When people build houses, they usually have a standard structure in mind--four walls, a roof, a floor. They also expect to include at least one door and perhaps several windows. No one has to teach an architect what elements to include in the basic design of a house. That's because architects, like the rest of us, learn those elements as very young children. Even though cultures in different parts of the world build their homes differently, there are some elements that appear in almost all home shelters.
What we know about story structure is not so different. By the time we enter school, chances are good that we have heard many, many stories, and that most of them follow very similar patterns. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some parts of the standard story make us feel calm and relaxed while other parts may make us anxious about how things will turn out.
Readers and writers often use a graphic like the one below to talk about the parts of a story's structure, or plot. The story begins on the left and proceeds to the right, but something other than a flat line happens in between.
Question
Do you remember what this illustration of a standard story's structure is called?
