ate, for the struggle which it
embodies will have been settled one way or the other. This final
situation will be the climax of the story, and its outcome or result
will be the denouement. The story will be ended because the struggle or
conflict it serves to embody will have ended. One force or the other
will have triumphed.

In considering the question of situation, the writer of fiction is
considering a more specific aspect of the question of plot. Usually he
desires to find a plot of real dramatic value, and likewise he usually
desires to find a situation or situations of real dramatic value. The
dramatic value of plot and of situation resides in the struggle between
the opposed forces which it presents. The more powerful the forces
involved in either case, the greater the dramatic value of the
conception. Each major situation of a story derives its dramatic quality
from the opposition of incompatible motives or forces that endows the
story's plot with its dramatic quality. In fact, it is not too loose to
say that the situation of a story is its plot, provided the main
situation or climax is meant.[B]

The purpose of the action or incidents of a story is to give the
dramatic struggle it embodies concrete expression. That is to say, the
dramatic quality of a story is specific in relation to certain persons
and certain events. Two definite men, for instance, will engage in a
definite fight over a definite woman. The writer will seek to
individualize the persons involved, which is a matter of description and
characterization, and he will seek also to picture the physical struggle
as definitely as possible, which is a matter of descriptive narration.
It is not enough to conceive a plot or dramatic situation; the writer
must also expand it into a story, which should be as concrete and
specific as its nature permits. Only thus can a reader be made to feel
the essential power of the whole conception. It follows that the action
or incidents of a story should be devised with a view to express the
dynamic elements of the plot and that no incident should be
incorporated in the story unless it will serve to build up some one of
the forces involved or else serve to illustrate the conflict of forces
that have been built up previously.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] Polti, in "The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations," uses the word
"situation" in a sense practically inclusive of plot. Plot is a word so
abused that it even might be advisable to