What Is Rising Action? And How to Use It in Your Story

You may have heard the term ‘rising action’ before and wondered how to use it in your writing.

Rising action sounds fancy, but it is simply a literary tool that writers use to make their stories irresistible to readers.

In this article, we’ll explain what rising action is, provide examples from modern literature, and explain why it’s so important to utilize rising action in your writing.

What is rising action?

In short, rising action is the series of events that starts after the inciting moment and leads to the climax of a story.

Ideally, these events build in intensity, cranking up the conflict, tension and stakes in the story so the reader is on the edge of their seat by the time they reach the story’s climax.

Think of rising action as a rollercoaster that starts off slow and builds in speed and intensity until it reaches a heart-stopping conclusion. Each curve of the track serves a purpose. Every loop is interconnected. The ride is smooth and thrilling.

This is what we want for our reader. We want them to be so swept up in our story that they can’t put the book down. Rising action is your opportunity to create this experience.

In a thriller, rising action might be a detective investigating a murder and drawing ever closer to the villain. In a romance, rising action may be the journey of two people who are falling in love. In children’s literature, the rising action may be the main character’s journey to self-reliance.

No matter what genre or category you’re writing for, rising action is essential.

Rising action and story structure

To effectively create rising action, it’s important to understand how this element fits into basic story structure. In classic storytelling, Freytag’s Pyramid is often used to represent the events of the plot. If you are a visual person, this model can help you see your plot at a glance.

Gustav Freytag was a nineteenth-century playwright and novelist who developed a visual model for a story’s plot. He noticed that all of his favorite plays hit similar beats, which led him to develop a pyramid-shaped model for story structure.

Remember, plot is the series of events that form your story. These events are linked by cause and effect, and different portions of the plot serve different functions. If you find it challenging to visualize plot structure, creating a plot diagram may help.

According to Freytag’s Pyramid, the basic elements of plot structure are exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Each element serves a simple purpose.

Freytag’s pyramid

Exposition

The opening of the story, which introduces the setting, main character, and central conflict and concludes with the inciting moment that kicks off the hero’s journey.

Rising action

This is the series of events leading to the climax.

Climax

When the central conflict comes to a head.

Falling action

The events that unfold immediately after the climax.

Resolution

The final loose ends are tied up and the story concludes.

The rising action is only one part of your story, but it takes up more real estate than any other portion of the narrative. This is because the rising action begins immediately after the inciting moment and continues all the way to the climax.

Freytag’s pyramid in action

The rising action is Frodo’s entire journey to Mordor in The Lord of the Rings.

In Die Hard, the rising action starts when the villain, Hans Gruber, takes over the office building where John McClane’s estranged wife works. McClane’s attempts to stop the terrorists increase in their scale and intensity, building to a jaw-dropping climax.

In Titanic, the rising action is tied to Jack and Rose’s relationship developing. Every time they interact, the tension builds. The reader wonders if they will end up together or not.

In Freytag’s Pyramid, the rising action should be the longest span of the plotline. Some models show rising action as equal to falling action, but that’s not what we recommend.

The rising action needs to build steadily for the majority of the story, only ceasing when you reach the climax.

Why is rising action important?

Have you ever read a book that never seems to get going? Page after page, events happen and descriptions abound but there’s no sense of momentum. The story is flat, the events inconsequential, and the descriptions tedious.

This is when a reader will put a book down.

We’ve all been there! We want to love the story but it’s missing something. That ‘something’ is often rising action. Without a gradual escalation of tension in the story, it is far too easy to set a book aside.

That doesn’t mean that all novels have the same rising action. Rising action can take many different forms. The escalating tension in a story could result from physical confrontations, but it can equally result from psychological tension.

Conflict and rising action

Both external and internal conflicts contribute to the reader’s sensation of being swept into a story. Each additional complication builds the central conflict. External conflict is what your character struggles with in the physical world. Internal conflict is emotional or psychological.

Ideally, your novel will have both types of conflict to give your reader the richest possible experience. Remember, building conflict through rising action is key to making your story unputdownable.

We do not read a story to watch characters peacefully going about their lives with little to no trouble. We read stories to see how people deal with different challenges in life. We want to see the good guy escape his captors. We root for the girl who gets stood up for a date. We watch in horror as a character witnesses a murder.

Place as many roadblocks as you like in front of your characters! We want to watch them rise to the challenge and overcome it.

Rising action and character development

This is why rising action is so important: the reader bonds with a character who is struggling. No matter the challenge, if you allow them to share what they are facing with vulnerability, your reader will feel a spark of empathy and connect to your story.

With each plot event that unfolds, the reader feels that much more for your character. It is this bond that keeps them glued to the page, hoping that your character will succeed in the end.

Once the dominoes start falling, most people are not able to look away.

Examples of rising action

Now that we’ve reviewed story structure and understand the importance of rising action, let’s explore a few examples from modern literature. At The Novelry, we call these Hero Books.

