The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller

by John Truby

Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did. Stories are really giving the audience a form of knowledge—emotional knowledge—or what used to be known as wisdom, but they do it in a playful, entertaining way.

Audiences love both the feeling part (reliving the life) and the thinking part (figuring out the puzzle) of a story.

What you choose to write about is far more important than any decision you make about how to write it.

Write Something That May Change Your Life

Because if a story is that important to you, it may be that important to a lot of people in the audience. And when you’re done writing the story, no matter what else happens, you’ve changed your life.

To explore yourself, to have a chance to write something that may change your life, you have to get some data on who you are. And you have to get it outside of you, in front of you, so you can study it from a distance. Two exercises can help you do this. First, write down your wish list, a list of everything you would like to see up on the screen, in a book, or at the theater. It’s what you are passionately interested in, and it’s what entertains you. You might jot down characters you have imagined, cool plot twists, or great lines of dialogue that have popped into your head. You might list themes that you care about or certain genres that always attract you. Write them all down on as many sheets of paper as you need. This is your own personal wish list, so don’t reject anything. Banish thoughts like “That would cost too much money.” And don’t organize while you write. Let one idea trigger another. The second exercise is to write a premise list. This is a list of every premise you’ve ever thought of. That might be five, twenty, fifty, or more. Again, take as many sheets of paper as you need. The key requirement of the exercise is that you express each premise in one sentence. This forces you to be very clear about each idea. And it allows you to see all your premises together in one place. Once you have completed both your wish list and your premise list, lay them out before you and study them. Look for core elements that repeat themselves on both lists. Certain characters...

A more valuable technique for seeing what’s possible in the idea is to ask yourself, “What if … ?” The “what if” question leads to two places: your story idea and your own mind. It helps you define what is allowed in the story world and what is not. It also helps you explore your mind as it plays in this make-believe landscape. The more often you ask “What if … ?” the more fully you can inhabit this landscape, flesh out its details, and make it compelling for an audience.

Your overall story strategy, stated in one line, is the designing principle of your story. The designing principle helps you extend the premise into deep structure.

The designing principle is what organizes the story as a whole. It is the internal logic of the story, what makes the parts hang together organically so that the story becomes greater than the sum of its parts. It is what makes the story original. In

Designing principle = story process + original execution

What’s important is that the designing principle is the “synthesizing idea,” the “shaping cause”1 of the story; it’s what internally makes the story a single unit and what makes it different from all other stories.

Theme is best expressed through the structure of the story, through what I call the moral argument. This is where you, the author, make a case for how to live, not through philosophical argument, but through the actions of characters going after a goal (for details, see Chapter 5, “Moral Argument”). Probably the most important step in that argument is the final moral choice you give to the hero. A lot of writers make the mistake of giving their hero a fake choice. A fake choice is between a positive and a negative. For example, you may force your hero to choose between going to prison and winning the girl. The outcome is obvious. KEY POINT: To be a true choice, your hero must either select one of two positive outcomes or, on rare occasions, avoid one of two negative outcomes (as in Sophie’s Choice). Make the options as equal as possible, with one seeming only slightly better than the other. A classic example of a choice between two positives is between love and honor. In A Farewell to Arms, the hero chooses love.

You should always write first for yourself; write what you care about.

KEY POINT: Your hero should not be aware of his need at the beginning of the story.

If he is already cognizant of what he needs, the story is over. The hero should become aware of his need at the self-revelation, near the end of the story, only after having gone through a great deal of pain (in a drama) or struggle (in a comedy).

The other reason you want to give your hero a moral need is that it prevents him from being perfect or being a victim. Both of these are the kiss of death in storytelling. A perfect character doesn’t seem real or believable. When a character has no moral flaws, the opponent, who does, typically dominates the hero, and the story becomes reactive and predictable.

Also present from page one of your story, but much less important than weakness and need, is the problem. All good stories begin with a kick: the hero is already in trouble. The problem is the crisis the hero finds himself in from page one. He is very aware of the crisis but doesn’t know how to solve it. The problem is not one of the seven steps, but it’s an aspect of weakness and need, and it is valuable. Crisis defines a character very quickly. It should be an outside manifestation of the hero’s weakness. The crisis highlights that weakness for the audience and gives the story a fast start.

KEY POINT: Keep the problem simple and specific.

Writers often think they have given their hero a moral need when it's just psychological. Remember the simple rule of thumb: to have a moral need, the character must be hurting at least one other person at the beginning of the story.

Two good ways to come up with the right moral need for your hero are to connect it to the psychological need and to turn a strength into a weakness. In good stories, the moral need usually comes out of the psychological need. The character has a psychological weakness that leads him to take it out on others. To give your character a moral as well as a psychological need and to make it the right one for your character, 1. Begin with the psychological weakness. 2. Figure out what kind of immoral action might naturally come out of that. 3.

A second technique for creating a good moral need is to push a strength so far that it becomes a weakness. The technique works like this: 1. Identify a virtue in your character. Then make him so passionate about it that it becomes oppressive. 2. Come up with a value the character believes in. Then find the negative version of that value.

One of the biggest mistakes a writer can make is to confuse need and desire or to think of them as a single step. They are in fact two unique story steps that form the beginning of your story, so you have to be clear about the function of each. Need has to do with overcoming a weakness within the character. A hero with a need is always paralyzed in some way at the beginning of the story by his weakness. Desire is a goal outside the character.

KEY POINT: Your hero’s true desire is what he wants in this story, not what he wants in life.

KEY POINT: To find the right opponent, start with your hero’s specific goal; whoever wants to keep him from getting it is an opponent.

Because Chinatown is a detective story, he and Jake are actually competing over whose version of the truth will be believed.

Usually, when you get an idea for a story, certain events immediately pop into your mind. “This could happen, and this could happen, and this could happen.” Story events are usually actions taken by your hero or opponent. These initial thoughts about story events are extremely valuable, even if none of them ends up in the final story. Write down each event in one sentence. The point here is not to be detailed but to get down the basic idea of what happens in each event.

This technique of starting at the end and going back to the beginning is one we will use again and again as we figure out character, plot, and theme. It’s one of the best techniques in fiction writing because it guarantees that your hero and your story are always heading toward the true endpoint of the structural journey, which is the self-revelation.

Psychological and Moral Self-Revelation When figuring out the self-revelation, try to give your hero both a psychological and a moral revelation.

Come up with not one but many weaknesses for your hero. These should be serious flaws, so deep and dangerous that they are ruining your hero’s life or have the real possibility of doing so.

Problem What is the problem, or crisis, your hero faces at the beginning of the story? Try to make it an outgrowth of your hero’s weakness. • Desire Be very specific when giving your hero a desire.

The plan generally shapes the rest of the story. So it must involve many steps. Otherwise you will have a very short story. The plan must also be unique and complex enough that the hero will have to adjust when it fails.

The most important step in creating your hero, as well as all other characters, is to connect and compare each to the others.

Don’t think of your main character as a fixed, complete person whom you then tell a story about. You must think of your hero as a range of change, a range of possibilities, from the very beginning. You have to determine the range of change of the hero at the start of the writing process, or change will be impossible for the hero at the end of the story.

True character change involves a challenging and changing of basic beliefs, leading to new moral action by the hero.

In a good story, as the hero goes after a goal, he is forced to challenge his most deep-seated beliefs. In the cauldron of crisis, he sees what he really believes, decides what he will act on, and then takes moral action to prove it.

Your hero’s development depends on what beliefs he starts with, how he challenges them, and how they have changed by the end of the story. This is one of the ways that you make the story uniquely yours.

Adult to Leader In this change, a character goes from being concerned only with finding the right path for himself to realizing that he must help others find the right path as well. You see this change in The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, Elizabeth, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Schindler’s List, The Lion King, The Grapes of Wrath, Dances with Wolves, and Hamlet.

Remember, the self-revelation is made possible at the beginning of the story. This means that a good self-revelation has two parts: the revelation itself and the setup. The moment of revelation should have these qualities: • It should be sudden, so that it has maximum dramatic force for the hero and the audience. • It should create a burst of emotion for the audience as they share the realization with the hero. • It should be new information for the hero: he must see, for the first time, that he has been living a lie about himself and that he has hurt others. • It should trigger the hero to take new moral action immediately, proving that the revelation is real and has profoundly changed him.

The setup to the revelation should have these qualities: • The hero must be a thinking person, someone who is capable of seeing the truth and knowing right action. • The hero must be hiding something from himself. • This lie or delusion must be hurting the hero in a very real way.

You may notice what appears to be a contradiction: a thinking person who is lying to himself. But even though this may be a contradiction, it is real. We all suffer from it. One of the powers of storytelling is showing us how a human being who is so capable of brilliant a...

An advanced technique for showing character change in a story is a unique kind of self-revelation, what I call the “double reversal.” In this technique, you give the opponent, as well as the hero, a self-revelation. Each learns from the other, and the audience receives two insights about how to act and live in the world instead of one.

To create a double reversal, take these steps. 1. Give both the hero and the main opponent a weakness and a need (the weaknesses and needs of the hero and the opponent do not have to be the same or even similar). 2. Make the opponent human. That means that he must be capable of learning and changing. 3. During or just after the battle, give the opponent as well as the hero a self-revelation. 4. Connect the two self-revelations. The hero should learn something from the opponent, and the opponent should learn something from the hero. 5. Your moral vision is the best of what both characters learn.

Structurally the opponent always holds the key, because your hero learns through his opponent. It is only because the opponent is attacking the hero’s great weakness that the hero is forced to deal with it and grow.

KEY POINT: The main character is only as good as the person he fights.

That’s exactly how good storytelling works. The hero and the opponent drive each other to greatness.

The single most important element of a great opponent is that he be necessary to the hero. This has a very specific structural meaning. The main opponent is the one person in the world best able to attack the great weakness of the hero. And he should attack it relentlessly. The necessary opponent either forces the hero to overcome his weakness or destroys him. Put another way, the necessary opponent makes it possible for the hero to grow.

In the best stories, the values of the opponent come into conflict with the values of the hero. Through that conflict, the audience sees which way of life is superior. Much of the power of the story rests on the quality of this opposition.

In a well-drawn story, both hero and opponent believe that they have chosen the correct path, and both have reasons for believing so. They are also both misguided, though in different ways.

Four-corner

Look for the positive and negative versions of the same value.