What rising action really means in story structure

  I got sick last year. Apparently too much stress, high blood pressure and a type A personality can do that to you--who knew? Looking back, I'm grateful. I had so many irons in the fire, it's a wonder I didn't clank. Many months slater, I've scaled back, feel better and rediscovered I like reading, a wow experience I never expected to find again. Books?? Yes, please. I love reading. One thing I've noticed--being how my usual pathway to a series is the free book listings on Bookdoggy and Dango, is the sheer number of people who don't  understand structure.

 People say it's all sorts of things--checklists, templates, required bits and pieces, etc, but it's really just a form of musical notation for writing. I mean, think about it? All structure is drawn as diagrams, even if it's nothing more than a couple of lines. It goes up, it goes down, it swoops or dips or whatever. 

Structure is simply a notation that tells you what story events are supposed to be doing at that point in the story. It's not telling you to go into a cave or bring out the mentor, or even howl at the moon. It's simply telling you that at this point in the story, story events on a meta level are supposed to be building or waning in intensity, and I think that's where it goes haywire.

Take a step back and think about the scenes in your story. If you have a sequence of events where the protag finds out the killer is really her boyfriend ( who is standing right behind her)  jumps out the window, runs down the street, and tries to find help then suddenly connects the dots between her boyfriend and the killer in her head, or walks instead of runs, then the structure of your events is off. A line pointed up means rising action or a build in intensity, it doesn't mean stop to rehash events (which is just explaining subtext anyway), or taking a second to catch your breath. Most story events are casual, which means they have a cause and effect sort of linkage.

e.g.

The woman realizes her boyfriend is a killer. 

He's behind her. Eeek! 

Time to run.

She jumps out the window and runs down the street.

Not

The woman realizes her boyfriend is a killer. 

He's behind her. Eeek! 

Time to run.

Oh yeah, it was that important clue that proved his guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. If not for that clue...etc.

Jumps out the window and runs down the street.

One is a nice straight line that builds in intensity, the other sort of sort of stalls out before picking up again.

It doesn't matter what the event is. If the event that comes after isn't of a higher intensity than what came before, the action is not rising. It's a drop in intensity which means it's going to affect your tension  and throw off the pace.

Does this mean you can't have any breathers or parts where you tell the reader it was really Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick because everything needs to keep rising until it drops again?

No.

It's just that in a sequence of rising events, you can't stop or go backwards unless that's the effect you're trying to get across. But you can group events of a similar intensity, so having her realize her boyfriend is the killer by connecting the dots, which rolls her realization and the method she used to figure it out into one, works really well because it's the same intensity and in essence the same event.

That's structure and how to use structure. 

And yeah, I tend to talk a lot, so a quick summary?

Structure is story notation on a meta level. Lines that point up (even if it's part of a curve or something) mean events intensify until it gets to the climax. or where it starts to drop again.  Lines that go down mean events "de" intensify. 

e.g.

Big shoot out and confrontation. The hero shoots the guy at the climax. (intense)

The guy falls over dead. (less intense 'cause he's no longer a threat)

Everyone goes out to dinner. (even less intense)

If you stall or sidetrack see if it can be rolled into the event before it. 

e.g. If you really want to tell the reader how the heroine reached her realization it's better before the actual realization

That book! That was her book. The only way he could have found it was on the body of the last victim. He is the killer! Eek! Jump out the window.

Not so good.

He is the killer! Eek! Jump out the window. That book! That was her book. The only way he could have found it was on the body of the last victim.