Understanding Plot

If you were to describe a story you read to a friend, you would likely begin by recounting what happened in the story or the series of events the story relates. When we discuss the events that happen over the course of a story, we are discussing plot. Rather than just a list of chronological events, however, short story plots tend to follow certain patterns that lead to satisfying and engaging stories.

First, short story plots tend to center around a central conflict. A story without conflict would be boring and pointless. Also, while a novel may include many conflicts that are raised and resolved over the course of the plot, due to the limited space, short stories most often focus on one conflict. Conflict can take several forms, though it most often occurs between the protagonist (central character) and something else. Some plots involve a person vs. person conflict in which the protagonist has some strife with another character. The story may involve a man attempting to survive in the wilderness, following the person vs. nature model. Rather than the natural world, the forces the protagonist finds themself up against may be societal forces. The protagonist in the person vs. society style conflict may struggle with poverty, sexism, racism, or some other societal problem. However, it is also possible that the strife experienced by the protagonist is an internal conflict, in which they struggle to make some decision, take some action, or simply come to a clear understanding of their world and their place in it. As an example of a story exhibiting person vs. person-style conflict, Alicec Walker’s “Everyday Use” presents Maggie as he matches wits with Dee, leading both to reconsider their relationship to family and tradition. In contrast, in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” while the narrator struggles with his brother Sonny, arguably the real conflict in the story is generated by racialized cultures and expectations in the United States of the 1950s and 1960s, thus providing a person vs. society-style conflict.

The development of the plot of the short story tends to follow set patterns as well. Most of the story involves establishing the conflict and building tension toward its inevitable resolution. We call this phase of the plot rising action. This leads to the moment in the story called the climax, in which the tension behind the conflict reaches its highest point, often prompting some action, choice, or realization by the characters. The climax is sometimes followed by a phase of falling action, in which the tension settles after the climax. The short story then typically ends with some description of the resolution, showing the reader where things stand in the aftermath of the conflict. Lastly, a story may include a denouement (which is French for “unraveling”), which is an ending that winds down the story after the resolution. A denouement may wrap up loose ends left behind after the resolution or even raise questions about the future of the characters. However, contemporary narrative theorists challenge such a predictable layout, with both postmodern and queer writers often using a narrative structure that explicitly rejects the model in which the “climax” functions as the guide to, and pinnacle of, the text. (For more information, see this book’s Appendix 1: “Queering Narrative Structure”).