Where I share thoughts on writing and the writing life.
A Shortcut on the Hero’s Journey
Dan Harmon was in a quandary. The Comedian turned TV comedy writer was frustrated with trying to turn the cumbersome Hero’s Journey (HJ—See previous post) into a useable plot to write a 30-minute sitcom. There were too many moving parts to fit into such a short script. So, he took a shortcut, and invented the Story Circle: a trimmed down version of the Hero’s Journey shrunk to fit the time constraints of TV. Instead of the 14 or so steps in the HJ, his template only consists of only eight steps. He placed these on a circle to match the HJ and it worked. The Story Circle is a versatile, easy to understand plot structure that can fit just about any story. What’s more, it can be used in conjunction with any of the other structures we have spoken about. Here is a graphic representation of the Story circle.
The circle is further divided int four ‘halves”. The top half signifying familiar territory and the bottom half indicating the unknown. The circle is also divided vertically, with the right half signifying stasis, and the left half indicating a change in the hero.
Notice that instead of “He” or “She”, he uses a more personalized “You.”
The first slice of the pie consists of “You,” or if you prefer “You are.” This is the “ordinary world” we are familiar with from Campbell’s theory.
The next slice is “You Want.” The Hero wants something that he feels will make his lie complete or at least improve it a lot. This may relate to the “Call to adventure” of the HJ, but here the “call” is something internal, vs a wizard or a droid.
Next comes “You go”, which relates to the “Crossing the Threshold” in the old order. The hero goes in search of his desired goal, but something else happens, as well: He moves from his familiar surrounding into unknown territory as he moves to the bottom half of the circle.
Next comes “You adapt.” Here the hero adapts to his new surroundings, but his mental state hasn’t yet changed. He is still his old self.
Next comes “You find.” The hero finds what he is searching for. (note that this takes place at the midpoint of the story and not the end.) But also he begins to change. Part of his old self doesn’t seem to fit that well anymore. This is signified by crossing from the right to the left half of the circle. Note he is still in the bottom half, as well, still in unfamiliar territory.
The next step according to Harmon is “You take.” Our hero has won his prize, but pays a heavy price for it, this corresponds roughly to “Seizing the Sword” in the HJ. The price may be physical or mental or both.
Step Seven is called “You return”, similar to the HJ’s “Road back.” The hero returns home. Note that he crosses from the bottom to the top half of the circle, indicating his return to familiar territory.
The final step in the circle is “You Change.” Similar to “Return with the Elixir in the HJ, the Hero returns home a changed person. Notice that he is back in the top half of the circle, in familiar territory, but remains in the left half, signifying permanent change.
The Story Circle is pretty versatile and can be applied to many stories. Let’s apply it to a popular tale. As I said in previous posts, I like to apply these structures to old stories to show how versatile they are. For the Story Circle, I will use The Epic of Gilgamesh one of the oldest written stories known to man. It predates the bible by around two thousand years. Various versions of it have been found in ancient ruins of several empires, including Babylon and Assyria, written on clay tablets in cuneiform. Being an epic, there are various subplots and side trips, but we will concern ourselves with the main plotline with just a couple of detours.
(You Are): Gilgamesh is a great king in the city of Uruk but he is unhappy and bored. (Though no historical record of Gilgamesh’s life has ever been found, Uruk was a real city with massive walls, and the folklore of the town says they were built by him.)He is brutal to his people. The gods decide he needs a friend, so they take a beast of the woods known as Enkidu and turn him into a man-like figure (the way they do this involves a prostitute, but we won’t go into that).
Gilgamesh is walking down the road and meets Enkidu and they immediately begin to fight. They fight for a long time, and it ends in a draw (some versions have Gilgamesh winning). As often happens, the two enemies become best buds. They go off on adventures basically terrorizing the neighborhood and pissing off the gods. When they kill the gods’ prized bull, the gods have had enough and decide to kill Enkidu in revenge.
Gilgamesh takes his friends death hard and morns over him. He begins to wish he could not die but could be immortal (You need).
Gilgamesh sets off to find a man called Utnapishtim, who is said to be immortal, hoping Utnapishtim can grant him eternal life, or at least tell him how to get it. (You Go).
Gilgamesh has many adventures on his journey, eventually ending up in a bar where the bartender tells him to forget about immortality and learn to enjoy life. (You adapt).
