if you want to write a book or a screenplay that either becomes a bestseller or earns a lot of Rewards or stands the test of time then you're going to want to pay attention to this video right here today we're talking story structure and story structure is I would say the closest thing to the secret sauce that storytellers have had in their back pocket for centuries literally it's not the only thing that makes a good story but without it you are likely setting yourself up for failure now who am I to tell you this well my name is Jason Hamilton I am the nerdy novelist and I have written 14 books and Counting I write every single day I'm also the developer of the 40 chapter plot module and before going full-time on this channel I was working for several years at Kindle preneur one of the largest websites all about writing and Publishing books plus I've been writing and telling stories in a variety of mediums for pretty much my entire life and I've made it my mission to really understand stories at their core especially those stories that either stand the test of time or become really huge and really popular in uh you know our Modern Times And so I'm going to break down for you exactly what story structure looks like why it is so Universal and everything else that you need to know about it so let's dive [Music] in before we get started on actually talking story structure I wanted to address the elephant in the room which is this big thing that anytime you bring up story structure inevitably people will turn to what I and Blake Snider author of save the cat call the fword or in other words formula so a lot of people look at story structure and they say oh it's just a formula it's formulaic it's going to result in a lot of unoriginal crap out there and there is certainly a lot of unoriginal crap out there but for the most part the kind of stuff that we're talking to about today is not that sort of thing there are conventions to the storytelling genres of today that are shall we say just fleeting they come they go they e they flow they change but story structure is not one of those things story structure is one of those things that has been around for literal Millennia pretty much every bestselling story or award-winning story depending on what kind of awards we're talking about as well as time- tested stories so things that have definitely stood up to the test of time and have become Classics over the centuries all those follow very very similar story structures that we're going to be talking about today and so what I want to get across with this is that we're not really talking about a formula okay we're talking about something that is more like DNA okay so think of DNA let's talk about the the human species right Homo sapiens all of us for the most part have a head two arms a torso legs Etc we all have very similar features right and yet even though our DNA is the same on a species level we are all quite different on a more personal individual level and so even though we all have more or less the same types of Limbs and things we have slightly different proportions to those limbs we have different color hair eyes skin some are tall some are short but for the most part we all fall under the same category of homo sapian right it's what makes us compatible with each other as a species Well story structure is the same way story structure allows you to basically be recognizable as a member of the same species of the species being just a good story in this case and even though there are some certain things that are the same across the board those things that make it recognizable as a species there's still so much room for originality and freshness and things that just make it sound better but if you don't have this basic DNA here the basic you know if we were using the human the homo sapian example the AR the legs the torsos the head all of those things that make us pretty much the same species and yes I know there are outliers out there but that's sort of beside the point story structure also needs all of those things in order to be recognizable if you don't have those things then it's suddenly not a story or at least not a good story not a story that's going to resonate with a lot of different people my favorite example of this is actually an internet phenomenon it's one of my favorite things that the internet has given us in recent years and that is barbon Heimer so if you don't if you're unfamiliar with this this was like basically a series of internet memes that came around around the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer which came out on the same day in the summer of 2023 and I think they actually make the perfect comparison for what we're talking about today first of all both of these films were very highly regarded right Barbie was considered to be one of the freshest films that we've had in a long time just a very original fresh take on Barbie basically they could have gone a direction that was so much more generic and much more reminiscent of all of the little animated Barby films out there but they didn't they went to something that was far more accessible to adults and just interesting and fresh whether you liked it or not we can all agree it was definitely original right on the other hand Oppenheimer coming from Christopher Nolan one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time and largely considered one of his best as evident by the fact that he won best picture for that film and so both of these films are really well done critically acclaimed they both made a decent amount of money at the at the box office they both did very very well and yet they're also so different and this is what led to barbin Heimer right this meme that kind of grew out of the fact that they are sort of diametrically opposed movies and yet they are they're both really well done what would it surprise you to know that both of these follow very very similar story structures and that it's actually true if you actually go through and learn about the things I'm going to teach you today and then go and watch those films you will start to see them pop up in the same places and so I think this is the perfect example about how story structure doesn't make your work a formula all it does is set it up for success by making sure it is the same species as other best-selling and time tested stories out there right make it recognizable to people as a story that they would want to engage with and you know Christopher Nolan for example is a master of story structure you will see very similar story structure across all of his films but done in ways that are just masterfully done so it's not so much about using the formula itself as it is about the implementation of the formula and how it's used and as well as all of the other things around story structure story structure is certainly not the only thing that makes a good movie or book but it is one of the foundational pieces that if you don't have it is going to throw everything off so what are some of these commonalities that you see throughout all story structure pretty much and what do we see inside of Barbie and Oppenheimer and I'm going to give you a whole bunch of other examples as well today well the main thing that it comes down to is actually maybe not what you expect because people when they hear of story structure they think of plot and like elements of plot the things that actually happen and they're certainly part of that but the central thing that story structure is about at its core is character and specifically we want to think about character change character change this is ultimately what pretty much every story is about there is something that transforms uh usually a character but doesn't always have to be an actual person that transforms from the beginning of the book or film to the end now there are multiple types of Transformations right the most that we see all over the time is a positive change so the character goes through some sort of ordeal and by the end of the story they have improved as a person in some way or another but there are also negative changes and so some these are tragedies right so of course you've got Hamlet MC Beth some of the most famous tragedies of all time but then you also have things like Anakin Skywalker was a negative change and some of those Transformations even though they are less common than the posit positive transformation are significantly more impactful in a lot of ways because they're showing us kind of like what not to do right there are however characters that are totally neutral so what do you do when you have a neutral character right is that like a contradiction here to the change and that and not necessarily and the reason for that is even if you have a character that is totally neutral and some good examples of the you see them a lot in in Thrillers and Mysteries characters like James Bond these