Chart your plot with the ultimate Freytag’s Pyramid Template
Freytag’s Pyramid is the shape of dramatic downfall: a five-act structure from Exposition to Catastrophe that traces a protagonist’s climb toward what they want and the fall their own flaw makes inevitable. Gustav Freytag drew it from Shakespeare and the Greeks, and writers have been plotting with the pyramid ever since.
This template turns the pyramid into a dynamic board system that will teach you the method as you plot with it. Like every story structure template in Reedsy Studio, it’s built around what its framework believes about stories — and Freytag’s Pyramid believes in inevitability. All five acts arrive as interactive cards, which include:
- The workshop — guided questions and exercises that pressure-test each act. “What central conflict lies beneath the surface — what is being suppressed, avoided, or denied in your protagonist’s world?” “How does your protagonist unravel in this stage?”
- The checkpoint — sanity check questions that confirm whether your protagonist’s fatal flaw is present and at work in this beat.
- The scene — space to summarize the act itself, with a worked example that follows Willy Loman through all five acts of Death of a Salesman.
This structure gave us Oedipus, Macbeth, and Willy Loman — and it can give shape to the downfall you’re writing today.
Build your story in five acts, from Exposition to Catastrophe
Freytag’s Pyramid unfolds across five acts in your Outline board:
- Exposition. We meet the protagonist, their relationships, their illusions, and the flaw that will undo them.
- Rising Action. The protagonist builds their own downfall while climbing toward what they want.
- Climax. Otherwise known as the point of no return, or the act where the fall begins.
- Falling Action. The consequences arrive. Everything bought on the way up comes due on the way down.
- Catastrophe. The fall lands, and the tragedy earns its meaning.
Every card is fully customizable: rename acts to match your story’s vocabulary, add your own questions, and check off acts as you complete them. Writing something gentler than a tragedy? Rename the Catastrophe a Dénouement, soften the questions, and let your protagonist off the hook. The pyramid — and our template — can hold any story with a rise and a fall.
Link your Freytag’s Pyramid to your characters and world
In a tragedy, the cast and setting can’t just be backdrop. They’re equally important instruments of the fall. That’s why this template is three boards, not one. Your Outline holds the five acts; your Characters and Places boards hold the people and world they move through; and @-mentions on every act card tie them together.
Rethink your protagonist’s fatal flaw on their character card, and it’s waiting beside every checkpoint that tracks it. Profile the spouse who keeps defending them, the child who stops believing, the rival who saw it coming, and link each one to the acts where the damage is done. You’ll oversee one story universe, with no loose threads.
Best of all, when the last act is checked off, your first chapter starts right here in Reedsy Studio — with your outline within arm’s reach for the entire draft.
Your pyramid, saved and synced on every device
Reedsy Studio automatically saves every change you make, so your outline is always current, always backed up, and always where you left it. And because Studio works on any device, you can plot the Rising Action on your laptop and rethink the Catastrophe on your phone.
In other words, the pyramid travels with you.
From first outline to finished book, all in Reedsy Studio
This template draws on a structure writers have trusted since Gustav Freytag mapped it in 1863 — refined by Reedsy into a workshop built for novelists plotting the rise and the fall.
And it’s just the beginning of what Studio can do. The same free app that holds your outline is where you can plan, write, and format the whole book.
The Freytag’s Pyramid Template includes:
- 3 interactive Outline, Characters, and Places boards
- 15 cards, including Character, Supporting Character, and Location cards
- A worked example following Death of a Salesman through the full pyramid, and a status tracker for every act
Beyond the template, Studio provides:
- A full library of planning templates — story structures, outlines, characters, and worldbuilding
- A distraction-free manuscript editor for drafting and revision
- Professional typesetting: export print-ready PDF and EPUB files
- Automatic saving, cross-device syncing, and collaboration tools
