Plot: What comprises a complete story

For our first lesson, I'll be talking about the basic composition of the plot of a story. All of these should be present in your story, or your story is technically incomplete or even lifeless. The story is divided into six parts, which will later be divided to the author's ideal number of chapters for the story. Keep in mind that each part of the plot doesn't have to have an equal number of chapters. Actually, don't; a part of the plot is meant to be longer than the others.

The six parts of the story are:

1. Exposition - This is the part where you introduce your characters. Let the readers get to know them, care about them, or even root for them before you put them in a life-and-death (metaphorically or literally) situation. Now this can be optional, if your specialization on creating and writing plots is indescribable; why? 'Cause based on my observation in the Improve Your Writing club, a lot of people have different opinions on whether this part is important in the story or not, and the points were all valid. Some people say it's not important to the plot; I say it is; others say you're a big disgrace to writing if you include an exposition. But objectively speaking, is the exposition important to the story? It depends on you.

If you're writing a purely plot-driven story, which isn't really a good idea unless you can pull off a character with little to no third dimension using an extremely exciting plot, you don't write an exposition; you go straight into the action, see how far the plot can drive your character(s). However, if you plan to write a mostly character-driven story, you'll feel the need to make the readers get to know the characters first before you put those babies to the test. And lastly, if you plan to write a spontaneous, character-driven story, you include little to no exposition before the main premise; in stories like this, most of the exposition part coincides with the next part of the story, which is:

2. Rising Action - You may see me refer to this as the "main premise" of a story. The end of the exposition and the beginning of the rising action is indicated by a thing called the "inciting incident." It's the only major turning plot point you usually see in the blurb of a story. When you have read past this, expect the story to slowly build up to the climax.

The rising action is usually the longest part of the story, but it's not the hardest; creating conflict is. However, note that both the rising action and the conflict determine how the effective the climax will be, and the climax will make or break the story.

3. Conflict - this is written within the rising action. You create a conflict; tense things up a little bit as the story approaches the climax. Conflict is when a main protagonist is working to achieve his or her goal, but an external or internal force is hindering him or her from doing so. These conflicts usually start from smaller things, but gets bigger and bigger the more the story approaches the climax.

Take my story "A Criminal's Confession" for example. The main protagonist's main goal is to find the guy who killed his parents and make him pay, but the main premise starts when he meets the love interest, who's a celebrity that he's had the hots for. First conflict: he found out that he killed the girl's brother, which was illustrated at the prologue of the story. Second conflict: his feelings for her, together with his conscience, are eating him alive, enough for him to turn himself in to the state. Third conflict: he was ultimately sentenced to death.

4. Climax - this is the most important part of the story. This is the highest form of conflict which turns the rising action into a falling action. The climax is a form of conflict; it plays a part on whether your character achieves the goal or not. It usually decided what the character should do to ultimately achieve this goal, or more importantly, if achieving this goal is worth it or not.

Example time: the climax for "A Criminal's Confession" is when the main character decided to have his best friend help him escape from prison on the day of his execution. The best friend didn't show up, so he did it himself, together with his cellmate, kind of like an Escape Plan situation. He later finds out that the best friend died that day while attempting to save him. Also, along the way, he realizes that he had once been in the position of the guy that killed his parents; he killed his love interest's brother.

5. Falling action - After the climax has been reached, the plot slowly falls down until it finally calls for a resolution. It is usually the part where the protagonist and the antagonist battle for the last time. This will usually decide whether the protagonist achieves their goal or not.

6. Resolution/Denouement - If you don't want a grade of "incomplete" in your story, you have to write a resolution. It resolves the main conflict--the main premise of the story. This answers the question "Does the main character achieve the final goal or not?" It gives a closure to the main plot, therefore tying most loose ends in the story.

Now, some writers, especially those who write book series, like to leave the golden question blank or open, so that the readers will "wait for the next book to find out," kind of like a teaser. Do you even know what a teaser is? It's kind of like a sneak peek for the next book. Movie series do that all the time; they leave a little something after the credits as some sort of prelude to the next installment. That's fine; this, leaving the main plot unresolved to do some sort of teaser, is not. And I'll show you how:

If you watch or have watched American Idol, how many of you would like it if the two finalists were standing there, and you were sitting in front of the TV, biting your nails, hoping your favorite contestant would win, and then as Ryan Seacrest reads the envelope containing the name of the champion, he says, "... Tune in to the next season to find out!" Would you still call it a teaser?

That's exactly what it's like when you leave your readers in outer space, waiting for the sequel of your book which may or may not come. Your story is technically incomplete. And also, the sequel of a book should not come directly from where the first book left off; you'll never see any movie/book sequel that required watching the previous movies/books to be able to get the main plot; the sequel's main plot should stand on its own.

Also, there's this thing called "denouement;" it comes after the resolution, and goes on until the absolute end of the story. Now this is kind of optional, since a lot of stories end directly after the resolution, provided almost all loose ends are tied, including both major and minor subplots.

Once you have planned every bit of your story, starting from the exposition, rising action, conflict, climax, falling action, and all the way to the resolution and denouement, you are now ready to write the story.

Tune in in a couple of days, and we'll discuss one of the hottest topics in Wattpad: it's all about chapters.