are characters that don't really change from one story to the next or throughout the story although they did change this up for more recent iterations of James Bond where they gave him character arcs and I would argue those are some of the best Bond films for that reason but traditionally James Bond isn't really a character that has a whole lot of growth and then you also see other characters like paulana Ted lasso in the very first season of Ted lasso not the second or third season because they did give him an arc there but the first season he's kind of a neutral character doesn't really have much of an arc and so what happens is that these stories are not so much about the change of the character as they are about the change of the world around the character so my favorite example of this is actually polyana many of may not be so familiar with the story but you're probably familiar with the expression of someone being a paana meaning they're always like optimistic all of the time Ted lasso was this person in season one of Ted lasso and it's all about sort of like changing the world around them to be happier and be more optimistic and that's kind of what we saw in Ted Lassa and in paana The Music Man is another good example of this and so there's almost always a change of some kind that is sort of the point of Storytelling in general you always want to illustrate some kind of change some kind of outcome that is different because of the events of the story and just to further my point that this is not a formula this is also the same stuff that you will find regardless of whether we're talking like an actual story or we're talking about other things if if you're into marketing I'm pretty heavily into marketing and sales and things like that I get into that sort of thing any good salesperson will tell you that you're going to be using the same stuff all of the stuff I'm teaching you that we'll get into about 3A structure and all of that is all part of sales and marketing as well because it's a powerful way to resonate with people you'll see it also in YouTube videos so this is more of an educational YouTube channel here but there's still a transformation taking place right I'm taking you from not knowing as much about story structure to knowing a little bit more about it by the end of the video and that's kind of what all my videos are about but you'll see this even more so in entertainment channels like Mr Beast go watch a Mr Beast video and you will see it will line up with most of the key points of the storytelling that we are talking about today I've even seen this in music believe it or not there was a fascinating show I listened to a long time ago called the soundtrack show I think it was called and it went over the music in main theme to Star Wars and in Star Wars John Williams actually structured the theme of Star Wars to match up with the basic you know the rising action rising and falling action that we get inside of story structure and maybe I'll demonstrate that a little bit further on as we get into the 3x structure but I hope I've gotten this idea across to you that this isn't aoral this is DNA right this is the fundamental building blocks of what makes a story and then once you've got all of those fundamental story blocks in place then then you can start adding the things that make it feel fresh and original and all of that stuff but you have to have these actual things in place now when I was first studying story structure I wasn't so sure about this because there are so many different story structures out there that people can use and I'll just name a few of them we have the 24 chapter novel outline which is a favorite of mine deing Coon's classic story structure the eight sequences method the eight act structure the fican curve the foolproof formula the 4ax structure the 5A structure or the freight pyramid the heroes Journey Hollywood formula James Scott Bell's disturbance and two doorways the Lester dent master plot formula the nutshell technique the onepage novel The Panero screenplay method Poetics plot embryo tragic plot embryo propped folktale structure Romancing the beat save the cat seven-point plot structure the six-stage plot structure the snowflake method the story Circle story engines blueprint the story spine take off your pants the 3x structure the three story method and the 40 chapter plot module by yours truly so that sounds like a whole lot of different things right and that's not even getting into the more specific genre structures as well because some of the major genres have specific things that you have to do for those particular stories as well and so when I first got into this I wasn't sure like is there actually an underlying story structure that's kind of universal across all of these things and as I got into studying each of them I was doing so to create my 40 chapter plot module and I actually found that most of these structures have a lot more in common with each other than you might think in fact almost all of them hit some of the same basic beats they just might differ a little bit in terms of how they Define them or what level of importance they assign to different sections or in terms of complexity some have more beats to hit and some have fewer it just kind of depends but overall they pretty much follow the exact same structure so with that in mind we're going to examine three of the most common story structures and uh I'll give you an idea of just how they sort of fit together and how they are similar and how they differ and that sort of things so we're going to be covering the threea structure the hero's journey and the save the cat beats all right first we're going to talk the threea structure now I've got the most examples for this I'm going to give you three examples from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone because it's like the greatest selling book of all time as well as the we'll look at the Matrix another really good bestseller in terms of film but also in a lot of critical ACC claim and we'll also be talking about a classic known as the Epic of Gilgamesh which is the oldest piece of literature that we know also happens to fall into the same structure and so this is the threea structure right and so the threea structure is as you can imagine divided into three acts okay we have act one which is called the setup we have act two which is the confrontation and then we have act three which is the resolution okay these are the three basic building blocks of the 3A structure and the 3x structure practically looks something like this so this is what we would call rising action and then resolution down here every story pretty much progresses in a similar way where it just sort of escalates and escalates and escalates and escalates and then Peaks here in the climax and then falls off right so in Harry Potter and the source Stone the setup is basically just everything that we learn about Harry and his situation and then everything about the world that we need introduce all of the characters it's just exactly as you would think with the word setup you're just learning about the characters and the situations and the conflict in The Matrix it's the same thing we get introduced to Neo and the the conflict that he's up against we get introduced to the Matrix as a whole and it sort of ends with him being presented with the choice of taking the red pill or the blue pill in the Epic of gilg mesh we get introduced to gilg mes as a tyrannical King who has a whole lot of problems and so the gods decide to sort of make an example of him and they send creature called inadu to sort of basically fight him take care of him but then there's a reversal of that and Gilgamesh and inadu kind of become friends and that's sort of everything in the First Act of the Epic of Gilgamesh this section makes up about 25% of the novel and then we get to act two which is usually about 50% % of the novel and I say novel but this is true of film and other things as well and the confrontation is basically we have a escalation after escalation after escalation where the characters try things and fail one of my mentors David Farland calls this a try fail cycle so this is an instance where there's just a lot of the protagonist trying to do something then failing and trying to do something and then failing and that cycle sort of repeats but as this goes on the character usually is learning things they're learning to confront the inner flaws that they have to overcome those flaws so that they might better have a chance of facing the main threat they're also improving their skills and other things anything that they sort of need in order to win at the end is the kind of stuff that that they're going through right here so in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone this is where Harry basically learns about the sorcerer Stone they sort of suspect Snape of doing some things it's also him going to all of his classes you know encountering Voldemort in the Forbidden Force all of these sort of just tests and trials that he goes through in The Matrix act two starts as he is pulled out of the Matrix and then goes through quite a lot of training and rigor and things to become the hero that he needs to be by the end so this is where he learns Kung Fu and other quirks of the Matrix and things like that and in the Epic of Gilgamesh Gilgamesh is now teamed up with inadu and they basically go on a whole bunch of different Adventures you know they kill the bull of Heaven like they they basically become like the ultimate buddy cop scenario and they're just going out having a fun time learning a lot of different things but act two ends for the Epic of gilgames where inadu is actually killed and that sort of launches us into act three now act three also takes up about 25% of the story um and this you know that's approximate but act three is where everything climaxes it gets to a head everything sort of wraps up and then after the climax ends then we get what we call the danum ma it's where all of the loose ends are tied up we sort of figure out what happens after the climax to our hero and everything like that and wrap up the story right so in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone act three is pretty much going in through all of the trials that they go through to try and get the sorcerer Stone right so the the chess game all of that stuff ending in Harry's final confrontation with Voldemort and coral which is the actual climax of the story and then it wraps up with him being in the hospital and then winning the house cup and all of that now each of these three section can be further divided up into a couple of key points so for instance right around here there is a moment that we call the inciting incident and the inciting incident is basically the moment where things change and for Harry Potter this is where we learned that he's a wizard okay literally the phrase Euro wizard Harry could be thought of as the inciting incident uh for the book right it sort of kicks everything off but it comes after a fair amount of setup and other things that have happened before I kind of neglected to mention but everything up to here is what we call Exposition and it's basically everything I mentioned already about the setup the inciting incident in The Matrix is where Neo is basically confronted by Morpheus and um he has the phone call with Morpheus and then he's sort of taken by the the agents agent Smith and goes through that terrifying scene that would count as the inciting incident and then there's a little bit more but then we get the inciting incident for the Epic of Gilgamesh is where inadu is created and he confronts Gilgamesh and they fight that would be inciting incident there and then we get something that we call plot point one and it's basically the same as this line here it's the moment that transitions us from act one to act two and plot point one is you can think of this as the point of no return we are moving from the old world into the new scary world and that happens with plot point1 so in Harry Potter this is basically where Harry learns about the sorcerer Stone and that someone wants to steal it in The Matrix this is where he takes the red pill and is extracted out of the Matrix a very very powerful plot point1 and in the Epic of gilgames this is where Gilgamesh and ingu kind of become friends and decided to team up and that sort of moves us into act two all right in act two there are three other very important moments or sequences first we get what's just called rising action and this is just exactly what you would think it's where things just start to escalate it's where you know we learn Kung Fu and all of those things all of the skills that are needed you can think of this as the moment in the trailer for any good film a lot of what you'll see in the trailer is centered around this concept of rising action because it's where a lot of the fun stuff is happening it's where what Blake Snider the promise of the premise the premise of the movie is sort of paid off here but then we get an important moment right here in smack dab in the center of act two that's important enough that I would almost argue that this should be a separate act so this should be almost a forx structure with this moment here in the middle called the midpoint and the midpoint is kind of a moment where the main character really needs to confront themselves it's a moment that figuratively and often literally involves a mirror like the character is sort of looking inward for example literally in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone we have the mirror of aret where he's sort of just confronting his own loneliness and this is also where we get this sense of like do we go in a selfish Direction uh where we sort of use the mirror of araed to just sort of Imagine our most selfish desires right which is eventually going to pay off when we find out that Harry is able to get the sorcerer Stone only because he wasn't trying to use it for himself and so we get a hint of that theme right there here in the midpoint where we're discussing that relationship between selfishness and and selflessness that's the midpoint for Harry Potter for the Matrix the midpoint is the moment where he meets with the Oracle and has that moment where he decides oh maybe he might not actually be the one and it's an important moment of self-reflection that's also going to up the moment at the end where he finds out well he actually is the one and that leads us to the end of act two which is another important point right here as we transition into act three called plot point two okay and plot point two very similar to plot point one it's kind of another point of no return usually there's some kind of attack by the antagonist of the story but whatever happens it's a moment where they have a major setback the hero has a major setback and they're not really sure if they're going to be able to continue so in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone this is the moment where they think Snape is going to get the stone Dumbledore is gone they realize it's going to happen tonight and it's not looking good right in the Matrix this is when Morpheus is captured and they're almost going to actually terminate morpheus's life so that he doesn't give any secrets and it's just a dark moment right but if we were to end the story there it would be a tragedy and kind of make a lot of people angry because we've gone through this this whole experience all for nothing right so this is just a really low point for the characters but after that we got to move into act three which is the resolution and the climax oh and I neglected to mention for the Epic of gilgames the plot Point 2 is where inadu dies and suddenly gilg mesh is having a real hard time with that and so moving on to act three we get what's called and actually in order for me to illustrate this perfectly I've got to do some a little bit more like that there we go that's a little bit more accurate there so this first bit is called the pre-climax this is basically the preparation this is where the characters sort of like get pumped up they get all of the tools that they need everything that they sort of need to do this final moment of storming the castle figuratively speaking so there's just a little bit of prep work that happens here in in the pre-climax so that in Harry Potter this is where they're sort of just getting ready to go and take out the sorcerer Stone and then there's also all of the steps going between them actually you know arriving and putting fluffy to sleep and all of that stuff all of the confrontations that they have right there is a series of steps that could all be kind of considered the pre-climax the same is true in The Matrix where in The Matrix Neo says we're going to need guns lots of guns right and that's part of this pre-climax where they're getting ready for the final Climax and then there's all of the initial attempts at getting into the building and everything like that that's all part of that in the Epic of Gilgamesh Gilgamesh actually goes on a sort of quest for immortality and he encounters the Mesopotamian version of Noah who you know gives him some insights on that but ultimately that Quest searching for immortality could be considered this pre-climax and then right here at the very top we get the actual Climax and Harry Potter this is obvious this is the moment he confronts Voldemort quirrel that is the the Pinnacle of this climax that we've been building up to this whole time in The Matrix this is the same thing where he's confronting agent Smith and they have that sort of chase scene where the agents are are after Neo but then he gets shot and then not to spoil the story but he discovers he is the one and he's