EVERY Plot Element You Need in a Novel

by the time you are done watching this video you will not only know every single element that you should include in a plot but also the relative importance of every single one so we can boil it down if we could only have a handful of these elements to include in say a short story or a children's book or something small so that you don't necessarily need everything included what are the most important elements that you would want to look at So today we're looking at every single one of those plot elements and ranking them on

a tier list let's get into [Music] it all right so we have the standard tier maker thing here sa a b c DF Etc pretty much everything that we're going to be talking about is an important element of plot so it took me a little while to figure out what the approach I was going to take in terms of ranking them because they are all important but I decided s tier which usually stands for super or superb or whatever so the S tier is going to represent just those things that are the most important of

basically all of the different plot elements out there they're the kind of things that you will find in any successful story regardless of the medium so you'll see them and everything from books and novels to children's books like I was reading the cat and the hat to my daughter the other day and noticed that it had all of these things as well as you might also find them in things like YouTube videos and short stories flash fiction everything has these basic elements that you'll see on on the S tier a tier is almost as equally

important but maybe not quite as universal especially in smaller stories but they're going to be fairly common in novels and films and other more standard forms of Storytelling then the items that I'll be putting in the BCD list I have nothing that goes in the F list are just going to be other elements that are in use in most cases but in some cases may be optional we'll just have to go along and see how these all fit together so down here I've got got a list of all of the different plot elements and they're

arranged in rough chronological order here so we're going to start with the prologue and now I did a whole video about the prologue it's one of the very few pieces that is very optional in fact some people don't recommend having them at all it depends on the situation it's more common in genres like fantasy and science fiction for example and some forms of mystery and Thriller where you might start out with a murder scene or what have you but in general a prologue is one of those very optional things and sometimes it is good advice

to say we need to get to the main character and build empathy with them as quickly as possible and having that prologue gets in the way of that so in cases like that it's definitely something that we want to take caution with and only use when we really think it is important and so for this one I'm going to put it in the D tier because of how optional it is now this next one I have here I have opening and closing image now this is a great technique and I would highly recommend you use

it inside of your your novels and your film scripts and everything it's a technique pioneered to my knowledge by Blake Snider as he wrote save the cat the opening and closing image are two of his 15 scene beats but the opening and closing image is kind of a newer concept it's not necessarily something that has been talked about in ages past if you understand what I'm saying that said I think it's a powerful way to level up your storytelling and not just with an opening and closing image but to think of images at key points

in your story key points that are perhaps a major turning point for the character a major turning point for the conflict with the antagonist you can pick any significant moment try to capture that in a visual image and then try to explain that image if you're writing a novel if you're writing screenplay you can just show the image but trying to do so in a visual way is a great way to as they say show don't tell and I think it's a powerful way to get your message across with the opening and closing image specifically

we have an opportunity to show where the protagonist starts at the beginning of their entire journey and where they end and see just how they differ from each other and you'll see this in movies all the time where the opening shot of the film or at least a shot that's close to the beginning of the film together with the final shot of the protagonist at the end are complimentary to each other but done so in such a way that you can see the growth that the character has had and through those two images you can

really get a sense of the theme of the story as well as the characters Arc throughout the story which is why I often start when I'm getting ready to Plot a novel I start with the opening and closing images I want to know what does that look like what is the growth that this character has gone is going to go through I do consider these to be quite powerful but given that it's kind of a newer concept it's not really at the same level as some of these others I'm going to go ahead and put

this one at C tier but I'm only doing that because of the fact that it's not necessarily strictly necessary I do think it will enhance your novel no matter how you use it all right the next item I have here is called the information Gap now the information Gap is a term I actually got from the science of Storytelling which is a great book that you should check out and I actually had this thought before I even read that book I realized that most of the books that I would read and would become page Turners

for me had some kind of mystery at the beginning that really pulled me in and got me really invested in understanding what was going on in the story that mystery is what is called an information Gap and it turns out we as humans are psychologically wired to find out and resolve information gaps we want to know what is missing from the set of information that we have and so having some kind of information Gap involved at the beginning of the story is a great way to make your story really stand out and get people immediately

