Plot diagram maker

How to fill it in

Pick a shape, then write what happens in your story at each numbered point. On a phone, tap a point or a box on the drawing and its box in the list under the drawing opens for typing; on a wider screen with a mouse you can also type straight into the boxes on the sheet. Rename any point by editing its label (a teacher might call the exposition The beginning), and fill in the title, name and date line at the top. Load the example story fills a plot diagram with a short story written for this page, The Salt Kite of Brinmoor Quay, so you can see a finished sheet before you start.

How the boxes make room. The boxes sit in a row above the line and a row below it. Every box in a row is the same width and keeps a 3 mm gap from its neighbours, as close to its point as that allows, so boxes never overlap and never run off the sheet. A box grows with its text, upward above the line and downward below it. On the screen the sheet simply gets taller. On paper the two rows share the space left by the title lines and the line itself; if a box still needs more room, its text gets smaller, never below 9 pt, and only then is the end cut off and marked …, with a note beside the print buttons naming the box. In our tests 400 characters (the most a box takes) fit in any one box on every shape, paper and orientation, and with every box full only one sheet runs out of room: six crises, with definitions, on A4 landscape.

To plan the book chapter by chapter after the arc is settled, the plot grid lays your scenes out by chapter and plot line, and can mark where a structure's beats fall.

Filling it from your plot grid

If you have outlined the book on the plot grid and laid a story structure over it, Fill from my plot grid draws that outline as an arc in one tap. Pick the grid (each timeline kept in this browser with events or plot lines in it is one); the page places the structure's beats on your chapters exactly as the plot grid does (by chapter count, or by your word counts when every chapter has one), and puts each beat on its point with its name as the label and, in the box, the chapter number, the chapter's title if it has one, and the title of the first card in that chapter (the leftmost plot line that has one). With the example outline's 15 chapters and three acts, the midpoint falls in chapter 8. Before anything changes, the panel lists every beat and its chapter, the beats it cannot place, and what the fill replaces: your text on those points, their labels, and the shape. Undo the fill puts the diagram back exactly as it was, byte for byte, as long as you have not edited it since. The plot grid is only read, never changed. On the plot grid, See it as a plot diagram under Structure opens this page with that grid chosen; the link carries only which of this browser's grids to use, never its text.

Where each beat goes. Three acts and Freytag's pyramid have a shape here; the others go to the nearest one, and a beat with no matching point is listed, not squeezed in. The three-act arc has no inciting-incident point, so that beat is listed; a seven-point outline's resolution, at 90 %, is the moment of success or failure, so it takes the climax.

The four shapes

Plot diagram (Freytag pyramid): exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Gustav Freytag described the five-part shape of a play in 1863; most classroom versions give the inciting incident its own point, and you can switch it off for the plain five. Story mountain: opening, build-up, problem, resolution and ending, the same climb in plain words for younger writers. Fichtean curve: 2 to 6 crises, each worse than the last, rising to the climax and a short falling action, for stories that open in the middle of the trouble (many thrillers do). Three-act arc: setup, plot point 1, midpoint, plot point 2, climax and resolution, with the acts marked.

Switching shape keeps your text. Text belongs to a moment in the story, not to the word on the label: the mountain's Opening is the exposition, its Problem the climax, its Resolution the falling action and its Ending the resolution; the three-act Setup is the exposition too. So the example story moved to the story mountain keeps five of its six boxes, and the inciting incident waits under Not on this shape until you move it, delete it or switch back.

With definitions adds a one-line meaning under each label, written for this page, on screen and in print: useful on a handout, or when you are not sure what a falling action is.

Printing, blank or filled

Choose A4 or US Letter, portrait or landscape; the diagram is drawn to that page and always prints on one sheet. Labels print at 12 pt, your text at 11 pt, and nothing on the sheet prints smaller than 9 pt, so it reads at arm's length. Print blank is the handout: the shape, the numbered points, the labels as you have named them, the definitions if ticked, an empty title, name and date line, and ruled lines 8 mm apart in each box. On A4 portrait a plot diagram's boxes hold 10 writing lines each (9 with definitions); on landscape, 6. PNG and SVG save the filled-in drawing at the paper size chosen, on white, with the fonts inside the SVG.

Files

Each diagram is kept in this browser on its own, and Your diagrams lists them by title, so a class set or one diagram per subplot is a tap apart. Save file downloads one diagram as a small JSON file (.plotdiagram.json, file version 1); Open file adds it back as a diagram of its own, beside the others, never over the one you have open. A damaged file, another kind of file, or one saved by a newer version of this page is refused with a message, and nothing changes. The backup on the front page saves every diagram along with the rest of your Dankstory work.

What it cannot do

• One arc per diagram: a subplot is a second diagram.
• The four shapes only: you cannot draw a curve of your own, move a point along the line, or add points beyond the 2 to 6 crises of the Fichtean curve.
• At most 400 characters in a box, 40 in a label and 120 in the title. With every box full on the fullest sheet (six crises, definitions, A4 landscape) the ends of some texts are cut in print; the page says which.
• No pictures, colours or fonts to choose; the sheet prints in this site's ink on white.
• No class accounts and no sharing: a teacher hands out the printed sheet or the file, and each diagram stays in the browser it was made in.
• Filling from a plot grid is one way and one time: it copies the beats' chapters in, and does not follow later changes to the grid (fill again), never writes anything back to the grid, and never fills the Fichtean curve, which no plot grid structure matches. Beats a shape has no point for are listed, not drawn.
• It does not judge your story or suggest anything; there is no AI.

Private by design

No account and no upload. Your diagrams are drawn and kept in this browser, and nothing you type leaves your device.