9.2 Plot, Structure, and Narrative Order

Plot, Structure, and Narrative Order

Quick Answer: Story is the full chronological sequence of events a narrative implies; plot is the arrangement and manner in which a narrator actually presents those events to a reader — and the two are rarely identical. Traditional plots move through exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, but a CLEP passage usually shows only a fragment of that arc, so you must identify which stage a short excerpt represents from internal clues rather than assuming you are seeing a complete arc. Authors reorder story into plot using devices such as flashback, foreshadowing, in medias res openings, and frame narratives, each of which changes what information a reader has and when they get it.

Plot versus Story: Events versus Their Arrangement

Two novels can tell the identical sequence of events, a marriage, a betrayal, a death, a reckoning, and produce completely different reading experiences depending on the order in which those events are revealed. Story refers to the underlying chronological events themselves, the "what happened" reconstructed in the order it would have occurred in the world of the fiction. Plot refers to the sequence and manner in which the narrative actually presents those events to the reader, which may skip forward, circle back, withhold information, or open at a point of high tension before explaining how the characters arrived there.

This distinction matters on the exam because passage-based questions often ask not "what happened" but "in what order does the reader learn what happened, and to what effect." A death revealed in the first sentence, with the rest of the passage explaining how it came about, produces suspense of a different kind (how, not whether) than a death withheld until a final line. The story may be identical; the plot's arrangement determines the reading experience.

Freytag's Arc: Exposition Through Resolution in Short Excerpts

The classical model for plot structure, often called Freytag's Pyramid, describes five stages. A short CLEP excerpt will rarely contain all five; more often it drops you into one stage and expects you to recognize which one from context, tone, and the state of the conflict.

A passage that opens mid-argument between two characters, with accusations sharpening line by line and no resolution offered by the excerpt's end, is very likely a rising-action fragment; a passage that opens with a character reflecting calmly on events that have already concluded is very likely falling action or resolution, even without seeing the climax itself. The exam is testing your ability to infer structural position from internal evidence, not your memory of a specific plot.

Reading a Short Excerpt: Locating the Stage

Because you are seeing only a fragment, resist the temptation to assume the excerpt is self-contained or that it must include a climax. Instead, look for direction of movement: is tension increasing, peaking, or dissipating across the lines you can see? A passage can end on unresolved tension precisely because it was extracted from a rising-action stretch, and a question that asks "what will most likely happen next" is asking you to extrapolate along the trajectory the excerpt establishes, not to guess a random future event.

Manipulating Narrative Order

Beyond the five-stage arc, authors reorder how story events reach the reader using several recurring devices.

Flashback (Analepsis)

A flashback interrupts the narrative's present action to present an earlier event, typically to explain a character's current behavior, motivation, or a fact the reader needs to make sense of the present scene. Flashbacks are usually marked by a shift in verb tense, a clear transitional cue, or an explicit signal that the narrative has moved backward in time.

Original example:

Daniel gripped the railing and would not look down. He had not looked down since the summer he was nine, when the barn roof gave way beneath him and the ground rushed up before anyone could catch him.

The second sentence moves backward to an earlier, formative event, explaining the present action (his refusal to look down) through information from the story's past.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing plants a hint of a future event before it occurs, creating anticipation on a first reading and retrospective significance on a second. Unlike flashback, which moves backward, foreshadowing points forward; its content is often understated or ambiguous enough that its significance only becomes clear once the anticipated event actually happens.

Original example:

She left the letter unopened on the mantel for months, telling herself there would be time enough to read it later.

This detail foreshadows a future regret or consequence tied to the unread letter, without yet stating what that consequence will be.

In Medias Res

In medias res ("into the middle of things") opens a narrative already in motion, at a point of action or tension, withholding the exposition that would normally precede it. Necessary background is typically supplied afterward, often through dialogue, brief exposition, or flashback, once the reader's attention has already been captured by the opening action.

Original example:

Gunfire cracked somewhere behind the market stalls before Elena understood that the argument she had walked past ten minutes earlier had become a war.

The passage begins mid-crisis, with the reader dropped into action whose full context (the earlier argument, its escalation) has not yet been explained.

Frame Narrative

A frame narrative (or frame story) encloses one narrative inside another: an outer narrator or situation introduces and eventually returns to close a story told within it, often by a different narrator. The frame can create distance, mediate an unreliable or unusual voice, or comment on how and why the embedded story is being told.

Original example: a passenger boards a night train and finds an elderly stranger willing to tell the story of a shipwreck decades earlier; the excerpt spends its opening lines establishing the train compartment (the frame) before turning over most of its length to the stranger's embedded tale.

Comparing the Narrative Order Devices

Exam Application: Order Clues in a Fragment

When a CLEP prose excerpt does not proceed in strict chronological order, identify the reordering device before answering questions about its effect. A sudden tense shift or an explicit reference to an earlier time signals flashback; an unexplained, charged detail with no immediate payoff signals foreshadowing; an opening that assumes context the reader has not yet been given signals in medias res; and a narrator explicitly introducing another speaker's story signals a frame. In every case, the exam is testing not just recognition of the device's name but your ability to explain what the reordering accomplishes that strict chronological order would not, whether that is building suspense, delaying judgment, mediating a voice, or compressing exposition into a more dramatically efficient shape.