able to overcome everything and sees the Matrix as it is right that's the climax for that in the Epic of gilgames gilgames comes to this realization that we are mortal and that he is not going to be able to find immortal ality and so he has this moment of acceptance both for his own mortality and for the mortality of his friend who died at the end of act two and it kind of completes the change that we've been building to where at the beginning Gilgamesh was sort of this conceited tyrannical King and by the end he's had a transformation where he realizes that life is special and precious and he needs to do good with the life that he has and that leads us to the final step of the 3x structure which is the D M now the day ma is basically this is the moment where everything is wrapped up so the climax has already happened the danger is largely passed at this point and so in Harry Potter this is where he wakes up in the infirmary has that little conversation with Dumbledore and then everything else is wrapped up after this so Harry gets to the point where you know he he gets back and they win the house cup and everything's fine and he goes home so it's just tying up all of the little loose ends that we have at the end of a story but pretty much the story is over by the time you finish the climax the day numont is just there to give us a little bit of a chance to breathe so to speak in The Matrix this is after he's become the one and gets home with Morpheus and you see that final scene where he's on the phone call basically announcing himself as the one and then you see him flying away and in the Epic of Gilgamesh this is basically his return to his City urk and he comes back as a a white ER King and all of that basically it's just his return having gone through the the journey that he's gone through and that in a nutshell is the threea structure now I've given you three examples here but now we're going to move on to the next major story structure that people are familiar with it might be the most popular one and that is the hero's journey so let's get into that okay so now we're going to get into the hero's journey which is probably one of the more well-known actual story structures that people use it was popularized or at least kind of introduced by man named Joseph Campbell who I happen to have as one of these images here on my wall because he's one of my Inspirations and my heroes he kind of came up with this 17 step formula that he looked at in all the mythology he was a mythologist and he said he just noticed that there were a lot of similarities between different myths and he kind of came up with this 17-step formula that he called the hero's journey George Lucas then famously took the hero's journey and used it in Star Wars which is why for this example I'm going to be using Star Wars as the primary example of how the hero's journey Works Joseph Campbell I think is even quoted as saying that George Lucas was one of his best students ever even though they didn't actually meet until after Star Wars was a thing now as we go through this you'll find that there are a lot of parallels between the hero's journey and the basic 3x structure that we just covered and like the threea structure we can actually divide this Heroes journey into three parts the first part is called the departure the second part is called the initiation and the third part is called the return and just like the hero's journey you could summarize this as act one act two and act three now even though Joseph Campbell created a 17-step process this model was eventually taken by a man named Christopher Vogler and simplified into 12 steps which were specifically designed for writers writing a screenplay or a book or something like that and so I'm going to be using the 12 Steps here for this example but understand that Jo Joseph Campell originally had 17 but that was meant to be more from an academic descriptive example of working with the different myths and not as a guide for actual writing now a lot of the times when people discuss the hero's journey there is a model that people will use that is more circular it looks uh like a circle rather than the hero's journey which looked something like this right with Rising rising action and then a climax and then falling action and the reason why the hero's journey is so circular is because it's meant to be sort of a adventure a voyage and then a return it's a circular motion where you start some place you go somewhere you go through an ordeal and then you end up back where you started a changed person different than you were before but honestly for being honest here you could use the same model of this rising action Climax and then falling action just the same with the hero's journey as you could with with the 3x structure just for Simplicity I'm just going to be listing out the 12 Steps here under these three sections but overall just keep in mind you'll see a circular model for the heroes Journey quite often now in the heroes Journey under departure there are five different steps under initiation there are four and in return there are three now if you recall if we're mapping this to the threea structure you will call the First Act is one of the shortest it's at 25% roughly whereas the middle one is the longest at roughly 50% or the third act also at 25% so you might be asking why are there more steps in act one well that's because a lot of these steps happen more in short succession whereas some of these steps take a little longer and take place over a lot a longer period of time so even though there are more steps here in the beginning that's just more beats that you need to hit whereas there is actual more content more story here in the second act as well as the third act so let's get into what these actually are the first beat is called The Ordinary World and this is basically where the hero starts out in a place that's sort of ordinary as it the name implies it's a place that might be a little boring to them it's not really a place where they're comfortable they want to move on get out of this state that they are in it's just not you know a pleasant place for them to be in even though it is familiar even though it is what they are used to and they might be comfortable like Bilo baggin in The Hobbit doesn't really want to have an adventure or at least so he thinks he does actually sort of have this tokish side inside of him that that wants to go out but he might not even admit it to himself yet that's kind of what the Ordinary World is and in Star Wars the perfect example is Luke's just growing up on this farm he wants to go to the academy he wants to get out of the farm life but he sort of resigned to this life as a farmer for probably the rest of his life it's not a exciting place to be at all and you know we have that iconic scene where where he's staring out into the two sunsets and he just you know wishes life was more right so that's the Ordinary World and then in the midst of this Ordinary World comes an important moment called The Call to Adventure and the Call to Adventure it's basically the exact same thing as the inciting incident in the 3A structure this is the event that kicks things off and gets the adventure going so in Star Wars this is when R2-D2 arrives and Luke sees the transmission from Leia saying Obi-Wan Kenobi you're my only hope all of that sort of kicks off the adventure for Luke even though he's not quite ready to leave his Ordinary World quite yet and because he's not quite ready to leave the world yet we have step three which is a refusal of the call and the refusal of the call is exactly what it sounds like there's an initial moment where you're kind of digging in your heels not wanting to go on this adventure it's obvious in The Hobbit that Bilbo doesn't want to go on this vure at least so he says he's very uncomfortable with the idea and in Star Wars we see this as well with Luke as well when Obi-Wan tells him that you must learn the ways of the force and come with me to alderon Luke's like I'm not going to alderon like I've got to get home I've got chores to do I've got all this stuff he's sort of resistant to that call even though he's initially sort of drawn by it now right around the same time and in Star Wars these are actually kind of reversed but they can happen sort of before or after one another is meeting the Mentor so the mentor figure is an important figure in the hero's journey now a lot of books and movies don't actually have a mentor figure in the sort of Obi-Wan Kenobi sense where Obi-Wan is clearly a wise old wizard Mentor figure which we do see in a lot of fantasy and things like that we see it in you know characters like Gandalf and Dumbledore but a mentor figure doesn't have to be an actual sort of Wise Old wizard character the mentor can be anybody it can be someone just giving advice it can be a parent it can be an ally it can even be