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

by John Truby

Step 1: Write Something That May Change Your Life

Step 2: Look for What’s Possible

KEY POINT: Explore your options. The intent here is to brainstorm the many different paths the idea can take and then to choose the best one.

Step 3: Identify the Story Challenges and Problems

Step 4: Find the Designing Principle

Designing principle = story process + original execution

KEY POINT: Find the designing principle, and stick to it. Be diligent in discovering this principle, and never take your eye off it during the long writing process.

Step 5: Determine Your Best Character in the Idea

KEY POINT: Always tell a story about your best character.

Step 6: Get a Sense of the Central Conflict

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.

Step 8: Determine Your Hero’s Possible Character Change

W × A = C where W stands for weaknesses, both psychological and moral; A represents the struggle to accomplish the basic action in the middle of the story; and C stands for the changed person.

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).

KEY POINT: Write down a number of possible options for the hero’s weaknesses and change.