Gilgamesh finds Utnapishtim below the twin peaks (You find)
Utnapishtim tells him how he got eternal life. This is one of the earliest known flood stories. He says the gods thought the humans were too noisy, so they decided to wipe them out with a flood, but Utnapishtim built an ark and took his wife and all the seeds of the earth with him and survived the flood. The gods were flabbergasted and didn’t know what to do with him, so they made him immortal. (Side note: The instructions in the epic are so precise that in 2017an actual ark was built according to these 3,500 year-old directions. It floated. Probably scared the shit out of IKEA.)
Utnapishtim sets up a challenge: If Gilgamesh can stay awake for seven days, he can have immortality. He immediately goes to sleep and sleeps for seven days, losing his chance at immortality. But Utnapishtim tells him of a plant growing at the bottom of the sea, that, while not granting him immortality, will make him young again and erase his fear of death. Gilgamesh dives down and retrieves the plant but, not trusting Utnapishtim, decides to take it home. (It was not unusual at that time to have a slave taste one’s food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned).
So, Gilgamesh heads home, but on the way a snake steals the plant and eats it, shedding its skin and becoming young again. (You take: pay a heavy price).
(You Return): Gilgamesh returns to Uruk empty handed.
(You Change): Gilgamesh no longer fears death because he knows that life will go on after him. There will be other kings and other cities. He begins to admire his city and the industriousness of its people. He is a changed man.
While the Story Circle works great for many stories, the fact that it was designed for a comedy means it always has a happy ending. How can we apply The Story Circle to tragedies? We will tackle that in the next installment when we look at an adaptation of the Story Circle known as the Tragic Plot Embryo.
Play around with it. Practice writing a story outline by writing one or two sentences for each step in the story circle or outline a favorite story using the circle.
There and Back Again: The Hero’s Journey
Vercingetorix is a national hero in France, but his life was more Freytag’s Pyramid than Hero’s Journey.
I my last post I discussed Gustave Freytag’s famous pyramid, which is often used and mis-used by screenwriters even now, over 150 Years since its invention (or I prefer discovery). In this post I will discuss another very popular trope called the Hero’s Journey. Which is also often used and mis-used by writers of all stripes.
Like Freytag’s pyramid, the Hero’s Journey is best applied to certain stories, in particular the single-hero adventure tale that generally has a happy ending: The hero returns home victorious (think Luke Skywalker.)
The Hero’s journey was developed by Joseph Campbell (1984-1987) and laid out in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, First published as an academic treatise by the Boddington Foundation in 1949.
Campbell was a professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College and as a young man travelled to India and became fascinated by the mythology there. He recognized that the Indian myths, though apparently isolated from Western stories, held many themes in common with them. On graduating college with a degree in Medieval Literature he spent five years in his family’s cabin reading and studying stories from all over the world. He discovered that stories, especially mythology had several common tropes across many cultures. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was his attempt to explain his theories. It might have ended at that, with Campbell living out a quiet academic life, except that over 20 years after it was published a little movie called Star Wars (you may have heard of it) hit screens across the world. Its creator, George Lucas, mentioned that he used the principles in Campbell’s book as a template for his story. Campbell was immediately launched into prominence as a story guru, and neither he nor Lucas ever looked back.
Campbell’s book is not an easy read, and his idea of the hero’s Journey, which he calls The Adventure. Or the Monomyth, Is complicated. Luckily, John Yorke (1962—) simplified it into 12 steps in his book Into the Woods (Overbrook Press, 2015) and it was further simplified by Dan Harmon (1973—) in his Story Circle, which we will discuss in a later post.
The Yorke version consists of twelve plot points and is usually pictured in a circle. The story advances in a clockwise fashion around the circle (though in Campbell’s version the path is reversed.)
I will lay out the plot points below, and as a way of showing the universality of the trope, I will apply it to the Bible story of the Exodus.
Plot Point One: The Ordinary World
This is where we find our hero living his normal everyday life. He is an orphan working on is uncle’s water farm, a hobbit enjoying his life in Hobbiton. Often something is bothering him; he wants more out of life than his dull hum drum existence, or he feels he is destined for greatness, Often, he has a problem that he is running away from.
In the Book of Exodus: We see Moses on the lamb. Literally, tending his father-in-law’s sheep, but it wasn’t always this way. He was once an up-and-comer in Egyptian society until he killed a slave driver for mistreating a slave. He is hiding out from his accusers.
Plot Point Two: The Call to Adventure: Something happens to disrupt the hero’s life: It may be a visitation from a Wizard, a hologram projected from a newly acquired robot, or some other event that requires the hero to leave his home and face a challenge of some sort.
The Exodus: Moses is out tending sheep one day and sees a bush that is on fire, but not being consumed. He approaches the bush and the voice of YHWH emerges from the conflagration and tells him to go back to Egypt and free the Israelites from the Pharoah.
Plot Point Three: Refusal of the Call: The hero tries to avoid the challenge. She’s too weak, too scared, too young, etc.
The Exodus: Moses tell YHWH that he can’t go. He is inarticulate and a stutterer, and the Egyptians will laugh at him.
Plot Point Four: Meeting the Mentor: Just when the Hero feels he is over his head and can’t do the job, someone appears who will assist him on his journey. He may be given special knowledge, A talisman, or a magic device like an invisibility ring, or a Laser sword that will help him on his way.
The Exodus: YHWH tells Moses that Aaron will go with him and speak for him if necessary. He is given a magic staff that he can use to perform miracles before the Pharoah to show that YHWH means business.
Plot Point Five: Crossing the Threshold: Our hero finally sets off on her quest, often after a period of preparation proceeding the journey. He may go off to a nearby town to hitch a ride to another planet, or set off with his crew to destroy a magic ring. He crosses from the Ordinary World to the Special World, where things are often topsy-turvy.
The Exodus: Moses sets off with his family for Egypt to face the Pharoah.
Plot Point six: Tests, Allies, Enemies: The hero is confronted with ever more difficult tests, but also may gain some new allies; a renegade space-ship captain and his fuzzy buddy, or a motley crew of dwarves, elves and mercenaries.
The Exodus: Moses engages in a battle of wills with the Pharoah and his wizards. He finally gets the Pharoah to relent and release the Israelites, but the fickle Pharoah quickly has a change of heart and sends the army after them.
Plot Point Seven: Approaching the Innermost Cave Our Hero faces a threat to his being, either physical, mental or both. He must face up to the danger. He may have a period of preparation before entering. He may have to fight the urge to keep the magic ring and all its power, or he may enter an actual cave and face his enemy, only to find out it is himself.
The Exodus: Moses climbs up the mountain to meet with YHWH, even though he knows if he looks on His face he will die.
Plot Point Eight: Ordeal: A metaphorical “death” the hero must endure in order to be resurrected. It may be physical, emotional, or psychological.
The Exodus: Moses battles with YHWH for forty days, and finally returns to his tribe with the Ten Commandments only to find his people have turned from the LORD. In a fit of rage, he smashes the Ten commandments. (for those of you keeping score, this signifies the death of civilization).
Plot Point Nine: Seizing the Sword (the Reward) Our hero survives death and is transformed into a new state of being. Her reward may be a valuable physical object, new idea, a secret, or insight. She may finally understand the evil power of the ring, or may be accepted into a secret society of mystical warriors.
The Exodus: Moses returns to the mountain and is given a new set of the Commandments for his people.
Plot Point Ten: The Road Back The hero prepares for the trip home. He must decide between self-preservation and a higher cause.
The Exodus: Moses leads his people to their new home in the Promised Land (this scene is out of place from the Hero’s Journey)
Plot Point Eleven: Resurrection: Our hero faces their final challenge and emerge a changed person.
The Exodus: Moses faces off with YHWH to save his people from YHWH’s wrath
Plot Point Twelve: Return with Elixir Our hero returns from her journey a changed person. He may bring new hope, new Knowledge, or salvation to those left behind.
The Exodus: Moses returns from his ordeal with YHWH with the new tablet of the Ten Commandments. The people notice that his face is glowing from being in His presence. He has struggled with the Lord and come out victorious. His people have been spared and given a new chance at becoming a civilized people.
Writing the Monomyth
The Journey is just a guideline. You do not have to include all the steps, nor complete them in the same order.
A given story may have more than one journey. There may be successive journeys, or parallel journeys by different characters.
Some steps may be repeated.
This may seem formulaic. it is important not to try to fit your story to the template. Go ahead and write your story and then compare it to the template to see if your tale can be enhanced by adding or deleting certain plot points.
This is a recipe, not a formula. Like all recipe’s you may feel free to add or delete ingredients, make substitutions, or change quantities of ingredients to make it your own.
I my last post I discussed Gustave Freytag’s famous pyramid, which is often used and mis-used by screenwriters even now, over 150 Years since its invention or I prefer discovery). In this post I will discuss another very popular trope called the Hero’s Journey. Which is also often used and mis-used by writers of all stripes.
Like Freytag’s pyramid, the Hero’s Journey is best applied to certain stories, in particular the single-hero adventure tale that generally has a happy ending: The hero returns home victorious (think Luke Skywalker.)
The Hero’s journey was developed by Joseph Campbell (1984-1987) and laid out in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, First published as an academic treatise by the Boddington Foundation in 1949.
Campbell was a professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College and as a young man travelled to India and became fascinated by the mythology there. He recognized that the Indian myths, though apparently isolated from Western stories, held many themes in common with them. On graduating college with a degree in Medieval Literature he spent five years in his family’s cabin reading and studying stories from all over the world. He discovered that stories, especially mythology had several common tropes across many cultures. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was his attempt to explain his theories. It might have ended at that, with Campbell living out a quiet academic life, except that over 20 years after it was published a little movie called Star Wars (you may have heard of it) hit screens across the world. Its creator, George Lucas, mentioned that he used the principles in Campbell’s book as a template for his story. Campbell was immediately launched into prominence as a story guru, and neither he nor Lucas ever looked back.
Campbell’s book is not an easy read, and his idea of the hero’s Journey, which he calls The Adventure. Or the Monomyth, Is complicated. Luckily, John Yorke (1962—) simplified it into 12 steps in his book Into the Woods (Overbrook Press, 2015) and it was further simplified by Dan Harmon (1973—) in his Story Circle, which we will discuss in a later post.
The Yorke version consists of twelve plot points and is usually pictured in a circle. The story advances in a clockwise fashion around the circle (though in Campbell’s version the path is reversed.)
I will lay out the plot points below, and as a way of showing the universality of the trope, I will apply it to the Bible story of the Exodus.
Plot Point One: The Ordinary World
This is where we find our hero living his normal everyday life. He is an orphan working on is uncle’s water farm, a hobbit enjoying his life in Hobbiton. Often something is bothering him; he wants more out of life than his dull hum drum existence, or he feels he is destined for greatness, Often, he has a problem that he is running away from.
In the Book of Exodus: We see Moses on the lamb. Literally, tending his father-in-law’s sheep, but it wasn’t always this way. He was once an up-and-comer in Egyptian society until he killed a slave driver for mistreating a slave. He is hiding out from his accusers.
Plot Point Two: The Call to Adventure: Something happens to disrupt the hero’s life: It may be a visitation from a Wizard, a hologram projected from a newly acquired robot, or some other event that requires the hero to leave his home and face a challenge of some sort.
The Exodus: Moses is out tending sheep one day and sees a bush that is on fire, but not being consumed. He approaches the bush and the voice of YHWH emerges from the conflagration and tells him to go back to Egypt and free the Israelites from the Pharoah.
Plot Point Three: Refusal of the Call: The hero tries to avoid the challenge. She’s too weak, too scared, too young, etc.
The Exodus: Moses tell YHWH that he can’t go. He is inarticulate and a stutterer, and the Egyptians will laugh at him.
Plot Point Four: Meeting the Mentor: Just when the Hero feels he is over his head and can’t do the job, someone appears who will assist him on his journey. He may be given special knowledge, A talisman, or a magic device like an invisibility ring, or a Laser sword that will help him on his way.
The Exodus: YHWH tells Moses that Aaron will go with him and speak for him if necessary. He is given a magic staff that he can use to perform miracles before the Pharoah to show that YHWH means business.
Plot Point Five: Crossing the Threshold: Our hero finally sets off on her quest, often after a period of preparation proceeding the journey. He may go off to a nearby town to hitch a ride to another planet, or set off with his crew to destroy a magic ring. He crosses from the Ordinary World to the Special World, where things are often topsy-turvy.
The Exodus: Moses sets off with his family for Egypt to face the Pharoah.
Plot Point six: Tests, Allies, Enemies: The hero is confronted with ever more difficult tests, but also may gain some new allies; a renegade space-ship captain and his fuzzy buddy, or a motley crew of dwarves, elves and mercenaries.
The Exodus: Moses engages in a battle of wills with the Pharoah and his wizards. He finally gets the Pharoah to relent and release the Israelites, but the fickle Pharoah quickly has a change of heart and sends the army after them.
Plot Point Seven: Approaching the Innermost Cave Our Hero faces a threat to his being, either physical, mental or both. He must face up to the danger. He may have a period of preparation before entering. He may have to fight the urge to keep the magic ring and all its power, or he may enter an actual cave and face his enemy, only to find out it is himself.
The Exodus: Moses climbs up the mountain to meet with YHWH, even though he knows if he looks on His face he will die.
Plot Point Eight: Ordeal: A metaphorical “death” the hero must endure in order to be resurrected. It may be physical, emotional, or psychological.
The Exodus: Moses battles with YHWH for forty days, and finally returns to his tribe with the Ten Commandments only to find his people have turned from the LORD. In a fit of rage, he smashes the Ten commandments. (for those of you keeping score, this signifies the death of civilization).
Plot Point Nine: Seizing the Sword (the Reward) Our hero survives death and is transformed into a new state of being. Her reward may be a valuable physical object, new idea, a secret, or insight. She may finally understand the evil power of the ring, or may be accepted into a secret society of mystical warriors.
The Exodus: Moses returns to the mountain and is given a new set of the Commandments for his people.
Plot Point Ten: The Road Back The hero prepares for the trip home. He must decide between self-preservation and a higher cause.
The Exodus: Moses leads his people to their new home in the Promised Land (this scene is out of place from the Hero’s Journey)
Plot Point Eleven: Resurrection: Our hero faces their final challenge and emerge a changed person.
The Exodus: Moses faces off with YHWH to save his people from YHWH’s wrath
Plot Point Twelve: Return with Elixir Our hero returns from her journey a changed person. He may bring new hope, new Knowledge, or salvation to those left behind.
The Exodus: Moses returns from his ordeal with YHWH with the new tablet of the Ten Commandments. The people notice that his face is glowing from being in His presence. He has struggled with the Lord and come out victorious. His people have been spared and given a new chance at becoming a civilized people.
Writing the Monomyth
The Journey is just a guideline. You do not have to include all the steps, nor complete them in the same order.
A given story may have more than one journey. There may be successive journeys, or parallel journeys by different characters.
Some steps may be repeated.
This may seem formulaic. it is important not to try to fit your story to the template. Go ahead and write your story and then compare it to the template to see if your tale can be enhanced by adding or deleting certain plot points.
This is a recipe, not a formula. Like all recipe’s you may feel free to add or delete ingredients, make substitutions, or change quantities of ingredients to make it your own.
Everybody Dies in the End
In my last post I wrote about Aristotle’s Poetics, and the idea of the three-act story structure. Though this structure is still popular today, it has its drawbacks. One of these is the long second act, which sometimes seems to go on forever and where some writers tend to veer off track. For this reason, it is often called “the muddle in the middle.”
Perhaps aware of this problem Gustave Freytag went back to the books and came up with his famous pyramid which contains not three, but five acts and is based on Horace’s Ars Poetica (cir. 100BC).
Gustave Freytag was born in Silesia in 1816. He studied written and spoken language at Breslau and at Berlin. In his day he was a popular and prolific writer who published plays, novels, and histories. His novel Debit and Credit, published in 1855, was what today we would call a blockbuster, winning worldwide acclaim.
He also studied drama, particularly the tragedy, and wrote his seminal work The Technique of Drama, which contained his famous pyramid, in 1863. It is now considered a classic primer on writing and is particularly popular with screenwriting, and is still used today albeit wrongly, in many cases,
To get his five acts, called stages, Freytag split up the second act into three sections, with what he called the climax of the play occurring at the midpoint. This structure diagrams to a roughly pyramidal shape, which is why it’s called Freytag’s Pyramid.
As I stated, this is probably the most misunderstood and misused story structure in use today. For one thing, Freytag intended his pyramid to only be used for tragedies, (where the hero dies in the end) though it can be used for comedies, if the pyramid is inverted.
The Freytag Five Act Structure
I will outline Freytag’s five act structure below, using probably the most well-known tragedy, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The quotes are from The Technique of Drama.
Stage one (Act one) Exposition
The writer introduces the main character and gives background information, setting the stage for the drama. This corresponds to the first act in modern drama.
Romeo and Juliet
Juliet prepares to marry Paris. A banquet is planned by the Capulets. Romeo and his home boys plan to crash the party. Despite a fearful dream, and a feud between the two families, Romeo decides to go ahead.
Stage Two (Act two) Exciting Force
Called the “Inciting Incident” or “Call to action” in other story structures, this introduces the central problem to both the characters and the experiencer.
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo meets Juliet at the party, and they fall in love. Tybalt, a friend of Paris vows revenge.
Stage Three (Act three) Rising Movement
Sometimes called “Fun and games,” this encompasses the first half of act two in other structures. The hero sets out to solve the problem, supporting characters are introduced, the hero is in charge at this point and the opposition appears relatively weak.
Romeo and Juliet
The famous balcony scene. Through a series of secret machinations, Juliet and Romeo are married and expect to live happily ever after.
Stage Four (Act four) Climax
All modern stories have a climax, but usually it is toward the end of the play, in the third act. Freytag puts is right square in the middle. In some modern dramas this is called the “midpoint reversal.” If things were going good for the hero so far, they take a turn for the worse. If things have been going badly, they take a turn for the better. In Freytag’s pyramid, things always go downhill from here. While often in modern drama the midpoint reversal is only one scene, Freytag says it may contain several scenes.
“This middle, the climax of the play, is the most important place of the structure. Action rises to this; action falls away from this.”
Romeo and Juliet
Tybalt kills Mercurio, Romeo’s friend. Romeo kills Tybalt. And the feces impacts the axially rotating vanes.
Stage Four (Act Four) Falling Action
Things go from bad to worse for the hero. He is falling headlong to destruction. This encompasses the second half of act two in other structures.
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo is banished for his crime. He and Juliet have one night of bliss before he leaves. Lord Capulet sets the wedding date three days hence. Juliet tells him she will not marry Paris. Lord Capulet is furious. The Friar Lawrence comes up with a plan. He gives Juliet a sleeping potion that lasts 48 hrs. The news is sent in a letter to Romeo. Juliet’s marriage is pushed forward by one day. Juliet takes the potion and blacks out. Romeo hears Juliet is dead and buys poison. Friar John returns with Romeo’s letter undelivered.
But Freytag wants the audience to think there might be hope for the hero after all. He called this the “Force of Final Suspense.”
“It is an old, unpretentious poetic device to give the audience, for a few moments, a prospect of relief.”
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo comes to the tomb, meets Paris and kills him.
Stage Five (Act five)
The Hero meets his final doom.
“The poet should not be misled by modern tender-heartedness to spare the life of his hero on the stage.”
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo drinks the poison and dies; Juliet awakens, finds Romeo dead, and kills herself. Friar Lawrence and Romeo’s servant are arrested. All is revealed. The feud is ended.
Freytag vs modern structure
In modern structure the climax comes near the end vs. the middle. Other differences include:
Though the story may follow the pyramid structure writers either misconstrue Freytag’s theory or purposely modify it to fit their needs.
There is a “midpoint reversal” which may turn good or bad for the protagonist.
The climax is a “decision point” for the protagonist.
There may be many ups and down, vs a straight-line arc.
The end can be either catastrophe or triumph.
Below is a graphical representation of the pyramid from Freytag’s book
And the Grand Prize is…This Beeyootiful Goat!
The ancient Greeks looked forward to a semi-annual festival (spring and fall) in honor of the god Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of fertility, wine, and harvest. His symbol was a goat. I imagine that a celebration of wine, fertility, and harvest was not exactly like our modern county fair. It was more likely akin to Woodstock. There is some speculation that at least some of them drank wine laced with LSD.
One of the more civilized activities at these festivals was a poetry contest. This was not like our modern- day poetry slam, but a presentation of stage plays (written as poetry) put on by a group of writers. Each writer was sponsored by a local big wig. The poet had to present three tragedies and one “satyr play,” sort of like vaudeville, I guess to lighten the atmosphere after five or six hours of pain and grief. The plays were observed by a panel of judges and the winner (not the writer, but the sponsor—even back then writers never got any respect—would be given the prize of goat. The word tragedy in Greek means “goat story.”
Aristotle was a big fan of these contests and probably participated in the judging.
No one is sure why he wrote Poetics. It may have been a textbook for his Lyceum, a precursor to the modern university. It may have been a guide for judges for the festival, or he may have just been pissed that his home boy Sophocles only came in second for his play Oedipus.
At any rate Poetics, over two thousand years after it was written, is one of the most referenced works on the idea of story structure. It is the reason many modern stories are broken up into three acts, though that is a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s theory. What follows is an outline of Aristotle’s ideas, based on his book Poetics, and how it related to Aristotle’s favorite play, the aforementioned Oedipus. There will be blood (and spoilers).
Aristotle believed tragedy should be an imitation of real life. It must contain a plot i.e., a cause-and -effect trajectory. He believed the purpose of story was to create emotional release in the experiencer, what he called catharsis. He said that the plot must have a beginning, middle and end. He did NOT call this three acts. This was a later interpretation by a Frenchman in the 19th century.
His ideal plot included a backstory where a problem was created for the protagonist, which Aristotle called “tying the knot.” An inciting Incident sets the story off on a cause-and-effect trajectory leading to a climax, then a resolution as the “knot” is unraveled.
Since this is a tragedy, there must be some kind of suffering going on at the beginning of the story. In Oedipus, there is a plague on the land and the story begins with the peasants begging the king to do something about it.
Aristotle says the hero must be a man of high moral character, and we learn this when Oedipus comes out of his castle and tells the peasants he is aware of the plague and is already on it. In fact, he has sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to the soothsayer to find out what to do. (Soothsayers were popular in Greek plays and did not interfere with the realism, because in ancient Greece, they were a thing.) His brother-in-law returns and says that the problem is that somebody killed king Laius, the previous king. When the murderer is found and brought to justice, the plague will be lifted.
This is the inciting incident that gets the plot underway. The knot has been tied in the form of the plague and the mystery. This leads to Oedipus’ first bad decision. Aristotle had a word for bad decisions: Hamartia It is an archery term meaning to miss the mark. This is one of the Aristotle’s plot conventions. Hamartia occurs when the character makes a decision that turns out to be the wrong decision resulting in bad consequences. This plot convention is still popular today and is the meat and potatoes of many horror stories.
Oedipus decides to get to the bottom of the murder to end the plague. There begins a series of revelations and reversals, which are also part of Aristotle’s theory. Oedipus summons the blind prophet, Tiresias to find out if he knows anything. Tiresias stuns Oedipus by telling him that he is the murderer(reversal). Oedipus says the man is crazy and sends him away, but before he leaves, the prophet hints at an incestuous marriage, future blindness, infamy and wandering (a little foreshadowing always helps keep the people in their seats).
Next Oedipus asks his wife Jocasta what he should do. She tells him to pay the soothsayer no mind. She points out that a prophet once told her that her son would kill his father. This couldn’t be true, because she left her baby to die in the woods, and Laius was killed by a bunch of robbers.
Oedipus becomes distressed because just before he came to Thebes, he killed a man who resembled Laius at a crossroads (more complications, and a revelation.) He commits another hamartia by deciding to send for the only witness to the murder, a shepherd. Oedipus reveals that while at his home in Corinth, an oracle once told him he would one day kill his father and marry his mother. This is why he left Corinth and came to Thebes. (more revelation). Once again, his wife tells him not to worry about it.
A messenger arrives with another revelation: His father, king of Corinth has died of old age. (reversal) Jocasta has a “see, I told you so” moment. This is obviously proof that the prophesy is false.
In a stunning reversal, the messenger, trying to cheer Oedipus up, says not to worry. The king and queen of Corinth were not his real parents. (A this point the orchestra, if there was one, would go “dum dum dum!”) He says he gave Oedipus to another couple when a shepherd found the baby Oedipus abandoned in the woods.
In another classic hamartia, Oedipus decides to track down the shepherd and get to the truth. Jocasta freaks and runs away into the palace overcome with fear and grief. (And Aristotle hopes the audience experiences fear and pity at this point.)
The shepherd arrives and must be threatened with death before revealing Oedipus is actually the son of —wait for it—Laius and Jocasta. The prophecy is true Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother (and he knot is unraveled).
Agonized, Oedipus runs into the castle to find is wife/mother has killed herself. He takes the pins from her gown and puts out his eyes. As the play ends, the once king awaits his banishment from the kingdom as the audience experience their catharsis, and one assumes the plague is lifted.
Aristotle also wrote a book on comedy that has been lost to history. Who knows how comedic stories would be different had it survived?
In our next installment we will look at probably the most misunderstood story trope, Feytag’s Pyramid.
Happy writing!
Working on a Building
A book writing project is similar to a large building project except that writing a book often takes many years longer than completing even the tallest building
“I’ve got to get the basement right before I build the house.”
A good foundation is important…
I once had the occasion to drive by a construction site once a month. The first month they started digging a hole. The second month the hole got bigger and deeper. The next month the hole got bigger and deeper still. Finally, just as I was beginning to think that instead of a building, maybe they were constructing a tunnel to China, a concrete column appeared. After that, the building zoomed skyward almost like a Chinese bottle rocket.
I often use this analogy with my students to point out the importance of a firm foundation to their stories. Writing a story is a little bit like a huge building project. Even some of the terms we use in story are also common to construction. We We talk of world building. structure, arc, and blue print. Even the term plot is common to both endeavors.
Writing, especially the novel, is similar to any other building project. There is the planning stage, (the blueprint), the writing stage, (the construction), the editing stage (the building inspector’s visit), the completion stage (the final draft) and the move in stage (moving the story into the world). One difference, however is that it often takes months or years longer to complete a novel than to build even the tallest building.
I’d like to focus on one part of the book writing process: structure. In my experience, until recently novel writing seminars and books gave only a passing glance at structure (John Gardener’s The Art of Fiction and Robert Roy’s The Weekend Novelist Being exceptions, though each of them devote a scant few paragraphs to the topic.
For screenwriters, the other variety of long form fiction, this is not the case, Screenwriting books are replete with diagrams, explanations, and discussions of story structure. Among the most popular are Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, John Yorke’s Into the Woods, and that doorstop of a book, Story, by Robert McKee. (For an insight into Robert Mckee’s book and and it’s popularity with screenwriters, watch the movie Adaptation.)
Why do screenwriters fret so much over structure (or as they often call it, story)? I think the reason is simple. A publishing company may spend a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars producing distributing the latest A-lister, and most first novelists are shocked to learn that the lion’s share of promoting their book falls on them.
…whether building a house or writing a book.
It’s not unusual for a production company to spend $100,000,000 or more getting an average movie onto the screen. A “blockbuster” may take many times that. (For an inside look at how a movie gets to the big screen, click Here) With all the money, time and personnel invested, the producers want to make damn sure the movie is a success. But even then, it’s more-or-less a crapshoot. The producer Samuel Goldwin of MGM once famously said, “If I had produced the scripts I rejected and rejected the scripts I produced, the result would probably have been about the same.”
In recent years, however, more attention has been given to structure by writing teachers and writing coaches. One recent example is Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel, wherein she adapts Blake Snyder’s work to narrative fiction.(If you’re curious about the name, keep reading.)Writers are also dusting off old tomes like Arisotle’s Poetics, Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Freytag’s The Technique of Drama, which is probably the most misunderstood of all story structure tropes. The work of K.M. Weiland and Ruthanne Reid et al is also of note.
In the next few installments I will be going over several of the most well-known story structure ideas with examples of how they relate actual works of fiction.
Why story structure? you can’t escape it. It has been around since The Epic of Gilgamesh. Understanding story structure will both help you become a better writer, and help when dissecting a classic work to learn how it is put together, which I highly recommend.
Is there one over-aching structure that all stories can fit into? I haven’t found one. Some work well for a single hero, others for a group. Some work with suspense or tragedy, others with comedy. I have seen attempts by writing teachers to shoehorn all stories into a single trope, but often they have to be modified or hybridized. But you will find that some structures are more versatile than others.
I’ll start our (hero’s?) journey with my next post, going back to the beginning, with Aristotle’s Poetics.
Happy Writing!
The term “Save the Cat” comes from Blake Snyder’s book, wherein he says that if you have a bad protagonist and want him to get the audience’s, sympathy, have them do something like save a cat at the beginning of the movie. This actually happened in the movie Alien, when Sigourney weaver’s character, Ripley, literally saves a cat. This was turned on its head in the beginning of the series, House of Cards, When Kevin Spacey’s Character, Frances Underwood, kills a dog. Sympathy, anyone?