invested in the story and the sooner you can do so the better which is why and because there's science to back this one up and just my own personal experience I found it to be very powerful I'm putting this one up in B tier all right next we have the character wound which some would argue is not really a plot point it's more of a character development point the reason I put it here is because I actually consider most stages in the character development process to actually be parts of the plot a good plot will

have a character development for the main protagonist baked into it from the start and so for that reason a character wound and this has many names some call it the character flaw the characters ghost there are a lot of different terms for this I like the word wound cuz it makes it feel like something has hurt this character and in fact most characters most humans rather have certain types of trauma that we've been through in our past even if the trauma was relatively minor at the time often these things happen to us in childhood we

sort of take that piece of trauma whether it was major or minor and it festers inside of us and kind of causes us to be the way we are especially with more negative aspects of our personality for instance addictions tend to grow out of trauma in some form or another at least that's how they start and we have as humans a lot of protections against trauma anytime we have this internal wound inside it we build up layers of psychology basically in our heads to protect this wound inside of us and because we do that it

forces us to have different kind of behaviors that are often not as great and so when you have a character who needs to go through a character Arc their flaw or their wound is going to be the thing that they need to over overcome and to do so is going to be painful for them because they're going to have to go through those psychological layers that they have in order to really dig deep and understand how they can change themselves and yet it is that change that healing of the wound that is going to allow

them to become better and to overcome the antagonist at the end of the story and so for that reason this is phenomenally an important thing and so that's why I put it here in the a tier now you may ask why I'm not putting this one in s tier because character development is so important for most effective films and I agree that said there are plenty of stories out there that don't have a whole lot of character development and yes I would agree that adding character development usually makes them better stories and yet you'll find

all kinds of more pulpy stories as well as certain types of children's fiction and other short stories and things that don't have a whole lot of character development in them and so for that reason I'm not putting it at the top of my tier list just because it's not necessarily an essential musthave in order to have a story which brings us to the next option here the theme now the theme is a good way of thinking about it is what is your story about and it's an important thing to understand what your story is about

now sometimes authors kind of come across what the theme is as they're writing it it's something that's discovered I usually like to know what my theme is before I get started and the best way I can do that is to look at the opening and the closing image which we discussed earlier and see what's the change that's going to happen to this character and usually from understanding that change I can understand what the theme of the story is going to be the theme is very very closely tied to the character development of the main protagonist

there may be other characters that embody different aspects of the theme so you might have a character that's sort of represents the negative of that theme and I like the idea of a theme being something that you see from multiple angles based on your characters your main character is going to be the primary person who changes across the story and For Whom the theme is display play but you may have a bunch of other characters that have different viewpoints on those themes and that's a great way to really explore a theme you want to be

able to explore from multiple angles and be able to argue that theme from each angle as if that were the side that you were taking and the better you are at arguing both sides of Any Given debate the better you are of making that debate into your theme but generally speaking this has to do with the growth of your character and because of that I put it at the same level as the character wound certainly a very important thing and most of the best selling books that you will ever see have very strong themes they

are about something but I'm not going to put it up in the S tier because again same reason I wouldn't put character wound there character development is not required for plot although it usually does make an improvement all right the next one that we have is save the cat now this is a Shand created by Blake Snider to refer to how do you make your character compelling there is a lot of misunderstanding about what save the cat means a lot of people think that saving the cat just means you have to have likable character they

have to go out and save a cat and so that we know that they are the good guy right the person that we should like that is just one way of making a character compelling and indeed in the book save the cat Blake Snyder goes into many other ways that you can make a character compelling without having them be likable so there are a lot of different ways that you can make a character compelling for one they can be really competent in some area or another we as humans like to see people who are good

at their jobs so that can be one way to do it you can also make them severely oppressed by someone for instance Harry Potter is you know severely oppressed by his uncle even if you have an anti-hero who's not a very likable person one of the ways to make them a compelling character is to make sure that they are oppressed by some villain who is even worse than they are you can also make them humorous if they have a really good sense of humor that's a feature that most humans appreciate and then of course you

can have them do some kind of act of kindness like we see in the actual title of say the cat but the whole point of doing all of these things is to build empathy between the character and the reader and if the reader cannot build empathy with the character there will be absolutely no interest in the story let me say that again if the reader does not build empathy with the characters they will have no desire to keep reading and so there's got to be something about the characters that makes them interesting something that makes

