X-Write-Z
Hi and welcome to X-Write-Z, a podcast fueled by our love of books and the craft of writing. Veronica is a Gen-Xer, and Anna is a Gen-Zer. Together, we’re on an intergenerational mission to help writers write better stories.
X-Write-Z
So Many Story Structures, So Little Time
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Some writers' eyes light up when talking about story structure. Others want to run for the hills. No matter how you feel about structure, all stories have an inherent structure. There's a beginning, a middle, and, eventually, an end. As soon as you go beyond this foundation, though, you'll discover a lot of different methods and formulas for story structure. How do you choose the right one for your story?
It's a bit like deciding how you want your eggs! Fried, scrambled, poached, or perhaps an omelet? No matter how they’re cooked, they’re still eggs. In the same vein, different story structures share many core characteristics. They’re just presented differently.
In this episode, we explore 8 methods for structuring a story to help you find the one (or pieces of ones) that might work well for you.
For insights into each method discussed in this episode, check out and download this PDF (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cOOCozQLyM5KhRruKE-A3zi4UixmTq0L/view?usp=sharing). No subscription or signup is necessary.
Do you need support with your writing? Check out our coaching and editing services at https://veronicajorden.com/ and https://annaschechter.org/.
Hi, I'm Veronica, a Gen Xer. And I'm Anna, a Gen Zer. And this is X Wright Z, a podcast fueled by our love of books and the craft of writing.
SPEAKER_01We are writers and editors who read across the genre spectrum. And you know how in Sci-Fi characters are on an intergalactic mission to do whatever they need to do? Well, we're on an intergenerational mission to help writers write better stories.
SPEAKER_00And as part of our mission, every episode comes with a handout, chock full of key takeaways and tips that you can use for your own writing. A simple Google Doc with no signups or subscriptions necessary. If we can spark your creativity and help support your writing habit, we'll consider this a job well done. Now let's dig into this week's discussion. Now, this is one of those things that I think some of us really love. Like we want to just dive so deep and we want to make sure that every scene has a specific purpose and we want to fit it into a very clear structure. And some of us who live more on the pantzer side of things, like just want to write, and structure is like, no, don't put me in a box. And uh, you can tell me if you agree, but I think one of the things that really distinguishes a professional book is understanding that plot has to have a purpose and it has to have a structure, right? To ensure that the reader gets the best possible reading experiences. So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I I think people treat writing sometimes as this thing that just comes into being and these beautiful books are just produced that have incredible stories. I like to kind of reorient people to the fact that writing is a craft that takes practice and planning and trial and error and editing. Yes. Much like if you are an incredible musician, that didn't just start one day. You, you know, you had to put in a lot of practice and time. Same with painting. And I think we sometimes forget to apply that to writing. So I do like to kind of bring that back. And structure is part of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, in all of those things, in any art, you can have somebody that has some innate skill, right? But it, you're right, it is a craft. Like I think every musician would say at the bare minimum, they have to practice a lot. Even if they don't actually study music theory, they have to listen and watch other artists and then figure out what they do and then apply it to themselves, right? Artists have to constantly paint and learn new technique. So the same thing applies for writing. Some of it, I think we think just because we're natural-born storytellers, which I think most of us as human beings are, right? But there's a difference between being able to kind of spin a yarn on a Saturday night at the at the dinner table with your family and have them be entertained and actually produce a professional book.
SPEAKER_01I think as we get into these examples of different story structures, listeners are going to realize that some of it happens just naturally, and some of it they are going to have to maybe intentionally weave in.
SPEAKER_00One thing we want to kind of caveat before we get in and talk about any of these, and this is a list of some popular ones. It is by no means exhausted. Exhausted. I'm exhausted. It's by no means exhaustive. But but these are some of the more popular ones. And really, all I would say is you don't have to take any one of these as is in its set form. You can actually take pieces of these and come up with your own. If you take nothing away from this, just remember that plot has to have a purpose and a plan. That's how you keep the middle from getting muddy or getting saggy. Like you have to have some clarity around what your plot is supposed to accomplish. And you have to do it in a way that escalates so that the reader continues to lean in and they continue to turn those pages because they cannot wait to find out what happens.
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, so let's let's dig in. When I think about structure, if I kind of whittle that concept down to its absolute core, I'm gonna think of the three-act structure: act one, act two, act three. You know, I think that this serves as a really fantastic foundation for stories because act one is the beginning, act two is the middle, and act three is the end. And every story in some way has a beginning, middle, and end. Let's treat that as just a jumping off point and let's add some more detail to what goes into a beginning, a middle, and an end with the rest of these examples. But if I'm thinking foundations, I'm thinking three act.
SPEAKER_00Right. And this is like the basic three-act structure is something we've all seen. And for those of you who are kind of like diehard panters who absolutely are just like, no, I will not write to structure, if nothing else, having a general understanding of kind of what constitutes your act one, the introduction, what constitutes the middle, like all of the things that are gonna happen in your plot, right? And then if you have a general understanding of where you want the ending to go, this is not a bad kind of basic bare bones. Break it down into three acts, just so that you have some general goalpost to write towards, right? Um, but three act is kind of not enough, I think, in modern fiction to really define kind of the plan and the purpose for your plot. So one of the things that kind of build off this three-act structure that I think most writers have seen, um, which is Frytag's pyramid, which takes a three-act structure and kind of explains it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01As its name implies, we've got a sort of pyramid or triangle shape, which is important because we are going to talk a lot about escalation throughout this episode. But this pyramid visualizes that escalation. A story begins at a kind of level with exposition. It jump starts at the moment known as the inciting incident, the moment where the status quo changes or a problem is introduced, or the road has split in a way for the character, and they must make some sort of choice. Then we get into the act two give or take of the story, which is chock full of rising action. These are the events of the plot that continue and continue to escalate until the story reaches its highest point or its climax. Then, probably unsurprisingly, the story de-escalates back down the pyramid or mountain or triangle or whatever kind of roughly triangular shape you want to picture with falling action, the events that occur in a story after the story's climax, which start to bring the story towards its conclusion.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And finally the story reaches a resolution and wraps up.
SPEAKER_00Right. And I think it's it's interesting. This original story structure was developed, is it like the late 1800s, right? And it was the Frytag was actually studying clays. Tragedies. Yeah, when he developed this structure. So originally it was always designed to end with some kind of tragedy. And so we see that in like Romeo and Juliet. We see it in Hamlet, right? But most of us nowadays have seen a version of this that just suggests that there's some kind of falling action and then some kind of resolution, be it tragedy or not, right? A really simple example of this, I think. Like we can look at Lion King. Doesn't end in um tragedy, but it does encompass all those other things. So we've got exposition, where we meet Simba at the beginning, right? This future king. Then we've got the rising action as his uncle Scar manipulates um Simba and he takes over the throne. And we have the worst thing, right? Yes, he loses his father, like all of these things, right? That's that's that rising action. Then all leading us to this big climactic moment where Simba returns and confronts Scar. Um, Scar is defeated, and then we see, like, you know, how the how the kingdom kind of returns to normal and Simba takes his role as king and everything has been restored to the pride land. So that is a Fried Tag Pyramid three-act structure.
SPEAKER_01If we wanted to, we could maybe call it a five-act, with the five sort of crucial beats being exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Um, and that's nice because that takes out the necessity of a tragedy or a tragic ending.
SPEAKER_00Right. So you may hear this, you sometimes fry tech experiment is referred to as like three-ac structure, sometimes it's referred to as five X structure, but really it's all the same. It's really just the same thing with some extra labels thrown in, essentially.
SPEAKER_01Well, and with everything with writing, there's not only one name for things. Uh right before we started recording, we were talking about the difference between a line edit and a copy edit. It's a different concept, but there's always a second name, a third name, and overlaps, and some people will call it one thing and some people will call it another. Well, and when we were talking about Romeo and Juliet, there is an absolutely tragic last final huge event. Yeah, then the play continues onwards. The surviving characters, those two rival families, have to agree to a truce, essentially. So I don't even think Romeo and Juliet follows an exact end with tragedy.
SPEAKER_00I bet some people out there will probably uh agree to disagree on that one. And if you do, drop us a comment. We'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
SPEAKER_01Well, yes. I guess I guess I took the end of the it is a tragic ending. Yes. The final event is not the catastrophic true deaths of Romeo and Juliet. But now I might be overthinking it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, and to be honest with you, I have not done a deep dive study into Leg Freitag's works and like how he came to this theory and all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_01He was not a super nice man, according to his Wikipedia.
SPEAKER_00So whatever. So again, this is probably the structure that most writers are the most familiar with. And you could look at really any, I would say 90%, maybe even 95% of successful full-length novels that are out there, um, you could fit them in. What is the normal before? What happens that changes everything, that rising action, that's that plot with a purpose, right? The challenges and obstacles that stand in the in the main character's um way towards achieving whatever goal it is they have. They have some big kind of confrontation. And then as they tie up all the loose ends, the falling action and the fancy word, the denounce or the resolution at the end of the story. So that's the structure I think most writers today are very familiar with. But it is not the only structure that you can use when putting together your story, right?
SPEAKER_01Certainly not. And yeah, now we're getting into the ones where we're like, hey, you want 12 more steps for planning? Um these don't need to scare away the pincers, though. I think there's interesting stuff to glean from each and every one of them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And again, if you take any of these, if you're a pancer, you don't have to write a perfect outline. But if you were to take each of the kind of the big um moments that are identified in any of these structures and just had a general idea of kind of what that would be in your story, again, it gives you those goalposts to write towards so that you end up with an actual plot and not just a series of interesting events.
SPEAKER_01So the next one is the seven-point story. We've gone from three acts to five beats to seven points. And this is a story structure that was popularized by Dan Wells, who is an American horror and sci-fi writer. This one has probably could have guessed it, seven major beats in it. A hook, a plot point, a pinch point, a midpoint, another plot point, another pinch point, and a resolution. So it's still got that kind of symmetrical triangle kind of vibe where we have plot points and pinch points leading up to a midpoint and then plot points and pinch points leading down to a conclusion. Um this one is, you know, this one's really interesting because Dan Wells recommends that you actually start with the end in mind for plotting this one out. That is what made it stand out to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, because if you know where the book is going, then it makes it whole, it's just think about it. Like if you get in your car and you have a destination in mind, it's a whole lot easier to pick the most efficient route to get there than if you got in the car and just started driving and had no idea where you were gonna end up, right? I mean, so again, this is if you have a really clear understanding of where you want the story to end up, it can really help to inform the journey that you take to get from the beginning point to the end. So I I love the idea that um that you would start with the end. There's a a really famous book that was written the last chapter first. Do you know what it is? No, I do not know. It's a gone with a wind. Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone with a Wind backwards well before Dan Walls ever taught that. Yeah. So this is a plot structure that's really great for authors. If you don't have a story where it's just like constant challenge and failure, challenge and failure, right? If your book is a little more subtle than that, if you think about, okay, we've got a starting point, something happens that that changes everything, then something complicates that. Then we get to a new kind of almost like plateau. We've reached another point in the plots and we're like, okay, we're making progress, but like something else now has complicated things. So it's this one is almost, I think in my mind, when I think of this structure, I kind of think it like steps. So it's like steps escalates. It's like uh, what do you call it? Stepped pyramid versus a more straight pyramid that try tag.
SPEAKER_01And I think this this is one that's really helpful for writers who are saying, Where do I go from here? I have my idea. Yep. I may even have my ending. How the heck do I get from A to B? This is a really nice one. It's still simple. Yeah. It does, I like the step visual. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I'm like, can you think of a good example of this one?
SPEAKER_01So I have seen The Martian. Haven't read the book. That's okay. So I'm wondering, you might have to help fill in some details. But I know the Martian is a good one to think about here. The Martian also fits another one that we're gonna talk about later. A lot of these stories do because they've got the elements of storytelling, you know. Yeah. Um, but the Martian is a is a story that starts in crisis. Yes. Yeah, which we'll come back to that kind of idea in just a bit. Um, but the main character, Mark, is an astronaut on a Mars mission. That is sort of our hook. That's interesting enough. I think very few of us have been in that position. Or ever will be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or ever will be. Um astronauts who are listening. Thank you for your service. Yes. Yes, exactly. Um, but when we enter plot point one, Mark is stranded on Mars after being presumed dead. Yes. Okay. Uh-oh. We've got a big problem, obviously. The first pinch point is that like horrible realization that he doesn't have the resources to survive. He can't get off of Mars and he can't live on Mars. Right. So what is he going to do? Right. It's he's gotta figure out a way to survive.
SPEAKER_00Or the story is over. The story's gonna be over really quickly. Yes.
SPEAKER_01So he we reach this midpoint where he turns a corner. He has successfully been able to grow potatoes, and survival becomes much more possible. Right.
SPEAKER_00So we've gone, we've kind of climbed that first step, right? We've now leveled off. Okay, we've got a food source, things are gonna be okay. Except Right.
SPEAKER_01It's a sort of false victory type of thing. He's had this success with growing the food, but then we reach a point where uh the habitat is damaged and his food supply is destroyed. Right. That's pinch point number two. Yeah, it's almost like coming back to pinch point one. A little bit, yeah. You don't have resources to survive anymore, right? Right. Then plot point two, we get some external help starting to come in. We've got NASA and the crew developing a rescue plan and trying to help Mark get home. Right. So we've gone also, this this one's nice because it we go from a highly isolated situation to the world has opened up a little bit more. And then our resolution is Mark is rescued and is able to return to Earth.
SPEAKER_00Right. And the thing to keep in mind is like just because this doesn't follow that same kind of like escalating action, it doesn't mean that the action isn't, of course, escalating. And if you've read the book or seen the movie, right, he goes through a lot of challenges to to get through pinch point one. He doesn't have enough food to survive. So he has to go through a lot of different things, trial and error, until finally he gains some success. And um, and then we kind of get a breather as the reader or as the movie watcher. But then we're right back to escalation again, right? His habitat is damaged. He doesn't have, he's now lost the ability to grow his food, but he enter NASA and the team, right? So now he's got some outside help and they've got a plan and they've set a date when they are gonna make it to him. So now he has to figure out how to make what he has last until that date. So we've got like a ticking clock, you know, external force kind of pushing this story forward. So we still have escalation, but there are these major points kind of along the way. Um, but there's there's still story that's escalating between each of those in between.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, I can imagine I obviously don't know the author's writing process, but I can imagine the thought process of an astronaut is stranded on Mars, but will ultimately be able to return to Earth. I have no idea if that's how his thought process went.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But you can see that end result is like it's yeah, it's driving how the beginning started, right?
SPEAKER_00So you can see, like, this isn't a full like outline, but it is seven really important points in the plot that if you had these, then you can you can write in between them and have and and do what you do to kind of let the muse and the flow come through and figure out. But the goal is always to like how can we continue to escalate between each of these points? How can we make it as difficult as possible or as impactful as possible on the characters in between each of these points in our plot?
SPEAKER_01This next one is big. Everybody's heard this one. Everybody's heard of this one. If they've never heard of it, they have witnessed it on their TV screens and the books on their shelf. It is the hero's journey. This is a big one. Yeah. It was developed by writer and professor Joseph Campbell through his studies on myth. Yeah, this one's old and well proven, by the way. This one, it's old, it's well proven, it's in the Odyssey, it's in Star Wars, like good luck getting away from this one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Any story where you've got uh where you've got a hero is more more than likely you're gonna be able to fit it into this structure and see very clearly um that they're on a hero's journey. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's Joseph Campbell who kind of sets out the foundation for the hero's journey. And then it is actually a Hollywood executive, uh, Christopher Bogler. He's a Hollywood executive, a screenwriter, and he's the one who actually kind of makes this into a 12-step hero's journey and kind of formalizes it in that way.
