Story Structure Diagrams

Yes, it’s true, I’ve had story structure on the brain. I’ve also recently joined pinterest (of which I immediately became addicted). But there’s a happy side effect of these two obsessions… this post! I love visual representations of novels and narrative structure, and pinterest gave me a place to collect all these fascinating, beautiful, funny, and brilliant story diagrams.

Feast your eyes!

Three Act Plot Structure:

 

Four Act Structure:

 

Freytag’s Pyramid:

 

Swooping Character Arcs:

 

The Hero’s Journey:

 

Branching Structure:

 

And Just For Fun:

Check out more charts on my Pinterest Page!

Happy structure dreams everyone.


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11 responses to “Story Structure Diagrams”

  1. Perfect! We just talked about plot structure at our last meet-up! Colleen

  2. donniesworld says:

    Ingrid (you’re the bomb) . . . I love your crazy awesome “purple hair”.

    Here is my Pinning Page –         http://pinterest.com/yankeedoodle30/ –      with over 3,000 photo captions I have written in the last year. donnie

  3. Cynthia Surrisi says:

    I am over the moon over this post and the last one. Ingrid, you are a visual beast!

  4. Lisa Odaffer says:

    Help! So much info, such tiny print!

  5. I love these plot diagrams Ingrid, Thank You for sharing 🙂

  6. You have no idea how much I love these.
    Thanks!

  7. Thanks for sharing these Ingrid – a great collection. Have you come across Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Shapes of Stories’? I happened to stumble across his model over the weekend and enjoyed it so much I ended up blogging about it, as it has some relevance in my line of work. http://ifonlyblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/the-shapes-of-stories/

  8. C.B. Dixon says:

    I have story structure on the brain today. This was a feast for my eyes. I can’t wait to get home and see it full sized on my computer. I never thought to look at story structure on Pintrist. Thank you for your post. It was great help.

  9. This is a perfect quick reference guide for story structures, thank you!

  10. I don’t suppose you know the original of that second “swooping character arc”? The source material might be worth a read.

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