Story Writing: The Five Essentials of Plot Structure

In this article, we begin a look at story structure by exploring the five essential building blocks of any plot. Every story, no matter its genre, must have these five components.

Writing that is missing even one of these simply does not work as a story and won’t resonate with readers.

The Inciting Incident

This scene begins the story and hooks the reader. Without a compelling inciting incident, there is no motivation for anyone to continue beyond the opening of your story. If this scene is lackluster, they’ll just put the book down.

The inciting incident changes the protagonist’s life. It upsets the status quo and presents them with a situation, challenge, or problem so great that they must take action to face it. That action is the launching point for the rest of the story.

Action or Coincidence?

The scene may be the result of an active choice by the character, such as a cop who chooses to quit the force to become a PI and must begin a new career.

The other option is to have the inciting incident be a coincidence or random happening that impacts the character, such as a homicide detective who gets called to the scene of a new murder.

No matter what you write, the inciting incident must prompt your character to take action.

The promise of genre.

Inherent in your choice will be the promise that your genre makes to the reader. For instance, when a homicide detective is called out to a crime scene, the reader understands that the story ahead is a murder mystery.

The opening promises them the experience that will follow, and so the beginning must correspond to the experience that the middle and end of the book deliver.

The ending has to pay off the inciting incident in a surprising way. It must tie back to the event that began the story.

In a murder mystery that opens with the arrival of a new case on the detective’s desk, the middle of the story will contain the progression of that case, and the ending must resolve it for the story to be satisfying.

In that way, inciting incidents define the whole concept for your story.

For example, when I defined the concept for my second novel, Mr. Moneybags, I boiled the premise down to this short pitch, which also describes what happens in the book’s inciting incident scene:

A retired armed-robber gets back into the game when his old partner shares her idea to kidnap the boss of a car-theft ring and steal millions from him.

Complications

The middle build portion of the story (the middle 50% of the content) must be full of complications that fuel the story’s external and internal conflicts.

These complications create the twists and turns that keep the story moving forward. They ensure that the reader never gets bored or loses interest.

To do this, you must present your characters (especially your protagonist) with problems of increasing size and importance. The stakes must always be raised, as your characters pursue their conscious wants in the external conflicts and learn the lessons that their subconscious needs to learn in the internal conflicts.

Don’t miss my article on writing compelling external and internal conflicts!

These complications should build in scale until we reach the story’s climax, when the characters face a problem that pushes them to the limits of their humanity.

In most mysteries and thrillers, this will be the life and death conflict when the protagonist and villain finally confront one another.

The Crisis

At this point in the story, the complications have raised the stakes to the point that the character now faces a difficult choice between two bad options. This creates a crisis situation.

Their decision one way or the other will tell the reader a lot about them, making this kind of scene an excellent opportunity to showcase the character’s development.

The two options must both threaten the character with negative consequences. There can be no obvious victory in sight.

An example.

I’ll use my first novel, No Hard Feelings, as an example. My protagonist, a hit man called The Apostle, is on the run from the police and from a pair of criminals who want to kill him after he crossed them. One of those criminals catches him and makes a deal…if The Apostle will murder a detective who is causing trouble for the crooks, his previous sins will be forgiven.

If The Apostle says no, he’ll be shot on the spot. If he says yes, however, he’ll have to go through with the hit, meaning that the entire police force will be out for vengeance. He might be able to run, but his life will likely be over anyway.

Which is the better of the two bad choices? His decision tells the reader who he is, what he values, and demonstrates how he has developed to that point.

What does he choose? Nice try, but you’ll have to read the book to find out!

Remember, the best of two bad choices.

The key to writing a compelling crisis is to make it a truly difficult decision. Neither option can be good. The character must be trapped.

The choice will change their life in such a way that there will never be a way for them to undo the consequences of their actions.

The Climax

Let’s get back to the climax of the story. It follows the largest crisis your character faces.