SPEAKER_00Um that we can follow.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's a circle as well. So yeah, picture that it's a circle because it involves a character leaving home and eventually finding a way back. It's very much tied in with rites of passage and growth for a character.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And like we said, there is like so many different examples of this story or this kind of story. I think some of the important, and I won't list all 12 steps here, but some of the important ones, um, we've got ordinary world, which obviously that sounds a lot like our other story structures, right? We've got that little bit of exposition, we've got to meet this character. Totally. And there's a call to adventure. That's your inciting event. That's like what changes, what choice do they have to make? And I think probably the biggest the next one is one of the most important ones in Hero's Journey, which is this. Refusal of the call, which is basically a hero saying, I don't know if I want this. I don't, I don't think I want to do this. Like that in in every classic, like clean hero's journey, there has to be a ref refusal. There has to be a moment where the hero is reluctant to go on this journey. And that really kind of is, I think, the dip the definitive aspect of like if you see that moment in a book or or in a movie, then more than likely you were on a hero's journey, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you know what's really interesting is that that refusal, we see it quite a lot in memoir and true stories as well. So it was, I think it was Women on Writing, that organization, that used a Save the Cat beat sheet, which we're gonna get to Save the Cat, um, to and applied applied the save the cat structure to memoir. And one of the things that came out of that was it's actually pretty important for a memoirist to show the moments when they were refusing the way that their life was changing, or refusing the journey that they needed to go on to complete sort of the transformation or whatever it is that they go through in the memoir, whether that's denial of an issue existing in your life, or it's flat out refusal. I'm not gonna do it. Yeah, I'm not doing this. Like whether it's, you know, if you had to confront something really scary in your life, or something scary happened in your life, and there's that moment where you're like, nope, I'm not doing that. Um, that comes up in memoirs a lot. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_00And I so that that's that's I mean, that makes sense because like, you know, memoir, you are the hero of that story, right? If you are writing, you're the hero and you're on a journey of some sort. I like that actually. I'd never I'd never heard that before, and now I'm now I'm gonna like as soon as we get down, I'm gonna spend some time thinking about how to apply heroist journey to memoir. That's very cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I with memoir, there's a lot of leaving a a version of normalcy and returning to yourself in a like changed or evolved version. Yeah. Perfect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, so so there's lots of other things that you'll recognize too in this one. Meeting of a mentor. I mean, every hero movie, they've always got to have like a psychic, a mentor, somebody that's kind of helping them along the way, right? Then they're gonna have they they have the big section of like challenges, they call it test, allies and enemies. It's this, you know, that's the the crux of every hero has to fight a battle, right? And then eventually they get on the road back home. There's resolution and return of the elixir, which is all of that big climactic. What did I learn from this? How have I been changed? And now I'm gonna take this new version of myself back home.
SPEAKER_01So like emotional reunions, yes, type of thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Right. So, I mean, let's talk about um probably the most I don't know if it's the most famous, but it's it's one that makes the hero's journey really, really easy to see.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the one where we got to watch a movie in high school English class because it's Star Wars. And when we learned the hero's journey, um we watched all of Star Wars, and it was a it was a treat to watch a whole movie in class. And a good movie at that, right? I mean, who doesn't like Star Wars? Yeah. Well, the thing about Star Wars, uh, tell me if this is true. Each individual installment follows the hero's journey, and the entire, at least I think original franchise is a larger hero's journey itself.
SPEAKER_00You know, I'm not meant that for five years. I don't know. I'm not that much like I love the movies. I don't know that I'm not much of a now I feel like I'm I'm I'm letting all the listeners down. Is Anna's theory correct? Did she get that correct? If you know, um let us know. Otherwise, I'm gonna, I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend, a deep dive into Star Wars mythology.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I also I I feel like I did learn that. It might also be wishful thinking because what a cool little twist.
SPEAKER_00That would be, I mean, that's masterful. And I believe that I can look at the success of this series. So let's talk about a couple of examples so you can see this play out in real life, right? So um, ordinary world, right? That beginning. We meet Luke's Luke Skywalker. He's a farm boy, he's living a quiet life on Tatooine. Then we have the call to adventure, right? Princess Leia's message arrives and is asking for help. And um, I think Obi-Wan shows up, right? And there's this refusal of the call. Luke's like, I can't go. I gotta stay here. I gotta help my aunt uncle. And um, yep, so Obi-Wan Kenobi is his mentor and introduces Luke to the force and encourages him to join the mission, right? And then what happens? Like, obviously, something pushes him past that refusal. Luke has to go. And all of the things that he learns ultimately, he meets like Han Solo and Chewbacca, and they rescue Leia and they get caught in like the trash compactor, right? And then eventually he ends up joining the resistance and becomes a fighter pilot and destroys the Death Star, right? So then he like he's now part of this official rebellion, and he's no longer that simple farm boy, right? He has a new purpose. Um, and now he's leading us, he's leading the charge into the second story as the resistance continues to fight. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, from farm boy to hero. That that is your hero's journey. That's the whole journey, right? That's the whole thing. Yeah. I mean, we see it in The Hobbit, we see it in Moana, we see it in the Odyssey, as I said. Yes.
SPEAKER_00A lot of the Disney movies where you've got that central hero are gonna follow the same thing, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, nothing. Easy to see. I'm guessing Percy Jackson. I'm thinking Percy Jackson.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I um I would imagine it would have to be. I mean, like based on myth. Yeah, I think so. I'm trying to think of the ones that I've read.
SPEAKER_01I think it re So I think I'm it's I think it's he returns to Camp Half-Blood at the end. And I know the novel does not begin at Camp Half-Blood, but it is a place that becomes like home for him, and he does have to leave.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it's like yeah. And this is again, it's one of those things where like it doesn't have to fit into a structure 100%. So you can take different elements. If you like the opening of um Hero's Journey, but then want to move to like plot point, pinch point, you can do that. Like take the pieces that make the most sense for your story and make it work. Just make sure that your plot, again, it still has, you've still got to have those basic things. Like it's got to escalate through the middle to keep us engaged. The main character has to have a goal that they are working towards. And everything that stands in their way towards achieving that goal, that's where your plot lives. So whatever structure it takes, as long as you continue to escalate and you have a purpose and that character is driven, then you'll be okay.
SPEAKER_01Nice.
SPEAKER_00All right.
SPEAKER_01Not every story involves leaving home and returning home. So your that circular shape for the hero's journey might not apply, but you could take the step up with the pinch points and the plot points. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Find what works and put it all together and create your own scripture.
