The Most Popular Story Structures | Hero's Journey, Save the Cat, Story Circle

hey guys what's up welcome back to another video today I'm gonna be breaking down the top three most popular story beat structure things let's get to it [Music] so last week the ever lovely cam over at Wolf Shop publishing posted a video about the hero's journey which reminded me that approximately 50 billion million years ago I promised you guys a video comparing different narrative structures and so today we're doing that also a link cams video in the description and in the end cards now if you've heard of some of these guides before but aren't super familiar with them you're probably thinking that there's like 50 billion million guides up there and how am I possibly gonna talk about just three and that is because writers suck and we insist on giving 50 billion million names to just variants of one thing just to make life difficult but a lot of those variations boiled down to three main popular sort of beat cheats that people use so number one is Joseph Campbell's the hero's journey aka the monomyth or stages of monomyth or the 17 stages of monomyth and this structure of course because why not has four whole freakin variations and they're all just called the hero's journey so there's no real way to tell them apart except for the people who kind of created them and it's it's a mess but we'll get to that in a second number two we have saved the cat also known as the Blake Snyder beat sheet the 15 beat sheet and now you may sometimes hear it called save the cat writes a novel and last but not least one that I've seen around is Dan Harmon's story circle all of them known as pot embryo and apparently it's mostly only called plot embryo by Rachel Stevenson she loves the hell out of this story method so she covers it in videos all the time and she always calls it pot embryo and when I search for plot embryo it's just it's all her stuff so I don't know how popular of a turn that is but plot embryo does sound cooler so I'm gonna go with Rachel on this one so now let's cover a brief history of these three narrative structures and where they sort of came from so Dan Harmon is a writer and producer you're probably familiar with his work on Rick and Morty he is the producer for that now dan started developing the plot embryo method in the 90s when he was stuck writing a screenplay he wanted to codify the writing process because this crazy lunatic thought that he could bring some level of simplicity to writing madness I know but his his sheet that he developed does help a little bit so Dan went out and from scratch created a whole perfect recipe for fiction just kidding he distilled the hero's journey down into a simplified eight step process oh and then you put them in a circle but hey don't complain about the simplicity of relating this to a circle because Joseph Campbell compared the hero's journey to the digestive tracts where the hero is being broken down and stripped of his sphere and desire probably desired to live because he's in a digestive tract and that's just why next up the history of save the cat's save the cow was developed by screenwriter Blake Snyder who passed away unfortunately in 2009 at the age of 51 a mere four years after officially publishing save the cat now save the cat is not technically the name of the beat sheet it contains the beat sheet but I'm not gonna use a title that doesn't have the word cat in it when there's an option of a title that has the word cat in it and that's probably how this title became popularized like Dan Herman Blake Schneider wanted to codify a pattern that he noticed while listening to audio tapes of films and his long commute from Santa Barbara to LA okay pause for a second I hate traffic as much as the next person but credit where credit is due I don't think we properly appreciate how much traffic does for creative my I bet 20% of Hollywood ideas come from the fact that la traffic is hell but if you thought that Blake Snyder was super clever and also created this whole thing from scratch you are wrong again because he directly cites Joseph Campbell's a hero with a thousand faces in his book the book that I threw across the room and now I'm too lazy to go pick up again and the book contains the quote hero with a thousand faces remains the best book about storytelling ever so we cannot say that he wrote his B sheet without being influenced by the hero's journey so not created from the ground up and say the cat writes a novel is written by Jessica Brody who was contacted to write this book by a publisher who had permission from the Blake Snyder estate this does have the same exact plot structure it just surrounds it with a writer jargon rather than screenwriter jargon so if you're a novel writer I do recommend you just buy this over the regular save the cat I haven't finished the book yet but so far I'm enjoying it so if you want to check it out it is in my Amazon shop link in the description down below and Jessica Brody seems like a cool person she follows me on Twitter and I'm always like 50% more likely to promote books that people who follow me on Twitter that's probably a bad thing cool so now let's cover the history of the hero's journey thank you guys are super excited to hear about this Joseph Campbell dude that unlike these other people actually created a cool narrative structure from the ground up whoa got bad news for you you didn't create it from the ground up either cuz nothing is original every idea has already been had and life as a writer is just rehashing other people's ideas until you die so Joseph Campbell writer of a hero with a thousand faces which is not the book I'm holding up because I don't own that book but for some reason I own this book which is literally an entire book that's just a back and forth interview between Joseph Campbell and some dude called Moyers and I still have it because you know I use it all the time so I'm holding this up because it's super relevant because Joseph Campbell's name is on it and it's all I got so Joseph Campbell got his idea for the hero's journey and how to compose it and everything from research by anthropologists edward burnett tylor who observed common patterns and plots of the hero's journey also Auto rank and his psychoanalytic analysis of myths and heroes tales as well as some work from Sigmund Freud and Lord Raglan's work on myth and rituals as well as Carl Jung's view on myth so just Campbell although composing this into a really great narrative structure did pull most of his ideas from research that came before but in his defense at his research that he popularized so here's the thing hero's journey save the cat's plot embryo I keep trying to call it story embryo plot embryo they didn't invent these structures rather they recognized patterns that were already there and composed them into a guideline that we as writers can follow so that's not to say that these people don't get credit for their work summarizing it and boiling it down into an easy-to-follow guide but the beets themselves have been in development over thousands and thousands of years of storytelling in human history and while we're talking about humans building off of what already exists if you go search for the hero's journey odds are you're gonna find a ton of variations of it with the exact same name of the hero's journey splattered across them and it's gonna get a little bit confusing for example you may find the 17 stages of monomyth that joseph campbell developed in his book hero with a thousand faces back in 1949 but you may also find the 1981 version by David Lee means which is eight steps long that was also not the book that it was contained and that's just a book that has David Lehman's name on it cuz I Ward books you could also find Phil Connor sua's Connor hosting one Phil poison news 8 steps which he developed in 1990 or Christopher Vogler's 12 steps which he developed in 2007 so these three don't even bother with new names and they directly credit and Joseph Campbell as being the source of the hero's journey they just kind of change it up a little bit and simplify it down from 17 steps to 8 8 and 12 and then of course there is the copycat of copycats the hero's journey to save the cat which fuses the hero's journey with save the cat which was built on the hero's journey and this wonderful piece of narrative structure was created in 2018 by the ever lovely author Megan Tennant as I needed a slightly different narrative structure for Red Rivers outline and I liked components from both and either one worked on their own so I just smushed them together and there's a video on it and it is my favorite thumbnail ever and I remember nothing about the video so it might be really bad but linked in the places where links live so now you have the history and now I'm just gonna do a very brief summary of each so you know kind of what reincarnation you want to use for your story so Joseph Campbell's original 17 stages of monomyth go as follows after one we have separation which divides into call to adventure refusal of the call supernatural aid crossing the threshold and belly of the whale then we move into act two which is initiation and this has step 6 which is road of trials step 7 which is meeting the goddess step 8 which is temptation step 9 which is atonement step 10 which is a path iosys which I only just realized last year was a path iosys ever since my mythology class where I first learned about the hero's journey like five years ago I've been calling it apoptosis because I was a biology major in apoptosis is a term in biology that means the natural death of cells in the body required for you to live and be healthy and not have cancer so the first time ever I read it apoptosis and then every time after my brain magically read it as apoptosis because brains are cool like that so I outlined and wrote the entirety of Alethea under the belief that this step was called apoptosis and was meant to represent a character's sort of dying symbolic death and being rebirthed healthier and new and the entirety of the Alethea scene where 7:36 is locked in the sun depth chamber all of that came from the misunderstanding of this step and that is the weirdest way in which my biology degree has ever influenced my writing number eleven the ultimate boon and then we have Act three which is the return so step 12 is refusal of the return step 13 is the magic of flight step 14 is rescue from without step 15 is crossing the return threshold step 16 is master of two worlds and step 