and plot or storyline breaks down the “plan” or series of actions and events that lead up to the story, I use them in this book interchangeably. The reason for this is that a story without a plot or storyline (i.e., without a structure) is just a random series of events. Random series of events don’t make for good stories and definitely won’t engage your target audience. Your story must engage your audience. And in order for it to do so, it must have a structure at its foundation.
Story Has a Structure
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.
Exposition
During the exposition, you are introduced to the world of the story, the characters, and some kind of big goal. There is a main character, and that character wants something. Big. The exposition functions not only to set the stage of a story, but also to get the person on the other end—you, the viewer—interested and engaged with the main character or characters and what drives them. At its most powerful, a good exposition will compel you to see yourself in and identify with a character or a set of characters. At the very least, it compels you to empathize with them.
Take for example the 1985 feature film, Back to the Future. In the exposition, you meet Marty McFly, who lives in Hill Valley—any suburb USA. His family isn’t very ambitious, but Marty has plans. He’s going to make something of himself. Marty has a friend, Doc—a mad scientist who built a time machine (see Figure 2.4). All very cool.
FIGURE 2.4 In the exposition to Back to the Future, you are introduced to Marty, Doc, and their time machine.
In a movie like Back to the Future, you’re compelled to empathize with Marty. You don’t have to like him. You just have to understand him, his goals and why he wants to pursue them.
Inciting Incident or Problem
The inciting incident is the moment where something changes or goes dramatically wrong in the world of the story. A problem surfaces and gets in the way of the character meeting his big goal. The moment when the hero is thrust into leaving his safe world in order to fix the problem is called the call to action.
Neuroscientists have shown that when you listen to or watch a story, it’s as if you are experiencing the story in real time. As action rises, your pulse might quicken or your palms get sweaty. Something startles you, and you jump. Stories are not just about looking or listening, they are about being. The inciting incident is the first hook or trigger point in a story that amplifies if and how you identify with the main character, what problems he has, and what he has to go through to fix that problem and meet his goal. It’s what gets you hooked. When the main character is called to action, it’s as if you, the viewer, are called to action. Your brain starts working in overdrive to figure out what will happen next and how the hero will right the wrong.
In Back to the Future, the excitement of a time machine doesn’t last long; militants shoot Doc in a parking lot in an attempt to retrieve plutonium that he stole from them (see Figure 2.5). Not good. In an attempt to escape, Marty ends up driving the time machine to 1955 and then finds out that he can’t get home. That’s a problem—a meaty enough problem to name the movie after. Marty’s call to action is simple: to get back to the future.
FIGURE 2.5 Inciting incident: this is the point in Back to the Future where the story kickstarts into action.
Rising Action
After the problem surfaces in the inciting incident, the protagonist of the story goes on a journey to right that wrong. We spend the rest of the story not just seeing how it all pans out, but also feeling how it pans out. A good story escalates during the rising action, creating new tensions and conflicts that help move the story forward. As the story builds, the audience’s anticipation and excitement builds simultaneously.
During the rising action of any good story, there is also plenty of conflict to keep the audience engaged. Without conflict, endings come too easily, and the audience is unconvinced or bored or both.
In this sense, humans are easy—because to keep them engaged, you save the best for last.
In Back to the Future, Marty sets out to find 1955 Doc. They try to get Marty home. But they can’t solve the problem, or the movie would end. So things get weird. Marty meets the younger version of his mom. His mom has a crush on him (see Figure
