The Five Elements

What is this story about? When did you first hear this story?

What is this story about? When did you first hear this story?

Because of their length, short stories make it easier to see the FIVE ELEMENTS of a story. These five major elements are what drive all the stories we read, as well as the movies and television shows we watch. Without the elements, we wouldn’t have the fun and exciting stories or movies that we see every day!

At the basic level, it’s the sequence of events in a story Plot is broken down into 5 stages, which help direct how the story starts and where it ends.

Exposition is a technique the author uses to set the stage for his or her story. It is how we learn who the characters are, what the conflict is, and most importantly WHY WE SHOULD CARE. Without exposition, plots will never get going and some of the action we say in stories will never even start. In other words, it’s important!

After being set up during the exposition, rising action is the group of events that lead up to the climax of the story. Rising action is a major part of the plot – without these events, the author can’t build excitement for what is going to happen in the story. Can you think of an example of rising action from a story you know?

The climax is the TURNING POINT of the story. Usually, the climax is the most exciting part of the story – think about the final chase scene in an action movie or the death of a major character. The climax is the event or group of events that leads us toward the end of the story.

What happens after that exciting chase scene near the end of a movie? Where does the story go? The falling action is the group of events that lead us to the end, or RESOLUTION, of the story. Think of it like a race: the rising action is the warm-up, the climax is the actual race, and the falling action is the cool-down.

The resolution of the story is, simply put, the end! This is where an author can wrap up the plot neatly, or leave the reader hanging and ready to read the next book in a series! The events of the plot RESOLVE themselves here.

Setting is one of the most basic elements of a story, but it is also extremely important! Setting is WHERE a story takes place… … but also WHEN a story takes place!

Not many stories can exist without characters! Characters are as important to a story as the plot and setting, because they are the elements that we as readers can identify with. Characters are the “actors” in a story. There are several character types that we’re going to see in the stories we read.

DYNAMIC CHARACTERS change over the course of the story. Can you think of an example of a dynamic character from a story you have read?

STATIC CHARACTERS do not change as the story goes on – they always behave the same way. Many minor characters are static characters.

The PROTAGONIST is the character that we will follow throughout the story. The protagonist is usually the main character.

The ANTAGONIST is the opposition that the protagonist faces in the story. It could be a villain, the environment, himself, or other factors. The antagonist presents a PROBLEM for the main character.

ROUND characters are those that we know every last detail about! Usually they are main characters in the story, and we know about the way they act, think, and feel. FLAT characters are those that we only know the basic details about. We know what they look like, but we don’t know how they are feeling in most situations or what they are thinking.

POINT of VIEW is how we see the story! Whose eyes are we looking through? Is it…  A narrator?  The main character?  Another character in the story?

When the main character is telling his story, or another character is telling the story from her perspective, the story is written from a FIRST PERSON point of view. "Landlord!" said I, "what sort of chap is he -- does he always keep such late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock. The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he answered, "generally he's an early bird -- airley to bed and airley to rise -- yea, he's the bird what catches the worm. -- But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head.“ From Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

When a narrator is telling the story, the author is using THIRD PERSON perspective. "What are you doing?" Yossarian asked guardedly when he entered the tent, although he saw at once. "There's a leak here," Orr said. "I'm trying to fix it." "Please stop it," said Yossarian. "You're making me nervous." "When I was a kid," Orr replied, "I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek." Yossarian put aside his musette bag from which he had begun removing his toilet articles and braced himself suspiciously. A minute passed. "Why?" he found himself forced to ask finally. Orr tittered triumphantly. "Because they're better than horse chestnuts," he answered. From Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Sometimes, authors won’t use first person OR third person perspective when telling their story. SECOND PERSON point of view is not used often, however. In this point of view, the author talks directly to the reader: If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes. From The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket and Brett Helquist

THEME is the general idea, message, or moral of the author’s story. Theme deals with the BIG ideas. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the guilt of the narrator is the major theme. Although the plot is why events in the story happen, the theme is the reason the author wants her story told.