he held that the morality was the center of the play and what made it great. Unlike popular belief, he did not come up with the three act structure popularly known. Gustav Freytag The German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag wrote Die Technik des Dramas, a definitive study of the five-act dramatic structure, in which he laid out what has come to be known as Freytag's pyramid. Under Freytag's pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts: Exposition (originally called introduction) Rising action (rise) Climax Falling action (return or fall) Catastrophe, denouement, resolution, or revelation or "rising and sinking". Freytag is indifferent as to which of the contending parties justice favors; in both groups, good and evil, power and weakness, are mingled. A drama is then divided into five parts, or acts, which some refer to as a : exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and catastrophe. Freytag extends the five parts with three moments or crises: the exciting force, the tragic force, and the force of the final suspense. The exciting force leads to the rising action, the tragic force leads to the falling action, and the force of the final suspense leads to the catastrophe. Freytag considers the exciting force to be necessary but the tragic force and the force of the final suspense are optional. Together, they make the eight component parts of the drama. In making his argument, he attempts to retcon much of the Greeks and Shakespeare by making opinions of what they meant, but didn't actually say. He argued for tension created through contrasting emotions, but didn't actively argue for conflict. He argued that character comes first in plays. He also set up the groundwork for what would later be called the inciting incident. Overall, Freytag argued the center of a play is emotionality and the best way to get that emotionality is to put contrasting emotions back to back. He laid some of the foundations for centering the hero, unlike Aristotle. He is popularly attributed to have stated conflict at the center of his plays, but he argues actively against continuing conflict. Parts: Introduction The setting is fixed in a particular place and time, the mood is set, and characters are introduced. A backstory may be alluded to. Exposition can be conveyed through dialogues, flashbacks, characters' asides, background details, in-universe media, or the narrator telling a back-story. Rise An exciting force