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Story Structure: Four Models, Who Wrote Them, and How to Read a Draft Against Each

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Short answer: a story structure is a named set of parts that a whole story is said to pass through. Here are four, with who wrote each one.

Gustav Freytag's five parts; the three acts with Syd Field's two plot points; Joseph Campbell's hero's journey in Christopher Vogler's twelve stages; and the beat sheet. Each was written by someone, for a form; with each, this page gives one question to ask a draft.

Each of the four was written for a form other than the novel. Freytag wrote about the drama of the stage, Field about the screenplay, Campbell about myth, Snyder about film; the beat sheet was adapted for novels in 2018.

Outline vs structure on this site separates the list of what happens from the shape the events make; this page is about the shapes.

The four at a glance

ModelWho, where, whenPartsThe question this page puts to a draft
Freytag's pyramidGustav Freytag, Die Technik des Dramas, 1863Five: introduction, rise, climax, return or fall, catastrophe, with three "crises" between themWhere is the climax, and does anything rise once more after the fall?
Three actsDescribed by Aelius Donatus in the fourth century; made popular by Syd Field's Screenplay, 1979Beginning, middle and end, with a plot point where each turns into the nextOn which page does the beginning turn into the middle, and the middle into the end?
The hero's journeyJoseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949; Christopher Vogler's memo, then The Writer's Journey, 1992Campbell: seventeen stages in three movements, departure, initiation, return; Vogler: twelveDoes the protagonist leave, get tested, and come back with something?
The beat sheetBlake Snyder, Save the Cat!, 2005; adapted for novels by Jessica Brody, 2018Fifteen named turns, each with a rough positionWhich of the fifteen turns is this finished draft missing?

Freytag's pyramid: five parts and three crises

Gustav Freytag, a German playwright and novelist, published Die Technik des Dramas in 1863. Elias J. MacEwan's English translation gives the shape in one sentence: the drama "possesses — if one may symbolize its arrangement by lines — a pyramidal structure."

The sentence goes on: "It rises from the introduction with the entrance of the exciting forces to the climax, and falls from here to the catastrophe."

The five parts, in his order and his words: "(a) introduction, (b) rise, (c) climax, (d) return or fall, (e) catastrophe". Under other names, the same five are exposition (his introduction), rising action (rise), climax, falling action (return or fall), and, for the catastrophe, denouement, resolution or revelation.

Between them stand "three important scenic effects". He names the three: "the exciting moment or force, the tragic moment or force, and the moment or force of the last suspense." Only the first is required; the other two he calls "good but not indispensable accessories."

His climax is a place, not a feeling: "the place in the piece where the results of the rising movement come out strong and decisively". He adds that "it is almost always the crowning point of a great, amplified scene."

His catastrophe is "the closing action", in which "the embarrassment of the chief characters is relieved through a great deed."

He was writing about serious drama on the stage, and the tragedy in particular. On the same page he adds that the deeper the strife in the hero's soul, "so much more logical will the destruction of the succumbing hero be". The poet is not to "spare the life of his hero on the stage".

The Wikipedia article on story structure says he "outlined the basics for what would later become the foundation for the three– and five–act story structures."

One way to read a draft against it: find the climax, then see whether the draft has one or several, and whether something rises again after the fall.

Freytag's third crisis, the one "which must rise once more before the catastrophe", is the name for that late rise. He counts it among the optional ones.

Three acts: the page where one thing turns into the next

The first known description of a drama in three parts is from the fourth century, in Aelius Donatus's commentary on the comedies of Terence. The model was made popular by Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, first published in 1979.

Field's own page on his model is short. "Simply put, structure holds the story together; there is a beginning, middle and end, (not necessarily in that order), and a point at which the beginning turns into the middle, and the middle turns into the end."

"That point is called a Plot Point." He counts four elements: "beginning, Plot Point I, Plot Point II and the ending, will always hold your story in place."

The Wikipedia article on story structure corrects an attribution. The three acts have "been falsely attributed to Aristotle, who in fact argued for a two-act structure consisting of a 'complication' and 'dénouement'."

Aristotle's own sentence, in S. H. Butcher's translation of the Poetics: "Every tragedy falls into two parts- Complication and Unraveling or Denouement." His "beginning, a middle, and an end" defines a whole; it does not count acts.

