Intro: Michael Hague's Six-Stage Plot Structure

A lot of questions that I get from authors and a lot of edits that I give come from questions on story structure because story structure is quite literally the bones of your story. Understanding it and using it correctly in your novel is key to making sure your book is as strong as it can be. 

There are various different theories or story structures that can be ascribed to. There is no one right answer or one right structure that works for every author or for every story. Regardless of which theory you follow or which one you like the best, there are different problems and questions that come with each, whether it’s the story structure overall or the different pieces and how they all fit together and how they can work for you as an author.

I decided it would be really helpful to work through this. I can’t hit all the story structures in one go, so I thought it would be helpful to start with the one I use most in my editing and with the authors that I work with, which is Michael Hague’s Six-Stage Plot Structure. For the full video, go HERE.

If you aren’t familiar with this, I highly recommend you check it out. There are a lot of resources online and articles written about it. There’s a lot of graphs and images. You should definitely check out The Hero’s 2 Journeys, which is an audio recording of a conversation between Michael Hague and Chris Vogler about plot structure and character structure and the journey you take your heroes on throughout your novel. It is awesome, super helpful, and has a great explanation with a lot of examples. 

They work in film, so it’s more geared towards movies than it is towards books, but it really is just based on the idea of story structure in general and how to make it work for your story. But in general, as a quick overview, the basis for Michael Hague’s structure are these six stages:

1. Set up

2. New Situation

3. Progress

4. Higher Stakes/Complications

5. Final Push

6. Aftermath

Those are divided by 5 main turning points:

1. Opportunity/inciting incident

2. Change of plans

3. Point of no return

4. Major setback

5. Climax

But just looking at that from the outset, that’s a lot of terms, and there’s a lot of different ways that can play, especially for a novel instead of a screenplay because books don’t as rigidly adhere to a structure like films do. There’s a little bit more give. There’s different ways that you can structure things, work things to make it work for you, your characters, and your plot, which is phenomenal because it gives us such a wide variety of different books and different ways to approach things. But it also – in some respects – makes things a bit more difficult because you have so many options and you need to understand what you can play with and what might not work to be able to put yourself and your story in the best place possible moving forward. 

Again, there’s so many, so you don’t have to adhere to this one. Whatever works for you, I highly encourage you to do a lot of research into this to see what you might like and what works best for your genre, your characters, your plot, and everything like that. Adhering to some sort of plot structure can be the key to pushing your book to the next level. What we’re going to do for the next few weeks is really dive into these stages and these key turning points to understand what they mean and how to get the most out of them for your story. 

I’m excited to go through this with you and hopefully help you as you either write your story or edit your novel or whatever stage you’re at. So, definitely make sure to check back in next week when we talk about story setup – where should your story begin?

As always, don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or would like to hear more about something. I love to hear from you.

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And until next week, keep writing!