Story Structure 105

“Professor” Rj Waltz

Hello, class. I’m glad to see that you all haven’t been replaced with scarecrows holding up a mirror to reflect my own vanity and futility of my actions. Today, we’re going to be talking about story structure. Some of this is stuff that you’ve undoubtedly heard somewhere before, so I’d ask that you stay still in that uncomfortable plastic desk chair and not interrupt me with your petulant whining. You know who you are.

There are probably five different components to any story, provided you want to break it down into some sort of cold, uncaring formula. Which is why you’re here, of course. These parts are the exposition, rising action, climax (or turning point), falling action, and the resolution. I say probably because it is possible to take those components and break them down further to make a teacher like me look foolish and stupid by getting the exact number wrong. Joke’s on them; I don’t even refer to these components consciously when I write my books, anyway. It’s time for you, too, to become similarly transcendant of such weird overanalysis.

I will concede that exposition sounds like an important word, but, in actuality, it’s really the beginning of the story. In the early days of your… education, you probably got an earful about the first sentence of all of the great novels and how they all were completely perfect. I know that I heard throughout my long life of failure and disappointment that the first sentence of any great American novel had to be the most important sentence ever written in the history of mankind. Here’s a trade secret; it’s all complete rubbish. Your story’s beginning matters so little that you don’t even have to start writing at the beginning. Besides, all the exposition part is for is to introduce your readers to your characters and start the plot boulder rolling. As a writer, that’s boring. You’ve undoubtedly been badgered into oblivion by those daydreams with your characters acting out in their own self-interested little scenarios. It’s like a damn troupe of annoying theatre kids prancing around up in there, I swear. Man, on paper I don’t come off as the sanest person in the world. Anyway, my point is this: even though I’m explaining all of the plot elements in order, write in whatever order you damn well please. All your story needs is these components in it. It’s future you’s problem to piece the manuscript jigsaw together. Okay, so I’ve told you to ignore whatever your impressive first sentence is, and that you can save the exposition for last. What’s left? Well, the exposition is to teach your readers which emotions to feel for each character. I know what I just said, but, as a writer, you can’t directly tell your readership anything. How you do this is by using one of the few hard rules in novel writing. Pay attention, because I will be repeating this a crap-ton throughout this class and life in general. I’ll come to your work and throw pamphlets with this rule written on it if I have to. (Disclaimer: Rj is not rich enough to afford printed paper.)

Show. Don’t tell.

I’m obviously going to do an entire class on this rule, but in the mean time, let me pause the lecture and tell you what show don’t tell is. Who among you has heard this rule before, yet the dingbat who balled it up and threw it at you didn’t explain what it meant? Show of hands. Oh, right. I can’t see you. Ten points to Ravenclaw if you raised your hand, anyway. Show don’t tell is a complicated rule to explain, so I’m going to do a horrible job trying to do exactly that. The purpose of it is basically to inform you, the writer of this magical universe, that you aren’t a voice in it. You have to reveal what your characters are experiencing through the physical responses to the emotions they are feeling. When you, as a normal human, feel sad, you don’t loudly proclaim “I am sad!” like some two-bit Shakespearean neandorthal. Yeah, I said it. No. Your chin quivers, your eyes get blurry with tears welling up and streaming down your cheeks, your throat closes up, and, finally, you start crying. When you’re mad, your fists ball up in anger, your words get shorter and burn hot with rage until you’re screaming so loud that you turn purple in the face. When frightened, your heart thunders in your chest and your legs twitch in the anticipation of bolting the hell out of that Scooby-Doo mansion. Get it? No? Okay. Well, in that case, you’ll have to come back for the entire class on it when it comes out. Because I am moving on.

Okay, class, on to rising action. It is the part of the book that takes up a healthy majority of the run time of your manuscript. All that’s going on is the story is building up to the climax. I consider this the journey part of the story. You’ve introduced your band of merry midgets or whatever it is, and after you introduce the conflict (more on that later) that spurs them off on their thirteen year long pillow fort roadtrip, the rising action is the actual pillow fort road trip. Other, more sane people call this part of the novel “the middle,” and most people start here when writing out their rough draft. You can too. Nobody’s here to hold your hands back to make you write your book a certain way. This is the part of the novel where having some form of slapped together outline helps the most. Everyone going in knows both their characters and the story’s climax backwards and forwards. The challenge is herding the damn cats into the climax hole. Wait, that came out wrong. Speaking of the rising action, there is a special secret part in between the exposition and this bit, and that’s formally called the inciting incident. Scary term, eh? It’s the part of the story that spurs the characters into action. For shorthand, I called it the intro to conflict, earlier. Making it simple, it’s the part where your characters witness whatever situation that will jumpstart the events of the story. Everything in between the inciting incident and the climax is the rising action. It’s different in every story, and I can almost guarantee that it’s the part you as a writer will be least prepared for, going in. Make an outline, and you’ll get through it okay.

