Plot: The Story’s Structure

Basic situation

Complications

Climax

Resolution

Setting and Conflict

Practice

Plot and Setting

Feature Menu

Plot is the series of events in a story.

Plot answers the question “What happened?”

Plot: The Story’s Structure

Most plots have four parts.

Plot: The Story’s Structure

Basic situation

Complications

ClimaxResolution

You can diagram a plot like this:

Plot: The Story’s Structure

These events are the complications.

The climax is the “high point” of the story.

The resolution usually wraps up the “loose ends” of the story.

[End of Section]

The basic situation usually answers two questions:

The first part of the plot tells you about the story’s basic situation.

Plot: The Story’s StructureBasic Situation

Who is the main character?

What is the character’s basic problem, or conflict?

A conflict is a struggle.

Two characters sometimes oppose each other.

One character might struggle against a whole group.

Plot: The Story’s StructureBasic Situation

Plot: The Story’s StructureBasic Situation

A conflict can be inside a character.

Finally, a character may also struggle with a setting.

A character might struggle to overcome fear or to gain confidence.

When the conflict involves a setting, the setting is often extreme or life threatening.

[End of Section]

Plot: The Story’s StructureBasic Situation

As the characters try to solve their problem, complications arise.

Complications are new problems that come up. They make us wonder and worry about what will happen.

Complications create suspense in the story. [End of Section]

Plot: The Story’s StructureComplications

Finally, you reach the climax, the most exciting point of the story.

At the climax, you find out how the story will be resolved. [End of Section]

Plot: The Story’s StructureClimax

In the last part of the plot—the resolution—the characters’ problems are resolved.

In a fairy tale…

the clues are explained.

In a mystery…

they all live happily ever after. [End of Section]

In an adventure…

the survivors may be rescued.

Plot: The Story’s StructureResolution

Setting is where and when the action of a story takes place.

Some stories, like trickster tales, can take place almost anywhere.

Setting and Conflict

The characters and the settings are different, but the stories are basically the same.

Coyote

Brer Rabbit

In many stories, however, setting plays an important role.

Setting and Conflict

The setting in these stories controls the action. The story can’t take place in another kind of setting.

The Arctic

A rainforest

A big city

In some stories, characters are in conflict with their setting.

a person marooned in a small boat in the middle of the ocean

Setting and Conflict

animals trapped by a raging forest fire

people surviving on a cold mountain with no food

Why do you think this kind of setting and conflict is used in so many movies?

[End of Section]

Let’s Try It

As the hot July sun slipped below the horizon, a cooling darkness filled Central Valley. Lisa had just fallen asleep when the windows of the trailer rattled like a snake giving warning. The trailer swayed back and forth. Lisa could hear the baby screaming. Papa yelled, “Outside! Get out! Get out! It’s an earthquake!”

Practice

1. Who do you think the main character is?

2. What is the setting? When and where does the story take place?

3. What do you predict the conflict will be?

Let’s Try It

The earth groaned, and a river of mud slid down the canyon. The family huddled together in the dark. Mama tore up a sheet to make a sling for Papa’s broken arm. Papa shined his flashlight on the wreck that used to be the trailer. “It could explode,” he warned. “Don’t get any closer.”

Practice

This passage takes place a little later in the story.

4. What complications have taken place?

Let’s Try It

The baby kept screaming. Lisa’s mother said, “I have nothing to feed him. What are we going to do?” Suddenly the earth rumbled again. Lisa looked back at the trailer and saw fallen electric wires dangling all over it.

Practice

5. What new complications come up?

6. What do you predict the family will decide to do? Why?

Let’s Try It

Lisa stumbled down the side of the canyon. She could hear a siren coming closer. The lights of a helicopter shone on her like a spotlight. “Stop! Help us!” she cried, frantically waving her arms. The copter clattered to the ground.

Practice

This passage takes place later in the story.

7. Why is this event probably the climax of the story?

8. Write a resolution for this story. What happens to the family?

Lisa…The baby…The mother…Papa…

On Your Own

Fill out a diagram like this one, tracing the plot of a movie or book you know well. Try to find a story in which a character struggles with a setting that threatens his or her life.

Practice

Plot and Setting

The End