Sharing Your Story: How You Can Structure Your Narrative
The ultimate romance is simmering in your head–they’re childhood lovers, share their first kiss in a drunken stupor after a college party celebrating the end of midterms, and can’t admit their feelings for each other because their parents are mortal enemies. Or maybe you have an account of a group of four friends going about their daily lives, navigating college applications, and suddenly one friend didn’t apply to the same college they promised to attend. Whatever your idea is, your story is just stuck in your head, never to be released. That is... until you’ve finally mustered the courage AND strength to finally write that novel or comic or pilot episode. But how do you structure the story?
HOMIE! I’m there! I’m with you in the same boat, over the same sea of mystery! So, let’s learn together! While there are many, many ways to write a narrative, let’s go over two ways you can write a banger of a narrative and bring those ideas to life. As I share these two narrative structures, I’ll be focusing more on character-driven narratives, where characters’ internal conflicts drive the progress of the story, rather than plot-driven ones, where external events push the chronicle. Check out this great video on the difference between character-driven and plot-driven narratives. Now let’s dive in!
The Three Act Structure
You’ve probably seen this in a majority of Western storytelling. In the three act structure, there are three parts: the Setup (Act 1), Confrontation (Act 2), and the Resolution (Act 3). Basically, it’s the beginning, the middle, and the end.
The Setup introduces worldbuilding and characters. Oftentimes, there is a plot point, or twist, that brings the ending of Act 1 to signal that the protagonist(s) is going to go through a change.
During the Confrontation, the stakes for your characters have to rise. After all, they’re going through a transformation process. In the middle of this act, there should be a big twist that ensures that your characters can’t go back to who they were in the beginning.
In the Resolution, we get the ending of the protagonist’s story. Bringing your characters’ journey to a close will wrap up any loose ends in the story and can reveal why the twists and turns in the narrative were important to developing your character. When you write the resolution, it doesn’t always have to be definitive. You can have cliffhangers to leave the audience wanting more or open endings to leave the interpretation to the audience.
Dive deeper into the three act structure with Studio Binder’s analysis of Parasite.
Kishōtenketsu
The kishōtenketsu story structure is often seen in East Asian storytelling. Kishōtenketsu is the Japanese word, but the structure can also be found in Chinese and Korean stories as well. Unlike the three act structure, where conflict is the driving factor, the kishōtenketsu framework uses four acts to tell a story. These acts include the: Introduction, Development, Twist, and Conclusion.
In the Introduction, the protagonist is introduced and the world they inhabit is shared in detail.
The Development act focuses on the characters. It’s typically outlining the emotional state of the character. The audience really gets to know and understand the characters, where we can get attached to the characters in the story presented to us.
The third act, the Twist, is where things get juicy. There’s an unexpected change. Here, the characters are faced with changes, whether internally or externally.
Everything wraps up in the Conclusion, the final act. The audience gets to see how the characters wrangle with the conflict and whether or not they want to change the status quo as a result of their development.
A great example of this story structure is Kiki’s Delivery Service.
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Now that we’ve gone over two narrative structures, how are ya feeling? We only scratched the surface with these structures; just as there are many experiences in the world, there are different ways that stories can be conveyed. Be sure to click the example links to get an in-depth look at how these frameworks look in action so that you can do your thing.
Now that you have the knowledge to share your story, let us know what narrative structure you are planning to use.
Thinking about sharing your story? Check out these resources for more ways to do so:
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How to Write a Better Novel: The 4 Most Common Story Structures
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How to Structure a Story: The Fundamentals of Narrative - article
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How to tell a great story — 4 must haves for authentic storytelling
Sometimes I need a little motivation and inspiration to get me started. Hopefully these links will work for you too!