--- title: Plot Structure description: Plot structure is the framework that organizes the events of a narrative. Learners will understand different structural models, such as the three-act structure, and how to manage pacing, tension, and resolution. category: literature-writing subcategory: creative-writing difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/plot-structure --- # Plot Structure Plot structure is the framework that organizes the events of a narrative. Learners will understand different structural models, such as the three-act structure, and how to manage pacing, tension, and resolution. ## Available Resources 5 Books • 2 Courses • 5 Websites ## Courses ### 1. BYU Creative Writing Lectures Learn plot structure from bestselling author Brandon Sanderson in these BYU Creative Writing lectures. Master storytelling techniques today! **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSH_xM-KC3Zv-79sVZTTj-YA6IAqh8qeQ **Tags:** creative-writing, plot-structure, fiction-writing, fantasy-writing, storytelling ### 2. Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot In this course aspiring writers will be introduced to perhaps the most elemental and often the most challenging element of story: plot. We will learn what keeps it moving, how it manipulates our feelings, expectations, and desires. We will examine the choices storytellers make to snag our imaginations, drag them into a fictional world, and keep them there. We will learn how to outline and structure a plot, discuss narrative arc, pacing and reversals and reveal the inevitable surprise: connecting the beginning, middle and end. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Duration:** 4 weeks of study, 1-2 hours/week | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/craft-of-plot **Tags:** courses, personal-development, communication ## Websites ### 1. Helping Writers Become Authors K.M. Weiland's long-running craft blog and podcast covering story structure, character arcs, outlining and scene construction. Readers get a consistent structural vocabulary of beats, arcs and act turns for diagnosing why a draft stalls and revising it. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/ **Tags:** story-structure, character-arc, creative-writing, outlining, revision ### 2. Story Grid Editor Shawn Coyne's method for analysing narrative, using a spreadsheet that tracks genre conventions, obligatory scenes and value shifts scene by scene. Applying it gives a concrete diagnostic for where a manuscript loses tension or breaks reader expectation. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://storygrid.com/ **Tags:** story-structure, editing, genre-conventions, scene-analysis, narrative-craft ### 3. Dan Harmon — Story Structure 101–106 (Channel 101 Wiki) **Author:** Dan Harmon Dan Harmon's essay series laying out his eight-step story circle, a compressed adaptation of the monomyth built for short-form television. Six installments move from the basic circle to act breaks, character need, and pilot construction. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit **Tags:** story-circle, story-structure, monomyth, television-writing, screenwriting ### 4. Aristotle, Poetics (Butcher translation) **Author:** Aristotle The earliest surviving analysis of dramatic structure, defining plot as the arrangement of incidents and introducing reversal, recognition, and unity of action. Butcher's translation, complete and free, in the MIT Internet Classics Archive. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.html **Tags:** aristotle, poetics, dramatic-structure, tragedy, classical-literary-theory ### 5. writersdigest.com WritersDigest.com is a comprehensive resource for writers, featuring craft articles, writing prompts, market guides, contests, and publishing tips to help aspiring and established authors improve their craft and get published. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://writersdigest.com **Tags:** websites, personal-development, communication ## Books ### 1. Poetics (Butcher translation, full text) **Author:** Aristotle The earliest surviving treatise on dramatic construction and the origin of the whole with a beginning, middle and end, plus the complication/unravelling split that later act models formalise. Covers plot unity, reversal, recognition and the ordering of incidents in about forty pages. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1974 **Tags:** aristotle, dramatic-structure, plot, tragedy, narrative-theory ### 2. Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique **Author:** Kristin Thompson A film scholar tests the three-act model against ten Hollywood successes including Tootsie, Alien and Groundhog Day, concludes it fails to describe them, and proposes four roughly equal parts: setup, complicating action, development, climax and epilogue. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674839757?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** screenwriting, story-structure, three-act-structure, hollywood-cinema, film-analysis ### 3. Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story **Author:** John Yorke Yorke, a former BBC drama executive, reconciles three-act, five-act, and monomyth models into a single shape and argues why narratives take it, drawing on psychology and examples from Macbeth to Mad Men. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1468310941?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** story-structure, five-act-structure, screenwriting, narrative-theory, dramatic-writing ### 4. Plot & Structure **Author:** James Scott Bell James Scott Bell's Writer's Digest guide to building a novel's plot: the LOCK system, three-act structure, scene construction, openings, middles and endings, and plotting approaches for both outliners and discovery writers. Readers learn to diagnose and fix structural problems in a manuscript. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/158297294X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, creative-writing ### 5. The Anatomy of Story **Author:** John Truby John Truby's screenwriting-derived guide to building stories from premise outward, covering his 22 story steps, character webs, moral argument, symbol, and scene weaving. Readers learn to diagnose structural problems and design plots where character change drives events. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865479933?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, creative-writing --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/plot-structure