Meaning & use
storyline
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Meanings
nouncountable
The main series of events that a novel, film, play, game or TV show follows from beginning to end.
Grammar: Usually a singular countable noun: the storyline of the film; a film with two storylines.
Patterns
- the storyline of something
- follow a storyline
- a storyline about someone
The storyline of the film is simple: a lost dog tries to find its way home.
Viewers complained that the second season had a confusing storyline.
She wrote a detailed storyline before she began drafting the chapters.
nouncountable
One of several separate threads of action that run alongside each other in a long or complex story.
Grammar: Often plural in long series: the show juggles three storylines.
Patterns
- a storyline involving someone
- resolve a storyline
The romance storyline barely connects to the mystery at the center of the book.
Writers on the soap opera ended the character's storyline with a surprise move abroad.
Each storyline in the novel follows a different family.
Word forms
| plural | storylines |
|---|
Common combinations
- follow the storyline
- It was hard to follow the storyline because the film jumped between decades.
- a gripping storyline
- The game has a gripping storyline that kept me up all night.
- the main storyline
- The main storyline concerns two brothers who inherit a failing farm.
- a parallel storyline
- A parallel storyline shows what the villain was doing during the same week.
- develop a storyline
- The team spent months developing a storyline for the new series.
- a weak storyline
- Great acting could not rescue the weak storyline.
Synonyms and how they differ
- plot
- Plot stresses how events are arranged and linked by cause and effect, while storyline sounds more like the overall path the story takes.
- narrative
- Narrative is broader and more formal, covering the telling of events as well as the events themselves.
- story
- Story is the general everyday word, whereas storyline points specifically to the sequence of events rather than characters or style.
- scenario
- Scenario describes an imagined or planned sequence of events and is not limited to fiction.
Word family
- story noun
- an account of real or imagined events
- storyteller noun
- a person who tells or writes stories
- storytelling noun
- the activity of telling stories
- storyboard noun
- a series of drawings planning the scenes of a film
Commonly confused: storyline or theme?
storyline vs theme
A theme is the underlying idea a story explores, such as loyalty or loss, while the storyline is what actually happens.
Practice
Which sentence uses storyline correctly?
Choose one answer.
A storyline is the sequence of events in a narrative, so the first sentence fits. The second describes a theme, which is the underlying idea, not the events.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “storyline”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.