Plot
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Plot is the sequence of events that make up a story, arranged in a way that carries the audience from a beginning, through rising tension, to some kind of resolution. In fiction, plot is often engineered to create suspense or surprise, but in personal storytelling, plot is instead discovered, always in hindsight, based on events that actually happened to the storyteller.
As with fictional stories, true stories also follow a recognizable arc. Typically, a moment in time is disrupted by an event – a decision or diagnosis, a loss or a new opportunity – creating narrative tension as a new storyline unfolds and the stakes increase. That tension ultimately builds toward a turning point, the moment when a different future emerges, followed by the aftermath: how things resolved once the dust cleared.
Personal storytelling never needs an invented plot twist, because real life already provides plenty of genuine issues to deal with. The storyteller’s job isn’t to manufacture drama, but to identify which events best serve the intent of the story. This requires story elements to be condensed or eliminated altogether. In that way, the plot provides a feeling of intent rather than a sequence of random diary entries.
While real life happens along a straight timeline, plot in personal storytelling also doesn’t have to maintain a strict chronological order. A story might open at the turning point, then go back in time to provide the backstory. Plots can also alternate between past and present to show how previous events tend to shape what happened afterwards. It’s up to the storyteller to determine the order that best serves the story being shared.
Examples
“I spent six years climbing toward a promotion I thought would finally make me feel successful. When I finally got the title, the corner office, the raise, I felt nothing but a strange, hollow disappointment. That emptiness became the real turning point of my story – not the promotion itself, but the moment I realized I’d been climbing the wrong ladder entirely. Within a year, I’d left the company to start something of my own.”
“The headaches had been part of my life for so long I’d stopped mentioning them to doctors. Then one Tuesday, mid-sentence in a meeting, the right side of my body simply stopped responding. The diagnosis that followed changed everything I thought I knew about my own invincibility. Eighteen months of recovery later, I walked, unassisted, across a stage to collect the diploma I’d once been told I might never finish.”
“My mother and I hadn’t spoken in three years when she called, out of nowhere, on a Sunday afternoon. I almost let it go to voicemail. That five-minute phone call became the turning point that unraveled a decade of unspoken resentment, one careful sentence at a time. We buried her eight months later, but not before we’d said everything that mattered.”
“I’d kept my manuscript in a drawer for eleven years, telling myself I was still ‘working on it.’ A single rejection letter, oddly enough, was what finally pushed me to actually finish revising it, out of pure stubbornness. The turning point wasn’t acceptance – it was the moment I decided the drawer wasn’t where the book belonged anymore. It sold eighteen months later, on the fourth agent I queried.”
“I promised myself I’d never become my own mother, short-tempered and always rushing. Then, one ordinary Tuesday, I heard her exact words come out of my own mouth, aimed at my own daughter. That moment of hearing myself became the turning point where I finally understood my mother wasn’t the villain of my childhood – she’d just been exhausted, the same way I was now.”
these resources will make it more impactful!
The Essential Literary Techniques
The Essential Literary Elements
The Essential Literary Devices
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks