Structure a Story that ACTUALLY Works: 10 UNIVERSAL Plot Points

If you’ve ever struggled to finish your novel, fill in the middle, or keep your plot emotionally compelling from beginning to end, this framework is for you. For over 15 years, I’ve used these 10 Universal Plot Points to craft every story I write—regardless of genre, trope, or length.

These plot points aren’t just surface-level structure. They’re grounded in transformational human psychology, incorporating both emotional logic and spiritual arc. Today, I’ll walk you through each one, show you how they work, and challenge you to apply them to your current work-in-progress.

The Foundation: Establishing Conflict and Kicking Off the Adventure

Stories begin in the World Before—a character’s status quo life that isn’t optimal, but is tolerable. This helps readers connect with the character’s reality before things start to unravel.

Next comes the Intro of Conflict—the first hint that the status quo won’t last. Something new enters the character’s awareness, like a piece of information or a mysterious change, but they don’t act on it yet. It hasn’t upended their world... yet.

That world is shattered by the Call to Adventure, also known as the inciting incident. This forces the protagonist to act—even if they don’t want to. It upends their life and sets the story in motion.

From Chaos to Control: Escalation and Turning Point

Following the call to adventure, we enter the Early Story Escalation. This is when your protagonist is reacting, scrambling, and overwhelmed. They’re facing obstacles they don’t understand, barely surviving, and certainly not in control.

But that changes at the Turning Point, usually near the story’s midpoint. This is a major pivot in both the plot and the protagonist’s mindset. They stop reacting and start acting with purpose. They make a plan. They begin pursuing their story goals proactively. This shift—from reaction to intentional action—is crucial in creating a satisfying character arc.

High Stakes and Emotional Depth: The Second Half of the Story

Once the character is charging forward, the universe pushes back. The Late Story Escalation raises the stakes and deepens the emotion. This is more than just harder battles—it’s emotionally devastating. Losses, failures, betrayals, or past wounds re-emerge. This is the part that should hit your character (and your reader) hardest.

Then comes the Climactic Face-Off—the confrontation with the main antagonist, which must transform the character. Within this moment, two additional beats occur:

• Uber Despair: The dark night of the soul, where the protagonist feels all is lost.

• Ah-Hah Moment: Just when hope vanishes, the protagonist realizes how to win. This insight often draws on something set up earlier or emerges from deep internal growth—never a deus ex machina.

  
  

Resolution and Character Transformation

After the final confrontation, the story moves into its Resolution. This is where we see the outcome of the protagonist’s journey. They should now live a life more optimal than in the “World Before,” having earned this through growth, struggle, and emotional transformation.

They’ve changed. They can’t go back. Whether your story is a standalone or part of a series, this emotional closure creates lasting impact for the reader.

Just remember: the 10 Universal Plot Points are a skeleton. You’ll fill it in with character arcs, worldbuilding, themes, and genre-specific elements. But using this structure will keep your story emotionally compelling and psychologically satisfying.

Are You Using the 10 Universal Plot Points in Your Story?

Whether you're writing a romance, thriller, fantasy, or literary novel, these 10 beats provide a flexible, universal framework grounded in how human beings naturally absorb stories. They keep your pacing tight, your emotional stakes high, and your readers hooked.

Take a look at your current work in progress. Can you find all 10 Universal Plot Points? Are any missing or underdeveloped? This framework will not only help you finish your draft—it will elevate the emotional resonance of your storytelling.

If you’re interested in writing fiction that leverages psychology, spirituality, and deep emotional arcs, I invite you to follow me and hit the notification bell so you don’t miss future breakdowns. I’ll be deconstructing popular books and films to show you exactly how these 10 plot points play out in the stories readers love most.

