What is a narrative arc?
People have written books theorizing it, but here’s a short version that is sufficient for our purposes. A narrative arc describes the structure of a film or story’s drama from start to finish. It is most often rendered as a pyramid (this one by Freytag): The parts: Exposition (Act I): Background. This is the stuff you have to know in order to care about the rest of the story. Think about the first 30 minutes of any movie–this is the part of the movie when you learn most about the characters, their setting, what they care most about, what they fear, and what hardships or action they are likely to encounter and be forced to deal with before the story’s end. It’s true that some of this information gets delivered after those first 30 minutes, but it’s rare that you’ll ever be dropped into a story without beginning with SOME exposition. The exposition usually ends with an inciting moment, a moment of conflict that sets the rest of the film & the characters’ actions into motion. Rising Acti
