Spread the Word!
Spread the Word!
In the Story Grid method, the major plot points for a complete story arc are called the Five Commandments of Storytelling. The commandments are the Inciting Incident, Turning Point Progressive Complication, Crisis, Climax, and Resolution. Many story structure systems use one or more of these terms but don’t go into much detail about what they mean. Story Grid, on the other hand, provides clear definitions and lots of detail about how each of these Five Commandments connects to and builds on the others. Let’s take a close look at Cloudette — a 32 page picture book by Tom Liechtenheld — to understand each commandment.
The Inciting Incident is the moment in a story when the status quo of the protagonist’s life is knocked off balance. In narrative picture book plot structure, this moment should typically happen within the first 9 pages which make up Act 1. In other story structure systems, the inciting incident is sometimes referred to as the story problem.
The second essential structural point in the SG system is the Turning Point Progressive Complication. Before the major turn, though, Act 2 is made of smaller, progressive complications. Essentially, the protagonist tries and fails (three tries is traditional) to get back to the status quo they enjoyed before the inciting incident. The concept of the protagonist trying and failing to solve the story problem is not unique in scope of narrative picture book plot structures, but Story Grid gets into the nitty gritty of how these progressive complications work.
For instance, every complication needs to be related to the inciting incident. Each complication must make the problem a bit worse than the one before it. By worse, I mean the stakes (or risks) for the protagonist should become increasingly problematic and irreversible. To solve the problem, the protagonist will act the way they did before the inciting incident, but this original strategy will work less and less well. Each failure should result in more and more irreversible choices. The protagonist must keep trying until they have exhausted all their usual tactics and options. They must come to the end of their rope.
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