REINVENTING THE WHEEL

Intro to Story Structure

Preface

Very few, if any, of the following ideas are my own. Stories are old, as old as humanity. They are universal across every culture. In many ways, they are culture. Most of this article is a recapitulation of a storytelling tutorial written by Dan Harmon (creator of Rick and Morty and Community). He, in turn, was recapitulating Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and Campbell was recapitulating Carl Jung. There are other good treatises on story structure: Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!, Robert McKee’s Story, and Syd Field’s Screenplay. I’m putting their ideas into my own words because I want to apply them to stories that I love via cool infographics, and I’d like you to understand what the heck I’m talking about.

Intro

Human beings are adventurers. Sorry, we were adventurers. Now our idea of danger is people on the internet posting things we disagree with. But once upon a primordial time, we would leave the safety of our homes and enter dangerous environments in search of stuff. What sort of stuff? Good stuff! Primal stuff! Stuff like food, shelter, sex, or…basically food, shelter, and sex. We would score that good stuff, and we would bring it home.

We’d go on a round trip. We’d learn something. Something like “beehives are delicious but try not to get stung.” Or “the people in that remote tribe are attractive, but their leadership is jealous.” So far, this is learning through experience. Something that lots of animals can do.

Stories, however, are where humans diverge from other species. Stories are adaptive. We evolved to be storytellers. If your friend tells you a story about the time she found a beehive, you can readily soak up that knowledge. This is one of humanity’s animal superpowers: we can transform one another with information.

Two Halves of One World

There are key things that every story has that helps tell a human that the information contained within will be useful. They tend to appear in a particular order and with particular orientations.

So, let’s start with a circle and cut it in half:

This circle is basically the world. Or a world anyway. Not the Earth. The world as your primordial mind knows it. This world has two territories. The Known and the Unknown.

The Known is mapped territory and behavior. It’s home. It’s your neighborhood, your city, your school, your job. It’s a child’s treehouse. It’s brushing your teeth, mowing your lawn, or doing your job. It’s the rink to the skater, the nest to the bird, or the cutlery drawer to the anthropomorphized spoon.

The Unknown is the uncertain world outside the familiar. It’s a dark forest. It’s the ocean. It’s an alley with weird bathroom smells in a bad neighborhood. The Unknown can also lurk inside the home. It’s a kid’s bedroom closet, transformed by darkness. It’s the attic, the crawlspace, and the septic tank. The Unknown can also be a situation: your house with a burglar in it, learning to swim, or a jug of milk past the expiry date.

The Known and the Unknown have many names. Order and Chaos, Life and Death, Civilization and Nature, Day and Night, Surface and Underworld, Left Brain and Right Brain, Yin and Yang, Conscious and Subconscious. They all boil down to Known and Unknown, and depending on the character, that will mean different things. In The Nightmare before Christmas, Halloween is the Known to Jack Skellington, and Christmas is the Unknown territory that he enters.

Why do humans categorize everything as either Known or Unknown? It’s a way of easily prioritizing reality. You can either ignore or react reflexively to the Known. In the Known, you can let your subconscious drive. The Unknown, on the other hand, could be dangerous. The Unknown requires your full attention. Is this snake venomous? Is this fruit good to eat? Is this stranger on a dark corner friend or foe? Discerning Known from Unknown is the difference between life and death, so that’s the first set of categories our subconscious uses to organize our world.

I’m going to tell you about the basic path every hero takes through these two territories, and you might be resistant. You might balk. That’s okay. You’re welcome to balk. Balk all you need. You might need to go read/watch/feel your ten favorite stories to be convinced. Contrary to common belief, structure is not here to limit you. It’s just a map of how the human mind makes sense of the world. The better you understand the map, the better you’ll be able to navigate storytelling. Structure doesn’t provide good ideas. It just gives you an appealing way to arrange them.

The Elements of Story

There are eight basic parts to a well-structured story. Eight things that alert the ancient caveperson within your audience that the story they’re imbibing might be useful. Eight simple, primal actions in a particular order. YOU, a being in a zone of comfort (the Known), NEED to solve a problem that forces you to GO somewhere unfamiliar (the Unknown). There you SEEK a solution and adjust to the unfamiliar, FIND what you need, paying a cost as you TAKE it. Having braved the Unknown, you RETURN home to the Known, changed and able to enact CHANGE in your world because of it. These eight steps are the path. Without them, your audience will struggle to recognize the characters and events you're showing them as a story, and they will get lost.

We can divide up the Known and Unknown using these eight elements to form a complete story circle like this:

Let’s look at each step in detail.

1. YOU

YOU is the protagonist/main character/hero. The hero starts at the top of the circle. They’re going to journey around the circle clockwise. They start at “home”. Home is in quotations because it’s not necessary for it to literally be their home. It’s the Known. Maybe they’re in their favorite restaurant. Maybe they’re at their boring job. Maybe they’re in their best friend’s car. This part of the story’s job is introducing you to the character as they are, and ensuring that you will identify and connect with them. A good story will immediately help you get inside the character’s head and start working on understanding them.

Some of you might be jumping up at this point and going “Aha! Busted you already! Lots of movies start with action! Raiders of the Lost Ark starts in the jungle with dangerous mercenaries!” But don’t you see? Indiana Jones is an adventuring archeologist: Searching for artifacts with dangerous mercenaries is the Known for him.

2. NEED

Humans are creatures of need and want. We have drives: we avoid pain and we seek pleasure. A character that doesn’t want things is not yet a character. This is part of why teenagers are frustrating, and frustrated. They don’t really know what they want, so instead they pile a bunch of ideas on themselves and call that an identity. Bad stories are like teenagers: big unstructured lumps of promising concepts and cool moments that don’t yet add up to a functional whole.

Need is key to sorting out structure. It determines what your character does and contextualizes that action. There’s something wrong in their world, and they must act to correct it. They’re hungry and the fridge is empty! Zombies are coming and the windows aren’t boarded! There’s an attractive human prince up on a boat, but the mermaid doesn’t have legs! Need is your character’s compass, and therefore your story’s compass. Get the Need right and keep it in mind as you’re writing the story, and things get a lot easier.

John Wick kills a lot of people in a bunch of cool ways. We care because he’s getting revenge for his puppy. We know what John Wick needs and it helps us map ourselves onto him. This is the closest most of us will come to being inside Keanu Reeves, and it’s all thanks to the filmmakers getting their character’s Need right.

Generally, a well-developed character will want something, but they will also need something deeper. Like way down deep in their subconscious. By the end of this section of the story, the audience should know both. For example: In Guardians of the Galaxy, Starlord wants the orb so he can sell it and get rich, but what he needs is to deal with his mother’s death and start forming a new family. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy wants to find the Holy Grail, but what he needs is to become less cynical and open his eyes to the possibility of higher powers.

3. GO

The hero’s need has pushed them to a boundary. The edge of the realm of the Unknown. It’s dangerous and scary over there. But there’s something the hero wants really bad. Despite that, the hero may balk the first time they approach the Unknown, just like you balked when I told you there are simple rules governing story structure. Speaking of rules: DO NOT FORCE THE HERO TO GO ON THE ADVENTURE (Rogue One, I’m looking at you). The journey should be daunting, but it must be taken willingly. Taking away the hero’s agency also takes away the audience’s empathy, because if the hero has no choice, they stop trying to imagine what the hero might do.

Once the hero enters the Unknown, the story becomes what you told the audience it was going to be. If your comic is about a scientist cloning herself, and the clones forming a volleyball team, she was singular up until this exact moment. Now she presses power and dorky ladies in lab coats start spilling out of the cloning machine.

This is where Alice goes down the rabbit hole. This is where Ben Stiller actually meets the parents. This is Indiana Jones heading to Nepal on his quest for the Ark.

4. SEEK

Your hero has entered the Unknown and begun to search for their need. They are filled with fears and doubts - should they turn back? The road is difficult and searching this dangerous world is risky. Will they even be able to find what they seek? Despite their inexperience and uncertainty, the hero resolves to press on towards their goal.

If your hero were able to claim their prize with little effort, the story would be unexciting: it wouldn’t be a story worth telling. It needs to be hard, and they should overcome a weakness that they have and grow into someone capable of taking their need. This leg of the adventure makes them stronger and more capable, better able to swim through the waters of the Unknown.

This development prepares your hero for the point of no return in step 5. They must adapt to the challenges surrounding them. They have completed their boxing montage, or learned to control their superpowers, or mustered the courage to ask their love interest on a date… now they just need to go for it.

In Fellowship of the Ring, this is where Pippin learns second breakfast doesn’t exist outside the Shire. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is Indy’s trip to Cairo. In which he loses his girlfriend and his monkeyfriend as he searches for the ark of the covenant.

5. FIND

The hero has been descending into the Unknown. Now they have hit an inflection point. They have found what they were seeking (consciously or subconsciously). They might get a little break from the chaos. Find is the eye of the hurricane. The summit of Everest. The medulla of the medulla. The hero has gone as far from the Known as possible (note that we are opposite YOU on the circle). Having adapted to the Unknown in SEEK, there is going to be a temptation to stay. Here the hero is going to learn or gain something that causes them to change direction. Something that sends them on the way back up to the Known.

In the Matrix, this is where Neo meets the Oracle. She reveals more about the nature of the Matrix. She pushes Neo in a new direction. In the Lion King, this is where Simba is reunited with Nala, she gives him that sexy look that made a generation of young people into furries, and he realizes that he does want more than a life of grubs and tomfoolery. In Raiders, this is where Indy assembles the staff, the sun shoots the laser at that little temple replica, and he learns where the ark is buried.

