Falling Action: What It Is, Examples and How to Write It

Falling action is the part of a story that comes after the climax, where the consequences of the climax play out and the threads it leaves open are carried toward the ending. Dictionary.com defines it as "the part of a literary plot that occurs after the climax has been reached and the conflict has been resolved."

It is the fourth of the five parts taught in schools: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. The climax decides the story. The falling action shows what that decision does to everyone in it.

What Is Falling Action in a Story?

Falling action is the run of scenes between the climax and the final settling of the story. The main question has been answered, so the reader is no longer asking "what will happen?" but "what happens now?" The falling action answers that.

The term is a translation. Gustav Freytag, the German playwright behind Freytag's Pyramid, described a tragedy as a shape that rises to a climax and falls to a catastrophe, and the 1894 English translation of his Technique of the Drama calls the downward half the "falling action". His own name for the part is "the return", and he defines its place exactly: "the falling action, between climax and catastrophe, the part which fills about the fourth act of our plays" (p. 185).

In Freytag's account it is the stretch "where the consequences of what has happened are at work and the victory of the counter-play begins" (p. 186). That is still the best one-line description of what the falling action is for: consequences.

What Happens in the Falling Action?

Four things usually happen after the climax.

1. The consequences land. Whoever won or lost at the climax now lives with it. A victory is counted, a defeat is felt, and a price is paid.
2. Secondary threads close. A subplot, a side character's problem, a promise made in chapter three: these could not be settled before the climax without stealing its weight, so they are settled now.
3. Questions get answered. In a mystery, this is where the detective explains. In a romance, it is where the lovers say what the climax showed.
4. The new normal starts to appear. The reader begins to see the world the climax has left, which hands over to the final pages.

Is Falling Action Just the Story Winding Down?

Not quite, and this is where most short definitions mislead. Freytag thought the falling action was the hardest part of the whole drama to write: "The most difficult part of the drama is the sequence of scenes in the downward movement, or, as it may well be called, the return" (p. 133).

His reason was that the reader's main question has gone. "After the deed is consummated, a pause ensues. Suspense must now be excited in what is new." The writer still has to hold attention, so he gave two rules for this part. First, "that the number of persons be limited as much as possible, and that the effects be comprised in great scenes" (pp. 133–134). Second, "only great strokes, great effects" (p. 134). He also wanted fewer stages in the fall than in the rise.

So the tension does fall, but it falls with purpose. Each scene after the climax should still carry a question of its own, even a small one: will he be forgiven, what was in the letter, where did the body go.

Falling Action vs Resolution vs Denouement

These three terms are used loosely, and many guides treat two of them as the same thing. Here is the clearest way to tell them apart.

The falling action is movement: scenes in which things still happen. The denouement is rest: the final image, once nothing is left to happen. A resolution, strictly, is not a stretch of pages at all but an outcome. That is why Dictionary.com places the falling action after "the conflict has been resolved."

Freytag's own scheme has no resolution or denouement. His fifth part is the catastrophe, the hero's destruction, and the falling action leads to it.

How Long Should the Falling Action Be?

Short, in a modern novel, and much shorter than the rising action. There is no rule, so we counted three classics in their Project Gutenberg texts. The figures are our own and rounded.

The difference is structural. Freytag put the climax in the middle of a tragedy, so his falling action filled a whole act. Most novels now put the climax near the end, as the three-act structure does, so the falling action has only a chapter or two to work in.

What Are Some Examples of Falling Action?

Hamlet. Freytag maps it himself (pp. 191–192). After Hamlet kills Polonius, the return runs in three stages: Ophelia's madness and Laertes demanding revenge; Laertes and the king plotting Hamlet's death, ending with the news that Ophelia has drowned; and Ophelia's burial, with the gravediggers. Then the catastrophe: the duel. Freytag was frank about the result: "The three stages of the falling action are constructed less regularly than those of the first half."

Macbeth. Freytag uses it as a warning. After the banquet scene, he says, "the poet is through with the inner life of his hero" (p. 188). Once Macbeth has murdered the king and Banquo, "other opponents must bring the conflict with him to an end" (p. 187). The falling action passes to Malcolm and Macduff.

A Christmas Carol. The climax is Scrooge on his knees at his own grave in Stave IV, promising "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." Stave V is falling action, and every scene closes a thread from Stave I. He sends the prize turkey to the Cratchits. He meets the portly gentleman he turned away the day before and whispers a donation in his ear. He goes to his nephew Fred's dinner, which he refused. He tells Bob Cratchit, "I'll raise your salary". Only then comes the denouement, in one paragraph: "to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father."

