The parts of a story are the elements every story is built from: characters, a setting, a conflict, a plot, a point of view, a style and a theme. The plot has parts of its own, a beginning, a middle and an end, usually taught as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Stories tend to hold together when the elements press on each other: the setting makes the conflict harder, the conflict forces a choice, and the choice decides the theme.
This is the writer's version of the list. Each element below is a decision, and an original short story, “Lampwake,” is built one decision at a time so you can watch each change the others. The reader's version, with classic examples, is in literary elements. If you meant the parts of a book, front matter, chapters and back matter, see parts of a book.
The 7 elements of a story
| Element | The question it answers | Without it |
|---|---|---|
| ElementCharacter | The question it answersWho wants what, and what in them makes it hard? | Without itSomeone things happen to |
| ElementSetting | The question it answersWhere and when, and what does the place demand? | Without itA story that could happen anywhere, and so happens nowhere |
| ElementConflict | The question it answersWhat stands in the way, outside and inside? | Without itNo reason to turn the page |
| ElementPlot | The question it answersWhat happens, and how does each event cause the next? | Without itA list of events joined by “and then” |
| ElementPoint of view | The question it answersWhose eyes, and how close? | Without itA reader who isn't sure whose story it is |
| ElementStyle | The question it answersHow do the sentences sound? | Without itA voice that works against the story |
| ElementTheme | The question it answersWhat does the ending decide? | Without itA moral announced in the last paragraph |
Build a story element by element
Here is one way to build a short story, in the order the decisions tend to come. The example is a story of about 400 words, printed in full in the next section.
- Character: a want, and an obstacle inside
Start with someone who wants something specific enough to fail at. Helen Varga, 58, senior editor at a small dictionary publisher, wants to cut the new edition to length by five o'clock. What makes it hard is inside her: a rule she wrote herself, that a word with no recorded use in thirty years goes. Rules spare her from choosing. The story will take that away.
- Setting: a place that adds pressure
The basement citation archive: decades of index cards in steel drawers, a light table, a dehumidifier. The place carries its own clock. In March the cards will be scanned and recycled, and the scanners only read the front, so anything written on the back will be lost. One way a setting earns its place is by making the conflict harder.
- Conflict: two things she values, in each other's way
The external conflict is the deadline: twelve more lines to cut, and a managing editor waiting upstairs. The internal one arrives with the next word on the list, lampwake, filed by the mentor who hired her. Her rule says cut it. Her loyalty says keep it. Some of the strongest conflicts make a character choose between two things she wants.
- Plot: join the events with because
The plot is the conflict in motion. She reaches the word, searches for a recent use because the rule demands one, and finds none. She looks for another cut and finds nothing her rule allows. Then a note on the back of the card turns a hard choice into a painful one. Each event raises the cost of what she does at 4:51.
- Point of view: whose eyes, and how close
Close third person, inside Helen. First person would have her explaining her feelings; close third lets her keep them to herself, which suits a woman who hides behind rules, and leaves the reader to infer what she won't say. Told from the managing editor's side, it would be a story about a deadline.
- Style: sentences that sound like the person
Short declarative sentences, exact times and numbers, a dry joke or two, and the dictionary entry set in italics like a specimen. The style is a version of Helen: precise, a little wry, unwilling to name a feeling. At the emotional peak the sentences get plainer, not grander.
- Theme: let the ending decide it
Theme comes last because it is what the ending decides. Helen obeys her rule, cuts the word, takes the card home, and that night lies awake in the very hour the word names. The ending's claim: a word lives in use, not in a record. Nobody states it. The last line shows it.
In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.
Poe was arguing that a tale should aim at “a certain unique or single effect,” with every incident chosen to serve it. You don't have to be that strict, and the order of the steps above is only a suggestion; plenty of stories start from a place, a line of dialogue or an ending. His test is still worth running: does every element pull toward the same ending?
The finished story: “Lampwake”
At 4:12 on Friday, Helen Varga had cut 388 lines from the new edition of Ashdown's Concise Dictionary, and she needed twelve more.
The rule was hers. She had written it in 2004 and taped it above the light table, where it had outlasted two managing editors and a dehumidifier: A word with no recorded use in thirty years goes. Nobody argued with the rule. That was what it was for.
Next on the list:
lampwake, n. The wakeful hour after the lamps are put out.
One citation card, drawer 31, in the slanted capitals she would have known anywhere. Edwin Marsh had filed it in 1979, copied from a letter a ferryman's widow wrote in 1952: I lay in the lampwake thinking of the boat. Edwin had hired Helen in 1991 and taught her to distrust any definition containing the word “various.” He had been dead for six years.
She ran the search anyway: newspapers, novels, court transcripts, seventy-four years of other people's sentences since the widow's letter. Nothing.
Her screen chimed. Dev, from upstairs: Still need 12 lines by 5. Sorry. Pizza after?
She went back through the list for something else to lose. Two obsolete coins, cited 2011. A dialect word for a waterlogged field, cited 2017 in a farming magazine. Every one of them had a card, and every card had a date inside the rule. The rule didn't care who had loved what.
She turned Edwin's card over. On the back, in pencil gone almost silver: Keep. —E.
