Picture three scenes in a row. In the first, a detective interviews a witness who lies to her. In the second, a different witness lies. In the third, a third witness lies. Three obstacles, three lies, and the story feels like it is running on a treadmill. The detective is busy, but nothing is building. Now change one thing: make each lie cost more than the last. The first witness lies about a detail. The second lies about an alibi, and the detective's captain orders her off the case. The third lie comes from someone she trusts, and it undoes the one lead she had left. Same number of scenes, same number of lies, but now there is a slope. That slope is rising action.
Rising action is the structural lever I return to most often when outlining. When a middle sags, the fix almost always lives here.
This article focuses on one structural tool. For the complete framework, see the complete story structure guide.
What Is Rising Action?
Rising action is the section of a story between the inciting incident and the climax. It is the long slope of the plot diagram, usually the largest portion of any novel, screenplay, or short story. During rising action, the protagonist pursues a goal, complications multiply, and tension increases until it reaches the breaking point at the climax.
The term traces back to Gustav Freytag, who analyzed dramatic structure in his 1863 book Technique of the Drama and placed rising action on the ascending side of his five-part pyramid. His model centered on classical tragedy, but the concept outlived the form. Modern fiction, film, and television all rely on a rising-action phase, even when the story breaks from Freytag's symmetry in every other way.
What makes rising action work is not the number of events but their direction. Each scene in the rising action should increase what is at risk, narrow the protagonist's options, or both. When it does, readers feel pulled forward. When it does not, the middle wanders no matter how many things happen in it.
Escalation vs Repetition
The single most common failure in rising action is repetition disguised as progress. A character faces an obstacle, overcomes it, faces another obstacle of roughly equal difficulty, overcomes that, and so on. Plenty of events occur, but tension remains steady because the reader senses that the next obstacle will look and feel the same as the last.
Escalation means each complication is harder, costlier, or more personal than the last. It is the difference between three locked doors and a sequence in which the first is locked, the second is guarded, and the third requires betraying a friend to open. The obstacles change in kind, not just in quantity, and that rising cost is what the reader registers as tension.
A useful test: summarize each major complication in one sentence, then read the sentences in order. If you could rearrange them without the story feeling different, the obstacles are interchangeable, and the tension line is flat. Real escalation creates a sequence that only works in one order, because each beat depends on the damage the previous one caused.
Five Craft Levers for Rising Action
When I outline rising action, I think in terms of five levers. Not every scene needs all five, but every strong rising-action sequence uses most of them across its full span.
Stakes
Stakes answer the question "what happens if the protagonist fails?" Early in the rising action, the answer might be embarrassment or a missed opportunity. By the late middle, it should be something the character cannot recover from: a life, a relationship, an identity. Raising stakes does not require adding explosions. In literary fiction, a character risking honesty with someone who might leave can carry more weight than a car chase. The mechanism is the same: the potential loss increases as the story progresses.
Reversals
A reversal is a moment when a situation flips from apparent success to failure or from failure to unexpected advantage. Reversals disrupt the reader's prediction of where the story is going, forcing re-engagement. Aristotle discussed reversals (peripeteia) in the Poetics, and they remain one of the most reliable tools for maintaining tension. A good reversal feels surprising yet inevitable: the setup was visible, but the reader overlooked it.
Causality
Every complication in the rising action should grow out of a choice the protagonist made or a consequence of an earlier event. E.M. Forster drew the classic distinction in Aspects of the Novel (1927): "The king died, and then the queen died" is a story, not a chronicle. Add "of grief," and the sequence becomes a plot, because one event now causes the next. When obstacles feel random, readers disconnect because nothing the protagonist does seems to matter. When obstacles stem from previous actions, every scene gains retroactive weight.
The Midpoint
The midpoint is a structural beat halfway through the rising action where something shifts the protagonist's understanding of the problem. It does not resolve the conflict, but it reframes it. Screenwriter Syd Field described this as a turning point that splits Act Two into two halves, each with its own momentum. In a thriller, the midpoint might be the detective realizing the crime is personal. In a romance, it might be the moment when attraction becomes real vulnerability. Without a midpoint, the rising action sags in the center because there is no event to redirect the reader's attention.
Pacing
Pacing is the rhythm of tension and release across the rising action. Constant high tension exhausts readers, constant low tension bores them, and the solution is alternation. A tense scene followed by a brief moment of relief lets the reader breathe before the next escalation hits harder. Think of it as a ratchet: you can ease the handle back, but the mechanism holds, and the next pull clicks higher.
Common Rising Action Failures
Four structural problems recur in the rising action.
The first is the plateau, where obstacles arrive at the same intensity for several chapters. The protagonist struggles, but the struggle never deepens. The fix: ask what each obstacle costs that the previous one did not. If the answer is nothing, merge or cut until the remaining beats form a clear upward line.
The second is the coincidence trap. A new character appears with the right information, or a problem solves itself through luck. Every coincidence that helps the protagonist drains tension because the reader stops believing the outcome is in doubt. Coincidences that hurt the protagonist are more forgivable, but even those work best when they connect to earlier decisions.
The third is subplot sprawl. The writer opens several secondary plotlines during the rising action and serves them all equally, so the main conflict loses momentum. A subplot that complicates the protagonist's central goal adds tension. A subplot that simply exists beside it dilutes focus.
The fourth is the missing midpoint. The rising action runs from the inciting incident to the climax in a single unbroken ramp, and somewhere around the middle the reader's attention drifts because nothing has shifted. Adding a midpoint reversal splits that ramp into two shorter, more energized halves.