Examining an existing story can help you develop your sense of story structure and see the many different forms rising action can take in a story.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

In Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, the rising action begins when the Moving Symphony arrives in a town called St. Deborah by the Water to perform King Lear. This is 20 years after the Georgia Flu and the end of civilization as we know it. The Moving Symphony is a group of actors and musicians who travel the Great Lakes region performing for the scattered remains of humanity.

They arrive in town to find it radically changed. It is now ruled by a religious leader called ‘The Prophet.’ Perturbed by the change, the Moving Symphony depart from the town toward the fabled Museum of Civilization, but their members start disappearing along the way, increasing the tension, suspense, and stakes in the story.

The novel also flashes back to the time before the Georgia Flu, showing us the character’s backstories and providing an even greater sense of rising action with the depictions of the many tragic deaths that occurred when the flu first broke out.

The main character, Kirsten, also searches for issues of her favorite comic as they travel, called Dr. Eleven. Every discovery she makes adds intrigue and momentum to the plot, which reaches a heart-pounding climax between the Prophet and Kirsten.

Though there are several subplots to Station Eleven, all of them build with increasing intensity, gradually elevating the tension in the story until it explodes. That is the function of rising action!

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

The rising action in Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín begins when Eilis Lacey arrives in Brooklyn, New York as an immigrant from Ireland after World War II. Eilis has come to Brooklyn for work as there were few jobs back home, but she finds Brooklyn is an entirely different world.

She’s living with an older Irish woman who runs a boarding house, and she’s taking courses to learn how to be a bookkeeper, but everything is foreign and terrifying—even the other girls in the shared home. 

The rising action picks up when Eilis meets Tony, a young Italian man who works as a plumber. Tony courts Eilis, showing her the joy to be had in Brooklyn, but she still struggles with bouts of homesickness and missing her family, which add to the emotional tension.

Will Eilis stay in Brooklyn and accept Tony’s proposal for marriage, or will she go home?

A death in the family calls Eilis back to Ireland, where she finds her relationships rearranged, both by her own change and by the changes happening around her. She struggles with her identity as her relationships with her family fall apart and a young man named Jim starts pursuing her, building to an inevitable climax where Eilis must choose her path in life.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins launches into the rising action of the story when Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games, a brutal winner-takes-all annual contest in a far-future dystopian world called Panem.

In this world, young people must fight to the death in an arena for the entertainment of the nation, and specifically the Capital, which has far greater wealth than any of the other districts in Panem. One boy and one girl are chosen from each of the 12 districts.

This year, Katniss’s younger sister Prim is chosen, but Katniss immediately volunteers to take her place. Prim is very young and would not stand a chance in the arena. The rising action continues as Katniss learns that a boy named Peeta will be her fellow District 12 tribute, and they depart for the arena.

As they train in advance of the event (which wants the best entertainment possible, thus the training), Katniss must manage other people’s perceptions of her and learn how to survive. Once they reach the arena, the action accelerates, with hand-to-hand combat and weapons in frequent use.

Katniss faces extreme dehydration, a forest fire, and challenges from Career Tributes (people who train their whole lives for the games). Alliances are formed and lost while the gamemakers play with the rules of the game, leading to a dramatic climax where Katniss and Peeta threaten suicide rather than kill each other.

The rising action in this story is visceral and intense, both physically and psychologically. By the time we reach the climax, we are on the edge of our seat waiting to see who lives and who dies.

In each of these examples, you can see how the pile-on of events builds the intensity in the story, creating a sensation of anticipation and expectation in the reader. With each plot twist, the stakes increase, keeping the reader close through the very last page.

Tips for developing rising action

If you’re uncertain as to how to develop rising action for your story, first know that you are not alone! Plot is a challenge that requires flexibility and determination to figure out, but if you keep at it, you will crack your story eventually.

A good way to spark ideas for rising action is to ask yourself ‘what if’ questions.

For example—Tolkien, Shakespeare, and Suzanne Collins may have asked themselves: What if Frodo’s travel buddies turned on him? What if Romeo thought Juliet was truly dead? What if Katniss encountered a swarm of psychologically poisonous wasps?

Think of your plot as a series of bricks that you’re piling up, building higher with each stack, much like Freytag’s Pyramid. It’s okay to change your mind about the order the blocks are in. It’s okay to toss some of them out. The building blocks of your plot can be rearranged as many times as is necessary.

It’s okay to guess. It’s okay to mimic a favorite story. As you build, your story will develop in unique ways and with your unique voice—just remember, you need a lot of action to keep your reader engaged!

Whether that is external, internal, psychological, or physical action, feel free to pile it on. Just ensure that the events fit with your plot progression overall. When in doubt, look to your characters. Often there is an opportunity for them to grow, and that’s where you can find a great plot point to spur your story forward.

Think of rising action as the rollercoaster you are designing, block by block, and make it every bit of fun that you would want if you were the rider.

This is your story and these are your characters. Rising action is your chance to make the most of them.

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