something like piece of information or a book or something like that that sort of guides the character along of course in Star Wars the mentor figure is Obi-Wan Kenobi and the role of the mentor figure is to kind of pull the protagonist along into the story to get past this refusal of the call that we have here and also to equip them with knowledge or tools that they need we see this quite literally in Star Wars with Obi-Wan giving Luke his lightsaber and training him in the use of the lightsaber and use of the force throughout the film so that is the mentor figure that we meet early on in the story and then next we get a very important moment which is the equivalent of plot point1 in the 3A structure called crossing the threshold and this is exactly like the name implies we are moving from The Ordinary World into a new and unfamiliar World hence crossing the threshold and in Star Wars this is another very obvious moment this is where Luke's uncle and Aunt are killed and he says okay we're going to go and they go to mossle Cantina which is full of a very unfamiliar clientele it's not a comfortable place for Luke and it's very evident from the moment they step in that we are in a new world this is a new experience for Luke and this is the same as plot point1 it's just that moment that pushes us into act two usually kind of a point of no return where we can't go back to what we were in before and that leads us into act two or initiation in the case of the hero's journey the first step here is one of those longer beats so this can take place over many scenes in act two and take up quite a bit of the real estate of your book and that is tests allies and enemies and so in this particular sequence of events this is where we get to know all of the different characters that are going to be important to the story so this starts primarily when we meet Han Solo and Chewbacca but we also get a sense of who the villains are the villains kind of become a bigger player in the story overall and in the life of the protagonist so we get Stormtroopers we get the Empire is now actively pursuing the Millennium Falcon and uh Luke and Obi-Wan and everybody there they arrive on the Death Star and things get even more crazy and it's just kind of escalation of what David Farland calls Tri fail Cycles over and over again once again just like the 3x structure this is kind of a moment to really include a lot of the exciting things that you would think of as trailer moments meaning those moments that you might see in the trailer that promise what the story is going to be about and then for step seven we get what we call the approach to the inmost cave and the inmost cave we can think of it literally or metaphorically as a place that we go where bad stuff is going to happen we're going deep into this unfamiliar world this not really exciting place to be where we're having lots of trials and tribulations along the way and I like the the word inmost because there's also a sort of an inner conflict going on here as well because the character throughout all of this has something that they need to learn something they need to change about themselves in order to succeed at the end and so having a little bit of that inner conflict which we might see in in the 3A structure in places like the mid point it's a very important part of this whole process but the approach to the inmost cave in Star Wars it's very literal they go to the Death Star and it's like this literal scary evil place that it's literally like a cave because it's a space station you can't you know you're surrounded by it and so all of the trials and the tribulations that they go through on the Death Star all kind of factors into this beat of approach to the inmost cave and then we get an important almost climactic section this is more of a a specific moment or scene that we get called the ordeal and the ordeal is like I said kind of a climactic end to these two beats that we've had here where things kind of come to a head and this is very similar to that space right around the midpoint and the and uh plot point two where we have this another point of no return event where people are going into the third act that sort of starts to happen around the ordeal and this is a pivotal moment for the hero where because of the trial that they go through in the ordeal they will be forever changed and in Star Wars this happens in the events leading up to rescuing the princess and getting off the Death Star that's the ordeal is to get off the Death Star but in the process that ordeal is heightened because Obi-Wan Kenobi dies spoiler alert for Star Wars if you haven't seen him and that's what makes this ordeal so painful is because usually something happens that is a painful moment in this case it's Obi-Wan Kenobi dying and Luke losing his mentor at least so he thinks so that's the ordeal kind of paired with this ordeal is something that we call the reward so because the hero goes through this ordeal the hero actually gains something from it this can be new knowledge this can be a literal object a boon something that they carry with them certainly it's going to include things like experience and things like that and so the reward in the case of Star Wars is they've recovered the prince princess right and the princess now together with R2-D2 is going to give them the information that they need and the ability that they need to actually take on this Death Star the main threat that is the Empire along the way Luke has also learned quite a bit he's gone through a lot of action and become a more capable hero as a result but that kind of leads us into act three which begins with a beat called the road back and the road back might be literally the heroes trying to get back to the Ordinary World that we see at the beginning here but it also might just be sort of like their retreating from the cave and the ordeal that they just had where all of this stuff went down right they're kind of retreating from that trying to get away but also maybe getting ready for an even greater conflict which is to come and we see this obviously in Star Wars as they escaping the Death Star they get pursued a little bit but they manag to get to Yavin 4 and get the plans for the Death Star to the rebels there and they start to work up a plan in order to actually attack the Death Star that's all part of the road home which leads us to one of the most important beats here and that is the resurrection and the resurrection as the name implies is kind of a a death and rebirth sort of situation but this is basically the exact same moment as the climax in the threea structure this is where the hero goes head-to-head with the villain and because it's called The Resurrection there must be a change that happens in the hero where they start to put to use everything that they have learned and gained across the journey so far and they basically die and are reborn as a new person they are resurrected and because of that Resurrection they have what they need to actually defeat the villain we see this in Star Wars because Luke Skywalker basically has that moment where everything is not looking good some of his friends have died he's doing the same things that they did which you know the definition of insan right trying to do the same thing and expecting different results he's using his targeting computer and then he hears Ben Kenobi's voice which says use the force Luke let go and so he decides to trust in the force and turns off his targeting computer and he has this use the force moment where he is just totally dialed in to everything that he has learned so far he lets the torpedo go and it blows up the Death Star so that is the resurrection moment where he kind of lets go of his old self and Embraces a new self which is more for trusting of the force and letting go and not as distrustful in himself and that leads us to the final beat in the hero's journey which is the return with the Elixir and The Elixir is just a fancy word to say that the heroes come back with something they have whatever they gained here in the resurrection it might be a literal object it might be information that they have gained it might just be personal growth which it often is that they have gained over the course and they sort of come back it might be to their Ordinary World they might return exactly to that place or in the case of Star Wars they just he just sort of comes back to the rebels a changed person we have that award ceremony where we see Luke there not as just an ordinary Farm Boy anymore but he is now like a fully developed hero for the Rebel Alliance he comes back not only with new experience and a new trust in the force but he also comes back having blown up the Death Star which I'd say is a pretty good Elixir example so that is the overall overview of the hero's journey as you can see it fits very neatly almost all of these points can be compared