In Trifles, the exposition or backstory emerges when the county attorney has Mr. Hale recount the horrific events of the day before. Hale found Mr. Wright dead in his bedroom. We also learn that Mrs. Wright is in jail, arrested for murder, and that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters have accompanied their husbands to the farmhouse to pack up some things to bring Minnie Wright in prison.

With the scene set, the rising action includes the men ridiculing Mrs. Wright as a poor housewife because her kitchen is a mess and then ridiculing the two women for focusing on the "trifles" of domestic life in the middle of a murder investigation. When the men leave the women alone in the kitchen, the women use the "trifles" the men scoffed at to piece together why Mrs. Wright killed her husband, the very evidence the men have come to find.

The climax comes when, having pieced together the story of the murder, the women decide not to reveal to the men the chief piece of evidence that would have implicated Mrs. Wright as the murderer, which is the dead canary.

The falling action comes as the men return to the kitchen and converse with the women, admitting they have no motive for the crime.

The resolution is reached when, despite being face-to-face with the men and knowing they need the canary, the women keep their silence: they believe that Mrs. Wright's homicide was justifiable but know she won't be understood by a male legal system.