How to Plot Your Novel Using Dan Harmon's Story Circle

good morning I'm Chris Potts today we're talking about Dan Harmon's story circle and how you can use it to apply your novel so there are a lot of different techniques to plotting your novel I've tried a bunch of them this is the one currently that's resonating the most with me so first a little bit of history about it the process begins based on Joseph Campbell's monomyth so for those not familiar I highly recommend a book called hero with a thousand faces or even just watching some of the old Bill Moyers videos where he interviews Joseph Campbell just simply amazing and it teaches you a lot about story structure and how ultimately every story has similarities this is something that Joseph Campbell appositive early in the 20th century and really caught on and it's something that you know for a creator when you you actually read what he has to say it really you know ignites that light bulb in your head like oh my god I again it well Dan Harmon took that a little bit further and so what Dan did is he codified the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell had created into a series of steps that we can use to plot our novels we're going to jump into that in just a second here and it goes over each of the major plot points that you're used to seeing in a standard three act structure and it doesn't in a way that also grows the character so I guess the problem I've had until now is I've got my plot and then I've got my character arcs but they're two very separate things with this process what you're about to see they're actually unified the character rolling is a necessary part of the plot and this gives you the tools to express that so let's go ahead and jump in we'll take a look at the story circle okay you can see here we've got the hero's journey by Joseph Campbell and I want to start with how the circle works because there's nothing that Dan Harvin really built on the top world here the top part of the circle is the known world it's the ordinary world it's the conscious mind it is all the things that are normal for this character and this bottom world the special world the heroic world the unknown world is where all of the characters transformations are going to occur so they start off in their ordinary world they get call to adventure you can see them hitting this threshold and then going and beginning their transformation and going through challenges and temptations on their journey and then here at the bottom this is the depths of the abyss the belly of the whale is something where the character meets the goddess at side Joseph Campbell phrased it and in the process of meeting the goddess they are transformed finally into their higher self is where the transformation begins they usually pay a price for that transformation and then they return to their ordinary world changed and able to affect change around them so whatever problem they had over here they can now solve because they have changed and you can really apply this breakdown to any story you can think of and I think it's a lot of fun to practice doing exactly that so maybe think about your favorite novel or movie and go through the steps and you'll notice that it probably lines up pretty well with what you're seeing here but this as useful as it is as a compass to show us how stories work doesn't really tell us how we can plot a novel following this and I think that's what Dan Harmon tried to rectify so we're going to go ahead and take a look at the story circle and how it relates to this real quick and you'll see it looks very very similar to the hero's journey it's very recognizable but it's also a lot easier to work with as a creative so let's jump into that okay so this is where the magic happens now first off let me start by saying that this graphic in the previous one I pillaged from Google I don't own those I didn't make them thank you to the people who did I will endeavor to find the links and put them in the description so looking at the story structure in this story circle here you'll notice that it looks very very similar to the hero's journey and most of the components are the same so to understand kind of how you can apply this to plotting you want to start at the macro view so we're looking at the two worlds and sort of the quadrants of this circle so let's start with top and bottom top represents life consciousness order the ordinary world bottom death unconsciousness disorder chaos this is the crucible of change basically the special world of the play say hurrah us to go so we're really as a hero and a character in our arc journeying all the way down into the subconscious facing our darkest fears being changed by them seizing control emerging into the light and coming full circle so that that's how stories work they're about the transformation of characters you can also bisect the circle vertically so if you bisect it vertically this half here is in action this is where the character is reacting to all the events that are occurring and basically the first and the first half of the second act where they're doing the best they can but they're kind of being carried along then we have this pivotal point here which we'll go over in a minute where everything changes they cross another threshold and now their season control their destiny working their way back into the light so just again top is going to be you know your your life your ordinary world bottom your unconsciousness you know chaos disorder special world and then you've got an inaction on one side and action on another the individual steps are pretty straightforward it took me a little bit to understand what they need and how they work but they all relate pretty well to a three-act structure and then they all sort of just you know make me go aha it makes sense the first step is simply to give our audience a protagonist we just start writing the character and what will happen and this is the wonderful thing about the human brain well immediately begin to empathize with them and sort of become that character so we used to show a character in their ordinary world as quickly as possible you've got to give that character something that they need they have to want something and need it powerfully or else we don't have a story using an example that everybody knows star wars this is where Luke is tinkering on r2d2 and the hologram pops out and he sees a beautiful princess who needs help so what does Luke want he wants to rescue the princess and remember this need because it's going to be important later we get to the first threshold to mountain is going from his conscious world into the unconscious into the special world and what's the event that marks not his aunt and uncle are killed so this is where he comes back to his voice your farm finds it his family's been wiped out and what makes only choice he's got to leave Tatooine with obi-wan and fly up into space and deal with some problems so this is the road of trials where he is searching and trying to to get the thing that he wants to rescue the princess he blasts off of Alderaan and they have to run away from the Star Destroyers I'm sorry he blasts off from Tatooine they're gonna take my Star Wars card away he blasts off from Tatooine and is going to Alderaan and they show up to find that all the runs been destroyed and they're going through all of these problems now oh no we're doing toad in with a tractor beam and the Millennium Falcon is stuck on the Death Star and they've got to find a way off well they got you all these problems until we get down to what Joseph Campbell called and I mentioned in the previous section meaning the goddess this is where they get what they want so what is Luke 1 in step 2 he