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. Every good story has both. But you can see story forms that go to one extreme or the other, from sentimental melodrama to the most cerebral detective story.

We might say that theme, or what I call moral argument, is the brain of the story. Character is the heart and circulation system. Revelations are the nervous system. Story structure is the skeleton. Scenes are the skin.

we might, but why on Earth would we?

CREATING YOUR PREMISE—WRITING EXERCISE I • Premise Write down your premise in one sentence. Ask yourself if this premise line has the makings of a story that could change your life. • Wish List and Premise List Write down your wish list and your premise list. Study them together to identify the core elements of what you care about and enjoy. • Possibilities Look for what is possible in the premise. Write down options. • Story Challenges and Problems Describe as many of the story challenges and problems that are unique to your idea as you can think of. • Designing Principle Come up with the designing principle of your story idea. Remember that this principle describes some deeper process or form in which the story will play out in a unique way. • Best Character Determine the best character in the idea. Make that character the hero of your premise. • Conflict Ask yourself “Who is my hero fighting, and what is he fighting about?” • Basic Action Find the single cause-and-effect pathway by identifying a basic action that your hero will take in the story. • Character Change Figure out the possible character change for your hero, starting with the basic action (A) and then going to the opposites of the basic action to determine his weaknesses (W) at the beginning and his change (C) at the end. • Moral Choice List a moral choice your hero may have to make near the end of the story. Make sure it’s a difficult but plausible choice. • Audience Appeal Ask yourself if your premise is l...

When we talk about the structure of a story, we talk about how a story develops over time.

If he is already cognizant of what he needs, the story is over.

KEY POINT: Give your hero a moral need as well as a psychological need. In average stories, the hero has only a psychological need. A psychological need involves overcoming a serious flaw that is hurting nobody but the hero. In better stories, the hero has a moral need in addition to a psychological need. The hero must overcome a moral flaw and learn how to act properly toward other people. A character with a moral need is always hurting others in some way (his moral weakness) at the beginning of the story.

One reason it is so important to give your hero a moral as well as a psychological need is that it increases the scope of the character; the character’s actions affect others besides him. This moves the audience in a more powerful way. 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.

A true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving his desire but is competing with the hero for the same goal.

please

KEY POINT: Start by determining the self-revelation, at the end of the story; then go back to the beginning and figure out your hero’s need and desire.

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

Psychological and Moral Weakness and Need After figuring out the self-revelation, go back to the beginning of the story. Try to give your hero both a psychological and a moral weakness and need.

The relationship between the hero and the opponent is the single most important relationship in the story. In working out the struggle between these two characters, the larger issues and themes of the story unfold.

The subplot is used to contrast how the hero and a second character deal with the same problem in slightly different ways. Through comparison, the subplot character highlights traits and dilemmas of the main character.

KEY POINT: Always show why your hero acts as he does.

KEY POINT: 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.

If you master the range of change, you will win the “game” of storytelling. If not, you will rewrite and rewrite and still never get it right.

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

KEY POINT: Always begin at the end of the change, with the self-revelation; then go back and determine the starting point of the change, which is the hero’s need and desire; then figure out the steps of development in between. This is one of the most valuable techniques in all of fiction writing. Use it, and you will see your storytelling ability improve dramatically. The reason you start at the endpoint is that every story is a journey of learning that your hero takes (which may or may not be accompanied by a physical journey). As with any journey, before you can take your first step, you have to know the endpoint of where you’re going. Otherwise, you walk in circles or wander aimlessly. By starting with the self-revelation, the end of the character change, you know that every step your character takes will lead to that end. There will be no padding, nothing extraneous. This is the only way to make the story organic (internally logical), to guarantee that every step on the journey is necessarily connected to every other step and that the journey builds to a crescendo.

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.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the trick to defining your hero and figuring out your story is to figure out your opponent. Of all the connections in the character web, the most important is the relationship between hero and main opponent. This relationship determines how the entire drama builds. That’s why, as a writer, you should love this character, because he will help you in countless ways. 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.

Make the opponent necessary.

The contrast between hero and opponent is powerful only when both characters have strong similarities. Each then presents a slightly different approach to the same dilemma. And it is in the similarities that crucial and instructive differences become most clear. By giving the hero and the opponent certain similarities, you also keep the hero from being perfectly good and the opponent from being completely evil. Never think of the hero and opponent as extreme opposites. Rather, they are two possibilities within a range of possibilities. The argument between hero and opponent is not between good and evil but between two characters who have weaknesses and needs.

You never want to create characters that sound like a mouthpiece for your ideas. Good writers express their moral vision slowly and subtly, primarily through the story structure and the way the hero deals with a particular situation. Your moral vision is communicated by how your hero pursues his goal while competing with one or more opponents and by what your hero learns, or fails to learn, over the course of his struggle.

There are three main techniques you can use to break your theme line into dramatic oppositions: giving the hero a moral decision, making each character a variation on the theme, and placing the characters’ values in conflict.

The single biggest reason a story comes across as preachy is because there is an imbalance between moral argument and plot.

Even the least intelligent or uneducated character speaks at the highest level at which that person is capable. Even when a character is wrong, he is wrong more eloquently than in real life.