Plot is a series of events

• Event is always logically related to the message, the theme, the conflict of the story and is psychologically related to the development of the characters in the story.

• Event is always suggestive, and to interpret a story means to discover the role the events play in conveying the message of the story.

• Every plot is a series of meaningful events as the writer selects the events which are meaningful to the message of the story, which reveal certain features of the main characters, their motives and morals.

• Plot is a planned arrangement of actions and events. They do not occur in a haphazard way, they are causally related. It means that each event is the result of some prior events, and the cause of some subsequent events.

''The king died and then the queen died"

“The king died and then the queen died of grief"

Modem critics distinguish five main elements of plot structure. They are:

Exposition which introduces the characters and describes the setting. It contains all the necessary preliminaries to the events of the plot. Besides it introduces the nature of conflict that sets the plot in motion. It's the beginning of an unstable situation.

Rising actions ( complications ) – a series of events which complicate and heighten the conflict, the beginning of the unstable situation.

Climax – the most important event of the story where the major decision is made.

Falling actions (denouement) a typically brief period in which there is less intensity of the conflict, and the untying of complications takes place.

Resolution – the end of the conflict, the beginning of the stable situation.

The elements of plot structure can be presented with the help of pyramid. It is called a Freytag Pyramid as the diagram first was proposed by German critic Gustav Freytag (19 C).

In exposition the writer introduces the theme, the characters of the story. It contains all the necessary preliminaries to the events of the plot, casts light on the circumstances influencing the development of the characters.

As to its length it may be compressed into one sentence or extended into several paragraphs. Extended exposition provides the reader with information about when and where the events take place, who the characters are and what the story is about. If the characters and backgrounds are not special, not much exposition is required.

Setting is a particular place, time and the social context the events of the plot are set in. A social context of a story is a product of time and place. We have to understand where we are, in which period of time, in which society if we are to interpret correctly the other elements in the story. We must learn enough about the society— its customs, values, possibilities— to know what the characters are free to do, to choose, and what they may not do.

Setting can be:

dark or light,

melancholy or gay,

real or imaginary,

concrete or symbolic,

"a slice of life'¹ or a cultural panorama,

a moment or an eternity

but it cannot exist without description.

Stylistic functions of setting

• helps to evoke the necessary atmosphere (mood); (the atmosphere of gloom in "Cat in the rain");

• may be a reflection of the inner state of a character (similarity between Mr. Davidson's actions and the merciless rain in "Rain");

• the setting as domestic interiors may serve to reveal certain features of the character. "A man 's house is an extension of himself". Such setting are metonymic/metaphoric expressions of the character;

• places the character in a recognizable realistic environment, including geographical names and allusions to historical events (London by Ch.Dickens);

• reinforces characterization by either paralleling or contrasting the actions:

"He was not interested in the snow. Sergeant never even noticed the snow. But he must have felt it seeping down his neck, cold, wet, sopping in his shoes. But if you had asked him, he wouldn’t have noticed it was snowing. Sergeant didn’t see the snow, not even under the bright light of the main street, falling white and flaky against the night. He was too hungry, too sleepy, too tired.

Mr. Dorset, however, saw the snow when he switched on his porch light, opened the front door of his personage, and found standing there before him a big black man with snow on his face, a human piece of night with snow on his face –obviously unemployed. " (Langston Hughes "On the Road").

The author has established not only the mood of the story but the possibility of its main conflict

The common thing for all good stories is the thing that until the resolution of the central problem the situation should steadily get worse, or more difficult for the protagonist and the forces against him grow. If the protagonist picks up a bat, the antagonist should pick up a knife. If the protagonist, picks up a knife, the antagonist should pick up a gun. Until the climatic situation the difficulties should increase as the result of positive changes made by protagonist. The protagonist doesn't sit by and watch the world fall apart, doing nothing. He takes an active part in destroying the world around him. Every attempt to solve a problem should make it worse and worse and create some new.

Plot of any story involves characters and conflict. They imply each other. The contemporary American poet, novelist, critic Robert Penn Warren said: "No conflict, no story".

Conflict is at the root of the unstable situation at the start of the plot. Plot itself will pattern this conflict, but it is conflict that translates characters and ideas into action. Without conflict plot cannot exist.

Conflict is a struggle between opposing characters or opposing forces.

There are four general types of conflict :

When the main character (the protagonist) is fighting against someone (the antagonist) or something outside himself we term such conflict external.

There the following types:

• man against man;

• man against nature (the sea, the desert, the frozen North, wild beasts);

• man against society, the established order in the society ( a conflict with poverty, racial hostility, injustice, exploitation, inequality); one’s set of the values against another set of values.

When the opposition of forces takes place inside minds of characters this type of conflict is internal (e.g. against opposing forces within themselves; against fate and destiny).

Internal conflicts are termed as "man against himself “ and they take place within the character and are localized in his inner world. The character is torn between opposing features of his personality and rendered through man's illogical thoughts, ambiguous feelings, opposing intellectual processes.

Climax is the key event, the crucial moment of the story, the point of high tension and drama. It is often referred to as the moment of illumination for the whole story because it is the moment when the relationship between the events becomes clear, their role in the development of characters is clarified.

Denouement (resolution) is the unwinding of the actions. It includes the events following the climax that bring the main conflicts of the story to the end. It is the point at which the fate of the main character is clarified.

An interesting denouement should feel inevitable, even if it surprises. A story may have no denouement being open ("open texts"). By leaving it open, unclear the author invites the reader to sum up all the events of the story and work out its ending by himself.

Now being aware with the main elements of plot structure you may answer the questions why the author arrange the story elements the way he did or how he prepares different unexpected plot turnings.

Here is a four step scheme of a story:

• create a character;

• give this character a problem to deal with;

• imagine at least three different ways this character might possibly deal with this particular problem;

• pick one of the suggested ways and imagine at least three different ways it a/ wouldn't work; b/ would make the character's situation worse (it's the shortest way to kill the character).

Any shift in the organization of the plot structure affects the total response of the reader. Any rearrangement of the components of the plot structure is meaningful, (e.g. the denouement placed at the beginning of the story creates a certain mysterious atmosphere, increases suspense, sharpens the reader's interest). It also affects the general atmosphere of the story and introduces the necessary mood, increases the tension and the reader's suspense. We may generalize the abovementioned by saying that there is a variety of plot structure techniques. Stories may have different plot structure:

The distribution of plot elements, or the narrative structure, can be simple (straight-line), i.e. corresponding to the linear sequencing of events. It can be also inverted, with the conclusion at the beginning of a story or with the exposition missing, or with any other deviations from the usual compositional order.

The narrative structure may have a circular pattern, whereby the closing event brings the reader back to the beginning of the narrative. A plot containing a subplot has a frame narrative structure. A complex plot includes a number of digressions, among them retardations (a slow-down of the narrative in the form of descriptions or reflections), flashbacks and flash-forwards (foreshadowings).

The backbone of a plot, or its presentational sequencing (фабула) is the sum of the main events which can be reproduced in a certain logical and chronological order by the reader of the text.

Presentational sequencing does not always coincide with the underlying compositional structure (сюжет), in which the arrangement of the plot events often violates temporal coherence and spatial relationships.

One can distinguish the following devices of presentational sequencing:

• retardation – a deliberate withholding information until the appropriate time.

• flashback is a scene from the past inserted into a story.

• foreshadowing is a look towards the future, a remark or hint that prepares the reader for what is to be followed.

• subplots (double plots and multiple plots) as additional plots are connected with the main plot through the relationships between the characters or by mirroring some lines of the main plot.