Freytag's pyramid

Freytag's pyramid is Gustav Freytag's model of dramatic structure from Die Technik des Dramas (1863), the German playwright and novelist's study of five-act drama. Drawn as a pyramid, its parts run "Introduction, Rise, Climax, Return or Fall, and Catastrophe," climbing to the climax at the peak and descending to the catastrophe; modern listings rename the steps exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement. Freytag also placed three moments between the parts: the exciting force, which begins immediately after the exposition and builds the rising action, is necessary, while the tragic force and the force of final suspense are optional. The model laid the foundation for the three- and five-act structures that followed, and its exciting force is the direct ancestor of the inciting incident.

For novelists the pyramid is the diagram behind most later diagrams: three-act structure inherits its shape, and its slope gives this glossary its rising action, falling action and denouement. Freytag built the model on Shakespeare's plays as examples, and criticism arrived early: Georges Polti proposed multiple plot forms in 1895 in lieu of Freytag's single structure. For serial writers the usable lesson is symmetry. The descent after the peak needs as much planning as the climb. See dramatic structure.