The climactic scene is the one in which your character acts on the choice they make in the crisis.

After an inciting incident that hooks the reader, complications in the middle build that keep the reader engaged, and a harrowing choice between two bad options in the crisis, the climax is the emotional peak of the story.

It must also pay off your characters’ arcs. If your characters change throughout the story (as they should, if you have internal conflicts in place), then the decision they would have made at the beginning of the story should be different from the decision they do make at the end.

This difference in choice shows the reader how much the characters have developed during their arcs. This is especially crucial for your protagonist. Many contemporary thrillers have multiple prominent characters, however, so you may need to consider the arcs of multiple people.

Climaxes in crime fiction.

In a mystery, the writer must also deliver the answer to the puzzle, keeping in mind that the reader should have all of the clues that they need to solve it BEFORE this scene.

In a thriller, the sensations of dread and impending doom must be at their highest levels in this scene, in order to maximize the suspense.

For more information on writing mysteries and thrillers, read my posts on those subjects.

Resolution

This last component of the story allows the reader to understand the effects of the climax on the external and internal narratives.

There are two crucial factors to consider in your resolution…

Don’t make it corny or cliche. Your first idea for the resolution has been done before…trust me. So spend time thinking about how to conclude your story, because the first thing that pops into your head won’t be original enough.
Don’t review content the reader has already seen. For instance, don’t make the resolution a conversation rehashing the events of the climax. The reader will lose interest, and the ending won’t be satisfying.

Resolutions in commercial and literary fiction.

Here’s a trick to help you. If you’re a commercial fiction author writing in a popular genre, chances are your climax will focus on the external narrative. In a murder mystery, it will be the epic conclusion of the investigation, as the detective confronts the perpetrator in a life and death struggle.

If you are a literary fiction writer, the climax will likely focus on the internal narrative, in which the character will undergo their most dramatic change after their entire internal identity, worldview, and/or sense of morality have been called into question.

In either case, your resolution should center around the narrative that the climax did NOT handle.

The commercial novel’s resolution should explore the character’s internal change in the aftermath of the story. The literary novel’s resolution should show the reader how the external circumstances have changed as a result of the character’s development.

By handling it this way, you avoid reviewing story content that you’ve already delivered. Instead, you fulfill the cathartic reading experience by completing both narratives with satisfying pay offs.

In my crime novels, the climaxes resolve the major external conflicts between the characters. There are often outbreaks of gun play, quick-witted verbal slings and arrows, and the question of who will walk away with the money (and their lives).

My resolutions, then, resolve the internal narratives. Do the characters get what they subconsciously needed all along?

The power of ironic resolutions.

One way to make your endings memorable is to make them ironic. That is, the characters may see a positive outcome in the external narrative but not in the internal, or vice versa.

For instance, what if the detective has to do something that brings their sense of morality into question in order to catch the killer? So, in the end, the external conflict resolves in their favor (they get what they consciously want), but now they must deal with the aftermath of their choice to sacrifice their values.

They can’t undo the consequences of their choice (a crisis of conscience), so they must live with those consequences long after the killer is behind bars.

External victory, internal turmoil–this contradiction makes ironic endings interesting. These are the resolutions that are most likely to stick with a reader after they finish the book.

Summary

The five essentials of plot structure are the inciting incident, middle complications, crisis, climax, and resolution.
The inciting incident must change the protagonist’s status quo, prompt the character to take action, and hook the reader. It can also be used to define the concept of your story.
Middle complications are the twists and turns that keep the reader engaged and that raise the stakes for the characters. They cause the external plot to move forward and the internal arcs to develop.
The crisis presents the protagonist with a choice between two bad options. There is no easy way out, no happy ending in sight.
The climax occurs when the character acts on their choice, when the stakes are at their highest.
Finally, the resolution lets the reader digest the story. If the climax focused on the external narrative, the resolution will conclude the internal narrative, and vice versa. Ironic resolutions are the most memorable.

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