Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Goblin Fruit
Exposition
Tasty Girls
Kizzy is a teenage girl who's dissatisfied with her life and the lack of romance in it. Meanwhile, some goblins are watching her and trying to figure out ways to tempt her to give up her soul… and they think that they have a good idea. The ominous stage is officially set.
Rising Action
Tall, Dark and Handsome
A cute boy shows up at Kizzy's school and is basically everything that she's ever wanted in a dude. He's poetic and gorgeous and immediately starts talking to Kizzy. She's skeptical of this Jack Husk character at first, but also loves flirting with him and the prospect of something more happening. Things are on the move, Shmoopers.
Climax
Dangerous Dates
Everything comes to a head when Kizzy leaves her house in the morning to find that Jack Husk is waiting for her with a picnic basket. He wants her to skip school and go to the cemetery to have a breakfast picnic with him. How romantic, right? When she agrees, we officially have ourselves the point of no return in this tale.
Falling Action
Heed the Warnings
Kizzy starts to feel some misgivings about the whole Jack situation once they sit down for a picnic. First of all, she can feel all sorts of ghosts—including her grandmother—trying to send her warning messages. Additionally, she keeps looking at the cheese knife and thinking about all the stories of goblins that she's heard throughout her life. In other words, girl is realizing that Jack Husk is a goblin. Oops.
Resolution
A Kiss to End All Kisses
In the end, Kizzy decides to ignore all the warning bells ringing in her head (and all around her) in favor of just kissing Jack Husk. He might be a goblin, and this might be her last kiss ever because of this, but Kizzy's willing to make that barter. She'd rather give up her soul than continue to live in this humdrum, dissatisfied way.
Spicy Little Curses Such As These
Exposition
Welcome to Hell
The story opens up in Hell, where an old lady named Estella is bartering with a demon named Vasudev in en effort to get him to let all of the kids in a recent earthquake survive. Vasudev says he'll only do this if Estella delivers a curse for him, though, which she begrudgingly agrees to do. She goes to the Political Agent's house and delivers a curse to his new baby daughter, saying that the girl will have the most beautiful voice in the world but that anyone who hears it will immediately drop dead. With that, we're officially waiting for this kid to open her mouth.
Rising Action
As Time Goes By
Anamique (the cursed girl) grows older but refuses to speak since she's afraid that the curse might actually come true. This upsets Vasudev, but he's thrilled when she meets a young soldier and falls in love. To Vasudev's delight, the soldier, James, doesn't believe in the curse and keeps asking Anamique to tell him that she loves him. Even though she's scared of speaking aloud, Anamique starts to consider the possibility…
Climax
Birthday Parties are Hell
Despite being warned along his way there, at Anamique's eighteenth birthday party, James proposes. At the last moment, though, he believes the curse is true and kisses Anamique to keep her from speaking her answer. When she realizes he's afraid of the curse, she starts singing out of offense. When she does, though, everyone at her party immediately drops dead and their souls are shuffled down to Hell, much to Vasudev's eternal delight.
Falling Action
Down the Tunnel
Anamique follows Estella and Vasudev down to Hell to beg for James's life. Even though Vasudev says no, Estella tricks him and trades her soul for all of the souls that died at Anamique's party, which is a pretty great trade. Well, at least for those souls. Anamique brings all of her loved ones back to life, and she solemnly swears never to speak while she's on Earth again.
Resolution
A New Sheriff in Town
Now that Estella's gone, Anamique serves as the new Ambassador to Hell—and it turns out she's pretty good at it. Her otherworldly voice enables her to convince Vasudev to let all sorts of souls live, and when she's back on Earth, she's happily married to James with three kids. Everything is hunky-dory. Yay.
Hatchling
Exposition
I Spy With My Little Eye…
Esmé wakes up one morning to find that one of her previously brown eyes has turned blue, and that she has all sorts of confusing new memories. Mab, Esmé's mother, reacts very poorly when she sees the eye, and starts yelling at the beasts to get out of her daughter. What gives? Mab explains that she's afraid that the Druj—demons who used to keep Mab as a pet—have found them and are using Esmé's eye to see out into the world. Creepy.
Rising Action
The Thrill of the Hunt
As the tension rises, we see that Mihai—the Druj who helped Mab escape all those years ago—is also looking for them now that Esmé's connected with all these memories. When Mab and Esmé are nearly overtaken by a pack of Druj who have shape-shifted into wolves, Mihai jumps in and helps them. In doing so, though, he also grabs Esmé and takes her to the ancient Druj city of Tajbel without Mab's consent. Huh…
Climax
A Whole New World
Once in Tajbel, Mihai leads Esmé to a chapel where the Druj Queen's lifeless body sits on a throne. He explains to her that when she was an unborn baby, the Druj Queen incubated inside of her soul—and now it's time for her to get out. The reason for the incubation is so the Druj Queen can understand human emotions and remember that the Druj were human once, too, but gave up their capacity to love in order to become immortal. Now the Druj Queen is going to separate from Esmé's soul, and Mihai hopes that she'll remember what it was like to be human.
Falling Action
Two of Us
The Druj Queen and Esmé go through an intensely painful separation process before the Queen returns to her own body. Throughout the whole process, Mihai reflects on how he's incubated in so many human souls in order to regain his own soul and emotions. He remembers that the Druj Queen used to be his wife when they were both human, and he hopes that she'll still love him. When the Queen returns to her body and realizes what's happened, though, she explodes with anger so Esmé and Mihai are forced to flee back to the human world.
Resolution
Back to Normal
Now that Esmé's soul is all her own, she gets to resume a normal teenage life. She starts going to school and even dates a nice boy who works at the flower shop. In the meantime, Mihai is waiting desperately for the Druj Queen to return to him. One day a bird flies down and perches on his leg, and he realizes that it is the Queen. She has come to be with him. Finally.