Dissecting Story
The essential elements of a story.
One of the many experts on storytelling to have attempted in a book to describe the essential elements of a story is John Truby.
In The Anatomy of Story (2007), Truby identifies 22 steps in any protagonist’s narrative, which may play into four aspects of the story: character, plot, story world, and moral argument. Thankfully, Truby does not insist that every story must follow the template strictly and contain all 22 steps. He does, however, identify as critical that the story show seven attributes of a main character and their storyline:
By no means simplistic, Truby’s book is more concerned with the moral element of story – the ethical effect of character transformation on the audience – than with templates such as three-act structure.
Related function in the Beemgee story development tool:
Hero’s Journey, Story Beats, etc
Compose your story now:
