How to Structure a Book with the Dan Harmon Story Circle

hi everyone i'm shaylyn here with reedzy and today we're going to be talking about the plot embryo or the dan harmon story circle so this is a method of structuring a book just like the hero's journey or save the cat where it outlines specific stages along your plot that you can follow for strong structuring hence the name the dan harmon story circle was created by dan harmon who's the creator of community and it goes by many names the plot circle the plot embryo you can see this structure applied very clearly in a lot of dan harmon's work specifically in his series rick and morty if you're interested in a breakdown of this structure as it applies to rick and morty we've actually got an entire post that does that so i'll leave a link to that in the description but in today's video i'm just going to be looking at the different stages of the plot embryo if it's a structure you're interested in trying in your own work now the plot embryo has a lot of similarities to the hero's journey which we do have an entire video on so if that's a structure that interests you i'll leave a link to that but a lot of people find the plot embryo to be more widely applicable to a wider range of stories and more intuitive to use it has eight steps based on motivation action and consequence and can be arranged in a circular diagram so let's look at the steps the plot embryo moves kind of like a clock so we're going to start at 12 o'clock and then move clockwise around the circle the first step is comfort zone this is where the character is in their familiar place and status quo and we get an understanding of what their life is like before the story this is the same kind of introductory beat that you'll see in a lot of plot structures step number two is wants something this is where we gain an understanding of what the character wants what their goal is something is going to happen in their world that is going to steer them towards having a goal something's going to kind of shake them out of their status quo now they want something which means that something needs to be fixed at step 3 we're going to enter into the second quadrant with a beat called unfamiliar situation this is where the character tries to fix what is broken or achieve their goal but in order to do that they need to move into an unfamiliar circumstance if you're comparing this to the hero's journey it's kind of the same as the crossing the threshold beat once the character moves into unfamiliar territory the story has really begun um and we're kind of at a point of no return step number four is adaptation again we can compare this to the hero's journey this is kind of the same as the trials and enemies beat in the hero's journey but this is basically where the character will be forced to adapt as they face various obstacles in search of achieving their goal they'll face more and more trials and this will force them to grow change and step five is at the six o'clock mark and it's where we're going to enter into the third quadrant and this is called get what is wanted after adapting the character has transformed enough that they're able to achieve what they set out to achieve however the story is far from over which leads us into step six pay a hefty price even though they've achieved their goal there's some kind of significant loss that comes along with that their goal had some kind of unforeseen consequence that now they have to face step seven is going to bring us into the fourth quadrant and is known as return to the familiar this is where they come back to their familiar world and then finally step eight is having changed this is basically the denumong and it's where we see the character in their in their familiar world but the events of the story have changed them whatever their original problem was whatever what was missing they're able to fix it because they've changed over the course of the story so as you can see there are a lot of structural similarities to the hero's journey but the reason many people prefer the plot embryo is because it's a lot more widely applicable to a wider range of story you could apply it to very quiet subtle emotional pieces or to more epic ones that's because it's based on character motivation and change rather than external plot point if you struggle with character arc or character change this is a great plot structure to study or to follow because that's what it's based around the cyclical circular structure is also pretty intuitive to follow each quadrant represents a different contrast between the character's situation and their internal growth so as we can see the story divided into quadrants the top of the circle represents the familiar world and the bottom of the circle represents the unfamiliar whereas the right side of the circle represents the character before they've changed and the left side of the circle represents them after they've changed so we can see the character move through four distinct stages unchanged in the familiar world unchanged in the unfamiliar world changed in the unfamiliar world and finally changed in the familiar world now harman's idea with the plot embryo is that this is based on kind of an innate sense of storytelling that traverses culture and that this isn't a story hack rather it's an ingrained part of human psyche and how we understand stories by his philosophy a story that doesn't follow this story structure isn't a bad story it's simply not a story so that does raise a question does this really apply to every story well i'll be honest i don't really know i haven't done an inquiry into every single story out there i do think that this plot structure is vague enough that it can probably apply very widely you'll probably find it applies to a lot of stories you might not even expect it to apply to just because the stages are so flexible and it is based around core components that most stories have like character change and character goal however i personally rarely believe in the universal when it comes to writing and storytelling so i'm sure you can find a story out there that is a story that doesn't follow the plot embryo i try not to think about writing in terms of absolutes but that doesn't mean that this isn't a useful tool if it makes sense to you the way i like to approach plot structure is if it makes sense to you then it's a great tool to apply different plot structures resonate with different people and just make sense to them based on how they see storytelling this is a pretty good one because it's pretty approachable and pretty intuitive so if you're trying to improve your structuring skills one of the best ways to do that is to study story structure and this is a good place to start just because it is quite widely applicable if you feel like your story doesn't fit into the plot embryo ask yourself if it's because you're missing something that would improve the story like if your character doesn't have a goal and that's why it doesn't fit into the plot embryo that might be a problem however just because dan harmon says that every single story fits this plot structure i don't know if it necessarily means every story needs to i don't think anything's really that universal if you've written with the plot embryo before or it's a plot structure that you like i would love to hear about your thoughts in the comments if you're interested in learning about other plot structures we've got videos on save the cat the hero's journey and on friday we'll be talking about the three act structure as well as a video that covers four different ways to structure your novel including the plot embryo so i'll leave all of that in the description thank you so much for watching remember to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss any new videos from us we've got new writing editing and publishing tips every tuesday and friday until next time bye you

Channel: Reedsy

Views: 16,943

Keywords: how to write a book, authortube, writing tips, writing advice, writing tip, self publishing, self publishing tips, how to self publish a book, writing, plot embryo, plot circle, story circle, dan harmon, dan harmon story circle, dan harmon story circle example, plot embryo example, how to structure a novel, how to structure a book, book outline, how to outline a book

Id: AnUBjH7LV28

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020