- Inciting incident
- The event that disturbs the protagonist's ordinary life and sets the story moving. It usually arrives inside the first ten to fifteen percent of a novel, and it is what makes the rest of the book necessary.
- Three-act structure
- The most common shape for a novel: a setup that establishes the world and the problem, a longer middle of escalating complications, and a resolution. The act breaks usually fall near the twenty-five and seventy-five percent marks.
- Beat sheet
- A list of the story's key moments in order, each described in a line or two, used to plan a book or to diagnose one. Beat sheets run from a dozen entries to fifty. See how to outline a novel.
- Midpoint
- A turn near the center of the book where the protagonist stops reacting and starts acting, or where a revelation changes what the story is about. A sagging middle is very often a midpoint that is not doing enough.
- Climax
- The scene where the central conflict is decided. Everything before it is preparation, and everything after it is consequence.
- Denouement
- The material after the climax, where consequences settle and loose threads are tied off. From the French for untying.
- Rising action
- The stretch between the inciting incident and the climax, where complications accumulate and the stakes climb.
- Falling action
- The stretch between the climax and the last page. Usually short in a novel, and its job is to let the story come to rest.
- Hero's journey
- A structural pattern described by Joseph Campbell and adapted for screenwriters by Christopher Vogler, in which a protagonist leaves the familiar world, faces trials, and returns changed. Useful as a lens, restrictive as a template.
- Save the Cat
- A fifteen beat structure from Blake Snyder's screenwriting book of the same name, widely adapted for novels. Named for the idea that a protagonist should do something early that makes a reader want to follow them.
- Freytag's pyramid
- A five part structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement) described by Gustav Freytag for classical drama. It is where the vocabulary of rising and falling action comes from.
- Fichtean curve
- A structure built from a series of escalating crises with very little setup, starting close to the trouble. Common in thrillers and in fiction that cannot afford a slow opening.
- In medias res
- Opening in the middle of the action rather than at the chronological beginning, with the necessary background filled in afterward. Latin for into the middle of things.
- All is lost
- The low point before the climax, where the protagonist appears to have failed and the goal looks unreachable. Also called the dark night of the soul.
- Subplot
- A secondary storyline running alongside the main one and usually intersecting it. A subplot that never touches the main plot is often the first thing to cut when a draft runs long.