to a different section of the 3x structure we'll see this again as we look at another important story structure known as the save the cat beats so let's get into that right now if you've read the book save the cat and if you haven't I highly recommend it you will know that the name save the cat is referring not to story structure but to a a way of making your character compelling but inside the book there is a series of 15 beats that he recommends as the proper story structure and so even though phrase save the cat is kind of referring to something else it's sort of become known as the 15 save the cat beats they were developed by Blake Snyder in his book save the cat and Blake Snider has sadly passed on at this point but he wrote several books before he did and then Jessica Brody has actually written a couple of books save the cat writes a novel and save the cat writes a young adult novel which I also highly recommend you check out but let's go through each of these beats Al together and I'd like to actually start with the first and last beat before we get into everything that is in the middle because I feel like this first and last beat it's something a little bit more unique to save the cat and something that we haven't seen yet in the other two story structures that we've done so far and I actually think it's one of Blake Snider's greatest contributions if I can go be so bold as to say that to the idea of structure and that is the opening image and the closing image now the opening image and the closing image is centered around this idea of change remember at the beginning I said that change is one of the most important things that you will have in a story especially character change and Blake Snider Has This brilliant idea of a way of really demonstrating what that change has been in a powerful way that's really resonant by creating an opening image and a closing image Now Blake Snider was writing primarily to screenwriters so is a visual element to this opening and closing image because there's an expectation that this would be a film or a TV show and we don't get that quite in the same way with a novel but Jessica Brody points out that this should be thought of as a kind of opening shot an actual image that represents where their character is at the beginning and then at the end where they are at the end and how that has changed so I actually think this is brilliant I think your first scene should definitely do this and your last scene as well you want them to be almost like poetically related to each other and kind of opposite to each other in the sense that we see the growth that has taken place now the film that I'm going to be using as an example here is the film everything everywhere all at once so spoilers for that film if you haven't seen it yet but it is another film that was kind of hailed as this really fresh and original take and yet it follows the save the cat beats almost precisely so just as another way of saying that using structure doesn't make your film formulaic because there are plenty of fresh and original films that use the structure but are actually better for it and can still maintain that originality so in everything everywhere all at once the opening image we get is this picture of Evelyn just sort of at her desk tons of stuff going on that she's clearly not in a good place she's being audited she's uh getting a divorce she's clearly not happy or bonding with her family at all we get an opening image that just sort of visually represents the chaos that she is in by the closing we see a very similar situation except instead of her just sort of tackling this chaos by herself we see her with her family things are happy they are helping her to sort of make sense of everything that's going on and if you were to just look at the opening and closing image for this film you wouldn't know anything about like the Multiverse or anything that's gone on in the middle of the story all you would see is that we've gone from being kind of alone and overwhelmed to being less alone surrounded by loving family and not nearly as overwhelmed and this is actually a really good idea if you're plotting your novel to get a sense for the theme of your story and what your story is actually about what is the transformation that the main character needs to go through in order to get from this point to this point and how you get there is what the rest of the story is about but ultimately every story is about change so we start out with the opening image visually representing what they lack and where they are starting out and then a closing image to demonstrate where they have gone and just how far they have come in the transformation that they have I think this is a brilliant way to plot a story and I will often start with the opening and closing image before I do any plotting for the rest of the story whatsoever but let's get into the other story beats of save the cat the first one after the opening image is called the setup now one of the things that Blake Snider recommends is he actually recommends a around 40 scenes for a completed screenplay and yet we only have 15 beats here so what gives with that well some of these are specific scenes or specific moments in a scene for instance the opening and closing image could be a specific moment from your scene but then you have other beats that are multi- scene beats that take place across a little bit more time he does give a little bit more information about what should happen in in between some of those different scenes and that's actually why I developed the 40 chapter plot module I'll talk about that a little bit more at the end but is to kind of better Define what should happen in these multis scene beats so you know exactly what should happen inside of each scene but regardless the setup is one of these multic scene beats that takes place across multiple scenes and exactly like the exposition in a threea structure this is the moment where we're sort of getting introduced to the characters we're introduced to the conflict and their basic situation and one of the things that Blake Snider recommends is that you have a couple of different scenes in the setup showing them in different areas of their Ordinary World the three that he recommends the most show them at work show them at home show them at play and in everything everywhere all at once we actually do get all three of those to one degree or another we get introduced to her to Evelyn to her family we get introduced to the fact that her business is being audited by the IRS which is not looking good for her it's kind of a stressful situation that they're in but all of this is sort of introduced here the very beginning and that's done over a couple of different scenes usually three or four but somewhere in that setup early on we get a beat known as the theme stated and this is just a moment like if we look at where the character starts out and where they need to go somewhere early in the story a character usually not the main character but somebody else adjacent to the main character maybe a loved one or a friend basically tells them the change that they need to make they need to tell them the theme what's the theme of the story what is the change that the character needs to make and they sort of tell them what that is but the character usually sort of shrugs this off it doesn't really resonate with them because they've put safeguards up they have a sort of flaw or wound inside them that they just do not let people in and we see this from Evelyn's husband Wayman in everything everywhere all at once where he basically says you need to appreciate the world that you have you have a great family you have a thriving business and even though all of this crazy stuff is going on he's basically saying you need to look at the bright side appreciate what you have which is what she will end up doing by the end of the story but at this point she's just like no no no I have I can't think about any of that everything is kind of terrible and awful and and I'm overwhelmed and y y y but then comes what Blake Snyder calls the Catalyst and the catalyst is basically just another word for the inciting incident that we've already covered so far it's inciting incident the CTO Adventure whatever you want to call it it is that moment it's a single scene beat where everything is upended and something happens to disturb the world that we are in and suddenly things get crazy this is what happens in everything everywhere all at once where they're at the IRS office and then the bad guys are starting to close in they don't really know what's happening but then Wayman kind of goes into a like State and he ends up becoming a different version of Wayman From Another Universe and he starts to introduce Evelyn to this idea of the Multiverse which he had not really considered before and like a lot of crazy stuff happens at the IRS office