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

by John Truby

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.

Most writers, if they identify the problems at all, do so after they’ve written the complete story. That’s far too late.

KEY POINT: 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.

Designing principle = story process + original execution

To figure out the central conflict, ask yourself “Who fights whom over what?” and answer the question in one succinct line. The answer to that is what your story is really about, because all conflict in the story will

the one action that unites all the myriad actions of that film is “uses his skills as a fighter.”

KEY POINT: If you are developing a premise with many main characters, each story line must have a single cause-and-effect path. And all the story lines should come together to form a larger, all-encompassing spine.

How does the act of struggling to do the basic action (A) lead the character to change from W to C? Notice that A, the basic action, is the fulcrum. A character with certain weaknesses, when being put through the wringer of a particular struggle, is forged and tempered into a changed being.

action. This will tell you who

The steps work like this: 1. Write your simple premise line. (Be open to modifying this premise line once you discover the character change.) 2. Determine the basic action of your hero over the course of the story. 3. Come up with the opposites of A (the basic action) for both W (the hero’s weaknesses, psychological and moral) and C (changed person).

10-12-15 reading for week 4: read pg 32-35, 75-88