SPEAKER_00That's what's so cool about this.
SPEAKER_01The hero's journey. Yeah, I I have always liked this one, but Veronica, you opened my eyes to a whole alternative world that made me rethink the hero's journey and the connotations that it holds. So you want to introduce the next one?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, like, so Hero's Journey is very much an external pressure-driven story structure, right? It's all of these things that are acting like even what we just talked about, all these things acting on Luke, all of these things acting on that society that push him onto this journey. But there is an alternative, or I would say maybe even a sister version of this. A compliment, yeah. A complimentary, like kind of the yin yin yang version, the other side of this called the Virgin's Promise, which was a screenwriting and storytelling guide developed by Kim Hudson as an alternative to Hero's Journey, it doesn't necessarily mean that your protagonist needs to be a woman. I would say the vast majority of stories using this story structure probably do have a female protagonist, but it's not a requirement. For me, what Virgin Promise does that's different from Hero's Journey is that rather than relying mostly on external pressure, like in the form of, you know, Darth Vader or, you know, some kind of invading force, it relies more on internal struggle. It's a very similar structure to Hero's Journey, but the pieces are a little bit different. So this is a story where the protagonist lives within the expectations and rules of their community. So we've got elements like the price of conformity. What do, what does it cost this character to not be able to be their true and full self within that society? It looks at moments for um opportunity to shine. How can the protagonist demonstrate a unique gift, talent, or quality that makes them stand out from the crowd? Um, they have to dress the part, they have to attempt to fit into the society that they are in, but there is the next version, a secret world. There's a part of them that not everyone knows about. Mulan, even though Mulan could very much be a hero's journey, Mulan could also be the Virgin's promise. Oh, I like that. So much of, right? She's trying to fit into this society, but there is a part of her that doesn't quite fit. And everyone is telling her that part of her is not okay. But that part of her ultimately ends up saving, right? Saving the world, saving their society. So um again, I won't get into all of the different layers here. We will put it in the handout. But this is a version of this kind of hero's journey. It's a little softer. Again, the motivations are more internal versus external. And it's something that not a lot of writers have heard of, but it is something worth studying because honestly, I think if you can marry these two, you end up with a really stellar story, right? Um heroes journey sometimes struggles with stories where this central conflict is about defeating a villain, but it loses some of the impact about how does that change the main character. This is what The Virgin's Promise does really, really well. It's very clearly defined about like what's at stake for a character personally, and how does going through this journey change them for the better, right? So we see this in a lot of like women's fiction, literary fiction, coming of age stories, stories where relationships are kind of driving the plot, um, or stories where the plot where the the bulk of the story is kind of focused on identity or belonging or creativity or some kind of self-actualized actualization or like self-love, self-understanding, that kind of aspect.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. No, there's um a sort of journey to selfhood that like really comes through in this that the hero's journey doesn't quite account for. I think it's a really nice compliment that addresses what is left out of the hero's journey.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I think this is one of those things where I talk about you can pick the different pieces. This between these two, um, depending on your story, depending upon what your themes are, um, depending upon who your protagonist is, this would, these would be the two that I would really sit with and figure out are there elements of each one that you would add to the other? Or could you even combine and cut some from one and add them from the other? Like these really will work together very well. It's just about where I think the motivation lies to do these things, whether it's external and internal. And like you said, whether it's a journey to kind of like save the world for the world's sake, or whether it's to save the world while while learning who you are and why why being your full self is important. Why becoming your full self can save the world. Right. That that's that's the path to victory. Yeah. Yep. I think we have a good example of this one.
SPEAKER_01We do. Um, so let's just go ahead and disrupt the sort of archetype of the virgin. Yeah. Um, and all of those connotations. Your character need not be a virgin. Need not be. Yes. There need not be any sort of constraints in that. Yes. In that realm. Let's look at legally blonde. Yeah. She's blonde, she's bold, she's going. There, there's like some tag on this, like, she's going where no blonde has gone before, or something. Yeah. Great movie. Oh, fantastic. Elle Woods starts off living the life that she is supposed to live as a conventionally attractive blonde sorority girl. She's got the boyfriend, she does the party, she does all the sorority events. She lives according to the expectations of the world that she's in, the world of being a fashionable, popular woman. There is a steep price with that. People value her appearance more than her intelligence. They see a pretty face and not a brilliant mind. So once her boyfriend who we hate uh breaks up with her, she gets broken up with essentially because she played that role so well of the like blonde bombshell that she wasn't, she was no longer the right partner for this important, serious man to be with. Right. He failed to see the substance beneath the beauty. Exactly. He failed to see that. But she gets this opportunity to shine when she decides that she is going to apply to go to law school at Harvard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she's gonna prove to the world that she's more than just a pretty face.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that she can get into Harvard despite her good looks and her appearance. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So she gets into Harvard, and this is a triumph. You know, this is something that she earns herself. But as she gets there, she's still really trying to conform and she dresses the part of the woman she thinks Warner wants. While this is happening, though, she is starting to realize that she could be a good law student and a good lawyer. And these ambitions and capabilities of her own start to emerge. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00She starts to see that she's more than just a pretty face, that she does have a purpose, right? That's that self-realization and self-actualization having. And not only the minute she stops trying to be what everybody else thinks, or what she thinks everybody else thinks she should be, when she truly steps into her own power and finds herself in the midst of this, she is a fan, she becomes a fantastic lawyer, right? Like she proves to them all that you can be both.
SPEAKER_01Yes, well, and it's it's her sort of like beauty knowledge and knowledge of hair and shoe brands that allows her to actually solve the case that the big shot lawyer, who's a total creep, um, could not solve. So she she comes into her own as a lawyer. She sheds that old expectation of being essentially a trophy wife to Warner. She stops wanting that, actually. Yep.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, and so this is again, this is not about, I mean, it has a little bit of outside expectation, but it's not, it's not like someone's invading or someone is gonna destroy her if she doesn't do these things, right? She's the there's no life or death really happening here. But, and a lot of it has to come from her own personal journey, her realization of what she is capable of, what she wants from herself, and then having the courage to show that to the rest of the world. So, again, this is very similar. Again, I mentioned it earlier, like Mulan could very much fit into this because the moment that Mulan stopped trying to fit into everybody else's expectations and simply accepts that a combination of who she is is what is necessary in the world, then everything changes, right? She becomes she is the hero, she's successful, and then finally gets to go. And she finds the love of her life. I mean, look at that. So, which actually happens in uh legally blonde, too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's legally blonde. Um, she she graduates with honors, she makes a speech at graduation, she has a job lined up, which Warner does not. And she is in a relationship with someone who values her true self. Yes. Yeah. Perfect.
SPEAKER_00Love legally blonde.
SPEAKER_01Love it.
SPEAKER_00So you can see, like, this is very much a um it it follows a similar path to the hero's journey, but the motivations in it are a little bit different. The success, kind of right, the the success of what a hero's journey versus the success of the Virgin's Promise is a little bit different. But I think you can kind of see, like, if you can take the different elements of this, you could have a character who could not only be the hero with the external stuff, but also add just enough of that internal, or vice versa, if you were focused on the internal, but could add just enough of that extra outside pressure, you create the kind of story that we just like we stay up late reading because we root for this character so much and we care about them and we can't wait to find out, you know, ultimately what does success look like and who are they at the end of the book, right?
SPEAKER_01I think, I think, I think that is perhaps one of the most obvious and strongest examples of use bits from all of these or some of these structures. Yeah, they they work well when you yeah, take from whatever take from all, take from both, do it all. Well, don't do it all.
SPEAKER_00Don't do it all really complicated, but that's a good point. Find the pieces that work really well for your stories, find the ones that you're excited as a writer to write about and write them really well.
SPEAKER_01Nice, nice. Yeah. Okay, so this one is an this next one is another circular one. This is Dan Harmon's story circle. So this is a simplified kind of hero's journey. We've gone from a 12-step journey to eight stages. Much more um, yeah, more manageable. Um you've got that sort of setup where a character is in their comfort zone. They want something, they enter an unfamiliar situation, they must adapt, they get what they want, they pay a price for it, they return, and they are changed. So you've got that nice circle, don't you? Uh-huh. And Dan Harmon came up with just a one-word kind of beat for each of these stages. Do you want to share what those are? I didn't actually realize it was one word for each one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So those words are you need, go, search, find, take, return, and change. Nice. There's gonna be a quiz on that later. No, I'm just kidding. It'll be on the handout though.
SPEAKER_01Have you seen The Office? Yes. Okay, so you know when Kevin he decides that he's gonna take out unnecessary words out of his sentences because you can still understand what he's saying. And he's like, few words go fast. Makes sense.
SPEAKER_00That's kind of what that keeps. Yeah, you you need go search, find, take, return, changed.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Yes. Well, I like I like how accessible, action-oriented, and simple that list of words is. Yes, agreed. Yeah, I mean, if the hero's journey is like, okay, why are we talking about mentors and uh refusal of the call? And elixirs, like, yeah, take take this one. This is this is your bare circle-shaped story.
SPEAKER_00So, like, if if if hero's journey feels daunting to you, maybe take a look at Dan Harmon's story circle. This again, it's much simpler. And let's look at an example. It's a great example. It fits it like so perfectly. I would be curious if they looked at this story. And no, actually, I know that like Disney and Pixar and those, they tend to, they actually have a different story structure, but but this one fits so perfectly. So let's look at it. It's Toy Story.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_00Everybody's seen Toy Story, right? The original one. So let's look at each. This is a quick one. So you, right? You is is the character in a comfort zone. It's Woody is Andy's favorite toy. We meet him, life is good. He everybody knows Woody. He has, you know, he's he's settled, he's comfortable. This is his life. Next, need. Woody wants to stay Andy's favorite toy even after the really flashy Buzz Buzz arrives, right? Go. Woody and Buzz get lost and separated from Andy. So they they're on in this unfamiliar situation. Search, they have to try to get home and they have to learn how to work together, right? That's the adaptation part. Uh find Woody realizes that friendship matters more than being the favorite. So, like they also. Ultimately, this is a this is a little bit of a twist. And this is so they get what they wanted. So does Woody get what he wants? Well, he has to, he realizes he has to share, maybe being the favorite, right? Take, um, he has to let go of his jealousy and need for status. And that's what he has to lose, right? That's that's the heavy price that he pays for it, is that he's no longer going to be the lone cowboy who like Andy adores alone, but he has to share that status with someone else. So they return Woody and Buzz make it back to Andy and they get back into their familiar situation. And now Woody, because he accepts Buzz, because he's become a friend, he's actually become a better, like I think, kind of leader of the toys because it is a better understanding of the world and a better understanding of himself. And so that's the change element of that. So this story structure again, if you can put a story into hero's journey, you can fit it into story circle and you can see it in a much um more simplified version.
SPEAKER_02Toy Story.
SPEAKER_00Toy Story, I knew. The scary thing is I'm pretty sure the first one came out like 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_01I just I just went and saw the fifth one in theaters, and the first one came out just a little before I came into existence. Yes. And every single one of them has made me cry. So that's I forget sometimes.
SPEAKER_00I'm a Gen Accazer, and it's the Gen Zier, and I was like, yep, that's about right.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. But you can, you know, I'm on the older side of Gen Z because Toy Story is just a little older than me. Toy Story is a millennial, technically.
SPEAKER_00Well, there you go. I mean, first one I'll date my I was one when Star Wars came out in the movie theater, so like so we're both there. I was barely alive for that one, too. Okay. So I think we've got we have we have two more um story structures for you to consider. Um, the next one is called the fictian curve. Did I say that right? Fictian? Yeah, that's how I would say it. That's a fun word to say. So this is from John Gardner's book, The Art of Fiction. He is an American writing professor, a writer, a literary critic. I mean, the guy knows this stuff, right? And so he came up with um this story structure, and I'm gonna let you kind of jump in and chat about it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So he proposed that a lot of these other models were spending too much time in the status quo and in the setup. And he proposed that conflict should be present from the jump of a story. It's sort of like your other previous ones that we've looked at, especially our pyramid or triangle ones, but it cuts right to the chase. There's no expository introduction. There's no la la la, Woody is in Andy's bedroom. It's like if Toy Story started with Woody and Buzz alone at the gas station having to figure out how to get to Pizza Planet and then out of Sid's house. Like it cuts all of that, sort of. Yes. Um the so the 50-in curve, it begins with a problem already in motion. This is our sort of in media res kind of start, like starting in the middle of things. Yes. It's then follows a pattern of rising crises. It's like it's kind of a wave going up a mountain shape, um, is how I would describe it.
SPEAKER_00So would you say that like plots that are kind of built on this one are much more intense? This makes me think like action movie.
SPEAKER_01Like, oh yeah, yeah. So this is when I'm gonna come back to the Martian. This is, I think that the Martian is a beautiful example of this. Um, if you look at the first line of the Mar of the Martian, and I haven't read it, but I did check out page one. Um, it's F-bombs all the way because this guy is already stranded. So it's no sort of la la la, I'm an astronaut. It's I'm gonna die on this planet. Right. Um, The Virgin Suicides is another one. We do not wait. We cut to the chase um in that book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Problem is already in motion. Um, things just keep rising and rising and rising. Finally, you get to a climax, a breaking point moment, and you do kind of go down the other side of the mountain in terms of like falling action. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So this makes me think of like every action flicks. So, like um, like Mission Impossible or gosh, I'm I'm sure there are others, but like, yeah, just like these are the kinds of things where you're like gripping the armrests, right? Or in the books where you're like slur lean in so close, your nose is like the girl with the dragon tattoo, right? Like your nose is so close to the page, it's like, oh my gosh, like, and you barely get a moment to catch your breath.
SPEAKER_01And you know what? This is so good for a writer who likes an info dump. If you naturally gravitate towards starting out with a lot of exposition, background info, history of characters, I'd say this could be a serious challenge. Cut all of that and start where your conflict starts. Start right there with your conflict. The rest of that exposition and background info, it'll come up as your character goes through all these crises. It'll come up here and there. No, I like it. I mean, and the truth is, I mean, you gave an example.
SPEAKER_00It would be like if Woody and and Buzz like the story started at the gas station. So as you can see, like that would be a very, very different story. It would be it. Restarted there. So it's not gonna be for every story, right? But for those stories that it fits, oh my goodness, is this a good story structure? Like you gave a couple of good examples. Gone Girl, I think, is another really good example of this one, right? We don't, we don't meet Nick and Amy like before. We meet them in the midst of Amy is missing, and it just continues to escalate, escalate, and escalate to the point where like we believe he's about to, like, he did it, he's about to get arrested, right? Like his life is over. And then we've got that. I like I almost don't want to give it away. Because if you haven't seen it, I love I love Bond Girl. Oh there's this juicy twist right in the middle that changes everything, but then it just continues to escalate. And you just are, I mean, as like as a reader, or if you watch the movie, you're just like, I I think my eyebrows were like in my hairline, but this movie was done, right? So um, this uh so gone girl, fantastic example of the 50-year curve.
SPEAKER_01Totally. Oh, I like that one. Oh, I'm gonna have to rewatch. Love that one.
SPEAKER_00See, everybody is too. We probably just ruined all of these movies for you because now you're gonna have to watch them and be like, oh yeah, I see it now. Totally. Like, we're not ruining movies, but I think what it will do is is when you become more aware of these structures, you're gonna start to see them in plague, right? And it what it does is it gives you so many great examples. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to do like Fry Tag's like serious study of all of this stuff. You're gonna start to see how structure plays a role and the different pieces of it, depending on whatever structure you like the best, you're gonna start to see pieces of it in books that you read and movies that you watch. Totally. You can't help it.
SPEAKER_01No, I can't tell you how many times I'm just watching a movie and I'm like, inciting incident just happened. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, rising action.
SPEAKER_00Uh, Dark Knight of the Soul, which we're gonna talk about here in a minute.
SPEAKER_01Yes, okay, that one comes up in our very last one. Yeah, which is Save the Cat.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I think this one is probably one of my favorites. And I've talked to some other folks where they feel like this one is too formulaic, and I get that. But like if you're a beginner writer and you like have this idea for a story, but you're not really sure how to structure it, this is one, again, that's proven. Like this one you can see, pick any kind of like major successful movie, you can fit it into the say the beat, say the cat, Peachy, right? Because this was developed from a screenplay. There have been modifications, there are versions of it that are specifically um geared towards writing fiction. Um, is it formulaic? Okay, but there's it's kind of in the same way that tropes are formulaic, right? It's a story structure that readers, or if you're writing a screenplay, for example, that we're just used to. We would there's an expectation of a certain kind of structure, and there's nothing wrong with leaning into something like using reader or um audience expectation to do some work for you so you don't have to spend all the time creating some of these things. But that's all I'm gonna say about this. This is a great structure, and it's another one where I think you can borrow pieces even if the full thing doesn't fit.