The Hound of the Baskervilles. The climax is on the moor, when Holmes "emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank". The falling action follows the consequences: the search of the mire, where Stapleton "is forever buried", and the island where the hound was kept. Even a small thread is closed. They find the bones of Dr Mortimer's spaniel, which went missing earlier: "Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again." The last chapter, "A Retrospection", weeks later in Baker Street, is the denouement, where Holmes explains the whole case.

A Worked Example

Here is a short original story, with the climax and falling action marked.

Owen keeps the lock on a canal. A new inspector wants him replaced by an automatic gate. He has quarrelled with the Hales, who live on a narrowboat moored below him. The flood comes at night.

Climax. The water is rising behind the gates and the Hales' boat is pinned against them. Owen opens the sluices by hand, saves the boat, and floods his own cottage.

Falling action, too long. The next day Owen's brother arrives with a business offer, a journalist turns up to write about the flood, and an old flame from the village asks him to dinner. Each scene opens a question the story never asked. The reader stops caring.

Falling action, too abrupt. The next line is: Spring came, and Owen was happy. The quarrel, the inspector and the cottage are never mentioned again. The reader feels cheated.

Falling action, right. Three short scenes, each closing a thread the opening set up. Owen wades into his kitchen and finds the photograph of his late wife above the waterline. The Hales come up the towpath with shovels and dig out his mud without a word about the quarrel. The inspector reads the lock log, where Owen wrote down every sluice he opened and when, and closes it slowly.

Then the denouement: in spring, the gate is still worked by hand, and a new sign on the lock house carries his name.

Notice that each falling-action scene still has a small question (is the photograph lost, will the Hales come, what will the inspector decide) and that no new character arrives.

How Do You Find Every Open Thread Before the End in Deckle?

Deckle is a novel-writing app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Its Outliner lists every scene in the book, and its Codex keeps an entry for every character, with a Mentions tab that shows each chapter or scene that names them. Together they show what still needs closing after your climax.

1. Click Outliner in the menu bar, then Grid View to switch it to List View. Every scene is a row, with its Words, Status and Label.
2. Open any scene and click the pencil beside Status in the Inspector (Edit labels & statuses). The Metadata Manager opens. On its Labels tab, type "Climax" under Add New Label, pick a colour and click Add. Do the same for "Falling action" and "Denouement".
3. Open each scene from the climax on and pick the right one from its Label menu in the Inspector.
4. In the Outliner, click Filters and choose "Falling action" from the labels menu. Only those scenes stay. Read their Words: if the falling action is longer than the climax and the scenes before it, it is probably running on.
5. Now check the threads. Click Codex in the menu bar and open each character who matters to the plot. The Mentions tab lists the chapters and scenes that name them, in manuscript order, with a count for each. If the last manuscript row comes well before your climax, that character's thread has been dropped, and the falling action is where to pick it up.
6. For a thread that is an object or a promise rather than a person, type a word for it into Search in the Outliner's Filters. Only the scenes whose title or synopsis mention it stay. A thread with no scene after the climax is still open.

Threads you planted on purpose belong in the same check. A Chekhov's gun set up in chapter two and never fired is exactly the kind of loose end the falling action exists to catch.

Common Mistakes

• Making it too long. Every scene after the climax should close something. Freytag's rule: fewer people, bigger scenes.
• Making it too abrupt. Jumping from the climax straight to "and they lived happily" skips the consequences the reader came for.
• Opening new conflicts. A new character or problem after the climax belongs in a sequel, not the falling action.
• Letting the tension drop to nothing. "Suspense must now be excited in what is new," as Freytag put it. Give each scene a small question.
• Repeating the climax. If the reader saw it happen, they do not need it retold in the next chapter.
• Putting the biggest moment after the climax. If a later scene is more powerful, it is the real climax, and the structure needs moving.
• Calling every term Freytag's. He wrote introduction, rise, climax, return or fall, and catastrophe. "Exposition", "resolution" and "denouement" are not his names for any part.

Sources

Retrieved 1 November 2026.

• Dictionary.com, falling action: definition.
• Gustav Freytag, Freytag's Technique of the Drama, tr. Elias J. MacEwan from the sixth German edition (Chicago: S. C. Griggs, 1894; third edition, Scott, Foresman, 1900), pp. 133–135, 185–188 and 191–192. Page numbers above are from this edition.
• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Project Gutenberg 1524): word counts of Act IV and Act V scene 1 against the whole play.
• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), Staves IV and V (Project Gutenberg 46).
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), chapters 14 and 15 (Project Gutenberg 2852).