in this particular scene that is all part of the Catalyst that sort of as the name implies gets the story going but just like the hero's journey immediately following this Catalyst we have a moment known as the debate or as in the hero's journey this is the refusal of the call this is the moment where Evelyn is just like I don't know about this I just want to go back to my business I I don't want to have anything to do with this Multiverse you got the wrong person that you know she goes through this kind of denial across everything that's going on even though she really can't stop things happening at this point like they're going to happen to her whether she likes them or not and she's just going to have to deal with it but at this point she's sort of digging in her heels and saying no I don't really want this and then we get what Blake Snider calls break into two this is the equivalent of the plot point one from the 3x structure this is where we are moving from Act One into act two so you could actually look at this as kind of like this being the dividing line here between act one up here and act two down here and this is the moment where we have basically an event that forces the character to move into the action of the story it pulls out the rug from under them and we have moved into act two over a kind of point of no return just like the other points that we've covered that do the same thing in the hero's journey and the threea structure and this is where Evelyn is kind of whisked away and she starts to learn about the Multiverse and her role in it and her alternate self's role in the Multiverse she can't really go back at this point she's got too far in that's just the basic role of the break into two now around the same time what's called a b Story character and we have a chapter called the be story now so far most of this story has all been what we would call the a story or the kind of external action right the a story is the external action it's the things that are happening to the character whereas the B story is more of the internal motivational story and is much more closely related to the change that the character has to make here in the opening image to the closing image that personal transformation that she's going to have to go through is what the Beast story is All About so we get hints of the Beast story here where the theme is stated but the scene here the beat that we want to hit here with the Beast story actual beat beat number seven is a much more Stark confrontation with this idea of the change that this person's going to have to make so as I mentioned the character has a flaw sometimes called a wound and they've put up defensive barriers uh mental defensive barriers around this wound and the B story is a moment for a character usually a love interest or a mentor or a trusted friend somebody like that to basically say hey you have a problem here you need to change it and in the case of everything everywhere all at once this person is actually also the villain which isn't as common but can happen the villain in everything everywhere all at once is an alternate version of Evelyn's daughter and a lot of the poking and prodding of changing Evelyn actually comes from her daughter and the alternate version of the daughter because that is where the change needs to happen the most in order for her to become really in love with her daughter helping her daughter and everything to do with that that brings us into another multi- scene beat this is one of the longest multi- scene beats but a fun one called the fun and games now just because it's called Fun and Games doesn't necessarily mean that this is a fun time with a lot of games basically this is the moment like we've kind of discussed in some some of the other options where we get the promise of the premise we get the the trailer moments the moments like in The Matrix where K Reeves is learning Kung Fu and learning about the Matrix this is a moment of learning and a lot of growth and a lot of failure but a lot of like falling forward with that failure you're learning things you're getting more invested into the story this is where the main character has kind of moved from this debate here to actually accepting her role in the story and we see this with Evelyn because she starts to actually really embrace the whole Multiverse and she starts jumping from one Universe to the other she's also learning a lot of the other characters and there's multiple scenes in here as she's going through this growth but that leads us to another moment that is also the same as what we've seen in the 3A structure and that is the point and the midpoint is exactly the same as it is in the 3A structure it's this moment of sort of self-reflection where they are looking at that hole in themselves that flaw and realizing that there is something to change there they're a little bit less in denial of that change there's usually also some kind of a false Victory where they think that things are going well that they've actually done what they need to but as they're going to find out shortly thereafter things are not as they seem in fact things are about to get way worse for the character and in everything everywhere all at once there is a point where Evelyn is sort of told that she needs to embrace some of her worst qualities and be more like her daughter and she's expected to be more like her daughter as she's going through this Multiverse whole journey so people are kind of starting to come after her now because she is a threat but she manages to get away but she's also starting to embrace the same qualities and the same dangers that her alternate universe daughter who is now like the villain of the whole thing what happened to her might happen to Evelyn as well and so we get that false Victory and this threat that Evelyn might actually turn out just like the alternate version of her daughter and that's not a good thing and that leads us into the next beat this is another multic scene beat that can take place across multiple scenes but that is the bad guys close in now the bad guys closing in this is an important moment or series of scenes where things start to get really bad for the protagonist the conflict amps up it usually starts to look a little bit more hopeless and and everything everywhere all at once this is where she kind of decides like no I'm not going to become like the alternate version of my daughter I'm going to actually try to save her and she gets into these conflicts with her daughter which is amping up that tension with the bad guys closing in but also the good guy the supposed good guys are also closing in on her so even though they call themselves the good guys from the perspective of the story and the protagonist they are the bad guys cuz they're trying to get her they're trying to stop her from becoming an enemy even worse than her daughter and from basically destroying the whole Multiverse but through all that she's like sticking to her guns and says I'm going to do this I'm going to fix things and I'm going to do it by embracing this Multiverse but throughout all of that she's skating on thin ice which kind of leads us to the next moment which is All Is Lost and in the all this lost moment she kind of has this moment where she realizes that daughter might be right this alternate evil version of her daughter might actually be on to something and so she sort of starts to embrace that nihilistic approach to the universe and realize that maybe there's it's not worth it like maybe there's no point to this Multiverse and then kind of going along with this all this L moment we have what's called a Dark Knight of the soul and The Dark Knight of the soul is much more of an inner conflict that often happens after this all lost moment there's a moment where the character is really confronting that wound inside of them that flaw and realizing that they have to change or they're going to die basically uh whether that's literal or figurative things are not going to work out well if you stay in the dark knight of the Soul so in the case of everything everywhere all at once there's this sort of existential crisis that Evelyn goes through together with her daughter in this moment we're kind of at rock bottom right and when you hit rock bottom you can only go up from there and so we actually start to see Evelyn start to get a little bit more hope and to try and teach that to her daughter so we see that beautiful scene where there're just rocks in a lifeless universe and we start to see like oh actually maybe she still has love for her daughter maybe that love can actually do something and we start to get this glimmer of hope here and then we get break into three and this is kind of the same moment as the plot point two in the 3A structure where we're moving from act two into act three hence the name break into three and the break into three moment is a moment