Rising Action Examples

Stories have a plot, and a plot has five main parts: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Rising action refers to the part of the story after the characters and setting are introduced and where the events of the story begin to create suspense as the character faces conflict. The rising action of the story includes the events that help to build toward the climax of the story. The action in a story can rise steadily, or there can be a series of rises and plateaus as the plot builds toward the ultimate climax.

The author introduces us the four friends in a story, and as the action unfolds, one of the friends has a terrible secret and goes to great lengths to keep her friends from finding it out.

A character in a story wants to audition for the leading role in the school play, but so does his best friend, so the character has to decide what he will do.

Examples from Literature:

In the first book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry discovers he is a wizard and travels to Hogwarts, where conflict with Draco Malfoy and other Slytherin students and enters into his first conflict with Voldemort, who is trying to steal the sorcerer's stone and live forever.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take the place of her sister Prim at the annual hunger games, and she must fight for her life in a "game" to win food and provisions for her district, or hometown.

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet meet at a masquerade ball, and they fall in love. The action builds because their families dislike each other, and then Romeo kills Juliet's cousin. Juliet plots to fake her death to be able to run away with Romeo.

In Disney's Beauty and the Beast, the action rises as Belle trades herself to the Beast in exchange for her father's freedom, but then finds herself falling in love with the beast. Yet, the townspeople fear the beast and wish to kill him.