Story structure is the way a story's parts are built and arranged: beats inside scenes, scenes inside sequences or chapters, sequences inside acts, and acts inside the whole. It covers both the shape of the events, usually a rise to a climax and a fall to a resolution, and the order the reader meets them in, straight through or out of time order. A useful test at every scale, from a single exchange to a whole act, is whether the unit ends somewhere different from where it began.
This page is about choosing a structure for a book and applying it at every scale, plus two kinds of story the named maps draw badly: short stories and nonlinear novels. The maps themselves, Freytag's pyramid, three acts, the hero's journey, Save the Cat and the rest, are compared in the guide to plot structure, and the basic definition is in what is plot.
Structure at every scale
| Unit | What it is | Usual size | What has to change |
|---|---|---|---|
| UnitBeat | What it isOne action and the reaction to it | Usual sizeA line to a paragraph | What has to changeWho has the upper hand |
| UnitScene | What it isContinuous action in one place and time, around one goal | Usual sizeA few pages | What has to changeThe character's situation, for better or worse |
| UnitSequence | What it isA run of scenes aimed at one short-term goal | Usual sizeA chapter or several | What has to changeMore than any scene inside it |
| UnitAct | What it isA run of sequences that ends in a major turning point | Usual sizeA quarter to a half of the book | What has to changeThe direction of the whole story |
| UnitStory | What it isAll the acts together | Usual sizeThe book | What has to changeThe protagonist's life, for good |
Robert McKee's screenwriting book Story (1997) calls the beat “the smallest element of structure,” an exchange of action and reaction, and builds upward from it to scenes, sequences, acts and the story. The test is the same at every level: something that matters to the character has to change, for better or worse.
Beats
A beat is the smallest shift in a scene: one character does or says something, the other answers it. Here is a short scene and its beats.
Ines put the draft on Mark's desk. “It's ready for Sunday.” He didn't pick it up. “Legal hasn't seen it.” “Legal saw it at nine.” He picked it up then, and turned to the last page first. “You name the deputy mayor.” “He's on the record.” “Page four,” Mark said, and held it out. Ines didn't take it.
The beats: she claims the front page; he hides behind the lawyers; she takes the excuse away; he finds the real objection; she defends the story; he offers page four; she refuses without a word. Each beat moves the upper hand, and the scene turns from Ines winning to Ines losing, with a question left open.
Scenes
A scene is a unit of continuous action with a goal, opposition and an outcome that leaves the character better or worse off than before. Most scenes that drag have no turn: the character wants nothing, or ends exactly where they started. The scene outline template gives each scene a goal, a conflict and an outcome, and the guide to writing a scene goes through the craft.
Sequences and chapters
A sequence is a run of scenes with one short-term aim: get into the archive, survive the first night, win over the in-laws. It ends in a bigger turn than any scene inside it. The screenwriting teacher Frank Daniel, first dean of the American Film Institute, taught that a classically built film has three acts and eight sequences, an approach Paul Joseph Gulino later set out in Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach. In a novel, a sequence is often one chapter or a run of a few; the guide to chapter structure covers how a chapter holds its scenes.
Acts
An act is defined by the turning point that ends it, not by its length. Three acts are the usual model, four if you split the long middle at the midpoint, five in classical drama. The three-act structure template lists the turning points with rough percentages.
One scene at every scale
The same material reads differently at each scale. Suppose Ines's scene sits in a novel about a reporter who takes her story to a rival paper when her own won't run it on the front page.
| Scale | What the Ines material is | What has to change |
|---|---|---|
| ScaleBeat | What the Ines material is“Page four,” Mark said, and held it out. | What has to changeThe upper hand passes to Mark |
| ScaleScene | What the Ines material isSeven beats in Mark's office | What has to changeInes goes from winning to losing, with the question left open |
| ScaleSequence | What the Ines material isOne round in her week-long fight to get the story into Sunday's paper | What has to changeThe inside route closes, so she has to try another |
| ScaleAct | What the Ines material isThe turn that ends act one, if her refusal sends her to the rival paper | What has to changeThe direction of the book: the insider becomes an outsider |
| ScaleStory | What the Ines material isA clause in the synopsis: “after her editor buries the story” | What has to changeOnly what the scene sets in motion in her life |
At beat scale you revise line by line, asking who has the upper hand. At act scale the dialogue hardly matters: the question is whether the scene turns the book's direction, and if it doesn't, it isn't the act break, however well it plays. At story scale the whole scene shrinks to its consequence.
Choosing a structure for your book
Four questions settle most of it. Whose story is it, and how many viewpoints does it need? Does time run straight, or does the past hold a secret? What question keeps the reader turning pages? And how much open conflict is there? Then match the answers to a shape:
| If your story… | Try | Why |
|---|---|---|
| If your story…Follows one protagonist toward one goal | TryThree acts, or a Save the Cat beat sheet | WhyFlexible, and most readers expect its rhythm |
| If your story…Is a journey out and back | TryThe hero's journey | WhyThe circle fits a return home, changed |
| If your story…Opens on trouble and keeps escalating | TryThe Fichtean curve | WhyA run of crises carries the backstory |
| If your story…Is a mystery | TryTwo strands: the crime, told backward, and the investigation, told forward | WhyThe solution reorders the past for the reader |
| If your story…Follows several characters with equal weight | TryBraided viewpoints | WhyEach strand gets its own arc, and they meet at the climax |
| If your story…Turns on a secret from the past | TryA frame or a dual timeline | WhyThe past strand delivers the reveal |
| If your story…Is quiet, with little open conflict | TryKishōtenketsu, or linked vignettes | WhyThe turn is a change in how things look, not a fight |
You don't have to choose before the first draft. Plotters pick a structure and fill it in; pantsers write first and find the shape in revision (see pantser and plotter). Either way, the structure is a tool for revising, and the draft gets to argue with it.