us root for them and want to keep reading about them and which is why this is the first one I'm actually going to put on the S tier every single story has a character of some kind and there's got to be a reason for us to care about that character from the very start and so every story needs this and which is why I'm putting it here at the very top all right the next one we have here I call hint of death Blake Snider calls it whiff of death usually at the start of every

story there is a moment where the character realizes that if they stay the way they are they're not going to have a good time of it and they're going to experience some form of death whether that's physical literal death of themselves or the death of a loved one or perhaps something that's not literal death but it could be Financial death or social death or you know mental like a psychotic break that' be mental types of death emotional death all of these things there are a form of death associated with them bankruptcy is death for finance

Etc and so there's got to be this realization early on that there is something that if the character doesn't change that they don't get over their flaw if they don't go out of their comfort zone and leave their Ordinary World they're going to eventually have some kind of death happened to them and there's going to be that hint of death that we want to overcome now this is a little bit more of an advanced technique as something to include there and so I'm not ranking it quite as high because it's not the sort of thing

that you would see in say a children's book for example but it is an important one that said I'm going to put it down here at C tier with opening and closing image all right next we get the inciting incident now this is extremely Universal in fact you probably know exactly what I'm talking about when I say inciting incident it's also called The Call to Adventure there are a lot of other names for it including genre specific names in the romance genre for instance this is called the meat cute where the two characters meet for

the first time and so because of this the inciting incident is probably the most universally accepted moment in storytelling except maybe the climax which we'll get to later the inciting incident is even essential part of the storytelling on a scene level every single scene should have a minor inciting incident that gets the scene going and that kind of kicks off the conflict if there's no conflict in a scene then you should not have that scene there should always be conflict in every single scene that you choose to write out as part of your story otherwise

you don't have a story right because if there's no conflict there's no story and so for that reason the inciting incident is one of the most critical moments in the story because it's the moment when conflict really gets ratcheted up and going in the story sometimes it can happen as early as the first page which is why I'm putting this one here on the S tier all right now early on in many many many stories you have a moment where the character meets The MENTOR a mentor figure usually this is your Obi-Wan Kenobi your Dumbledore

but it could also be something as simple as a important piece of information a book a resource that the character comes across or it can be a friend or someone that just kind of comes in and pokes them when they need it most characters have a mentor figure of some kind even if the mentor figure is not as obvious as an old wizard like obiwan Kenobi that said because of the versatility of the mentor role and the fact that it's not necessarily as universal as something as the inciting incident I've chosen to rank it down

here in the at the B tier but it is still pretty important and most stories will have a mentor type figure to kind of help the protagonist along it's just the way that figure takes shape can be dramatically varied depending on the story all right often going along with the appearance of the mentor and with the inciting incident is a moment where the character has a initial refusal of the call which is what we have coming up next here the refusal of the call is basically where the character says no I don't really want to

get involved in all of this you know Luke says I got to get home I've got chores froto is like I just want to stay here in this little hobbit hole most of the particularly the more epic adventurous stories have this moment where the character is just like nah I don't really want to get into this you'll also see it in other genres like romance where maybe the main character doesn't really want to get into romance right now she's more interested in something else you know maybe there's something going on with her family or at

work or she's just more interested in her career you know there's lots of different reasons why you might have a refusal of the call but for the most part this is a element that shows up fairly frequently that said not always particularly in shorter fiction you might have the character just go from the inciting incident directly into the main conflict of the story which is why I am only putting this one here at the B tier with the mentor and the information Gap all right now if you have a particularly strong refusal of the call

sometimes there's an added nudge needed to really get the character going onto their Quest and into the main meat of the story and that's what we call the pull out the rug moment which is where you know think of the image of pulling out a rug the character gets upended and they pretty much have to continue going on throughout the story it's almost like a second inciting incident if the character is unable to really get going after the first inciting incident but because of that it can sometimes feel a little redundant if not done correctly

and sometimes you don't actually need it sometimes the character is just willing to go on and enter the new world after the inciting incident particularly if they've also met with a mentor who's encouraged them and so forth but if they have a particularly strong refusal of the call you might see this as well this the most famous example of this that I can think of is when Uncle Owen and a baru are killed in Star Wars and Luke is basically saying okay now there's nothing left for me here now I'm going to come with you

