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

by John Truby

The storyteller is first and foremost someone who plays.

The storyteller makes up characters and actions.

The storyteller is really selecting, connecting, and building a series of intense moments.

When the audience no longer has to figure out the story, it ceases being an audience, and the story stops.

The dramatic code, embedded deep in the human psyche, is an artistic description of how a person can grow or evolve.

A story tracks what a person wants, what he’ll do to get it, and what costs he’ll have to pay along the way.

A character pursuing a desire takes actions to get what he wants, and he learns new information about better ways to get it. Whenever he learns new information, he makes a decision and changes his course of action.

Any character who goes after a desire and is impeded is forced to struggle (otherwise the story is over). And that struggle makes him change. So the ultimate goal of the dramatic code, and of the storyteller, is to present a change in a character or to illustrate why that change did not occur.

The dramatic code expresses the idea that human beings can become a better version of themselves, psychologically and morally.

We might say that theme, or what I call moral argument, is the brain of the story.