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Podcast Transcript:

Hi there! Do you have a great idea for a fiction story? A story you're dying to bring to the world, but you don't know where you're going with it, don't know how to fill out a compelling plot, and have a hard time sitting down to even write words, much less finish your story? Even when you do write, do you worry that it's boring, that it drags, and that readers are going to hate it? So you stay stuck, write and rewrite the same scenes, and eventually give up, ending up with a file of half-written manuscripts and glorious story ideas on your computer. Hi, my name is Liesl, USA Today best-selling author and writer of four genres, and I've been writing fiction for more than 15 years. I teach fiction authors to write highly emotional stories based on elements of psychology and spirituality, with an emphasis on your unique subconscious creativity.

Did you know that human beings cannot be emotionally healthy without stories? That we'd all literally go mad if we couldn't tell ourselves stories and derive meaning from them? It's true, and a scientifically proven fact. So grab your chocolate of choice and your fuzzy slippers. Let's turn that story snippet knocking around in your brain into a full-length novel that will give your reader that emotionally cathartic experience they long for, make you money, and change the world.

Who's with me? Hi there, and welcome to Six Figure Storyteller. Today I'm going to give you a rundown of my 10 universal plot points that can craft any story. These plot points are basic story structure, but they also pull in transformational human psychology, meaning the psychological and spiritual elements, and I have been using these 10 plot points for 15 plus years to craft every story that I create.

So I'm going to give you a rundown of them and how to use them, and let's just dive right in, shall we? All right, so first of all, we have the world before. This is the status quo, the world before your story, where the protagonist is before the conflict or inciting incident takes place. Generally, the protagonist is living a relatively mundane life, or one with which they are content.

Now, there is always something about their life that is not optimal, might be big or small, but they are tolerating it, being content, and not taking any action to change it or alleviate the problem. Then we have the intro of conflict. Now this is the thing, try that again, the thing that will end up being the central conflict of the story comes into the protagonist's sphere of awareness.

This could possibly change the status quo, and it will, but it hasn't yet. This can be a new person, new government, new friend, new love interest, change of situation, or even just the information the protagonist did not have before. The character learns about and absorbs this new thing, but does not take any sort of action that will change their day-to-day lives yet.

So this is not the inciting incident, this is just them getting some information, kind of learning something about what will eventually become the inciting incident, right? So then we have the call to adventure. This is what your inciting incident is, I call it the call to adventure. This is something drastic that happens that kicks off the protagonist's adventure.

This should be something they are forced to take action on even if they don't want to, and it is going to upend their world in a big way. So then we move forward to the early story escalation. Things get harder.

The protagonist feels immense pressure of things that are acting upon him or her. They are reacting to these things. They are often running, hiding, barely surviving, barely keeping their heads above water in some way, and the things acting upon them and putting pressure upon them are outside their control.

And very often the protagonist does not even understand why these things are happening, just that they are, okay? So they don't have a handle on the situation at all. Then we go to the turning point. Now the turning point is right around the center of the story, the midpoint of the story, and it's a major pivot for the character.

The characters at this point, they're not necessarily running anymore. They have time to catch their breath and figure out what's going on. They often get information about why this has happened to them and how to fix it.

Most importantly, the character moves from reaction to action. Instead of just allowing things to act upon them, they formulate a plan to push forward proactively in order to get what they want or achieve their story goals. So for the first half of the story, they're very much, as I said, running, hiding, things are acting upon them, and they're just doing the best they can to push back and react, but they're not being very intentional.

Here that changes. They hatch a plan. They actually very intentionally and preemptively go after their story goals, right? So major pivot from reaction to action.

That's very important. If you have a great idea for a story premise but you don't know where you're going with it, if you're having a really hard time filling in plot events or finishing your current WIP, or if you're constantly worried that your story is boring or dragging or that your readers won't like it, then I encourage you to join the Legendary Fiction Forge, my monthly membership for fiction authors. Inside, I will give you the complete A to Z blueprint for how to write highly emotional stories that your readers will absolutely fall in love with, no matter what your genre or tropes are.