to alderon and so that's what that is but I find it to be a little bit more optional I don't see it in as many films and books that I read and so for that reason we're going to put it at the C tier all right now the next one we have is called the first plot point and this is basically the moment of transition between act one and act two this is the moment where the character after having gone through the inciting incident and you know optionally all of those other things that we discussed

they're going to be moving from their old world the place place of comfort the things that they are familiar with into a new world one that is unfamiliar a little bit scary outside of their comfort zone Etc and that moment can be a defining moment for the character and it's also where the conflict starts to get going and get really kicked into high gear it's where the story really gets started and where you'll start to see a lot more of the promise of the premise of the story itself so this is one of those things

that I actually would put into the here because the rising action that we get throughout a story which is an essential part of the story is something that is accelerated by that first plot point and is really important to the overall Rising tension of the story that's why I'm going to be putting that there all right the next one is the be story now the be story is a moment in the first part of the second act where the character gets to basically get a glimpse of what they need to change we've already had a

glimp of this already at the beginning when the theme is introduced or with the opening image as well as everything that we've talked about about the refusal of the call the refusal of the call is largely usually grounded in the thing that they are unwilling to give up but there's a scene usually involving a love character or a side character or the mentor character who really takes a moment to talk to the protagonist and give them information and usually there's something that tells them okay you need to actually change some things about yourself it might

not be as direct as that but that's basically what the Beast story is and it's an important moment to really explore the theme of the story in this scene there are a couple of scenes throughout the story that really explore that theme and this is one of them that said this is not one I would keep if I were doing a shorter story but it is an important one which is why I would put it here at the a tier you'll notice a theme developing among the the different options here in the a tier they're

all very character development related which is why I rank them so high but we're talking about plot elements here which is why there are a few that I rank higher than the a the ones involved around character development and theme all right after the B story we get a moment called fun in games this is a term stolen from Blake Snider who wrote save the cat he has a multi- scene beat at this point that gives you across multiple scenes a lot of stuff that just happens and usually there's a lot of growth in the

character at this point there might be montages there might be moments that are the kind of trailer moments like if you had a book trailer for your book and you were to really show off the kind of things that you're going to be talking about in the story and all the exciting things that happen a lot of those moments would come from this fun and game section it usually takes place over a couple of different scenes and is an important sequence of scenes to show growth of the character think about the Matrix this is the

moment where Neo is learning all of the different things about how the Matrix work he learns Kung Fu he has all of these moments with his mentor Etc the problem here is that it's set over several different scenes it's not entirely clear what those scenes should all be it's more of just a vague overview of like this is what should happen here I do try to go a little bit more specific in my 40 chapter plot module which tells you exactly what should happen across three or four scenes that I would categorize together as the

fun and game scenes and because it's not like a specific moment in time that's why I'm actually going to rank it here at the B tier the S tier I reserve here for almost the most important moments along the way and there is a lot of conflict that needs to happen between the inciting incident the first plot point and the next one that we're going to put up here there is a lot of conflict and rising action and tension that needs to happen and that all does kind of happen in the fun and game section

but it can also be super brief basically it could be just this first plot point and maybe the next section so that rising action can be done in multiple ways which is why I'm only putting this one here in the B tier but we do have other moments that are important and build that tension increasingly including the this next one the first pinch point now you can think of the word pinch exactly like it sounds we are putting pressure think of putting your characters in a pressure cooker we're putting pressure on those characters something new

is added to add urgency to the situation that they are in that makes it so that oh they can't just wait around to resolve the problems that they are having they have to really start taking action today and this is usually an important scene that happens in that early part of act two now like I said with the fun and game section it's not necessarily a one of the most essential plot points when you compare it to something like the inciting incident for example which is why I'm only going to be putting this up here

on the a tier but it is a very important scene and you'll see it in most films and novels so keep that in mind next we have the midpoint now this you could literally think of it as the turning point of the story it happens almost exactly in the middle of the story right in the middle of act two this is the moment where the character has another hint of death moment where they real I like if I don't make a change if something doesn't happen to heal this wound that I have in myself everything's

