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Comparative Narrative Story Structures The greatest hits of story structure, all in one place, arranged chronologically and side-by-side for your comparative viewing pleasure!
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The Application of Harmon's 8-Segment Story Circle in Lion King The You: Introduce the protagonist and the world they inhabit. In The Lion King, Simba is born, and his potential to become the next king is established.
The Need: Define the protagonist’s goal or desire. Simba’s need is to prove himself and claim his rightful place as king.
The Go: The protagonist embarks on a journey. Simba leaves the kingdom after his father’s tragic death, feeling responsible for the event.
The Search: The protagonist searches for what they need. Simba encounters Timon and Pumbaa, who teach him a carefree and carefree lifestyle away from his responsibilities.
The Find: The protagonist finds what they are looking for. Simba reunites with his childhood friend, Nala, and realizes the importance of his duty to his kingdom
The Take: The protagonist takes hold of what they found. Simba decides to return to his homeland, challenge his evil uncle Scar, and reclaim his place as king
The Return: The protagonist returns to where they began. Simba confronts Scar and his past, facing the ultimate test of his bravery and strength.
The Change: The protagonist undergoes a transformation. Simba defeats Scar, takes his rightful place as king, and learns the importance of responsibility and leadership. Simba restores balance to the Pride Lands, reunites with his family, and brings harmony back to his kingdom.
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Dan Harmon's 8-Segment Story Circle Dan Harmon hardly invented the circular narrative structure or traced the cyclical nature of stories in the three-act structure. He merely simplified the Hero’s Journey and adapted it to his own screenwriting needs.
In Harmon's 8-Segment Story Circle, there are only 8 parts: You. Need. Go. Struggle. Find. Take. Return. Change.
The way the story circle works is that your main character, much like Campbell’s hero, moves from a zone of comfort towards a want, and with that, into the chaos of the second act, from where they’ll return changed. The top half of the circle represents order and the bottom half chaos. The right side of the circle represents the hero resisting their transformation, the left side represents the hero moving towards their transformation.
Use this as a template for Dan Harmon's story structure:
The protagonist has a need. He goes to search for it. He finds what he needs, but in order to get it, he must face extreme challenges. In this journey, the protagonist returns to where he started, but he gained new experience which will help him change his world once and for all.
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The movie examples mapping in Robert McKee's Story Triangle The diagram places movies along a spectrum that spans from Archplot through Miniplot to Antiplot, indicating that few films achieve a pure form that settles at the extreme corners of this triangle. Instead, films tend to blend or borrow from each extreme. Examples given include "The Fabulous Baker Boys" and "The Crying Game," which fall between Archplot and Miniplot. These films combine elements from both structures: they tell the story of a passive main character, and they leave certain plot threads unresolved.
In the case of "When Harry Met Sally," the film initially presents an Archplot romance but later introduces elements of Antiplot, as the interviews with older couples create a documentary style that adds layers of reality and satire.
"Barton Fink" sits at the center of the triangle, drawing qualities from each of the three extremes. It features a single protagonist, a playwright trying to succeed in Hollywood, reflecting the Archplot. However, as Fink becomes more reclusive and suffers from writer's block, elements of Miniplot emerge. The progression into hallucination introduces aspects of Antiplot, with the line between reality and fantasy becoming blurred.
This triangle thus serves as a framework for analyzing the structural choices made in storytelling, emphasizing that writers often navigate the spectrum between the extremes, resulting in a rich diversity of narrative forms.
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Robert McKee's Story Triangle Classical Design means a story built around an active protagonist who struggles against primarily external forces of antagonism to pursue his or her desire, through continuous time, within a consistent and causally connected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute, irreversible change.
Minimalism/ MiniPlot = Reduced version of the Archplot. Strives for simplicity and economy while retaining enought of the classical to satisfy the audience.
Antiplot = reverses and contradicts the classical forms. (Ridicules them.) Extravaganet and self-conscious overstatement.
Miniplot and Antiplot wouldn’t exist without the Archplot.
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The application of Freytag's Pyramid in Psycho In the suspenseful masterpiece 'Psycho,' directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, a Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.
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Freytag's Pyramid Gustav Freytag analyzed the structure of ancient Greek and Shakespearean plays, dividing them into five acts: the exposition, which provides background information such as the identities of the protagonist, the antagonist, and other supporting characters, the setting, and the basic conflict; the rising action, which, set into motion by an inciting moment, complicates the basic conflict; a turning point, or climax, which reverses the direction of the plot so that the story ultimately becomes either a comedy or a tragedy; the falling action, which unravels the conflict and may or may not end in a moment of final suspense during which the story's outcome becomes a matter of doubt; and either a resolution or denouement (comedy) or a catastrophe (tragedy).
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6 iconic movies that follow the hero’s journey This infographic shows the progression of the hero’s journey in six iconic movies: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), Star Wars (1977), The Matrix (1999), Spider-Man (2002), The Lion King (1994) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003).
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Comparison Between Hero's Journey and Heroine's Journey
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The Heroine’s Journey Map The hero’s journey is a search for one’s soul and is chronicled in mythologies and fairy tales throughout the world. This quest motif does not, however, address the archetypal journey of the heroine. For contemporary women, this involves the healing of the wounding of the feminine that exists deep within her and the culture.
In 1990, Maureen Murdock wrote The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness as a response to Joseph Campbell’s model. Murdock, a student of Campbell’s work, felt his model failed to address the specific psycho-spiritual journey of contemporary women. She developed a model describing the cyclical nature of the female experience. Campbell’s response to her model was, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological tradition the woman is there. All she has to do is to realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to” (Campbell, 1981). That may be true mythologically as the hero or heroine seeks illumination but psychologically, the journey of the contemporary heroine involves different stages.
The Heroine’s Journey begins with an Initial Separation from feminine values, seeking recognition and success in a patriarchal culture, experiencing spiritual death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. The final stages involve an acknowledgement of the union and power of one’s dual nature for the benefit of all humankind (Murdock, 1990, pp. 4-11). Drawing upon cultural myths, Murdock illustrates an alternative journey model to that of patriarchal hegemony. It has become a template for novelists and screenwriters, shining a light on twentieth-century feminist literature.
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The Hero’s Journey map Campbell's foundational work describes the narrative pattern as follows:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
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The application of Larry Brooks’ Four Parts in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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Larry Brooks’ Four Part In Story Engineering Brooks writes that there are four major parts of a novel: The Setup, The Response, The Attack and The Resolution. Like a circle, successfully writing one of these parts determines the success of the next part – and the success of the sum of these four parts determines the viability of the entire novel.
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The application of Syd Field's Paradigm in The Shawshank Redemption The Paradigm of The Shawshank Redemption shows you how it works.
The Story: A young banker, convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, is sentenced to Shawshank Penitentiary. In prison, Andy meets and forms a relationship with Red, another convicted killer, then becomes an ally and trustee of the warden. When his attempts for a retrial fail, he escapes Shawshank. At the end, Andy makes his way to Mexico, where he and Red are reunited.
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Syd Field's The Paradigm Dramatic structure is the foundation of screenwriting.
The word itself means “to build, or put together,” and understanding how it works is essential to the craft of screenwriting. Simply put, structure holds the story together; there is a beginning, middle and end, (not necessarily in that order), and a point at which the beginning turns into the middle, and the middle turns into the end.
That point is called a Plot Point. It is any incident, episode or event that hooks into the action and spins it around into another direction; in this case, either Act II or Act III.
There are many plot points in a screenplay, but in the creation of the story line, the most important are Plot Point I and Plot Point II. The four elements of structure, beginning, Plot Point I, Plot Point II and the ending, will always hold your story in place.
This is illustrated on the Paradigm, a model of what a screenplay is if you look at it like a painting hanging on the wall.