SPEAKER_01You know, I have just like you seen writers roll their eyes at this and find it too prescriptive. I have even felt that myself in moments here and there. This one, though, if you kind of know where you're going, like let's say you take the um seven-point story, let's say you know where you start and where you end up, you're gonna hit some of these beats that are on the Save the Cat beat sheet along the way. Um just naturally, without even looking at the beat sheet, it's really got the fundamentals of so much of storytelling kind of encapsulated. So if you can use it to sort of like diagnose your story and better understand your story rather than like paint by numbers perfect. I must by page 57 hit my, you know, um my debate or my break into two or whatever. Right. Don't you don't need to follow it to a T that way, but you can use it. It is a really good resource.
SPEAKER_00I think so. I mean, again, I mentioned and I forgot to to say his name, and I think we should give credit where credit is due, right? So this was created by Blake Snyder, who was a screenwriter, and and it divides the work into 15 major beats. So, like, again, it's a lot of beats. I get it. If you are a planner through and through, you probably will like this structure quite a bit. So we've got things like opening image, which is that's just your normal. That's your intro, that's your exposition. You you get to meet this character a little bit of their normal life before the catalyst, which is your inciting event, kind of ignites the rest of the story. Um, you've got other things like, and I already mentioned debate, break into two, midpoint, things like that. But I think there are um two beats that come out of this particular structure that are useful in almost every story. One, because they create that kind of res, it's not a reset, but it's a little bit of a get the reader prepared for the big climactic moment. It's a it's a little bit of a breather, but it's also it kind of reignites. If you've been, if you've been reading a book that's like super high tension and your shoulders are up by your ears, like there's nowhere to go. You need a little a moment to kind of reset and be ready for that final charge into the climax. And so, and those two pieces out of this are all is lost. This is where like your hero or your main character has been working towards this goal, working towards this goal, and they're so close to it, but something happens that just destroys like everything they've been working on, or a split moment, they believe, and thus the reader believes, that they're gonna fail.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all hope is lost.
SPEAKER_00Like, right? There's we're done. There's no way. And then you have this dark night of the soul, which is where the the hero is basically like, I give up. I give up. Like, I can't do it. I this is this is I should never have done this. I'm the wrong person for it, right? They they just ultimately believe that they have failed and they've internalized that failure. What often comes after this, and it's not really listed, but what I see often is that you will have some kind of mentor figure or something that will happen, whether it's a reflection of something they've learned or it's a person in the now that reignites their belief that not only is this worth fighting for, but they are the one who can do it. Um, and those two pieces, and then you move on, you've got the big climax, and then you've got all of you know the rest of the stuff where we tie up all the loose ends and the story's over. But those two um elements, actually, three. The opening image, I think is really strong. If you can get a really strong opening image at the beginning of your book that you should potentially mimic at the end of your book, which gets into a whole other thing called mice quotent, which we will talk about on another podcast. But having a really strong opening image that you can then mirror in the c at the close, and then leaning into the all is lost and dark night of the soul moment somewhere towards the end of um act two in your book as you approach your climax.
SPEAKER_01I never noticed this, but save the cat is giving us elements of the hero's journey and elements of the Virgin's Promise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing: none of these are like they're all different combinations, right? They're of the same kind of basic structure. Totally.
SPEAKER_01Yes. All the same elements have come up several different times. Not because for no other reason than these are the elements that are in a story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's kind of like, I mean, I it make you're gonna laugh. It makes me think like when I was a kid, I hated scrambled eggs, but I liked fried eggs. I don't know, it's it's an egg. They pretty much taste the same, but you know what? Me too. I yes but presentation matters. So you know what? If one of these structures does not appeal to you, but another one does, just know you're not doing something dramatically different. We're just using different nuanced terminology to really accomplish the same thing. There are elements here and there that are different, of course, right? That don't exist in in all of them. But um, find the one that speaks to you. Find the one that makes sense, find the one that turns the light on when it comes to creating really strong plot structure so that you don't lose the reader in the middle. I think I think most writers are really good at the beginning. And I think a lot of writers are good at figuring out what's the big climactic moment that has to happen and and what's the happily ever after or what's the tragedy. It's the middle that's really tough. And that's what these structures are designed to do. It's to help you really build the middle so that you end up with a story that is well read from the beginning to the end.
SPEAKER_01Totally, totally. Yeah, find the structure that fries your egg, doesn't scramble then.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna put that out of mug. Find instruction that fry your egg.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Um and take take bits and pieces from the veritable buffet of structures that are sort of out there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yep, and create your own. Create your own. Just understand what each of these are designed to do. And remember the job is to take the reader on a journey that escalates, that shows change from in your main character from the beginning to the end. If you can do that in whatever combination of these different beats, then you've written a book that's that that readers are gonna enjoy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And no one needs to know how the sausage gets made to use another. That's right. No one needs to know how you fried your. No one needs to know if you adhered to a structure, if you did not. No one needs to know. They just are gonna get the end result.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a lot. I mean, we we give you a lot. And again, I think the handout will be really helpful. Um, and I think there are probably, correct me if I'm wrong, probably some some links on there too where you can kind of deep dive into um each of these structures. But just don't be afraid to try something new. Go fry your egg. All right, we'll talk again soon, y'all.