Why rename the narrative arc?

I recently created the first of six memoir journals. The first one is called The Memoir Arc. It started life as the narrative arc, but I felt a cold chill run through me – ok not that scary, but I don’t get a good feeling from the term narrative arc, so I renamed it for my journal.

And that’s not to take away what a great shape it is, but I like my name better.

Try saying ‘rising action’ to a room of novice memoir writers, and even on Zoom you can see their eyes glaze over and then they start to fidget and make notes that really don’t make sense, with another note that says, ‘is this where I get divorced or where the absolute disaster of my life happens?

The narrative arc is super useful. “Arc” comes from the Latin arcus, a bow – the curve of a drawn bow, all that tension held and waiting to be released. “Memoir” reaches us through the French mémoire, memory, from the Latin memoria. Put the two together, and you have exactly what we’re doing when we write our lives: drawing memory into a curve that carries the reader somewhere. And for a bit of added drama shoots the heart of your story into the readers heart.

Where does the narrative arc come from?

Contrary to popular myth, Aristotle didn’t invent it. In the Poetics, he observed that a whole story has a beginning, a middle and an end – which sounds like the most obvious sentence ever written, until you try to find the middle of your own life and discover it’s been going on for twenty-seven years.

Enter stage left with German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag with what is now known as Freytag’s Pyramid: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. He called that last stage the catastrophe, which tells you something about the loose ends or the cost of the story. Somewhere in there I am sure there is a helping of Shakespeare with a five-act structure.

And as you can imagine, as is the way of any model and creatives, different people have taken it and done something with it: the story arc, hero’s journey and probably an emotional arc and here we all are.

What makes it such a great shape?

It’s a mirror for a journey and what it feels like to live your story in your body. Something happens, tension builds, then a long exhale as you work out who you are on the other side of the story. Plus, readers recognise it. I read or listen to tonnes of novels and something instinctively knows the flow of the story. The shape gives the readers a reason to keep on reading. For me that’s a happy ending rather than a catastrophe.

Why can it seem so confusing?

Because it has come from theatre, and as you will have guessed, our lives are much messier than a play, though some things you watch do leave you wondering where the inspiration came from!

Also, I think that the structure makes you feel like you are stepping into a cage that doesn’t take into account that some things happen in a flash, others over decades and not everything is super dramatic.

I know when I first saw it I glazed over – the words: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution – made little sense and, typical of me, I needed to unpick it and add in prompts so that anyone who is struggling gets the gist.

What is the Memoir Arc?

It’s quite simply one shape of a story. When you strip away the textbook terminology, every story of human change moves through six natural stages. These are the six movements of the Memoir Arc, in plain language.

The Six Movements in Plain Language

Literary textbooks are filled with academic jargon: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. But your life is not a three-act play or a film script. It is an organic, lived experience. When you strip away the classroom terminology, every story of human change moves through six natural stages:

1. Setting the Scene (The Baseline)

Classical: Exposition

This is your normal world before everything began to change. Your daily habits, the kettle boiling on the stove, your unquestioned assumptions, the relationships that kept you steady in a crazy world, and the restlessness murmuring beneath the surface. It is not a catalogue of your entire childhood; it is a clear snapshot of who you were so the reader can see how far you eventually travelled.

2. The Spark (The Disruption or Realisation)

Classical: Inciting Incident

The disruption or an invitation. Sometimes it arrives with a lot of clatter: a phone call, a redundancy letter, a sudden diagnosis, a door slamming shut, or a terrifying morning you admitted a truth to yourself while while the radio murmured in the background. Often it arrives in absolute silence: a sudden thought while walking the dog, or clearing away a misted mirror. Whatever form it takes, it knocks the life out of its comfortable groove and makes staying the same impossible.

3. The Struggle (The Long Middle)

Classical: Rising Action

The messy, unglamorous stretch in the middle. In films, this part of the journey is shown in an energetic two-minute montage. In real life, it is months or even years of trial and error, second-guessing your decisions, using old habits to solve new problems, and trying to find your footing between who you used to be and who you are becoming. This is always the longest part of any genuine change.