Want to become a widely read, highly paid master storyteller? Then join us in the Legendary Fiction Forge and finally get that epic story that's been knocking around in your brain forever out to the world. Then we go to the late story escalation, which is going to be in the third act or around the three quarters, between the half and the three quarters mark. This is where things become far worse.

Our poor characters, right? Once the protagonist is charging forward toward their story goals, other forces in their world will start pushing back. This can come from enemies but also from weather, bad luck, anything else in their world. And the late story escalation should be much more dire than the early story escalation.

It should be emotionally devastating for the protagonist. This can look like someone dying, battles lost, villains getting a big win, disappointing or disheartening news. It can be a breakup, something from the past showing up to bite them in the butt.

You get the idea, okay? But again, the biggest thing here is that it needs to be emotionally devastating for the protagonist. Then we have the climactic face-off, otherwise known as just the climax of the story. Here the protagonist must come face to face with their main nemesis or antagonist or villain in some way.

Now this can be literal, it can be figurative, it can be both, but it must have a transformative effect on both the story and the character, okay? This is a point of no return for your protagonist's development. They're not going to be able to go back after this. Now within the climactic moment, we actually have the next two points.

The uber despair and the aha moment. The uber despair is something that happens during the climactic scene. The protagonist either doesn't think they will triumph, so they think the villain's going to win, or else has immense despair over something that happens in the scene.

This is their dark night of the soul. But then they eventually get the aha moment. Just when all hope seems lost, the protagonist realizes that they actually can triumph, or perhaps realizes how they're going to win.

Very often this is something within themselves, or something that was set up earlier in the story. Remember, no deus ex machina, no miraculously being saved from without, okay? It has to come either from themselves, from their own experience and intelligence, or it has to be something you have already set up earlier in the story. Once this realization comes, the protagonist takes action on it, and more than likely overcomes.

So the resolution then is how things are at the end of the story. How the main conflict in your story, or this installment of it if it's a series, resolves. Falling action.

The protagonist should have gained something that makes their lives more optimal than their lives were in the world before. So the world before was that first plot point, remember? It was their status quo, but there was something that was sub-optimal about their lives there. Theoretically, and of course it's going to depend on whether you're writing a series or not, but theoretically some part of that should have been resolved at this point.

But whatever they have gained has come at the cost of deep growth, wisdom, and perhaps suffering. Still the protagonist is wiser, stronger, and better for it, and cannot go back to the person they used to be at the beginning of the story. Now this is just a skeletal structure, clearly.

You have to fill in all the details. And depending on what kind of story you are telling, you're going to have to tailor this a little bit. You know, if you're writing a tragedy, if you're writing a romance, if you're writing an adventure, you know the genre, the tropes you're using, and the type of ending you're going for are all going to change what this looks like in your story.

But at the end of the day, you can always use this as story structure, just tailoring it to your own story, and it will always keep you on track. It'll keep your story from going off the rails. It's going to hit all of the psychological points of a story that readers subconsciously are looking for.

Following the story structure keeps the action rising the way that we want it to. It keeps the emotion high, and it does pull the reader through the story so that they aren't bored. So I am going to go ahead and challenge you to look at these 10 plot points for your current work in progress.

Do you have them all? Do you need to find more of them? I don't know, but you can use these to craft any story, no matter the genre, no matter the tropes, no matter the length, no matter the age range you're going for in readers. This is universal story structure. It is the psychology of the way human beings absorb story.

So it is universal and will apply to anything. If the psychology and spirituality of story structure interests you, go ahead and follow me and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss any of the deconstructions that I do. I'm going to start deconstructing films and books and really popular stories so that you can see these 10 plot points in action.

See you soon. Thanks for listening today. If this episode helped or inspired you in any way, would you do me a solid and leave me a review? Reviews help other fiction authors find the podcast.

You could also recommend it to a writer friend of yours so they can get the same inspiration you got. Remember, you have a story inside you that only you can tell. So get out there and write your soul story because your readers are waiting for it with bated breath.