The class was back by the main campfire this week. As the class arrived, Rick handed each of them a notepad.

"Afternoon, kids," he said, after the last student had arrived. "Today we're going to be talking about plot."

"In simplest terms, plot is what happens in your story, it follows your character as they go from Event A to Event B, to Event C," Rick explained. "Unless of course you're experimenting with narrative structure, in which case it follows your character from Event C to Event A, to Event B via Event X, and then back to Event C with detours through Events Lambda, Gyfu, and 47."

"Plot structure can be broken down into five stages," he continued, holding up his fingers as he counted the, off. "Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. Exposition is where you lay out the conflict or conflicts driving your story, for example Bob is hiding his unrequited feelings for Carol. Rising action involves the escalation of the conflict in the lead up to the climax, say Bob goes through increasingly ridiculous hijinks in order to keep his feelings for Carol from being revealed. Climax is the turning point in the story, where the drama is at it's highest, oh no, someone's let it slip to Carol about Bob's feelings. Falling action is where you see the fall out from the climax, Bob might run off in shame, or Carol might feel betrayed because Bob was lying to her. Finally, there's denouement, the end of the story where your conflict is resolved, and your loose ends are tied. Carol and Bob might decide to give dating a go.

"In more complex stories, in the course of resolving the main conflict of the plot your protagonist more may crop up that need to be deal with first, or what seems like the main conflict coming to a climax actually results in the main conflict being formed."

"Now some writers like to work from outlines, where they have all the major plot points all laid out, while others start with an idea and see where it goes from there," Rick said. "I'm not advocating either method, what works for one person mightn't work for another. However, and I cannot stress this enough, whichever you use, always make sure to periodically read though your work to make sure your plot is coherent. Get another pair of eyes if you have to, but do it, otherwise your reader is likely to fall into a plot hole and never be seen again."

Rick held up his notepad. "In order to show just how important coherent plot structure is, we're going to play a game. It's a version of Exquiste Corpse. On the first page of your notepads you'll all write a conflict," he said, then scribbled something down in his notepad. "Then turn to the next page and pass it along to another person in the class, who without looking at the previous page will write the rising action, they'll then turn it to the next page and hand it off to someone else, who'll write the climax, and then another will write the falling action, and another the denouement. Then, you can start all over again on the next page. After about fifteen minutes, we'll read out the corpses and see what kind of stories we've written. Got that?"

He waited for the class to nod along then continued. "After we've finished reading out the corpses, you can spent the rest of the class working on your stories, either by yourself, or brainstorming with a classmate."

[OOC: OCD up.]

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