In Issue #27 of PTWS - An Introduction To Story Structure Models - I introduced the concept of a story structure model and why it’s important for writers of non-fiction as well as fiction.
In this issue I'm going to introduce five different story models for you to start exploring. Before we do that, I just want to talk for a moment about how I discovered story structure models.
Ever since I've was 12 years old, I've wanted to be a fiction writer. And I wrote stories throughout my teens and into my 20s but struggled with making the jump from shorter works to long form stories, i.e. novels. One of the best ways that writers can procrastinate is to buy “how to books", and I bought or borrowed as many of them as I could get my hands on.
The problem was I was buying the wrong sub genre of books. There used to be a snobbish strain in fiction writing that considered plotting to be a mechanical activity. That plotting is hackwork.
At some point, in the late 80s/early 90s I came across an interview with a writer - whose name is long forgotten - and, in answer to a question, this long forgotten writer said all of the best writers who understand story structure are screenwriters.
She had studied with Robert McKee and taken McKee’s story structure seminar. McKee was planning to release that seminar in book form, the book deal had been signed, but publication was 18 months away.
The main book then available that detailed a screenwriter’s approach to structure was Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting.
That gave me a more concrete understanding of story than any plot structure for fiction books that I'd read. Shortly after that, and before McKee's book was published, Chris Vogler published the first edition of The Writers Journey.
That book was a massive upgrade on Screenplay, and turbocharged my understanding of story structure. More on that shortly. Since then, there has been an explosion of story structure books. In the rest of this issue, we're going to look at five different story structure models.
#1 The Three Act Structure
Three Act Structure goes back to Aristotle and Poetics. Syd Field adapted it for screenplay writing, with an important addition.
Field broke down a screenplay into three acts:
Act 1 (Setup) - the first act (of approx 20-30 screenplay pages) sets the story up in terms of character(s), premise, situation and so on.
Act 2 (Confrontation) - the second act (of approx 60 pages) details the main character’s journey through a series of obstacles as said character pursues his or her goals.
Act 3 (Resolution) - the final act (approx 20-30 pages) resolves the story and tells us if the main character succeeded in their goal and tells us what that means (or implies it). Resolution means finding a solution, not just ending the story.
Sidebar: with screenplays, it’s assumed that approximately one page equals a minute of screen time when it’s filmed. The industry is fixated on film length for multiple reasons.
What Field added that was new at the time were two significant events or plot points:
Plot Point 1 - this is an event at the end of Act 1 that turns the story in a new, possibly unexpected direction and leads directly to Act 2.
Plot Point 2 - this event turns the story in another directon and transitions the story to Act 3.
If you want to write novels, Larry Brooks’s expansion of this - Story Engineering - is worth reading.
#2 The Hero’s Journey
The next model to look at - and it's one of my favourites - is The Hero's Journey. The Hero's Journey was brought to the attention of writers in Christopher Vogler’s book: The Writers Journey.
This book is a simplification of the work of Joseph Campbell and his seminal 1949 book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. It's important to note that Campbell wasn't a story structure consultant, wasn't interested in story structure, and was actually a comparative mythologist. The vast majority of his work was on various facets of mythology. In The Hero With A Thousand Faces Campbell catalogued and organised the recurring patterns he found in the mythologies and stories of different cultures from around the world
Vogler took these ideas and wrote a seven page memo introducing these concepts in an understandable framework (which you can download here). And that memo was passed around all the Hollywood film studios and led to Vogler working with Disney and other studioes on various projects.
When I read the book I resonated with the material, because when I was younger I read a lot of mythology, not just Greek and Roman mythology, but Norse mythology, Ancient Egyptian mythology, different strands of Arthurian legend, as well as some of the French chansons des gestes.
As a tool for plotting a story, the hero's journey is more useful than Syd Fields, three act structure because there are more defined events, - or plot points - built into the structure.
One of the interesting elements introduced alongside the different plot events in the Hero's Journey, comma is the concept of character archetypes. Characters that are recognizable in stories. These archetypes range from the hero himself - who is often an orphan - to wise old wizards or witches who act as mentors, to villains who are often reflections of the hero and so on.
The hero's journey framework is the underpinning of a popular book on story branding, though the author of that book never mentions that.
