Story Structure

Here’s what we’ll be discussing:

● Story Structure: Conflict, Crisis, Resolution

● Conflict and Human Connection
○ What’s at stake?
● Resolution: A character’s active action or choice
● Cause and Effect
● Runways
Story Structure: Conflict, Crisis,
Resoluation
Story Structure: Conflict, Crisis,
Resoluation
Easy example:
● Conflict: Character’s car is being tailed on a
creepy back road
● Complications: character tries to get away, but
encounters obstacles with each attempt. Each
attempt is more intense than the one before it
(progressive complications).
● Crisis: Driver traps character in an abandoned
barn; Character takes action to escape
● Resolution: Character drives home safely
Not a very layered story, since there’s not subconscious
confict, for conflict related to the human condition, but
as a basic story it gets the job done.
Better example:
● Conflict: The bank is being robbed / Character
is extremely jaded
● Complications: Character antagonizes
robbers with progressive intensity
● Crisis: Character is shot / character’s jaded
past flashes through his brain
● Resolution: Character dies / Character
changes in the sense that he remembers life
was purer when he was not jaded.
Conflict and Human Connection
● “Stories are about both conflict and connection...A story which is only about
[external] conflict will be shallow. There must be some deepening of our
understanding of the characters.” - novelist Robert Morgan

● When writing your story, ask yourself...What’s at stake?

○ Life or death?
○ A relationship?
○ A character’s view of themselves?
○ Love?
○ ...these are the conflict of human nature that might turn a basic story into a piece of art.
Crisis/Resolution
● In the end (at the crisis point) your character will make an active choice, or take
an active action.

● Or at the very least, “The moment of recognition must be manifested in an

action.” - Janey Burroway
Cause and Effect
Cause and effect at the building blocks of your plot:

● An inciting incident kicks off your plot. Now we have a clear conflict.
● The progressive complications work in a series of cause and effect.
○ That inciting incident happened (cause), so this next thing happens (effect)
○ Because that last thing happened (in itself a cause), this other thing happens (effect)
○ And it goes on and on until your crisis and resolution
● Example plot:
○ Woman (main character) witnessed daughter being attacked by dog (cause and inciting incident)
○ Woman kills dog (effect)
○ (because of that effect) woman fights with dog owner (cause to following effect) and the dog
owner threatens to burn her house down
○ (because of effect) woman hires vigilanties to protect her house (cause to the following effect)
and the vigilanties go off the rails and burn dog owner’s house down.
○ Etc. etc. etc. --- notice how the complications progress (get more intense)
But wait...
“But wait...I’ve read stories that don’t follow this structure!”

True! But you need to know and master the structure.

--And side note, those stories you’re referring to probably follow this structure in some subtle
capacity more than you think.
Runways...or...where does your story begin?
● A runway is something you want to avoid

Definition of Runway: the unnecessary, superfluous, beginning elements of a

story draft that come before the conflict/inciting incident is presented.

Think of it this way...You’re writing a story about a librarian who will be taken
hostage by a library patron. If this is a ten-page story, and the hostage situation
doesn’t develop until page four, what have you really be writing those first four
pages? Could some of that exposition be peppered in throughout the story after
having the hostage situation kick off at the top of page two? Or even in
paragraph one?