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): Hello, Ladies
In all three of the novel's separate plotlines, things get underway in the morning. Laura Brown and Virginia Woolf each get a slow-ish start as they ease gently into their days, while Clarissa Vaughan, happy and energetic, walks cheerfully out into the city to buy flowers for her party.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication): It's a Hard Knock Life
As their days go on, all three of the novel's protagonists encounter minor hurdles. Clarissa Vaughan is disappointed to find that her friend Richard Brown is having one of his bad days (and may not be in good shape for the party that she's throwing in his honor). Laura Brown tries to make a beautiful cake for her husband's birthday, but it comes out looking clumsy and amateurish. For her part, Virginia Woolf has to face the grumpiness of her household staff.
Climax (Crisis, Turning Point): Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
Eventually, all three protagonists come up against a bigger crisis.
Laura Brown's dissatisfaction comes to a head in the mid-afternoon, which is when she decides to take off for a few hours so that she can spend some time alone. As she sits in a hotel room reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, she begins to think of suicide in fond, appreciative terms.
Virginia Woolf gives in to a similar urge to disappear, but hers hits her in the early evening. After slipping away quietly from her suburban home, she heads toward the train station with a half-baked scheme to run away to London.
Unlike Laura and Virginia, the flight response that Clarissa encounters isn't her own. When she returns to Richard's apartment to help him get dressed for her party, she arrives just in time to witness her best friend's suicide.
Falling Action: Keeping On Keeping On
In all three of the novel's plotlines, the action winds down in the evening. Laura Brown returns home and serves her husband's birthday meal; Virginia returns home, eats supper, and settles down with a book; and, Clarissa Vaughan collects Richard Brown's elderly mother—the very same Laura Brown—and feeds her a late-night meal.
Resolution (Denouement): Tomorrow Is Another Day
Only Clarissa Vaughan and Virginia Woolf end their days with some kind of closure. As Clarissa reflects on her friend's suicide, she comes to some conclusions about the value of life. As Virginia gets ready to head to bed, she decides how she will end the novel she is writing.
Unfortunately for her, Laura Brown ends her day in the same way she began it: in a state of paralysis and uncertainty. As she pauses beside her bed, not quite ready to climb in, she gets lost in thoughts of how easy it would be to slip away from her life.