Physical location or living situation: Such as people living in a country town (Letter Kenny), or students in a boarding school (Harry Potter), or a blended family (The Brady Bunch, or just about any sit-com from the 80s and 90s).Socio-economic situation: A broke family trying to get by (The Middle) A middle-class family (Dawson's Creek).Physical appearance: This could be ethnicity or skin colour, but could also be a hair style or clothing choice, or maybe a physical disability.'Identify' is a pretty broad term in story writing, and it can refer to just about anything, or might even be aspirational. "Every story starts with a character that the viewer/reader/etc. Try it for free with Scene One's trial Sign Up to Scene One 1. Have questions? Check out the AI Writing Assistant FAQ. It even matches your style!ĪI Writing Assistant can also help you rephrase rough sentences or expand small paragraphs into a full story sequence. It uses your own words for inspiration, and quickly generates new ideas for where your story can go. Write faster and clearer, and destroy writer's block! (The quotes are taken or paraphrased from the video linked to at the end.) Once you find it and take it, you'll return home changed." ![]() We can just about read this as: "You have a need, and must leave to search for it. You - Need - Leave - Search - Find - Take - Return - Change That it, some of the beats will take up more screen time (or more pages in your book) than others, and that some beats will be short, single moments within a plot (such as a character realising their need) while other beats will occur across one or several scenes.Įach beat has a longer title, but Harmon also gives them a one-word identifier that also reads like a complete description: Also remember that they aren't evenly spaced throughout the story. ![]() So, as you read through the descriptions below, keep in mind that each of these things happens in this exact order. The eight beats happen in sequential order and describe a focus character's journey through this week's adventure. (There are many sub-steps and features of the Hero's Journey that I've glossed over, but these are the major points also shared by the Story Circle.)įor more information, here is our comprehensive guide to The Hero's Journey. Once on the adventure, they'll often get what they want but experience unintended consequences before returning home again, now being changed. The Hero's JourneyĪt a high level, the Story Circle is a tweaked version of Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" (also known as the monomyth), so if you have any familiarity with that then the Story Circle should feel familiar.įor those who aren't familiar with Joseph Campbell's work, the very broad structure of the Hero's Journey has the main character start out in their "normal world" before being thrust onto the path of an adventure (often after first refusing that call). That isn't a requirement, though, and you might be happy to just start writing your story or script immediately with nothing more than the finished Story Circle. That said, once you have your eight beats for the Story Circle, it shouldn't take too long to jot down several bullet points beneath each beat that will become your scenes. So, no, it won't give you a scene-by-scene breakdown or anything more refined than that, but for shorter stories (such as a 22-minute TV script or a subplot) it might get you close. In that way, the Story Circle works just like every other beat sheet out there in that it gives you a high-level picture of what your story will look like before you start writing, and you can think of it almost like a check list of things to include. That is, this is the tool he uses to flesh out a smaller, simpler idea for an episode into a complete and compelling story for a Rick and Morty episode, and make sure that it hits all the needed beats. Get started here today Sign Up to Scene One How to use the Story Circleĭan Harmon has said that the Story Circle is how he "breaks" a new story. ![]() You also get a two-week trial to test out all of these book writing features, and even the AI Writing Assistant! Scene One is the best book-writing app on the market, and you can write one book for free.
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