Narrative Writing 02 Rising Action

typical plot structure has four different components in this lesson we're going to look at number two rising action rising action is just as the name implies it means there's increasing action in your story you do this by creating conflict in your story to engage your audience let me give you an example to show you why conflict engages your audience now in story your objective to get from the start to the end but if nothing interesting happens in your story then it's not much of story at all so you need to have interesting events occur however interesting events in and of themselves are not enough for example let's say on this journey fairy appeared along the way but if you just happen to meet the fairy and play with the fairy it doesn't really give you sense of increasing action it doesn't really engage your audience instead you need to create conflict or create OB obstacles blocking the path of your character in his or her journey for example dragon now suddenly you can't go straight from the start to the end you have to go around the dragon you have to overcome the conflict of the Dragon this is what creates the conflict and the tension and makes your audience engaged imagine you were telling story about going to school one day if in the story you talked about how you saw fairy by the side of the the road that may be kind of interesting but compare that to having dragon blocking your path on the way to school which story would you want to hear more so this is why we use obstacles and conflict to create rising action in order to create conflict to engage your audience here are couple of tips ask yourself what obstacle is stopping your protagonist there should be some kind of conflict that blocks your protagonists or your main character's path another way to think about it is to think of but instead of and rather than saying was going to school and sore fairy think was going to school but dragon blocked my path but creates Conflict by making sure you think about but instead of and you'll naturally include some kind of tension and conflict in your story now let's look at two examples first let's look at an example of some flat action where there isn't any conflict the bunny princess left her burrow and headed south along the River Bank towards the squirrel Kingdom as she hopped along under the Shady trees she saw fairy the bunny princess stopped to sing song with fairy and then continued on her way just like before we have fairy now story but there's no conflict or tension the bunny princess isn't blocked by the fairy so you can tell that this story doesn't really sound that interesting it doesn't grip you and make you want to keep reading this is probably one of the most common mistakes that lot of students make in their writing students focus on adding cool stuff and interesting things in their story but unless those things are creating conflict and tension it's not going to achieve the intended effect of making your audience interested let's try changing this example little bit to have some rising action the bunny princess left her burrow and headed south along the riverbank towards the squirrel Kingdom as she hopped along under the Shady trees she saw dragon the dragon shot out raging Fireball the bunny missing her by an inch now the example is very simple and of course it's nothing like some of the interesting stories that you guys like to read but it's very simple and clear example when you compare the first story to the second one clearly the second story is more likely to get you to continue reading you want to know what happens with the dragon and the bunny is the bunny princess going to make it out alive is she going to avoid the dragon or outsmart the dragon if you make sure to include conflict and rising action when you're planning your story you're much more likely to interest and engage your audience than if you just include bunch of interesting stuff that happens