One way to read a draft against it: look for two pages. If you cannot point to the page where the beginning turns into the middle, the first plot point, in Field's sense, is not on the page yet. The same goes for the second.

The hero's journey: seventeen stages, then twelve

Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949. His sentence for the pattern: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won".

The sentence ends: "the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

He described seventeen stages in three movements, departure, initiation and return.

The Wikipedia article on the hero's journey, which also calls the pattern the monomyth, adds a caution: "Not all monomyths necessarily contain all 17 stages explicitly; some myths may focus on only one of the stages, while others may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order."

Christopher Vogler, "a Hollywood film producer and writer", wrote "a 7-page company memo" based on Campbell's work, later the book The Writer's Journey, first published in 1992, with a third edition in 2007.

The same article sets his twelve stages, from the 2007 edition, beside Campbell's seventeen in a table. In its wording: ordinary world; call to adventure; refusal of the call; meeting with the mentor; crossing the first threshold; tests, allies, and enemies; the inmost cave; the ordeal; reward; the road back; the resurrection; return with the elixir.

Campbell was describing myth; Vogler's twelve are the version written for writers.

One way to read a draft against it: three questions, in Campbell's order. Does the protagonist leave the world they started in; are they tested there; do they come back, and with what.

The beat sheet: fifteen turns, placed

The beat sheet is the most recent of the four and has its own page on this site. In short: Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! (2005) named fifteen turns for film, each with a rough position. Jessica Brody adapted the list for novels in 2018.

The beat-sheet guide on this site puts it this way: it "describes a pattern that shows up often in stories that work, not a set of ingredients that guarantees one will".

One way to read a draft against it: set a finished draft beside the fifteen and see which turns it has and which it skipped.

Asked whether the list should be written before drafting, the same guide answers: "It can be, but it works just as well built afterward, as a way to check a finished draft for the turns it might be missing rather than a set of boxes to fill in advance."

Reading a draft against a model

This page reads each model as a list of questions in a fixed order, and a manuscript as a list of chapters. The reading is the same for all four.

Put the chapters in a column, as they stand. Beside each, write the part, act, stage or turn it belongs to, or "between two", which is a legitimate answer.

Then look at the gaps: a part with no chapter, or twenty chapters that all belong to the same part. The chapter-by-chapter template on this site already has that column, "Belongs to (act, point or beat)".

All four models were written for forms other than the novel. A chapter that answers to none of them tells you something about the chapter, and nothing about whether it belongs.

A scene that turns nothing may be there to move people across a country. In this reading, you write beside it that it turns nothing.

Where the chapters were drafted in no order, the first step is to list them in one place. That list is the same document whether the chapters are three or thirty, and it is where the column goes.

Questions

What are the 5 stages of a story? Freytag's five parts, in his order: introduction, rise, climax, return or fall, catastrophe. Under other names: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and a last part called denouement, resolution or revelation. He wrote them for the drama of the stage in 1863, with the tragedy in view: his catastrophe is "the closing action", and the poet is not to "spare the life of his hero on the stage".

What are the 7 parts of a story structure? The seven-point structure Dan Wells uses: hook, plot turn one, pinch one, midpoint, pinch two, plot turn two, resolution. The Writing Excuses episode on it (7.41, October 2012) says he took it from a role-playing book, and that these "are (obviously) not the only seven things that happen in your book".

Did Aristotle invent the three-act structure? No. The Poetics divides a tragedy into two parts, "Complication and Unraveling or Denouement"; its "beginning, a middle, and an end" is a definition of a whole. The first known description of a drama in three parts is Aelius Donatus's, in the fourth century; Syd Field's Screenplay (1979) made the three acts popular.

Is there a story structure without a climax? This answer covers one structure only: kishōtenketsu, the four-part form "popularly described as 'without conflict'". In its Japanese form it has one: the Wikipedia article on it, in the section headed "Japanese", calls the third part, the twist, "the crux of the story, the yama (ヤマ) or climax". What sets it apart, in the same article, is the place of conflict: the structure "does not center on conflict as part of its structure", though stories built on it "can and often do contain conflict".

Which structure is the best one? None of the four was written as a rule for novels. Freytag's parts describe stage drama (1863), Field's plot points the screenplay (1979), Campbell's stages myth (1949), Snyder's beats film (2005, adapted for novels in 2018). The table above gives, for each, one question this page puts to a draft; which one a given manuscript cannot yet answer is for its author to find.

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