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Three act structure 

The three-act structure is a model used in writing, including screenwriting, and in evaluating modern storytelling that divides a fictional narrative into three parts, often called the Setup, the Confrontation and the Resolution. While it is a popular structure for screenwriters, many have expressed their distaste with the model, feeling it to be too restrictive.

Exposition
Provides background information needed to properly understand the story. It allows you to learn about the story, characters and setting. 

 

Rising Action

The basic internal conflict is complicated by the introduction of related secondary conflicts, including various obstacles that frustrate the protagonist's attempt to reach his goal. 

Climax 

Marks a change for the better or worse, in the protagonist's affair. 

Falling Action

Conflict between the protagonist's and antagonist's unravels, with the protagonist's winning or losing against the antagonist. 

Denouement

Comprises events between the falling action and the actual ending scene of drama and narrative where conflicts are resolved.

Diegesis

The internal world created by the story that the characters themselves encounter. Non diegetic occurs on the outside world.

Story

All events reffered both explicity in a narrative and inferred. The backstory to the plot.

Plot

The events directly incorporated into the action of the text and the order which they are presented. 

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory.

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