where basically the hero starts to have a little bit more hope they start to gird up their loins to say hey we're going to do something about this they get a little a little bit more optimism and in everything everywhere all at once this is the moment where Evelyn kind of looks at her husband Wayman and just looks at how amazing he's been in pretty much all of the universes that she's visited up to this point and realized that no there is hope like this isn't a nihilistic existence that we are living in there is good out there and I can see it in my husband Wayman so she starts to shift at this point and try to imitate her husband by using compassion and things like that in order to help her daughter uh both her real daughter and the alternate version of her daughter that acts as the villain and all of this sort of leads up to this final moment called the finale which is basically the same as the climax in all of the other things that we've discussed so far this is the moment where everything comes to a head and in everything everywhere all at once she's trying to use compassion for her daughter it doesn't quite work and so she actually genuinely starts to care for her daughter and say basically I love you I'm going to be here no matter what not for myself but for you and throughout that whole ordeal she learns to actually start devel value more just the simple interactions that she has in life which is the journey that we wanted to go on from the opening image to the closing image she learns all of these things she comes out of the finale a changed person and in so doing actually saves the entire Multiverse this is a moment where the a story the external action that things that are going on intersects with the B story her own inner personal Journey which have to intersect at this point because her personal journey is what allows her to succeed in the a story her external journey and so the entire story wraps up with a closing image visually representing the change that she's gone through over the course of the story and that ends up being all 15 of the save the cat beats so you can see how this even though it's a little bit more detailed and adds a few things like the opening and the closing image you can see how it's very similar to what we've seen in the 3A structure and in the hero's journey it's just sort of breaking it down a little bit differently than those other two and I found that this to be the case for pretty much all of the story structures out there but to wrap up I kind of want to talk briefly about how I Plot a novel and a resource that I have that I think will be helpful for you now there are many ways to actually approach writing a novel and plotting a novel U but I'm just going to give you the way I do it just in case this is helpful for you certainly you can do things in a different way but one of the things that I like to do most of us usually have a concept a germ of an idea in our heads already when we get started and that's usually like the concept of the plot it might be a specific character that you have it might be more of like a what if scenario whatever the case maybe but you have a concept right and so I usually start with the concept and I write that down write down everything that I know about that concept everything that I've sort of already worked out in my head which may be a little might be a lot and that's step one for me step two is actually going through and identifying what is the opening image and the closing image so I take the advice from Blake Snider very literally and basically saying what is the transformation that I want the main character to go through you might not have a character yet you might just have the concept so before you get to transformation you do need to kind of have an idea of what's the character here who's the person that needs to go on this journey but once you have that you can identify what is the opening image and the closing image and I literally try to identify an actual visual representation of what their transformation is I might not know what the main conflict of the story is but I know what the transformation is just like with everything everywhere all at once if you looked at the opening and the closing image you would have no idea about this Multiverse thing that happened in between but you can see what the transformation is and that's going to give you the theme of the story so with the transformation comes the theme usually more or less so once I have that transformation down it it then becomes a lot easier to identify what is the conflict so the conflict is the next step that I go into now if you are Discovery writer a lot of this these next few steps are not going to be as useful for you because you don't want to have things plotted out ahead of time but I am a heavy plotter and so I always start to figure out what is actually going to happen in between the opening and the closing image and the best way to identify that is to identify what the conflict is so I usually think of the conflict in terms of like the climax what is the character going to be dealing with that results in them going through this transformation and so I like to out what the ending is first in this channnel we talk a lot about Ai and if you have the ending in mind for AI it's actually going to make things a lot easier as you're plotting the rest of the novel because AI has a direction in which to go but even if you're not using AI this is a very useful tool for yourself to actually be able to say okay this is where we're going how are we going to get there and just understanding the main conflict the antagonist all of that is going to do a long way to sort of figure out what are all of the other beats in between and from there I sort of start to fill in the blanks and at this point it's a little bit less structured in terms of where I go next but usually the next step for me is to identify a lot of the other main points most notably the inciting incident and then I also like to look at act two and the first and second plot point to try and figure out what are those main moments going to be about and then the midpoint is also a very important moment like what's this false victory that they're going to have makes them turn inward and look inward their journey and then I just sort of fill in the blanks from there and to make this a little bit easier I actually developed something that I call the 40 chapter plot module and uh because one of the issues that I was running into with the save the cat is save the cat says that you should have 40 scenes roughly for a screenplay but only gives you 15 beats and some of those beats are meant to be multiple scenes and so I was thinking about this and I'm like okay well if fun in games for example is supposed to be five scenes well then what's the difference between the five like there's got to be a point to every scene that's another thing you get taught a lot in creative writing circles is that every scene must serve a purpose well then what is the purpose of each of these scenes and so I actually created a 40 scene template that I call the 40 chapter plot module which basically gives you a starting point and tells you exactly what should happen in each of the 40 scenes and so it hits all of these beats that we've kind of covered so far I also went into all of the other story structures to look for inspiration there to see if there was anything that they were adding to the conversation that the others were missing and from all of that taking in all of that I created 40 chapters every chapter is unique every chapter serves a purpose tells you exactly what should happen in that chapter now of course it's not perfect this is really meant for a beginner template for someone who really doesn't know where to start and even for experienced authors sometimes it's easy to get lost in your outline and you find yourself creating something that actually would be better to to do this instead of that you might mix things around but I found that having a starting place of these 40 scenes is a great way to start you can mix them up a little bit change the order like I mentioned with the meeting the mentor scene in Star Wars that one kind of happens a little bit before refusal of the call so you can mix up the order just a little bit you can combine scenes or split them up but in general it provides a very clear step-by-step 40 scene guide for a complete novel with a single protagonist so if that is interesting to you I have video here talking all about that so you can check that out I also have a cheat sheet for the 40 scene template that you can actually get by subscribing on my website story hacker. there will be a link below just subscribe and you should get a link with the 40 chapter module as well as a few other things that I offer my subscribers for free so go ahead and check that out and I will see you in the next video