6. TAKE

The hero’s got what they wanted, or what they needed but didn’t realize, and now they gotta pay for it. In other words: they’ve taken something from the Unknown, but now the Unknown is going to take something from them. Outsiders don’t get to just come tromping around the Unknown without consequences.

Often, the hero needs those consequences (subconsciously). There’s some weakness, flaw, or self-indulgence the hero has internalized, and this is where it is truly expurgated. Here the hero is metaphysically (or even literally) killed, so they may be reborn.

This is where Gandalf dies in Fellowship, and our little Shire-sheltered hobbits learn how dangerous Middle Earth really is. This is where Thanos must sacrifice Gamora in order to get the soul stone, breaking his last true connection with the universe he is trying to save (PS: Thanos is the protagonist of Infinity War). This is where Luke gets his hand chopped off in Empire Strikes Back, and the innocent farmboy truly dies to make way for the Jedi master he will become. In Inside Out, this is where Bing Bong sacrifices himself to help Joy escape the Pit of Forgetfulness and I softly cry and hope no one else in the room notices. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is where the Nazis and Belloq catch up to Indy and take back the Ark.

7. RETURN

The hero emerges into the Known, bringing the knowledge and powers earned in the Unknown, and cleansed of the weaknesses they had unwittingly brought when they entered. The reformed (reborn) hero now carries the best of both worlds within them. Just as entering the Unknown was difficult on the opposite side of the circle at GO, crossing back to the Known at RETURN is also hard. The hero has to shed the last dregs of weakness/foolishness/self-deception still clinging to them in order to escape the Unknown and fix the problem that sent them there in the first place.

There’s another thing happening in Return that’s metaphorical. In journeying through and adapting to the Unknown, the hero transforms it into the Known. The unfamiliar and alien has become the familiar, and so it’s not necessary to literally go back home at Return, only to show how the Unknown has become a new home.

In the Matrix, Neo is now really getting a handle on his reality-warping abilities. He has come back into the matrix, rescued Morpheus, and can now fight the agents one-on-one. In Bridesmaids, Kirsten Wiig, having blown up her friendship with Maya Rudolph and confronted the sexy douchebag, gets a pep talk from Melissa McCarthy and realizes that if she wants to keep her friend, she is the one that has to grow. In the Lion King, Simba has confronted his father’s ghost, and has returned to Pride Rock ready to face his corrupt uncle. In Black Panther, T’Challa has confronted his father’s ghost, and has returned to Wakanda ready to face his corrupt cousin. In Hamlet, Hamlet has confronted his father’s ghost, and has returned to Denmark ready to face his corrupt uncle. These things don’t stack up because the writers of the Lion King and Black Panther were ripping off Shakespeare. They contain primal human truth that resonates with every generation.

8. CHANGE

Having been made ready by their adventure, the hero must now throw down against the forces of Chaos from the Unknown. Their adventure has altered them. Here they will fully demonstrate that they have changed. They have had the crappy parts of themselves stripped away. They have integrated vital new lessons. Because they confronted the Unknown, lived through it, and learned from it, they have gained power. They have expanded their territory, and thus expanded their being.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy tells Marion to shut her eyes as Belloq and the Nazis open the ark. The cynical rogue archeologist has seen enough to become a believer in the supernatural. He and Marion are spared while all the Nazis are liquified.

In Frozen, Anna bravely sacrifices herself to save her sister from the evil prince’s sword, and in turn, her and her sister learn that the answer to the blizzard plaguing their kingdom isn’t repressing their emotions, it’s the full healthy expression of the bad and the good.

In Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, Harold and Kumar get to Whitecastle, and their hunger is satisfied.

In Aliens, Ripley jumps in the mechsuit, fully becomes protective surrogate mom to Newt, slaps around the alien queen, and tosses her butt out the airlock.

Having changed themselves, the heroes are able to change the world.

Close

It is possible to eschew structure and hold the audience’s attention with style. If you’re brilliant, it may be enough. But your work will always be better if the story is well-structured. The caveperson down in your audience’s brain stem will recognize the pattern. They will pay closer attention. They will be entertained. The Hero’s Journey echoes over generations because it contains essential lessons about the rewards of facing the Unknown and can be used to powerfully encode human truth. It is an endless well of learning and inspiration.

Are you still balking? By all means, explore. Be a storytelling hero. YOU say you NEED a more creative form of structure, and are willing to GO into the Unknown realms of storytelling to SEEK it? Maybe you’ll FIND a new way of structuring a story, but TAKING it will come at a cost, and it will need to be resolved with and integrated into the existing rules of structure when you RETURN in order for you to CHANGE the medium. If you want to tell a compelling narrative for humans, you must rediscover the ancient codification of reality that we all share: the story.