Story Arcs

Perhaps you've heard of the story arc.  Basically, this involves a beginning, then an introduction of conflict; the conflict builds until it reaches a climax (the point of highest drama/emotion), which is resolved, the drama settles, and there is a conclusion.

That's how any story works, but it turns out within the larger arc, there are lots of little arcs.  Every chapter, every scene should have a beginning, middle, and end, and should slowly build the drama.

As I mentioned in the last post, my creative writing professor, Cheri Earl, said you should begin each scene a little late, so you start in the middle of the action, and end it a little early, leaving the reader with enough suspense to keep going.  She also said each chapter should build conflict to the end.  In some way or other, each scene needs to complicate things (and as I've mentioned before, this needs to be due to the characters' choices), and the conclusion leads to the next scene, where there are more complications.

That means you shouldn't have all the conflict at the very beginning of your story, or there will be nowhere to go up.  It will be a downward slope instead of an arc that holds the reader's attention.

However, it is good to hint at the main conflict in the first or second chapter of your novel, or near the beginning of your short story.  Your reader should understand what the point of your book is, though not necessarily know everything that's going to happen.  That would be boring.

That goes for any part of your book.  If you're on Chapter Ten of Thirty, but you have so much conflict in it that Chapters Eleven through Twenty don't build the plot anymore, then you need to either save some of the drama in Ten for later or make Eleven through Twenty more interesting.  The latter is probably best.

Based on all this, below is a revised story arc (sorry you can't read it very well).  There's the basic beginning, rising action, climax, denouement, and conclusion.  Between the beginning and climax, there's an arc for each chapter or scene.  The ending of each scene has slightly less drama than the climax of said scene, but more than the beginning of it.  That doesn't mean it's the end of a chapter, though; it's okay to end a chapter with drama heightening lines like, "Everything went dark," or, "But the man behind me wasn't my dad."  This is because while you've ended one scene, you're basically opening another with final sentences like this.  Beware of being cliche when you do this, however.

Also, notice that the denouement is fast, which is why I've drawn such a steep falling action.  Once you've gotten past the climax, the ending should be just in sight.  Finally, the conclusion of the main story has greater emotion than at the beginning, because the main character(s) should have learned something and should be a different person.

As you follow the main story arc, remember all the little arcs that make it up.