Whether you sit down with this template before you even begin a story, think of it as you’re telling it, or use it to review one you’ve already shared, it will allow you to condense the story into one coherent web of reason and emotion that connects right with your audience’s soul.įor example, when I wrote Why Losers Will One Day Rule The World, I watched and read a ton about The Gambler. Whatever the outcome, it must close all the boxes that have been opened up to this point. Climax: The hero and the villain clash.Act 3 - Payoff: The overarching sequence of events that resolves all the conflicts built up to this point by forcing the hero and villain to face one another.This could be a brilliant idea or a sobering realization. Breakthrough: The moment of insight that forces the hero on the only possible path: to fight the villain.Escalation: The villain’s main act of the show.Act 2 - Build: The overarching sequence of events that escalates the hero’s trauma, known to them or not, until they’re forced to do something.It usually involves the hero and the villain, and the climax will bring them right back to it. Inciting Incident: The event that officially kicks off the story.Act 1 - Hook: The overarching sequence of events that pulls the reader or listener into the story.Villain: Who puts the hero on that rollercoaster and tries to throw him or her off during the ride? This can also be a mistake or the state of the hero’s mind.Hero: Who rides the rollercoaster of hook, build, and payoff? This needn’t be a person.Concept: Look at the topic from a new angle, one that few people would ever consider on their own.Love, time, identity - every human has to deal with these. The bigger the theme, the more powerful the story. Theme: The underlying topic of it all.And while there are no hard rules here, this is what I think about for each element: It might have collapsed into a few lines, but since this kind of thought went into it, intuitively the story still makes perfect sense. This leads to the architect sitting over his original plan at night, all by himself, having a drink and facing the pain of his short-term thinking. Climax: An official tells the architect the building will be shut down. Act 3 - Payoff: The building is condemned and the architect is right back to where he started. Breakthrough: The architect realizes the sinking is caused by the weight of the books. All is Lost: Eventually, a report shows the building is sinking into the ground. Escalation: Year after year, repairmen and investigators return to figure out the problem. Act 2 - Build: A year after the grand opening, problems begin to show up in the basement, which keep getting worse every year. Inciting Incident: The plans pass all stages without the mistake being noticed. Act 1 - Hook: An architect designs a beautiful library but forgets to account for the statics of the building once it's in use. Villain: His narrow, short-term perspective. Concept: A project is never just about building what you set out to build. And even though accounting for the principles of storytelling doesn’t guarantee it’ll be well received, a story built this way always ‘works.’Ĭase in point, here’s what the screenwriters might’ve put into the template for Ted’s five-sentence story: Ted's Library Story Theme: The flawed nature of human short-term thinking. Like the library in Ted’s example, any story that doesn’t rest on the foundational pillars of Steve’s framework is bound to crumble. He forgot to account for the weight of the books. But every year, the whole thing would sink a couple inches into the ground. “There’s this famous architecture story about an architect who designed this library. One afternoon, Robin walks into Ted lost in thought, who responds to her prompt with the following: There’s a How I Met Your Mother episode in which Ted starts his own architecture firm, Mosbius Designs. I’ve gathered the cornerstone elements into a template you can copy: Theme: Concept: Hero: Villain: Act 1 - Hook: Inciting Incident: Act 2 - Build: Escalation: All is Lost: Breakthrough: Act 3 - Payoff: Climax: This has led to some of my biggest hits so far.
Since reading the book, I have run nearly all my articles through this framework. 8) Every story must build to a climax centered around a clash between the hero and the villain that pays off everything that came before and that pays it off on-theme. 7) Every story must escalate through Act Two in terms of energy, stakes, complication and significance/meaning as it progresses. 6) Every story must start with an Inciting Incident, embedded within which is the story’s climax. 3) Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It must put a unique and original spin, twist or framing device upon the material. He calls it the universal principles of storytelling:ġ) Every story must have a concept.
Steven Pressfield laid out a framework in Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t.
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