A recent Ask HN[1] reminded me of this series of articles. Make sure to read all six parts:

- https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Supe...

- https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_102:_Pure...

- https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_103:_Let%...

- https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_104:_The_...

- https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_105:_How_...

- https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_106:_Five...

[1]: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/34562930

For those complaining that this structure doesn't fit their favorite stories - of course not all story types can fit into this one (or any one) scheme. The one presented is a trope sometimes called "The Hero's Journey", and while not all stories fall into that category, a lot of them follow the basic tenet outlined in the article.

Also, the term "101" should make it obvious that this it not meant to serve as an all encompassing compendium. It's an introductory piece that outlines a basic structure, to get started thinking about commonalities in story telling.

It's also nothing new. If you scroll down to the comments, you'll find a mention of the book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell which is a go-to treaty on the subject - and it's from 1949! (I personally find it a bit of a slow read, but it does cover an impressive amount of classic narratives.)

Craig Mazin, the screenwriter of HBO's Chernobyl and the Last of Us series, once gave an awesome 45 minute lecture on his ScriptNotes podcast titled “How to write a movie,” in which he walks through how he thinks of storytelling and story structure. If you have any interest in storytelling or screenwriting, it’s a fabulous listen. (You could argue that anything that smacks of formulaic storytelling should be avoided at all costs, but I think it’s still critically important to understand the basic tenets of strong storytelling structure. And as someone who enjoys both of Craig's HBO series, I would say he’s proven he knows how to tell a good story.)

Here’s a YouTube link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY&feature=shares

You can also find it by searching for episode 403 of scriptnotes in whatever podcast app you use.

Here are some of my favorite movies: The Graduate, Taxi Driver, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Badlands, Mars Attacks, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Most of them don't really satisfy this formula, except for trivial points like the protagonists wants something and the protagonist has changed or if you're deliberately trying to fit them by being extremely vague.

The reason is that there are many different types of stories and these can have very different internal structure. For example, Space Opera in science fiction is often just a fight of good vs. evil set at many different interesting locations. Of course, some protagonist should develop, hence change, and it's good to have some kind of unexpected plot twist, but these are trivialities.

Excellent reminder. Thank you.

Commonly ignored critical insight:

Storytelling is for the HUMANS who hear the story, because our lives are in the format of heroes journeys. It matters not if most or some movies/stories follow it, because if the story doesn’t follow it - it’s not remembered by HUMANS. Because, you guessed it…our lives are in the format of a monomyth.

Joseph Campbell was an anthropologist. Not a script writer.

Christopher Vogler was a script writer for Disney.

They both understood that stories were just a vehicle for lessons. And if the structure wasn’t followed then the lesson wouldn’t be received, let alone passed down from generation to generation.

The super super basic shit is 3 steps: 1. Normal world- suspect something is wrong 2. Supernatural world- seek the thing that makes it right 3. Return- bring it back to share

That format fits not only every story ever told, but more importantly - it’s the dna of your life experience. And if you disagree, then ask yourself: am I refusing the call to adventure or a stage in the journey in my life? Give it a shot. It’ll change your life.

Side note: by “lesson” I mean the fundamental building blocks of your worldview. Lookup Weltanschauung.

Maybe I am watching the wrong movies, reading the wrong books and playing the wrong games, but I followed the prompt to think about those and they don't match. It's not that the protagonist wants something, but something happens to them.

The pattern I found mostly is - in comfort - something bad happens - try to get out of bad situation/get revenge - overcome many difficulties - maybe some plot twist - overcome last difficulty

What are good examples of the story setup in the articles?

A great piece of advice I got for public speaking is that you can structure a talk around the hero's journey... but you aren't the hero. You are the Yoda-like advisor character who's helping guide the hero (your audience) along the path, from their current default state to a new, improved mental model of the world at the end.

Nancy Duarte's book Resonate covers this idea in detail.

Pixars story structure comes to my mind:

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

There is tons of fascinating things on storytelling. One page i like to browse is tvtropes. It's collecting aspects of stories and categorizes them. For example unobtanium: ""Unobtainium is engineering jargon for, "a material that would be perfect for our purposes, if we could get it, which we can't." ""

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unobtainium

Or the story types, where there are 3, 6, 7, 36 depending on how you categorize them. Reading about them and seeing how they are used in all our Media is fascinating.

https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/37-possible-stories.html

See also:

Kurt Vonnegut - the shape of stories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc

because no-one appears to have said it explicitly yes, this is the "Hero's Journey" but MORE IMPORTANTLY this is just one of MANY story structures.

