it! We got it, didn’t we?” The trout flipped and struggled, giving off a smell of weed and water and fecund mud. Jeff’s knuckles were lined with grime. The knuckles and the rich river smell filled him with a memory of their first fishing trip together, the sight of their father’s hands on the same scarred net…
(Janet Burroway)
The epiphany, a memory leading to a realization, is triggered by an action and sensory details that the reader can share—so the reader can also share the epiphany and experience the change for herself.
(Janet Burroway)
Resolution
"When the person gets what she wants, the piece is over, the tension is resolved. During the piece, don’t let the character get what she wants! Your job as a writer is to move her closer to her need, and then either move her farther away or have the meeting of the need create a new desire." --Heather Sellers
"The encounter or collision of one character with others wi...
"The encounter or collision of one character with others will force change, and the story is the process of that change… the story will always end in an altered state in at least the character whose point of view we share. It might result in greater wisdom, compassion, or understanding—though it can end in diminishment or narrowing. As readers, however, we will always, if the story succeeds, have our capacity for empathy enlarged by having lived in the character’s skin for the duration." --Janet Burroway
Resolution ≠ Solution
Resolution ≠ Solution
The resolution often isn't nice and neat, but we see a reversal, a change--something has happened to the main character.
A resolution can lead to a deeper dilemma.
Often, the resolution will make us reflect back on the conflict and try to understand the change that has occurred.
Some kind of order is restored: “Whether or not the lives of the characters end, the story does, and we are left with a satisfying sense of completion. This is one reason we enjoy crying or feeling terrified or even nauseated by fiction; we know in advance that it’s going to be over, and by contrast with the continual struggle of living, all that ends, ends well." --Janet Burroway
Ways to envision story structure
Ways to think about the structure of your story
- Janet Burroway offers three ways for writers to think about story structure.
- Remember that not only fiction needs a story--drama, creative nonfiction, and even poetry all contain stories to one degree or another.
Story as a Journey
• Every story presents some sort of journey, literal or psychological or both, that results in a change in the central character.
• John Gardner claims there are only two stories: someone went on a journey and a stranger came to town.
• Think of the questions: Where does the protagonist want to go (what does he/she desire)? What are the obstacles (conflict)? What does he/she do to overcome the obstacles (decisions)? Is the goal reached? Is it what the character expects?
Story as a Power Struggle
- Every story shows a pattern of conflict between approximately equal forces, which leads to a crisis and resolution. (Aristotle)
- We can also think of the pattern of trouble and the effort to overcome it, with a protagonist (central character) and antagonist (character or force that thwarts the protagonist, the obstacle to his/her desires)
- These opposing forces should be fairly equally matched so that we’re uncertain about the end and want to keep reading. Shifts in power occur when one side seems to gain the upper hand, then the other, with the stakes increasing as the story moves along.
- In much contemporary literature, the true struggle takes place in the protagonist’s mind, so the real crisis action occurs there. BUT any mental reversal must be triggered or shown by an action. Also, remember that often the “resolution” does not offer a “solution,” but a deeper impasse.
Story as Connection and Disconnection
• Every story offers a pattern of connection and disconnection between human beings, which is the source of meaning and significance in the story.
• Conflict is exciting and keeps us reading, but it’s sterile unless it’s given humanity through the connections and disconnections of the characters—the emotional tide of the story.
• Stories that tend toward disconnection (death being the most extreme case) are typically tragedies; stories that tend toward connection (like marriage) are comedies.
Questions
Some questions to think about in any story--whether you're the writer or the reader:
- What’s the initial “stable” situation?
- What’s the inciting incident or destabilizing event? How and why does this event destabilize the initial situation?
- How would you describe the conflict that develops? Internal, external, both? What complications and secondary conflicts arise?
- Where, when, how and why does the story defy readers' expectations about what will happen next?
- What’s the climax or turning point? Why?
- How’s the conflict resolved? How and why might this resolution fulfill or defy readers' expectations? How and why is the situation at the end of the story different from what it was at the beginning?