going to fall apart and even in more plot oriented stories that don't have a strong character Arc there is a moment of self-reflection usually where the character has a some kind of change that turns the tide in One Direction or the other it can go negative it can go positive there is usually some kind of false Victory or false defeat depending on which way you want to go and a lot of people will argue that the midpoint is the most important moment in your book I wouldn't necessarily go that far but I will say it's

one of the most important moments because it is the turning point where the protagonist starts to go from a lot of stuff happening to the protagonist to being more proactive and actually trying to do stuff themselves and taking that proactive approach can be a really important thing it's not going to work out very well in the long run as we'll see with some of the next plot elements coming out but in general the midpoint is a really important moment and so that is why I'm putting it on the S tier the next one on this

list is bad guys close in this is another term taken from Blake Snider in save the cat it is also another multic scene beat much like the fun and game section was and which is why I'm actually going to place it here in the B tier right next to fun and games this is where the bad guys start to close in exactly like it sounds it's where the conflict begins to really heighten and the antagonist is taking a much more proactive approach against the protagonist which means that the protagonist is really going to have to

do their best in order to survive through these next moments this is where the antagonist gets so close to actually defeating the protagonist is during this section where they basically have the protagonist on the run but like fun in games and the first pinch point the first plot Point all of this kind of has to do with that rising action and so they all sort of lump together which is why I'm not putting it up here in the S tier we do have a second pinch point where things kind of come to a head at

end of this bad guys close in section and we have another it could be a literal battle or internal figurative type of battle but it's another point where things get pinched right the characters are put under more pressure and it's just like the first pinch point but even more dire at this particular point in the story because we've just gone through the midpoint and the bad guys close in and things are not looking good but I would rank it at the same place that the first pinch point is ranked at because it's just another part

of that rising action that Rising tension as things get worse and worse and worse and then we get to a very crucial moment here that I'm not going to put it on the S tier but it's very close I very nearly decided to put it on the S tier the only reason I didn't is because it's not necessarily something you will see universally across all stories but it's pretty close and that is the All Is Lost moment I'm going to rank it here on the a tier I'm very tempted to put it on the S

tier because it's a really important moment and most stories will happen this where in fact you know what I am going to rank this on the S tier I think it's an important moment to have a moment where the character is just feeling lost that everything is not doing well the antagonist appears to have won and there's just no getting out of it or at least that's what it looks like that's the All Is Lost moment to go along with the All Is Lost moment is a moment called giving up now this is I'm going

to rank it here in the a tier because giving up is a moment it kind of goes along with the All Is Lost moment but it's just extenuating it a little bit to show the protagonist that they show their inner conflict and how important it was to succeed and then how not succeeding is affecting them right they are not doing well after losing everything from the second pinch point and the All Is Lost moment so things are not going well here which is why the character is in need of a pep talk which I'm also

going to rank at the a tier this is a moment where a character usually the mentor or the love interest or you know know any of the side characters that have been along for the ride so far they are usually the ones to offer the pep talk which allow the character to get over themselves and get going and it's a very crucial important moment and you'll start seeing this one in every movie you watch ever because most stories do have a moment where it takes a little bit of outside influence to get the protagonist to

like I said get over themselves and get up and get to work and that leads us directly into the next one seizing the sword now seizing the sword is basically exactly what it sounds like there's a moment where the character needs to prepare to face the antagonist one last time and so seizing the sword is basically a metaphor for Gathering the team Gathering any tools that they need creating a plan to take on the antagonist in the final battle all of that goes into seizing the sword some of this can be done very very quickly

and which is why I'm not going to rank it on the S or even the a tier because it's sort of an extension of everything we've talked around about here with giving up in the pep talk which are much more character focused and very important for that reason seizing the sword is just a you know a minor plot element that's a Prelude to the climax so I'm just going to put it here in the B tier but for all intents and purposes it's a very important moment now we get to the next one that I'm

super excited about and I'm not going to hide it anymore here we're just putting this one straight on the S tier and that is the climax every story good story at least has a climax it moves from the inciting incident to the CL climax those are probably the two most important moments that you'll see you'll see them in children's books you'll see them in short stories you'll see them in comic books you'll see them even in flash fiction you'll see them on the scene level every scene like I said should have an inciting incident should

