The Five-Part Design
Five parts, at every level of a story.
A story movement begins when the existing balance is disturbed. Developing complications bring a character to a consequential decision, and action reveals what that decision means. This design helps you examine whether a scene or larger movement produces a meaningful change.
How it works
Robert McKee set out the five-part design in Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997). Its subject is how a story turns: an event upsets the balance of the hero’s life, and pressure builds until a choice with no clean answer forces an action that settles the matter. Shawn Coyne’s The Story Grid (2015) later recast the five parts as “five commandments” for every scene, sequence and act.
The Inciting Incident lands near 10%, an event that radically upsets the balance of forces in the hero’s life. Progressive Complications then fill a long span from 12% to 76%, each harder than the last, until the story passes a point of no return. At 78% comes the Crisis, a dilemma between irreconcilable goods or the lesser of two evils. In the Climax (80–95%) the choice is made in action, and the story’s value swings for good. A brief Resolution (95–100%) shows the aftermath and the new balance.
McKee marks nothing at 25% or 50%. Almost two-thirds of the timeline is one span of complications, and the force comes from escalation and the decision at 78%. Save the Cat! spends 68–77% on loss in All Is Lost and Dark Night of the Soul; McKee’s Crisis is a decision where every option costs something. The same five parts also work inside a single scene, so the model doubles as a test for any unit of story.
It earns its keep in revision. For a scene that feels inert, name its five parts and the value at stake at its start and end, such as trust or safety. If that value ends where it began, nothing has happened yet. A crisis with one obvious right answer leaves the climax nothing to prove, so sharpen it into two goods that can’t both be had, or two evils. The five parts are a small slice of McKee’s book, and the rest rewards reading.
The framework, part by part
Positions are illustrative comparison references, not universal timing rules.
- Inciting Incident (10%, Inciting incident): An event that radically upsets the balance of forces in the hero’s life.
- Progressive Complications (12%–76%, New world): Conflict builds, each complication harder than the last, past a point of no return.
- Crisis (78%, Lowest point): A dilemma: irreconcilable goods, or the lesser of two evils.
- Climax (80%–95%, Climax): The choice made in action; the story’s value swings for good.
- Resolution (95%–100%, New normal): The aftermath, showing the new balance of life.
Use it for
Revising scenes that sit flat, and checking that every unit turns.
Watch for
McKee’s book is a whole philosophy; the five parts are its skeleton.
See how your story works.
Explore 30 approaches to story structure through short films and illustrated guides. Bring an idea or a draft, build your outline, and compare how different frameworks organize its events.
Free to use. No account needed to write. Save a backup to keep your work.
A short film on every structure
Each of the 30 structures has a 90-second animation that draws its shape beat by beat, and a page with every beat, how its parts work, questions to try, and when it can help. Start with one you’ve heard of.
All 30 structures on one timeline
Each row is one structure. The story runs left to right, from the first page (0%) to the last (100%). Bars are beats that last a while; diamonds are single moments. Drag the red line to any point, and the list below shows the nearby beats in each structure.
- Bar: a beat that lasts a while
- Diamond: a beat at one moment
- Red line: the point you’re reading
- A blank stretch: that structure names no beat there
- Act II-A and II-B are the two halves of Act Two, split at the midpoint.
Rows 1 to 13 follow Robert Carlson’s Ultimate Story Structure Chart (2015). Rows 14 to 21 are the structures readers of that thread asked him to add, and rows 22 to 30 are nine more we added. Positions combine source conventions and editorial estimates. Use them to compare approaches; they are not universal timing rules.
† Credited on Carlson’s chart. We found no primary source; the tree line is also credited to George Abbott and George M. Cohan.
Outline your story in any structure
Choose a framework and give its prompts a few sentences. Compare suggested placements in other frameworks to find a useful question or a different way to develop an event.
Pick a structure you know
Not sure? Try one of these, or any of the 30.
Write a sentence for each beat
A beat is one turn in the story, like the Catalyst that knocks your hero’s life off course. Each beat comes with a question to help you answer it.
Compare another framework
The comparison suggests where your notes could fit. Review each match. You decide which prompts matter to your story.
We wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a Save the Cat! outline. These excerpts from our outline of Baum’s 1900 novel show how suggested placements change between frameworks. Unmapped prompts describe this partial outline, not a flaw in Oz. Pick any structure you know and try it with your own story.
Sketch your story’s ups and downs
Kurt Vonnegut drew stories as a line that rises when things go well for the main character and falls when they go badly. Draw yours from left to right and we’ll name the classic shape it’s closest to.
Take it to the page
The free 91-page guide has the full chart, a chapter on each structure, printable worksheets and beat calculators for films, episodes and novels.