2 Draw a line to match each stage to the correct definition:
Stage Definition
Exposition A turning point in the narrative at the
highest point of tension and drama. Rising action A series of events that release the tension and resolves some of the conflict. Climax The introduction to the story, including characters and settings. Falling action The resolution of the story where everything is fully explained. Denouement A series of events that move towards a high point of tension and drama.
3 ‘The Red-Headed League’ uses this story structure. Use five different colours to highlight the five stages in this summary of the story.
The narrator, Dr Watson, meets Sherlock Holmes at home. Holmes is talking with Jabez Wilson, a man with very red hair. Wilson is a pawnbroker and has an assistant named Vincent Spaulding, who is working for half the normal salary. Wilson says that Spaulding is a good worker who goes alone into the basement of the shop to develop photos. Two months ago, Spaulding showed an advertisement for the Red- Headed League, which gives job opportunities to red-headed men. Spaulding encouraged Wilson to apply. They went to the offices of the League and met Duncan Ross, another red-headed man, who hired Wilson. The League paid Wilson to copy pages of an encyclopedia. He was not allowed to leave the office when working. However, after eight weeks Wilson arrived at the offices and found that the Red-Headed League had been dissolved. Holmes asks Watson to accompany him to a concert. On the way, they stop in front of Wilson’s shop. Holmes thumps his walking stick on the pavement and knocks on the door to ask Spaulding for directions. Afterwards, Holmes also tells Watson that he saw on the knees of Spaulding’s trousers exactly what he wanted to see. Holmes also notices that there is a bank behind Wilson’s shop. Later that night, Watson and Holmes meet up, along with a detective named Peter Jones and a bank manager named Mr Merryweather. Holmes says that they will confront a criminal named John Clay. The four men wait for an hour in the cellar of Mr Merryweather’s Bank, which is filled with French gold. Suddenly, they notice a light shining through a crack in the floor. Two men climb out and Holmes and Jones leap at them. They capture John Clay, who is in fact Vincent Spaulding. The other man escapes.
Later, Holmes tells Watson how he knew that the Red-Headed League must have been a plan to get Wilson out of his shop. Spaulding being willing to work for so little money alone in the basement suggested to Holmes that Spaulding was doing something illegal. Holmes thought that Spaulding was digging a tunnel to the bank. Holmes pounded on the pavement outside Wilson’s shop to determine whether the ground underneath was hollow, and he asked directions so that he could see whether the knees of Spaulding’s trousers were worn away. The fact that the League dissolved so suddenly suggested to Holmes that the robbery was about to happen and that he could capture John Clay.
4 Many other stories, from old plays to modern movies, use a three-act story structure, where the hero suffers a failure or reversal in the second act of the story that leads to a low point. Label the points on the line with the following terms:
