Fichtean Curve Plot Outline Template, Interactive Story Planning Dashboard

✦ No setup. No lull. Seven crises, each one worse than the last

Most story structures start with the ordinary world — the calm before. The Fichtean Curve does not. It opens in the middle of trouble and never comes back down.

This interactive HTML dashboard puts all nine beats in your browser with 36 guided questions, a rising intensity curve, a crisis calculator, and the one field the whole structure hangs on: your protagonist's core flaw.

✦ WHY THE FLAW COMES FIRST

Seven bad things happening in a row is not a Fichtean Curve. It is a list.

What makes the shape work is that every crisis escalates for the same reason — the flaw the protagonist has not faced yet. Crisis three hurts more than crisis two because they still have not changed. The climax is only winnable once they do.

The dashboard puts that field at the top of the Foundation tab, before anything else, because everything downstream depends on it.

✦ WHAT IS INSIDE

→ **Foundation** — premise, logline, genre, tone, audience, theme, and the protagonist's core flaw
→ **Crises** — nine beat pages: seven crises, plus Falling Action and Resolution. Each opens with a note on what that beat is for, then four guided questions
→ **Calculator** — pick your chapter count, from 20 to 40, and see roughly which chapter each crisis should peak in. Key crises marked
→ **Characters** — protagonist with the flaw and how it is overcome, the antagonist or opposing force and how it escalates, and two allies with what each crisis costs them
→ **World** — setting, conflict landscape, escalation logic, and the world as it stands after the resolution
→ **Overview** — a rising bar chart of all seven crises. If two bars are the same height, two crises are doing the same job
→ **Settings** — themes, and your data

✦ WHAT IT IS GOOD FOR

→ Thriller, horror, mystery and dark fantasy
→ Literary fiction built on one sustained conflict
→ Any novel where tension matters more than a gentle beginning
→ Writers whose middle keeps sagging, who suspect the problem is structural

If your book needs a quiet first act, this is the wrong shape for it — and that is worth knowing before you plan around it.

✦ HOW IT WORKS

→ One HTML file that opens in any modern browser — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge
→ No account, no subscription, no internet connection needed. Ever, not just after download
→ Everything you type stays in your own browser, on your own device. Nothing is uploaded
→ Saves as you type
→ Three themes: Dark, Parchment, Slate
→ Works on desktop, laptop, tablet and phone

✦ THREE WAYS TO GET YOUR WORK OUT

→ **JSON backup** — the full file, re-importable. This is the one that protects you
→ **Markdown** — your plan as plain text, ready to paste into Scrivener, Word, or wherever you draft
→ **Print** — a clean printed layout where the interface drops away and only your plan appears on the page

That last one is unusual for a dashboard, and deliberate: some writers want the crisis plan beside the keyboard on paper.

✦ WHAT YOU RECEIVE

→ One interactive HTML dashboard
→ An illustrated user guide
→ Your license

✦ PLEASE NOTE

This dashboard is in English.

Your work lives in the browser you open the file with, so use the same one each time, and export a JSON backup before switching computers or clearing your history.

Instant digital download; nothing ships. For personal writing use, not for resale or redistribution. Because downloads are instant, all sales are final — but message me if anything does not open correctly and I will help.

Define the flaw. Then let it cost them, seven times over.

AI-assisted: product content, code and listing images are produced with AI tools. Concept, structure and creative direction are my own.