Story Arcs – How to write a story!
Story Arcs are formats for writing a story.
Use any of the Story Arcs below to help you create your story!
Pixar Story Format – This is a format used by Pixar studios (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc) It is a 6 step process. (Pixar’s 22 rules of Phenomenal Storytelling)
- Once there was a …
- Protagonist (Hero with a Goal)
- Every day the hero..
- Set up characters life/location – develop character
- Until one day…
- set up of conflict
- Because of that…
- and so forth. each next scene compels/moves the next
- Until Finally…
- Climax – dealing with the conflict set up earlier
- The hero achieves their goal
- Ever since then…
- The moral of the story
- Set up for sequel
Conflict/Climax/Resolution – This classic format can have a climax near middle OR in an action-movie format it can have the action spike first. The peaks are a graph between Intensity & Time. Characters develop along the peaks and valleys.
Monomyth aka Hero’s Journey – Joseph Cambell (philosopher, mythologist, historian) wrote about the ‘Monomyth’ also know as the ‘Hero’s Journey’. Explained how the ‘monomyth’ is present in many different myths and legends across the entire world. Rumor has it that George Lucas used this format when writing Star Wars.
3 Story Shapes – Kurt Vonnegut (Author, many of his stories became major movies) explains stories as 3 possible graphs (link to video) Links to an external site.
:
1. Person falls into a hole
2. Person A falls in love with person B
3. The Cinderella Story
Story Wheel – Dan Harmon (writer/creator of the TV shows Community & Rick and Morty) explains stories using a wheel. The wheel is a progression from number 1 to number 8. And it can also be seen as two separate halves. See images below. (link to a great blog written by Dan Harmon that explains this in detail!)
Three Act Play – a classic format used in greek plays and on Adventure Time (cartoon). According to the writers at Adventure Time they do the following:
1. First Act – from Normal to a Problem
2. Second Act – How do you solve the Problem? Find and Answer but then a TWIST it doesn’t work.
3. Third Act – Figure out a new way to solve the problem. Problem solved!
