Anatomy of a Novel

As I wondered what my first article about writing would cover, I decided upon the parts of a story.

When I first began writing, I learned nearly everything about novels, from reading novels.  I had never read a "How to Write Better" book, or studied the internet, or read essays on the subject.  I simply wrote.

However, whether unconsciously or consciously created, books have a plot line.  Generally, it contains the following parts:

The Freytag Plot (Apparently Freytag was a guy who divided story into five parts...)

1. "Exposition" (Introduction)
2. "Rising Action" (Conflict)
3. Climax
4. "Falling Action"
5. "Denouement" (Conclusion / Resolution)

This might sound weird and complicated.  The list looks kind of intimidating.  I hadn't fully researched these five parts at all, until today, when working on this article.

From my understanding, in the introduction, the characters are, of course, introduced.  You want to "set the stage" (pardon the cliche) for the rest of the novel.  You want to give the reader a chance to become acquainted with your peeps.  You might introduce some goals and personality traits of the character (although these can also appear through a result of circumstances, throughout the book).

Don't wait too long through - impatient readers (such as myself) will soon grow tired of meeting your characters and find something else to read, unless you throw in some conflict.  This is a significant part, since the conflict is what will cause your reader to become interested in reading the rest of the book.  They might even begin to worry about what will happen to the main character.  Through the rising action, the character battles the conflict.

Apparently the climax comes next.  I always thought the climax took place at the end of the book, but according to various websites, it takes place after the rising action.  The climax provides a turning point of the story, perhaps a character making a decision or an epic battle.

One website did not include falling action as part of the plot, but this is where evil seems like it will win and "all hope is lost" (again, pardon the cliche).

However, in the resolution, the last conflict takes place, and good triumphs over evil (I hope!).  The story concludes happily (or not so happily), and the author types (or hand-writes), "the end".

Although I personally don't think you should freak out if your story does not exactly follow these plot points, they certainly are something to consider!  As I researched for this article, I found the Freytag Plot structure very interesting!

Note there is also a Freytag Pyramid that diagrams this structure... I drew a copy of it for ya!

Well, that's that, my first blog post!  I think the next posts will be more of my personal thoughts on writing, but I found the pyramid thing intriguing!

-- Klara C.

Please note although I will often use the words, "novel", "book" or "story" interchangeably, although every part of the article should generally be applicable to short stories, novels, novellas, etc.