The dehumidifier ticked. In March the drawers would go to the scanners and the cards to the recycling plant. The scanners only read the front.
At 4:51 she deleted the entry, eleven words and a line of white space, and sent Dev the list with a note: No pizza. Thank you.
Then she did something she had not done in thirty-five years at Ashdown's. She put a card in her coat pocket and carried it out of the building.
That night she read until after midnight, turned off the lamp and lay with her eyes open. The radiator knocked twice. A car went by, laid its light across the ceiling and took it back. She thought about the boat, though she had never found out which boat it was.
She lay a long time in the lampwake, which was still a word, as long as someone was awake in it.
Each element comes down to a line or an action you can point to:
| Element | In “Lampwake” | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| ElementCharacter | In “Lampwake”“Nobody argued with the rule. That was what it was for.” | What it doesShows a woman who uses rules so she doesn't have to choose |
| ElementSetting | In “Lampwake”“The scanners only read the front.” | What it doesGives the archive a deadline of its own and puts the pencil note at risk |
| ElementConflict | In “Lampwake”The rule above the light table against “Keep. —E.” | What it doesSets two things she values on two sides of one card |
| ElementPlot | In “Lampwake”“At 4:51 she deleted the entry” | What it doesThe climax: every earlier event raised the cost of this one action |
| ElementPoint of view | In “Lampwake”“She thought about the boat, though she had never found out which boat it was.” | What it doesClose third: the reader gets her thought, never a named feeling |
| ElementStyle | In “Lampwake”“No pizza. Thank you.” | What it doesFour clipped words carry what she won't say |
| ElementTheme | In “Lampwake”“…which was still a word, as long as someone was awake in it.” | What it doesAnswers the rule with the story's claim: a word lives in use, not in a record |
Read it again for the joints. The rule appears before the word, so the reader knows what the choice will cost before Helen does. The pencil note arrives only after every other way out has closed. The archive's fate raises the stakes without anyone raising their voice. The climax is one small action, a deletion, and the theme is in what she does after it.
Beginning, middle and end
“A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” Aristotle wrote in the Poetics (section VII, in S. H. Butcher's translation), and it is still the shortest answer to what the parts of a plot are. Schools usually break the same arc into five stages. Here they are in “Lampwake”:
| Part | What it does | In “Lampwake” |
|---|---|---|
| PartExposition | What it doesIntroduces the character, the place and the normal state of things | In “Lampwake”4:12, 388 lines cut, the rule above the light table |
| PartInciting incident | What it doesDisturbs the normal state and starts the conflict | In “Lampwake”The next word on the list is Edwin's |
| PartRising action | What it doesComplications raise the cost of the choice | In “Lampwake”No recent use; Dev's message; nothing else to cut; the note on the back |
| PartClimax | What it doesThe main character's decisive choice | In “Lampwake”4:51: she deletes the entry |
| PartFalling action | What it doesThe immediate consequences | In “Lampwake”She carries the card out of the building |
| PartResolution or denouement | What it doesThe new normal | In “Lampwake”Awake in the dark, in the lampwake |
In a story this short, the beginning takes a few paragraphs and the end takes two. In a novel the rising action fills most of the book. The full anatomy, with a classic story taken apart, is in what is plot, and the diagrams, from Freytag's pyramid to three acts, are in plot structure.
A checklist for your own story
Where the elements usually fail:
- Setting as wallpaper. Described in the first paragraph and never felt again.
- Conflict without a choice. The character suffers but never decides anything.
- A plot of “and then.” Events that sit next to each other instead of causing each other.
- Point of view that drifts. The narration slides into another character's head mid-scene, which is head-hopping.
- Theme as a speech. A character explains the meaning in the last scene. Cut the speech and see if the scene still says it.
- Style that fights the story. Ornate sentences for a plain person, or flat ones for a story that needs to sing.
For the character work behind the first two items, the character profile template has fields for want, need and wound.
When a draft is done, you can ask the Strokes Assistant to review it against the seven elements: where the setting stops mattering, which events nothing causes, and where the point of view slips out of your main character's head.
Frequently asked questions
What are the 5 elements of a story?
The usual five are character, setting, plot, conflict and theme, though some lists put resolution in place of theme. Longer lists add point of view and style, which writers decide on every page even when readers don't notice them. Five or seven, the test is the same: each element should change what the others do.
What is the most important element of a story?
Aristotle put plot first, calling it the soul of a tragedy, and many writers would say character instead. In practice the connections matter more than the ranking. A memorable character with no conflict goes nowhere, and a clever plot full of characters nobody believes in doesn't hold. Most strong stories start from a character who wants something and a conflict in the way.
Does a short story need all seven elements?
Every story has all seven, planned or not: someone in some place, something happening, a point of view, a style and an idea the ending leaves behind. Short stories compress them. A story of a few hundred words might have one setting, one conflict and a single turn, and flash fiction can leave most of its plot implied.
What is the difference between story elements and literary elements?
They are mostly the same list seen from two sides. Literary elements are the reader's and critic's terms for analyzing a finished work, and they usually add tone and mood. Story elements are the writer's version: the decisions you make while building a story, usually character, setting, conflict, plot, point of view, style and theme.
