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 (Initial Situation)
Danger Is His Middle Name
The last priest in a Mexican state hides from the authorities while doing his best to minister to villagers he meets. If he's caught, he'll be killed. He knows it, the villagers know it, and now we know it.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)
Conflict
What Is His Duty?
Should he stay or should he go? That is the question. If the priest stays, the people will be able to practice their religion, but they'll be corrupted by his sinful lifestyle. If he flees, the people—the children especially—will be free of his bad example, but they'll have no access to the sacraments. This conflict torments the priest throughout the whole story.
Complication
I'll Be Back
Like a ruthless terminator—No pity! No remorse!—a police lieutenant hunts for the priest. He hatches a plan to take hostages from the villages and shoot them if the people who give the priest shelter don't turn him over. When the priest hears of this, he's even more tormented.
Climax (Crisis, Turning Point)
Crisis
To Leave, or Not to Leave?
The priest has escaped. He's free—or at least not in mortal danger. But then his enemy shows up with news that his priestly faculties are needed for a dying man. The priest knows it's a trap, but also that he really is needed.
Turning Point
Betrayed without a Kiss
The priest decides to help the man and so forsakes a future of comfort for a death just over the horizon. This is the turning point because there's no turning back. He's a dead man going to help a dying man.
Falling Action
It Is Finished
The lieutenant has the priest in custody. We don't expect any miraculous rescue, and none comes. The priest is quietly executed—quietly but for the sound of the rifles.
Resolution (Denouement)
Knock! Knock!
The last priest is dead, but a resurrection soon comes with the arrival of another man of the cloth. Seems the Church isn't so easy to destroy.