It's just the one that Western European & American (continent not country) authors seem to prefer. I know it's not the default in East Asia (see Kishōtenketsu). I assume it's not the default in many other places. And if we set aside the major default ones there are still many other structures to choose from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu

Kind of pretentious to call it "Story Structure 101" unless we're qualifying this as the author's types of stories. In which case, fine.

What about stories where the hero gets what they wanted, it's a net good for everyone, and the only heavy price is a newfound responsibility to maintain this good rather than "returning to a familiar situation"? To me, that's an actual hero.

This is pretty much just a riff on the Hero's Journey which is a very common narrative structure, featured a lot in Jung's psychology and just about every (fantasy) epic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

Should be paired with "Character Growth 101: It's This Easy".

- When the story starts, your character has a clear Want. - Over the course of adventure, they discover what they actually Need. - The Want and the Need are in conflict, and how they resolve that conflict changes them.

The author seems to avoid to call it what is it: The Hero's Journey,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

"Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do."

This reasoning doesn't follow, it's just a hollow appeal to nature. If people would work so well out of the box, they would not need parenting, and 10-20 years of that even.

Dan Harmon is a great storyteller, but this system, and indeed all these "universal story structure" systems all either:

1) Are so generic they doesn't say anything useful (like a horoscope which fit everybody).

2) Only matches some select stories.

A good litmus test is if the system is compatible with Shakespeare's Hamlet. Given how populuar and well-regarded the play have been for centuries, we can safely say it is the system rather than the play which is at fault if the play does not fit the system.

We immediately notice that Hamlet does not "Then return to their familiar situation", since he dies (along with most other characters). Also it is not really clear he have changed. Indeed, the genre of tragedy does not match the requirement to have the protagonist safely home in the end, so Romeo and Juliet is also out. These are not obscure examples, these are the most famous and well-regarded plays in the English language.

TV-shows like Rick and Morty does tend to have the characters safely home in the end, so they can start in the "zone of comfort" in the next episode. On the other hand the characters rarely change. Even if they learn some lessons, they have usually forgotten them by start of the next episode. So I'm unsure if the system even matches Harmons own writing.

The story structure that Dan shows is a distilled version of Joseph Campbell's Hero's journey. A more get it done version.

Mind you, this isn't something that you have to follow. It's something that appears whenever you're telling a story. It's like gravity it's there even if you don't believe in it.

~source: https://youtu.be/SndbyN4u0j4

Compare with the plot of “Back to the Future”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future#Plot

If you want to distill all stories, ever, to its atoms, you need only one bit: rise and fall. Of course a single bit (usually) makes a boring story, so combine at least two: rise & fall, or fall & rise. Now these are still pretty basic, it's best to take three, or four if you're daunting. You can make more, but at some point the reader will take a step and view a sequence of rises and falls as a single rise or fall.

Go ahead and try to apply this (admittedly a bit absurdist) scheme to any story known to mankind, ever.

The extreme version of this structure is Save The Cat[1] where each of the beats should happen on this page number of your script. Like others have mentioned these are largely based on the Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

[1] https://savethecat.com/products/books/save-the-cat-the-last-...

Can anyone name a movie that was really good and really popular that diverged from this model heavily.

By really popular I mean pretty much universally popular. Not niche popular.

Mike Hill made a great video about this topic, using "Terminator 2" as an example, as well as a few other excellent videos about storytelling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWeJ22mIlE

If you enjoy this, I highly recommend the podcast Craig Mazin (writer of Chernobyl and The Last of Us) made about structuring movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY

Also known as the Hero's Journey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

"the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed."

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

Short and to the point. This is how a tutorial should be.

To any budding writers out there: please don't.

I can't read any more hero stories, I've developed allergies.

And, let's go a little deeper into them:

a) They assume that there exists an area of comfort for characters, and the story will empower the reader to see it right at the beginning, so the story is asking the reader to make a judgement with incomplete data. (Do you like when your product manager asks you to estimate how long X will take?)

b) They "addict" the reader to this structure, which means writers who want to write other types of stories will be out of luck when it comes to their story being liked. Which takes me to

c) They shoe-horn the writer into writing a specific type of story. What if the writer is more interested in exploring a notion or a concept, but they don't want to do it through the exposition of the inner world/private life of a character? (like, should we understand US politics by following Donald Trump through his private life with camera, microphones and telepatic devices?)

What's the circle about?