have a climax among other things it is the most crucial moment it is the perhaps the most important moment of the story because it's where everything comes to a head it's where the theme gets to shine it's where we get to really look at why this story matters what is the change that occurs to make this story matter and that is the climax that's why I put it up here at the S tier with all of these others these are basically every single one of these are the crucial turning points for not just the plot

but also for the character to go along with this climax I have a moment that I've called the drop and the drop is basically just a moment within the climax I made a whole video about it so you should go check that out if you're interested it's just a moment of pause that usually happens inside of the climax before the actual Pinnacle of the climax itself is this moment of quiet where the character is really able to dig deep down and understand what it is that they need to change and then finally make that change

make that adjustment make that mental paradigm shift or whatever is needed in order to actually overcome the antagonist and that's why it's an important moment but it's really just a brief moment and it's done in many different ways and because of the flexibility that I'm going to be putting it down here in C tier that said I think it's a powerful tool that you absolutely should be using not just on the book level but at the scene level too anytime you have a climax you can have a momentary drop which is that moment of peace

right before the climax really hits then we have the resolution every story has a resolution and it's just a moment it's not particularly action-packed or exciting but it is a moment of reflection you can't just have a climax and then end it there you have to have a moment of reflection to understand what was the story about and why was it important and that's what the resolution does it also gives us an opportunity to see how the character has changed over the course of the story especially if the character has some kind of return to

their place of origin their Ordinary World where you can really see the difference of what has changed overall that's why this one is another s tier moment here because you'll see these pretty much in every single story as well even if it's very very brief that's everything for the S tier I have one last thing here that I call the after credit scene and it's another very optional scene that I personally like to include in a lot of my books it doesn't work for all genres but it's a lot like the prologue but at the

end of the story where you're hinting at the conflicts that are going to come think of it exactly like the end credit scenes that you get in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films that are teasing what's to come they're teasing that not everything is totally resolved they might tease a few things like some unresolved issues from earlier in the story that didn't get resolved in the resolution part part of the story those can come up here in general I think it's a great place to build excitement and build hype for the story but because it's not

a required thing it only really works well in more action-packed genres and in books with a series like you're putting this at the end of your book with the expectation that there's going to be more books Beyond it so it's a very optional thing much like the prologue which is why I'm putting it right here with the prolog in tier D so that is every plot element that I know of and can quantify here ranked as you can see if we look at just the S tier if you have a story even a very short

story that includes all of these things in it you will find that that story will be very powerful and will be a complete story because you've built empathy by having the character go through some kind of event that makes them compelling you've had an inciting incident to kick off the conflict and make sure that there's a point to the whole story you've had a first plot point which is more representative of the rising action that you need to have and moving from the old old world into the new world this can be a very brief

moment if you're doing a short story then you have the midpoint where things kind of get turned around you have an all this lost moment where the character is really struggling and then you have the climax where the character pulls off some kind of unexpected win assuming this is a positive non- tragic ending that we're talking about if it is a tragic ending then the opposite is true and then you have the resolution where everything every loose end is tied up at the end this is almost Universal not just for stories but at the scene

level too every scene should have most of these things as well particularly the inciting incident the climax and the resolution and all of these other things are in most cases essential except for maybe the prologue and the after credit scene I would use every single one of these if I were writing a full book or a screenplay but the reason I don't include all of them at the S tier is just because there's a lot of variability between different types of stories but if you look at this s tier and you look at say a

Mr Beast video you will find that the Mr Beast video hits all of these points if you look at a Dr Seuss book you will find that it hits all of these points these are much more Universal plot points than all of these others here although you will start to see these show up everywhere as well so that my thoughts on all of the different plot elements let me know in the comments if there's anything that I missed and anything you would include as an important plot element in a book additionally I did a full

video about my 40 chapter plot module which is a system that I develop that includes all of these in a 40 chapter lineup so you can make sure you're hitting every single one of these moments in those 40 chapters and so if you're interested in learning more about that I would go check that video out you can also download a cheat sheet for that 40 chapter plot module by subscribing to my newsletter so go ahead and look at the link I have down below for that and I will see you in the next video because

the so while this is oh gosh additionally I did a whole video about