4. The Turning Point (The Hinge)

Classical: Climax

The moment of reckoning. Not necessarily a dramatic explosion, but the point of no return. This is where you speak the words aloud, sign that bit of paper, stop pretending and pack a suitcase, physically or metaphorically. After this moment, going back to the old life is permanently off the table.

5. The Dust Settling (Finding Your Feet)

Classical: Falling Action

The immediate aftermath. Waking up the next morning on transformed ground. Learning how to carry yourself in an unfamiliar daily routine, feeling a surprising pang of grief for things you thought you were glad to leave behind, and taking your first tentative steps in an old way of being.

6. The Aftermath & Meaning (The Landing Place)

Classical: Resolution

The place where things integrate. This is not a fairy-tale ending where every loose end is tied neatly, and the prince carries you off on a white charger. Real life is far too interesting for that. Instead, it is a state of honest perspective: Who are you now? What did this rite of passage cost you? And what did it give you? What unresolved questions are you willing to carry forward with good grace?

Why does this make more sense to me?

Well, that’s easy because I changed the names to make more sense to me and hopefully others. I know what a Baseline feels like – the kettle, the routine, the low, boring hum of “is this it?” I’ve had Sparks that arrived by phone and Sparks that arrived while I was staring at the dogs. The Long Middle I could write a book about, and, as it happens, I have. When the stages have plain names, you can find them in your own life without a literature degree, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Why learn the arc before you write – and forget it while you do?

Knowing the shape before you start is like knowing the route before a long walk in the hills. You know roughly where the climb is, where the ridge might be, and where you’ll want to stop for a sandwich, a sulk and to rub your sore feet. That knowledge gives you the nerve to set off.

Then you put the map in your pocket and get on with it, sometimes going off track and sometimes utterly delighted with what you discover. If you write your memoir with the Memoir Arc propped open beside you, ticking off movements as you go, sure, you will have a story, but it won’t have a pulse. Your inner editor will be fixated on getting it right and making it perfect.

The key is to know it, map the moments so that you get a sense, and that’s in the head. Then you let the body take over – it knows the way, and it has your story in there waiting to tumble out.

Later you can come back to the arc, and you will see where the bits fit, still without being rigid. And what you might find is you no longer have a memoir arc but a man in a hole, and that’s a tale for another day.

But the point is – know the shape – let it go – write and then look at the shape.

How do you go from spill to soul?

Spill and soul is my way of writing. First you spill your guts – not literally – but metaphorically, and then you bring your soul to it and sort out your wonderful messy draft.

When you spill, you don’t think about dangling modifiers, commas or anything else. You curse and say what you really think of the ex. Your memory and raw experience speak, and it will be liberating with the manacles off.

In the second pass, you bring the soul. This is where you ask what it all meant, what it cost you and what it gave you. It’s where the Memoir Arc comes back out, and where you shape the spill into something a reader can walk through and actually get it.

If you don’t spill, the soul has nothing to work on. You cannot edit a blank page, and you do not want to publish something that reads like a diary.

What if your story isn’t this shape?

That’s absolutely fine. Braided memoirs weave two or three timelines together. Hybrids offer more wisdom, and men do fall in holes and climb out the other side. Words From The Wild is a man in the hole and a hybrid memoir. Journey of the Heart will be hybrid too, and I don’t know the shape yet.

My advice is to start with the memoir arc and use it as a lens to test your draft against. If your story wants to grow into something else, let it. We’ll explore those other shapes another time.

Where do you start?

With one question. Below there’s one for each movement; in my memoir journal there are more. Please don’t try to answer all six in a single sitting – that way lies a migraine or a computer flung out of the window. All you have to do is pick a question and spill.

Journal it:

• Setting the Scene: What did an ordinary morning look like before anything changed – and what were you pretending not to notice?
• The Spark: What was the moment, loud or silent, after which staying the same stopped being possible?
• The Struggle: Which old habit did you keep reaching for long after it had stopped working?
• The Turning Point: What did you say, sign or pack that made going back impossible?
• The Dust Settling: What did you unexpectedly grieve on the first morning in your new identity?
• The Aftermath & Meaning: Who are you now? What did the crossing cost, and what did it give? What questions are you willing to carry forward with good grace?

Write first. The shape can wait.

With love, Dale x