Dramatic Structure

Dramatic structure is the structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film. Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his Poetics (circa 335 BC). This article looks at Aristotke's analysis of the Greek tragedy and on Gustav Freytag's analysis of ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama. Northrop Frye also offers a dramatic structure for the analysis of narratives: an inverted U-shaped plot structures for tragedies and a U-shaped structure for comedies.

Many structural principles still in use by modern storytellers were explained by Aristotle in his Poetics. In the part that still exists, he mostly analyzed the tragedy. A part analyzing the comedy is believed to have existed but is now lost.

Aristotle stated that the tragedy should imitate a whole action, which means that the events follow each other by probability or necessity, and that the causal chain has a beginning and an end. There is a knot, a central problem that the protaganist must face. The play has two parts: complication and unraveling. During complication, the protagonist finds trouble as the knot is revealed or tied; during unraveling the knot is resolved. 

Two types of scenes are of special interest: the reversal, which throws the action in a new direction, and the recognition, meaning the protagonist has an important revelation. Reversals should happen as a necessary and probable cause of what happened before, which implies that turning points need to be properly set up.

Complications should arise from a flaw in the protagonist. In the tragedy, this flaw will be his undoing.

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