Beginning, middle, and end; complication, change, dénouement. Two thousand years later, in The Technique of the Drama, Gustav Freytag examined Greek and Shakespearean tragedies and drew a graphic like the pattern Aristotle described, a triangle showing the parts of drama: introduction, rise, climax, return or fall, and catastrophe. This is Freytag’s famous triangle or pyramid. John Gardner’s Art of Fiction helped make the link between tragedy and fiction:
