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

by John Truby

The drive is the series of actions the hero performs to defeat the opponent and win. Comprising what is usually the biggest section of the plot, these actions begin with the hero’s plan (Step 10) and continue all the way to his apparent defeat (Step 14).

During the drive, the opponent is usually too strong, so the hero is losing. As a result, he becomes desperate and often starts taking immoral steps to win. (These immoral actions are part of the moral argument of the story; see Chapter 5.) KEY POINT: During the drive, you want plot development, not repetition. In other words, change the hero’s action in a fundamental way. Don’t keep hitting the same plot beat (action or event). For

KEY POINT: This uncertainty between the two goals works only because it exists for a short time and is part of the big reveal in the final battle.

During the drive, the hero is losing to the opponent and becoming desperate. When he starts taking immoral steps to succeed, the ally confronts him. At this moment, the ally becomes the conscience of the hero, saying, in effect, “I’m trying to help you reach your goal, but the way you’re doing it is wrong.” Typically, the hero tries to defend his actions and does not accept the ally’s criticism.

During the drive, the hero is losing to the opponent. About two-thirds to three-quarters of the way into the story, the hero suffers an apparent defeat. He believes he has lost the goal and his opponent has won. This is the hero’s lowest point. The apparent defeat provides an important punctuation to the overall structure of any story because it is the moment when the hero hits bottom. It also increases the drama by forcing him to come back from defeat to win at the end. Just as any sporting event is more exciting when the losing home team comes back to win, so is a story when a hero the audience loves battles back from what seems like certain defeat.

KEY POINT: You want only one apparent defeat. Although the hero can and should have many setbacks, he should have only one moment that clearly seems to be the end. Otherwise, the story will lack shape and dramatic power. To see the difference, think of a car barreling down a hill and either going over two or three nasty bumps or smashing into a brick wall.

15. Second Revelation and Decision: Obsessive Drive, Changed Desire and Motive Just after the apparent defeat, the hero almost always has another major revelation. If he doesn’t, the apparent defeat is real, and the story is over. So at this point, the hero gets a new piece of information that shows him that victory is still possible. Now he decides to get back into the game and resume his quest for the goal. This major revelation has a galvanizing effect on the hero. Where before he wanted the goal (desire and drive), now he is obsessed with it. The hero will do virtually anything to win.

In short, at this point in the plot, the hero becomes tyrannical in his quest to win. Notice that while he is strengthened by this information, he is also continuing the moral decline he began during the drive. (This is another step in the moral argument of your story.)

This second revelation also causes the hero to change his desire and motive. Again the story turns in a new direction. Make sure that all five of these elements—revelation, decision, obsessive drive, changed desire, and changed motive—occur...

No matter what the audience learns here, this revelation is a valuable moment for a number of reasons. 1. It provides an exciting pop in what is often a slow section of the plot. 2. It shows the audience the true power of the opposition. 3. It allows the audience to see certain hidden plot elements played out dramatically and visually.

17. Third Revelation and Decision This revelation is another step in the hero’s learning what he needs to know to beat the opponent. If the story has a fake-ally opponent, this is often the moment the hero discovers that character’s true identity (what the audience learned in Step 16).

The battle is the funnel point of the story. Everything converges here. It brings together all the characters and the various lines of action. It occurs in the smallest space possible, which heightens the sense of conflict and unbearable pressure. The battle is where the hero usually (but not always) fulfills his need and gains his desire. This is also where he is most like his main opponent. But in that similarity the crucial differences between them become even clearer. Finally, the battle is where the theme first explodes in the minds of the audience. In the conflict of values, the audience sees clearly for the first time which way of acting and living is best.

If the self-revelation is moral as well as psychological, the hero also learns the proper way to act toward others. A great self-revelation should be sudden, for better dramatic effect; shattering for the hero, whether the self-revelation is positive or negative; and new—it must be something the hero did not know about himself until that moment. Much of the quality of your story is based on the quality of the self-revelation.

Here’s how you create a double reversal: 1. Give both the hero and the main opponent a weakness and a need. 2. Make the opponent human. That means, among other things, 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 as the author is the best of what both characters learn.

In Chapter 5, “Moral Argument,” I talked about the thematic revelation as a revelation gained not by the hero but by the audience. The audience sees how people in general should act and live in the world. This allows the story to grow beyond the bounds of these particular characters to affect the audience in their own lives.

The reveals must come at an increasing pace. This also heightens the drama because the audience gets hit with a greater density of surprise. The most powerful of all reveals is known as a reversal. This is a reveal in which the audience’s understanding of everything in the story is turned on its head. They suddenly see every element of the plot in a new light. All reality changes in an instant.

Notice that the final revelation is the classic horror one: the place you escape to is actually the deadliest place of all.

Furthermore, the use of a storyteller often signals a shift from a hero who acts—usually a fighter—to a hero who creates—an artist. The act of telling the story now becomes the main focus, so the path to “immortality” shifts from a hero taking glorious action to a storyteller who tells about it.

The act of telling the story is the equivalent of taking the self-revelation step and splitting it in half. At the beginning, the storyteller is looking back to try to understand the impact his actions or someone else’s actions have had on him. In recounting those actions—of another or of himself at some earlier time—the storyteller sees an external model of action and gains a profound personal insight that changes his life in the present. 2.

Instead, the storyteller should have a great weakness that will be solved by telling the story, and thinking back and telling the story should be a struggle for him. This way, the storyteller is dramatic and personally interesting in the present, and the act of telling the story is itself heroic.

Try to find a unique structure for telling the tale instead of simple chronology. The way you tell the story (through the storyteller) should be exceptional. Otherwise it’s just a frame and we don’t need it. A unique way of telling the story justifies a storyteller and says: this story is so unique that only a special storyteller could do it justice. •

The storyteller should try different versions of how he tells the story as he struggles to find and express the truth. Again, the story is not some fixed thing, known from the beginning. It is a dramatic argument the writer is having with the audience. The act of telling the story and the act of an audience listening to it, and silently questioning it, should partly determine how it turns out.

The storyteller creates this give-and-take by leaving openings where he struggles with how best to tell it and lets the audience fill in the gaps. Through his struggle, he comes to understand the deeper meaning of the events, and by pulling the audience in and making them participate, he triggers the deeper meaning of their life narrative as well.

Consider having the storyteller explore how the act of telling the story can be immoral or destructive, to himself or to others. This makes storytelling itself a moral issue, dramatically interesting in the present. • Copenhagen: Copenhagen is really a competition of storytellers: three characters give different versions of what happened when they met during World War II to discuss building a nuclear bomb. Each story represents a different view of morality, and each character uses his own story to attack the morality of another.

10. The act of telling the story should cause a final dramatic event. This event is often the hero’s moral decision. Telling the story should have an effect, and the most dramatic effect is to force the storytelling hero to make a new moral decision based on his self-revelation.

A scene is a ministory. This means that a good scene has six of the seven structure steps: the exception is self-revelation, which is reserved for the hero near the end of the story. The self-revelation step within a scene is usually replaced by some twist, surprise, or reveal.

To construct any scene, you must always achieve two objectives: • Determine how it fits into and furthers the overall development of the hero. • Make it a good ministory. These two requirements determine everything, and the arc of the hero’s overall development always comes first.

KEY POINT: Start the scene as late as possible without losing any of the key structure elements you need.

The classic definition of subtext is a scene where the characters don’t say what they really want. This may be true, but it doesn’t tell you how to write it.

Subtext characters are usually afraid, in pain, or simply embarrassed to say what they really think or want. If you want a scene with maximum conflict, don’t use subtext. On the other hand, if it’s right for your particular characters and the scene they are in, by all means use it.

KEY POINT: Dialogue is not real talk; it is highly selective language that sounds like it could be real. KEY POINT: Good dialogue is always more intelligent, wittier, more metaphorical, and better argued than in real life.

Even when a character is wrong, he is wrong more eloquently than in real life.

Dialogue is best understood as a form of music. Like music, dialogue is communication with rhythm and tone. Also like music, dialogue is best when it blends a number of “tracks” at once. The problem most writers have is that they write their dialogue on only one track, the “melody.” This is dialogue that explains what is happening in the story. One-track dialogue is a mark of mediocre writing. Great dialogue is not a melody but a symphony, happening on three major tracks simultaneously. The three tracks are story dialogue, moral dialogue, and key words or phrases. Track

An advanced dialogue technique is to have the scene progress from dialogue about action to dialogue about being. Or to put it another way, it goes from dialogue about what the characters are doing to dialogue about who the characters really are. When the scene reaches the hottest point, one of the characters says some form of the words “You are …” He then gives details of what he thinks about the other person, such as “You are a liar” or “You are a no-good, sleazy …” or “You are a winner.”

Moral dialogue is talk about right and wrong action, and about values, or what makes a valuable life. Its equivalent in music is harmony, in that it provides depth, texture, and scope to the melody line. In other words, moral dialogue is not about story events. It’s about the characters’ attitudes toward those events.

Character 1 proposes or takes a course of action. • Character 2 opposes that action on the grounds that it is hurting someone. • The scene continues as each attacks and defends, with each giving reasons to support his position.

During moral dialogue, characters invariably express their values, their likes or dislikes. Remember, a character’s values are actually expressions of a deeper vision of the right way to live. Moral dialogue allows you, at the most advanced level, to compare in argument not just two or more actions but two or more ways of life.

Key words, phrases, taglines, and sounds are the third track of dialogue. These are words with the potential to carry special meaning, symbolically or thematically, the way a symphony uses certain instruments, such as the triangle, here and there for emphasis. The trick to building this meaning is to have your characters say the word many more times than normal. The repetition, especially in multiple contexts, has a cumulative effect on the audience. A tagline is a single line of dialogue that you repeat many times over the course of the story. Every time you use it, it gains new meaning until it becomes a kind of signature line of the story.

The hero fails to achieve his desire, and the other characters come up with a new desire at the end of the story. This prevents the story from closing down and shows the audience that desire, even when it’s foolish or hopeless, never dies (“I want; therefore, I am”). • Give a surprising character change to an opponent or a minor character. This technique can lead the audience to see the story again with that person as the true hero. • Place a tremendous number of details in the background of the story world that on later viewings move to the foreground. • Add elements of texture—in character, moral argument, symbol, plot, and story world—that become much more interesting once the audience has seen the plot surprises and the hero’s character change. • Create a relationship between the storyteller and the other characters that is fundamentally different once the viewer has seen the plot for the first time.

Make the moral argument ambiguous, or don’t show what the hero decides to do when he is confronted with his final moral choice. As soon as you move beyond the simple good versus evil moral argument, you force the audience to reevaluate the hero, the opponents, and all the minor characters to figure out what makes right action. By withholding the final choice, you force the audience to question the hero’s actions again and explore that choice in their own lives.