Short story structures
A short story has room for one main conflict and a handful of scenes, so its structure is usually simpler and its ending carries more weight. Edgar Allan Poe put the principle in an 1842 review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales: the writer conceives “a certain unique or single effect” first, then invents the incidents that will best produce it.
| Shape | How it moves | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ShapeSingle scene | How it movesOne place, one stretch of time, almost all dialogue | ExampleErnest Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927) |
| ShapeEpiphany | How it movesOrdinary events build to a sudden moment of understanding | ExampleJames Joyce, “Araby” (1914) |
| ShapeReversal | How it movesA final revelation turns everything before it around | ExampleGuy de Maupassant, “The Necklace” (1884) |
| ShapeOne hour | How it movesA whole life turns inside a very short span of time | ExampleKate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (1894) |
| ShapeRule of three | How it movesThree attempts or trials, each harder, and the third decides | ExampleThe Brothers Grimm, “Rumpelstiltskin” (1812) |
Joyce's boy goes to a bazaar to buy a present for a girl, arrives as it is closing, and ends seeing himself “as a creature driven and derided by vanity.” Nothing outward is decided. The climax is the recognition, which is why epiphany stories can be so short. At the shortest end, flash fiction often keeps only the turn, and a vignette may drop it altogether. The guide to writing a short story covers drafting one from the first line.
Nonlinear story structures
A nonlinear book tells events out of the order they happened. The events still form a chain of cause and effect; what changes is when the reader learns each link.
| Form | How time moves | Example |
|---|---|---|
| FormFrame story | How time movesAn outer present holds the main story, told by someone in it | ExampleEmily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847) |
| FormFlashback inside a crisis | How time movesOpens at the crisis, goes back to explain it, then returns | ExampleAmbrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890) |
| FormBraided | How time movesTwo or more strands in different times or places alternate | ExampleMichael Cunningham, The Hours (1998) |
| FormNested | How time movesEach story is broken off for the next, then the stories close in reverse order | ExampleDavid Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004) |
| FormReverse chronology | How time movesScenes run backward from the end | ExampleHarold Pinter, Betrayal (1978); Martin Amis, Time's Arrow (1991) |
| FormFractured | How time movesSections jump in time and change narrator | ExampleWilliam Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) |
| FormContested | How time movesSeveral witnesses tell the same event, and the accounts clash | ExampleRyūnosuke Akutagawa, “In a Grove” (1922) |
The Hours braids three women's single days: Virginia Woolf in 1923, a Los Angeles housewife in 1949 and a New Yorker planning a party at the end of the century. Betrayal starts in 1977, after an affair has ended, and works back to the night it began in 1968, so the last scene's hope is the play's bitterest irony. Faulkner's four sections jump from 1928 to June 1910 and back to Good Friday and Easter 1928. “In a Grove” gives a killing seven accounts, including the dead man's, spoken through a medium, and Akira Kurosawa built his film Rashomon (1950) on it.
To keep a nonlinear draft under control:
- Keep a true chronology. A separate list of events in the order they happened, with dates. It catches the contradiction a reader would spot.
- Give every strand its own shape. Each timeline usually needs rising action and a turn of its own, or it risks reading as background.
- Make the reader's order build. The order of telling should climb toward a climax even if the chronology doesn't. Often the climax is a revelation, as in Bierce, whose last sentence shows what was really happening all along.
- Signal each jump. Dated chapter headings, a narrator's name, a change of tense. Faulkner's section titles are dates.
Common structure problems
- Scenes that don't turn. Characters talk, travel or remember, and end where they began. Apply the turn test and cut or merge.
- The same sequence twice. Three chapters in a row where the hero asks for help and is refused. Readers feel the repetition before they can name it.
- Act breaks without a turn. The draft is divided into parts, but nothing changes direction where they meet.
- Nonlinear for decoration. Scrambled chronology that withholds nothing and reveals nothing. If the straight version reads just as well, use it.
- Strands that never meet. Braided timelines or viewpoints that don't touch by the climax can read as two books bound together.
To run the turn test across a whole draft, attach the chapters and ask the Strokes Assistant to fill in “At the start ___, at the end ___” for each scene. The rows where both blanks match are the first ones to reread.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between story structure and plot structure?
The terms overlap and are often used as synonyms. Plot structure usually means the shape of the events, such as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution, or three acts. Story structure is broader: it also covers the units the plot is built from, such as scenes and sequences, and the order of telling, including frames and flashbacks.
What is a nonlinear story structure?
A nonlinear story tells events out of chronological order. It might open at the end and work back, alternate between two timelines, nest stories inside each other, or let several witnesses retell one event. The events still connect by cause and effect. Only the order in which the reader learns them changes, and that order is where the suspense and irony come from.
How is a short story structured?
Many short stories follow one main conflict through a few scenes to a climax close to the end, often on the last page. Common shapes include the single scene, the epiphany, the final reversal and the rule of three. Edgar Allan Poe argued that a short story should be built backward from the single effect it aims to leave on the reader.