A Rising Action Planning Template
Below is the template I use when outlining rising action. Copy it and answer each prompt in one or two sentences. If a prompt takes longer, you have not yet found the beat. Keep compressing until each answer is a clear, single event.
Inciting Incident: What single event disrupts normal life and sets the protagonist's goal?
First Complication: What is the first obstacle, and what does it cost the protagonist?
Escalation One: What goes wrong next that raises the stakes beyond the first obstacle?
Midpoint Shift: What revelation, reversal, or discovery changes how the protagonist understands the problem?
Escalation Two: After the midpoint, what new obstacle is harder than anything before it?
Dark Moment: What is the worst setback, the point where success looks least likely?
Climax Setup: What final choice or confrontation does the dark moment force?
Fill in the climax setup last, because every other beat exists to push the protagonist toward it. Then read the sequence top to bottom and check two things: does each beat cost more than the one before it, and does each beat grow from a choice or consequence rather than arriving randomly? If both answers are yes, your rising action will hold a reader through the middle of your story.
Worked Example: The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) builds its rising action almost entirely on emotional escalation rather than physical danger, which makes it useful for writers who think tension requires action scenes.
The inciting incident is Nick's invitation to one of Gatsby's parties, which leads to their first real encounter and opens the mystery of who Gatsby is. The first complication is the reunion Gatsby orchestrates with Daisy, which threatens her marriage to Tom. The escalation moves through Gatsby's increasing recklessness. He flaunts the affair, invites confrontation with Tom, and refuses to accept that Daisy may not leave her husband.
The midpoint arrives when Tom discovers that Gatsby's wealth comes from bootlegging, reframing him from a romantic hero to a vulnerable fraud. The dark moment is the Plaza Hotel confrontation, where Tom exposes Gatsby to Daisy, and she wavers. The climax follows: the car accident that kills Myrtle Wilson, sealing Gatsby's fate. Each beat costs Gatsby more than the last, and each grows from his own choices.
Worked Example: The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games (2008) shows physical escalation layered with emotional stakes, the pattern most genre fiction follows.
The inciting incident is the reaping, the moment Prim's name is drawn from the bowl. Katniss volunteering as tribute is the irreversible response, the first plot point that locks her into the arena. The first complication is training, which establishes she is outmatched by stronger tributes. Escalation one is the arena itself: fireballs drive her toward enemies, a tracker jacker nest nearly kills her, and Rue's death raises the emotional cost.
The rule change announcing that two tributes from the same district can win together shifts Katniss's goal from personal survival to keeping both herself and Peeta alive. After the midpoint, escalation tightens: Peeta is gravely injured, the feast at the Cornucopia forces Katniss into direct combat, and the Gamemakers release mutts to herd survivors toward a final confrontation. The dark moment is the face-off with Cato, and the climax setup is the revocation of the two-winner rule, forcing Katniss to choose between killing Peeta or defying the Capitol. Every obstacle is harder than the last, and the personal stakes climb alongside the physical ones.
Helpful Tools for Planning Rising Action
Rising action is structural work, so the best tools let you quickly see and rearrange beats.
Index Cards: Write one complication per card, arrange them in a line on a desk or wall, and check whether each card raises the cost beyond the previous one. Cards are the fastest option when the order is still changing.
Milanote: The Milanote visual organizer lets you create cards on a freeform board, drag them into sequence, and add images or notes. It works well for writers who think visually and want to see the whole rising action on one screen.
Miro: The Miro collaborative whiteboard is useful when you plan with a co-writer or critique partner. You can build a beat board, connect cards with arrows showing causality, and leave comments on specific beats.
A Simple Spreadsheet: One row per beat, columns for the event, the cost, and the causal link to the previous beat. Sort and filter to test different orderings. Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet app works.
The right tool is whichever one makes rearranging beats easy enough that you do it. If moving a scene feels like work, you will leave weak sequences in place.
Take the story you are working on right now and list every major complication between your inciting incident and your climax. One sentence each. Read them in order and ask whether each one costs the protagonist more than the last. If yes, your rising action is doing its job. If you find two beats at the same level, cut one or raise it. Twenty minutes with the planning template above will show you where your middle needs work.
Related Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the most frequently asked questions about rising action.
What is rising action in a story?
Rising action is the sequence of events between the inciting incident and the climax, during which complications multiply, stakes increase, and tension builds toward the story's turning point. In most novels and screenplays, it is the longest section of the narrative.
What is the difference between rising action and falling action?
Rising action builds tension by escalating complications before the climax. Falling action follows the climax and shows the consequences of how the central conflict was resolved. Rising action asks what will happen; falling action shows what it cost.
How long should the rising action be?
There is no fixed rule, but in most commercial fiction the rising action makes up roughly half the book or more. In screenplays, it corresponds to most of Act Two. The key is that it should feel like it is always moving, regardless of length.
Can a story have more than one rising action?
Yes. Novels with subplots run their own smaller rising actions alongside the main one, and series nest a per-book rising action inside a larger series arc. The main plot's rising action should dominate, or the story loses structural focus.
What is the difference between rising action and conflict?
Conflict is the opposition between forces in a story. Rising action is the structural phase in which the conflict plays out through escalating events. Conflict is the engine; rising action is the road it drives on.
How do I fix a sagging middle in my novel?
A sagging middle is almost always a rising-action problem. Check whether your obstacles escalate or repeat, whether there is a midpoint that reframes the conflict, and whether subplots feed the main plot or distract from it. Cutting or merging same-level obstacles and adding a midpoint reversal are the fastest structural fixes.