17 is freedom to live so those are the original seventeen but now if you search the internet for the hero's journey odds are you're not gonna find the seventeen stages of monomyth rather you're gonna find one of the very very many condensed versions out in circulation mumbles alternate versions you'll probably find the three variations in particular that are fairly popularized firstly David Lee means version which is stage one miraculous conception and birth stage two initiation of the hero child stage three with a draw from family for meditation and preparation stage for trial and quest Stage five death Stage six descend into the underworld stage seven resurrection and rebirth and stage eight ascension apotheosis and atonement yeah that one is super weird and really weirdly specific it doesn't really embody the hero's journey I don't know what the hell David Lehman was doing but that's the thing that exists that you might find then we have filled Kosan heirs which is stage one call to adventure Stage two the road of trials Stage three the Vision Quest Stage four meeting with the goddess Stage five the boon stage six the magic of flight stage seven the return threshold and stage eight master of two worlds and the most common one that you'll find which you'll probably recognize is by Christopher Vogler step one ordinary world step two call to adventure step three refusal of the call step four meeting the mentor step 5 crossing the first threshold step 6 tests and allies and enemies step 7 approach to the innermost cave step 8 the ordeal step 9 reward step 10 the road back step 11 the resurrection and step 12 return with the elixir I think that one is a pretty solid version that works with most stories and it's fairly modernized most of the graphics you find when you search the hero's journey are gonna be these twelve steps they're gonna be a little bit more cleaned up and are probably something good to go off of but as you can tell with the exception of whatever the hell David Lee mien was doing I don't know the others are all very similar they're just slightly condensed versions of the original hero's journey now the other two being newer and being already based on the hero's journey only have one variant each so first off we have the save the cat beat sheet which goes step one opening image step two theme stated step three setup step four catalyst Step five debate step six break into to step 7b story step eight fun and games step nine midpoint step 10 bad boys close in step 11 all is lost step 12 dark night of the soul step 13 break into three step 14 finale and step 15 final image so as you can tell this version is ripe with screenwriter speak but Dan Herman is also a screenwriter so what about his is his a little more palatable to us writers who write novels to Dan Harmon's plot embryo goes step one a character in a zone of comfort or familiarity step two they desire something step three they enter an unfamiliar situation step four they adapt to the situation step 5 they get that which they wanted step 6 they pay a heavy price for it step 7 they return to their familiar situation and step 8 they have changed as a result I personally think Dan Harmon's is kind of more of a match to novels in terms of terminology it's kind of formatted in more of an internal way of what the characters feeling which I kind of like so one method is best for you it doesn't actually matter the truth is all of these except for maybe David Lee means weird-ass version because what the but the rest of them all share most of the main most important elements and beats of a story now I personally tend to stick around the 17 stages of monomyth or the twelve stages of monomyth but whenever I use these formats I skip things I skim things these are just rough Maps rough guidelines you don't have to follow them to the letter these are just kind of to help you organize your ideas wait what am I saying of course there's a right answer the right answer for which one you should use is clearly Sarah's journey to save the cat so that was it for this video if you want to pick apart the stages of the hero's journey that made it into Alethea you can check it out hardcover paperback ebook let me know in a comment have you ever used one of these narrative structures if so did you like it how did it go check out my video as well as cams video breaking down the hero's journey in detail and actually explaining it he used a more modernized 12-step hero's journey I liked it it's one that I've seen before and I highly recommend you check it out and thank you so much for watching as always I will see you in the next video you [Music]

Channel: Cloud Kitten Chronicles

Views: 4,174

Rating: 4.738318 out of 5

Keywords: megan tennant, authortube, the hero's journey, save the cat, story circle, plot embryo, wolfshot publishing, joseph campbell, narrative structure, outlining, how to outline, novel, book, writing, writing tips, dan harmon, rick and morty, 17 stages of monomyth, rachael stephen, lessons from the screenplay, script structure, screenplay, writing advice, how to write, how to write a script, how to write a novel, 15 plot beat sheet, plot beat sheet, plot with me, outlining guide

Id: eQB-vwVu4qM

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019