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.
Exposition
To the Moon… and Beyond!
Titus and his pals take a rocket ride to the moon for some fun spring break action. Our main guy Titus has recently broken up with his girlfriend, Loga, and is now looking to hook up with a meg youch unette (translation for all you tragically un-hip denizens of the 21st century: a super-hot chick). Lucky him: he bumps into Violet at the low/no-grav family fun center, The Ricochet Lounge ("Slam the Ones You Love!"), and they're are all set to have an off-the-chain night at the Moon's scenester hotspot, The Rumble Spot.
This opening section is full of exposition: we learn about the high-tech future, all about the feed, and we get just a teeny inkling that this high-tech stuff may not be all it's cracked up to be. For one thing, don't the kids seem a bit… um… incurious?
Rising Action
It's All Fun and Games Until Someone's Feed Gets Hacked
Things go south when a hacker messes with the kids' feeds at that super-cool night spot. Whew! Turns out to be an easy fix… unless you're Violet. Her feed was installed late, meaning that it can't be fixed so easily, meaning that her health goes downhill fast. Enter the first major conflict of the novel: Violet's body starts to shut down, and because she's not rich like the other kids, it can't be fixed.
To make matters more complicated, Calista and Loga get all catty with Violet, both for macking with Titus and with using vocab words that break the two-syllable barrier. This threatens to drive a meg-sized wedge between either Titus and his friends, or Titus and Violet. It also provides us with one of the major sub-plots of the book: Violet just doesn't fit in.
Climax
Here's What Not to Do at Your Next Party
The turning point comes when Violet has her seizure at the big party at Link's place. She screams gibberish about how everyone is food and then has a go at Quendy's artificial lesions. There's no going back after this moment of crisis. When Titus visits her in the hospital right after this event, he's disgusted by her, so we know that things are going to go rapidly downhill toward some sort of resolution.
Falling Action
We Are Never (Ever, Ever) Getting Back Together
Shortly after the worst party of the century, Violet reveals to Titus that she doesn't have much longer to live. Before she dies, she wants to work through a bucket list with Titus's help—but it doesn't go too well. Titus grudging goes along on a mountain getaway with her, but it's the most awkward vacay ever. Violet puts the moves on Titus and Titus… breaks up with her.
At this point, we can see that there's no hope for Violet. She's dying, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The one hope is that Titus will somehow pull it together enough to see how messed up the world he's living in is.
Resolution
A Valuable Lesson about Love
In the end, Titus seems to learn his lesson. Violet's dad schools Titus hard about how Titus treated his daughter, and the last we see of Titus is when he's sitting at a brain-dead Violet's bedside. He cries and tells her stories about their relationship, her life, and current events—like that there's total chaos in the world—suggesting that maybe he's started to wise up a bit.
We're not saying that he's going to turn off his feed or anything, but maybe he'll, we don't know, listen to NPR once in a while.