One way to view the hero's journey - which is useful in multiple writing scenarios - is that the Hero’s Journey is a model of human development. To get an idea of how you could use the Hero’s Journey structure with your non fiction, check out this article by Vogler on a 'short form’ version of the Hero’s Journey:
#3 John Truby’s 21 Step Structure
I’ve seen John lecture twice - he’s a guy who knows story inside and out. (I’ve also seen Robert McKee lecture, and Truby was better.)
Truby’s story model is capable of much more nuance than most other story models and he talks about deeper issues like interweaving thematic and symoblic elements than you’ll find in simpler models like Syd Field’s or Save The Cat.
John’s story spine is built on 7 essential steps that frame and inform the whole story (like desire and need, the opponent, the plan) and these are interwoven with another 15 plot steps. Note that the 7 essential steps drive the direction that the story goes in.
One element that John talks about - that few other story structure gurus do - is using revelations and reveals of information as major plot and character turning points. Revelations can be used in non-fiction too - and foreshadowed to create narrative interest.
The Anatomy Of Story is the best place to start for John’s story model - though if you resonate with what he has to say it might be worth getting hold of John’s ‘Memoir And True Story’ audio class to see how narrative devices can work with non-fiction.
#4 Save The Cat
Save The Cat, by Blake Synder, burst onto the screenwriting scene in 2005 and has been a perennial seller since then. Although it’s designed for screenwriting, it’s been adapted by novelists and other writers too.
The Save The Cat methodology is built around 15 plot points that Synder insists every story has to have and then each of those 15 plot points take an assigned place on a 40 beat/40 card fuller outline.
I’ve never seen anyone adapt Save The Cat, or parts of it, to non fiction. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be. I mentioned Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t by Stephen Pressfield in Issue 27, and one of the things that Pressfield says is that every non-fiction piece should use story telling principles like a concept, a hero and a villain, a theme, acts, an inciting incident and so on. All of those elements are present in Save The Cat (and the rest of the story models introduced) - so maybe you’ll read Blake Snyder’s book, and you’ll be the one who takes the Save The Cat ideas and adapts them for non fiction.
#5 The Snowflake Method
The snowflake method was developed by a writer called Randy Ingermanson, who is a theoretical physicist in his day job. Ingermanson's theory is that story is fractal. You can read more about it at this link:
The way Ingermanson’s method outlines a story is to start from a one line log line, and then expand out in a 10 step process to a completed outline.
For example, you start with a one line description of your story.
Then you expand that one line description into a paragraph description of the story. Now, that paragraph description should incorporate the number of subsections in your story. Then, you take each of the lines that correspond to those subsections. And you expand those out to a paragraph.
Once you've done that, for all the sections of your story, you've now got a one or two page outline. And it carries on using a process of expanding sections that you've already created further outwards, until you’ve gone from a one line description to a completed outline of the story.
This process lends itself to writing nonfiction too. For example, this issue could have started with a one line description: six story models that nonfiction writers can start exploring.
Then, that one line can be expanded out into a paragraph that contains all six of the story models in its own sentence. Then each of those story model sentences can be expanded out into a paragraph outlining what each subsection will say.
Then those paragraphs can be expanded into the final form.
It's a different story model than the majority of the others introduced in this article, but I recommend reading Ingermanson's description of it and thinking about ways that you could use it in your writing
The Ride Out
All writers should understand story and story structure. In this Issue I’ve laid out five models that you can investigate to learn more. There are more I’ve left out. If you want to dive deeper into story theory, here are four more books worth checking out:
Into The Woods by John Yorke.
The Story Grid by Shawn Coyle.
The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker.
Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach (2nd Edition) by Paul Gulino
There’s no one story model to rule them all and what you may find is that you create your own story model by taking elements from two or three and blending them together. Understanding story structure is an important skill for non fiction writers and the resources I’ve mentioned in this Issue create a good starting point for your own investigations.
Issue 29
What’s interesting about this Issue is that the majority of the first draft was created not by sitting down and hammering away on the keyboard, but by dictating while doing other activities (e.g. walking the dog, walking to our local outdoor pool, etc).
Those activities are ‘dead time’ activities. I’ve already written a book about how bass players (and other musicians) can practice in their dead time (and when they don’t have their instruments to hand) and in Issue #29 I’ll talk about how writers can make use of their dead time to become more productive.
Primarily that’s to use dictation. And Issue #29 will summarise how that process has been working for me over the last week and the week upcoming.