Lesson 1.1 · Unit 1 · RL.9-10.3 and RL.9-10.5
What makes a sequence of events a story
A list of things that happened is not a story. What converts one into the other is conflict, and once you can name the conflict in a piece of fiction you can usually explain everything else about it.
- Plot is the arrangement of events, not the events themselves, which is why two writers given the same story can produce different plots.
- Conflict is a character wanting something and something standing in the way, and without it events are only a sequence.
- External conflict sets a character against another person, against nature, against society, or against a machine or system.
- Internal conflict sets a character against themselves, between two things they want or between what they want and what they believe they should do.
- The five stages are exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution, and they describe most stories without describing all of them.
- The climax is the moment the conflict is decided, not the most exciting moment, and the two are often different.
- Stakes are what the character loses if they fail, and a conflict without stakes produces no tension however much action it contains.
- The best stories usually run two conflicts at once, an external one that drives the events and an internal one that gives them meaning.
Where students lose marks: naming the climax as the most dramatic scene. Ask instead where the conflict stops being in doubt, which is sometimes a quiet moment several pages earlier.
The text. Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour", 1894. Public domain.
She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
Step one: state the events in order. A woman is told her husband has died in a railway accident. She weeps, goes upstairs alone, sits in a chair, gradually feels something approaching, recognizes it as freedom, comes downstairs, and sees her husband walk through the door.
Step two: find the conflict. Not the accident, which is over before the story starts. The conflict is inside her: she has just lost a husband she did not hate, and she is discovering that she wanted to be free of him. The two feelings cannot both be honored.
Step three: notice how the passage shows that. "She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy." The sentence concedes that the joy might be monstrous and records her declining to examine it. That is a character in conflict with her own sense of what she ought to feel.
Step four: identify the stakes. If she admits the joy, she is a woman glad her husband is dead, which in 1894 is close to unthinkable for her to say even to herself. If she denies it, she gives up the first sense of her own life she has ever had. There is no outcome in which she loses nothing.
Step five: locate the climax. Not the husband's return, which is the last paragraph. The climax is in this passage, when she says "free" and stops resisting. That is where the internal conflict is decided. Everything after it is consequence.
Step six: test that claim. If the climax were the husband's return, the story would be about a mistaken report. Because the climax is her recognition, the return is what destroys what she just found, and the story is about the recognition. Choosing the climax correctly decides what the story is about.
Step seven: name the external conflict. It is there but small: a woman against the expectations of her marriage and her time. Chopin keeps it almost entirely offstage, which is why the story is two pages long and why nobody in it needs to behave badly.
Step eight: map the five stages. Exposition is the first three paragraphs establishing the heart trouble and the news. Rising action is her going upstairs and feeling something approach. Climax is the passage above. Falling action is her descent. Resolution is the last line. The pattern fits a story of a thousand words exactly as it fits a novel.
Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.
- Define plot.
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The arrangement of events, as distinct from the events themselves
- What are the two components of a conflict?
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A character wanting something, and something standing in the way
- Name the four kinds of external conflict.
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Against another person, against nature, against society, and against a machine or system
- Name the five stages of plot.
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Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution
- Define the climax.
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The moment the conflict is decided, which is not necessarily the most exciting moment
- Identify the conflict in "The Story of an Hour" and explain why it is not the accident.
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The railway accident is over before the story begins and nobody struggles against it. The conflict is internal: Louise has lost a husband she did not hate and is discovering that she wanted to be free of him, and the two feelings cannot both be honored. Chopin makes this explicit when she writes that Louise "did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy", which concedes the possibility and records her refusing to examine it. An internal conflict between grief she is expected to feel and freedom she actually feels
- Where is the climax, and how would the story change if it were elsewhere?
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The climax is the moment she whispers "free, free, free" and stops resisting the feeling, because that is where the internal conflict is decided. If the climax were the husband's return in the final paragraph, the story would be about a mistaken report and a shock. Placing it at the recognition makes the return the destruction of what she has just found, which is what the story is actually about. At the recognition of freedom; placing it at the return would make the story about a mistake
- Explain the stakes and why there is no outcome in which she loses nothing.
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If she admits the joy, she is a woman glad her husband is dead, which in 1894 is close to unthinkable for her to say even privately and would cost her every belief about the kind of person she is. If she denies it, she gives up the first sense of owning her own life that she has ever had. Both branches take something irreplaceable, which is what makes a two-page story feel weighted. Admitting the joy costs her self-image; denying it costs her the life she just glimpsed
- Why do the best stories usually run two conflicts at once?
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Because the external conflict supplies events and the internal one supplies meaning. A story with only external conflict can be exciting and has nothing at stake beyond who wins. A story with only internal conflict can be profound and may have nothing happen. Running both means the events press on a character's divided self, so what occurs outside forces a decision inside, and the reader cares about the outcome for two reasons at once. External conflict supplies events and internal conflict supplies meaning
- Why does naming the climax as the most dramatic scene mislead a reader?
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Because drama and decision are different things, and a writer often puts the decisive moment somewhere quiet. In "The Story of an Hour" the loudest event is the husband walking through the door, and the conflict was already settled several paragraphs earlier in an armchair. A reader who identifies the climax by noise will describe the story's subject wrongly, since the subject is whatever the climax decides. The decisive moment is often quiet, and misidentifying it misstates the story's subject