And now, the climax. You know, I think I’ve said that word too much. It’s lost all meaning to me. The climax is something that everybody and their grandma knows about. The hero versus the big bad. The final showdown. Link fights the pig demon Ganon. The music swells, and the anime geeks lose their minds and ruin the collective movie going experience with their spoilers. Hannibal crosses the alps. Here’s something that you need to know as a writer, however; the climax refers to the start of the confrontation with the story’s big bad. (hereto, big bad will be referred to as shadow. It’ll make sense during the ‘hero’s journey’ class later on.) As a general rule, the protagonist fights against the shadow during the climax bit with the shadow having an advantage against the protagonist. Don’t look at me! It’s what your readers want. They’re always rooting for the underdog, and, well, your protagonist is generally the underdog here for that reason. Since y’all started this hellish journey into writing novels, you can’t pretend that you haven’t noticed this particular trend. Protag shows up, shadow is expecting them / laid a trap, and shadow kicks their teeth down their throat. It’s everywhere. Why it is everywhere comes back around to that rule I mentioned earlier. Show, don’t tell. You, as the writer, can’t directly tell your reader that they should root for your protagonist. Your voice doesn’t exist in the story. So, you have to create the circumstances in which your reader will naturally root for your protag. This is why the underdog bit is so common. Your reader laps that crap up, and human brains give tasty brain juice candy rewards for familiar situations. There are tons of other tricks to accomplish that goal, and most, if not all of them, have to do with empathy. I don’t have enough time left to really get into what empathy is or why it’s so important, but the bottom line is that you ‘trick’ your readers into feeling the emotions of your characters. Guess how? That’s right! Show, don’t tell. Seriously, consider tattooing that rule on the back of your hand if you have trouble remembering how important I’m making it sound.

Now, class, pay attention, because I’m going to confuse the heck out of you for a minute. That part you’ve been imagining about the protagonist overcoming their obstacles and striking down the shadow and overcoming their quest? That isn’t the climax. I know, right? Mind blown. It’s called the falling action. During this part of your story, your protag has lost to the shadow, in some form or another. By that I mean that whatever crazy trap the shadow has planned or done to backhand the protag to the dirt. This is when the protagonist digs deep into their training/wisdom/life transformation/really good snog session/horrible string of bad luck/etc. and uses that experience to triumph over the shadow. For the record, I have no clue how this part of the story is confused with the climax. My best guess is that it is shorthand so people don’t have to try and explain what the hell a ‘falling action’ is. Anyway, as a writer, you are now in the know. So, well, plan your future snide comments accordingly. Another thing to keep in mind is that this is the time to really pull the rug out from under your reader. If you want your protag to die, this is the place to do it. Falling actions are rife with heroic sacrifices. It’s a leading cause of fiction death in depressing universes. Well, that and superhero origin stories. Additionally, nobody says that your protag has to succeed. Your protagonist can fail to stop the shadow and cause untold devastation. The world is literally your oyster. If you cracked open an oyster and scribbled the diary of a mad man on the inside of it, I mean. Don’t look at me like I’m the only one who’s done that.

Finally, we come to the resolution. I’m starting to bore myself with all of this story structure crap. Geez. Anyway, your protagonist has finished their quest, and they only have themselves to blame for it. The resolution, aptly named, is the end part of the story where the consequences of the entire book play out. Good or bad. If you’re planning to write a sequel to your book, this is where you’d set up something to indicate the story’s contiuation. Some choose to utilize the dreaded cliff hanger here for that exact reason. Some may argue that it’s overused trash, but I say that using a cliff hanger is a thousand times more effective now because of the ease your reader has to read the sequels of your story. Specifically with eBooks and self-publishing, I mean. Just don’t leave them hanging too long, or they’ll drink your house like an army of nematoads. And what a tasty house it will be, for them. Resolution is for wrapping up the story in a neat little bow of order or chaos. Your book, your preference. And it’s also the spot where I’ll be wrapping up this lecture.

Homework? You know, some modern countries have done away with this barbaric ritual. Okay, fine. Go read a book. Preferrably one of mine. While reading whatever book you like, try to figure out what the hell I meant by show don’t tell. Also pinpoint the different parts of the story structure I’ve talked about at an exhausting length, I guess. If you’re having trouble with stroy structure, specifically, I recommend doing some extra credit by outlining some books you’ve read, writing a 2k short story or short fanfiction with all of the story beats I mentioned, or rereading this lecture with the super secret decoder ring included in all boxes of Multigrain Cheerios to reveal my hidden message. Any questions? No?

Class dismissed!