wanted to rescue the princess we get down to Step five and he does that but here's the problem you give the character what they want at the midpoint of the novel but then they find out it isn't really what they want is rescuing the princess really what Luke wants no as it turns out he's going to need to blow up that Death Star and to protect the rebellion so he sort of gets what he wants and find out that it's not what he really wants and this course is a moment of change for him he's now stripped away of all of his pride miss flaws and the things that he thought he wanted when he was an immature moisture farmer on Tatooine and now we have to become something greater and he crosses the second threshold and is starting to take control now you know he gets into the the gun cockpit on the Millennium Falcon and blows up some fighters goes back to the rebellion to deliver the plans once they deliver the plans they're gonna have to defend against the Death Star here it comes so he's ready to launch back into space on an x-wing and blow up that Death Star number 6 here cake while he's going through this transformation he's going to take what he wants he's going to learn to use the Force and he's going to become a very skilled pilot very quickly and he's going to help the rebellion but to do that he's going to have to give something up so he pays the price and obi-wan dies Darth our cuts down ob1 there is a lost or something going to take it away from him and you'll see this replicated and pretty much every story people are going to lose something there's almost always a cost for them to get what they want then finally Luke has changed he's now much more confident he understands the four status is and he's going to use it he has been changed and is returning back up into the ordinary world he's capable of change and so instead of relying on the technology that he has in the cockpit he turns off his targeting computer uses the force and blows up the Death Star and then he's returning full circle so you can see how this applies to a story and you can see how you can use this to plot a novel in the final section of the video I'm going to show you how I've used this on one of my upcoming novels from scratch so I didn't really have a story I sat down and I just wrote up some notes about what I want to write and I'm creating new characters it's all you know from scratch will look at Scrivener and you get to see how you could put this into action for yourselves okay so as you can see here I've got Dan Harmon's story circle set up what I did I've created a number of different documents that are world building and telling you a little bit more about you know sort of what I'm creating the basic pitch is this is my space fantasy this is a welding of magic and technology so you've got mages that text natives that can power rifles or armor or you know other technological gadgets with their magic and my main character is going to be one of these majors so his comfort zone is not very comfortable but is ordinary world you can see here he starts off as a prisoner in a starship with no memory and I'm not going to read the entire description because you guys can do that yourself but you can sort of see how I'm hashing out his ordinary world and figuring out who Aaron is and sort of giving context and placement for the character then we move on to number to need and you can see Aaron obviously needs to survive the catalyst from what you read above the body of the dead god work he's getting this tower but ultimately he wants to escape his captors he's got to get away from these guards and he wants to be free again this is his primary need he'd love to get his memory back as well but ultimately need for freedom that serving as the story meet which will become important later he manages to survive the catalyst he comes out finds out that Nora has betrayed him she was never a prisoner at all she was actually just a plant and so he's still a prisoner even though he's got these powers and he's going to be sold into slavery and he's pretty pissed off about it when all of a sudden a Confederate Navy ship pops out of the warp and arrests everybody aboard so now all of a sudden Aaron goes from I've been enslaved by these people to I'm entering a whole new road of trials III have a soldier in a military kind of against my will he's been impressed into service and he's now going to have to see and do a whole bunch of things that he didn't expect and these are going to be his road of trials are stripping away his pride his needs and sort of replacing them with a mature confident individual and again I'm not going to read this whole thing I'm gonna scroll kind of very slowly past it just rid of trials things start getting really long and you could say I've read a lot more information because it's a pretty significant part of the plot hopefully I'm going slowly enough if not I suppose you can pause it to read this and a huge part of this by the way are going to change but this was just my stream of consciousness trying to do each part of the story circle so we finally get down to you know meet the goddess and you can see I've implemented that then we get to the take and pay where I'm going to have to have my my hero sacrifice something for the return I've left this blank intentionally because I still have a few more things to figure out about the world but this is the epic ending right here this is where you know Luke destroys the Death Star and I'm not quite ready to write what that's going to be for me cuz I need to figure out a few more things about the mechanics of my spell system and how that's being implemented but I did do the ending and the reason why that's important is sort of 1/8 needed to dovetail really nicely you've got to come back full circle change so in meet the goddess Aran finally gets what he wants he's no longer enslaved theoretically he could leave the military right then and there but instead now he knows there's something more important than him he's got to protect humanity from the crocs in order to do that he's going to have to stay part of the military so he chooses when he meets the goddess to stay in the military and to be a part of something greater and not to pursue getting his own memory back manages to have this epic ending where he's you know killing the Crocs gets to the end and has changed so that's kind of how I implemented it I will probably show you guys in additional videos what I'm doing with the stories that I'm working on and sort of how Jesus elsewhere because I'm now dropping in a story circle document and every one of my stories and if I have a lot of story lines in the same book like let's say two or three different arcs I'm doing one of these for each of the point-of-view characters so that everybody's kind of getting their transformation everybody's a different character at the end and that the plot is sort of seamlessly woven into that so I realized this is a lot of information and one short 15 minute video is not going to help you master this but there are other videos on the internet on Dan Harmon's story circle there's Dan Harmon's material himself he put it out there on a blog post explaining how it works I highly recommend reading it I will link to that in the description of the video anyway I hope this has been helpful to you guys if it is please let me know in a comment shoot me an email if questions were raised by the video if there's things that still aren't clear ask them I'm happy to answer those but in the meantime I'm going to get back to the right

Channel: Chris Fox

Views: 107,605

Keywords: Writing, How to Write a Novel, How to Write a Book, Writing Tips

Id: tFaUmXIobuE

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2017