In this blog I want to look at a different way of looking at story structure that is not events-driven (such as the hero’s journey).

All stories are by their nature about ‘situations’ that form the central conflict of a story. However, not all situations are big enough or complex enough to drive a story for a movie or novel. For example, losing one’s luggage on a flight may well be an annoying situation, but it is unlikely to form the basis of story unless it is a catalyst for something else.

Let’s take a couple of good examples of great story situations from action movies.

A New York cop finds himself at a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Building when terrorists break in and take his wife and others hostage: Die Hard. Clearly a difficult situation even for a cop. He has a dilemma – what to do next? First he tries to alert the authorities to deal with the situation but when that is unsuccessful, the action escalates as he takes on the terrorists himself.

Notice the pattern:

Situation-> Dilemma -> Action -> Complication ->Escalation-> Crisis -> Resolution

Take another great example: after discovering that an asteroid the size of Texas will impact Earth in less than a month, NASA recruits a misfit team of deep-core drillers to save the planet. Armageddon – another great action-packed Bruce Willis movie. Again if you examine the narrative of the movie you get the same pattern:

Situation-> Dilemma -> Action -> Complication ->Escalation-> Crisis -> Resoluion

Here the action is to land on the asteroid, drill a hole to the required depth and detonate a nuclear bomb. But multiple complications get in the way of the mission, such that in the end Harry (Bruce Willis) has to detonated the bomb by hand. Thus saving the planet (high stakes).

So what do we learn from this? The character at the centre of the story has to fit the situation. It has to be difficult to resolve. It has to be capable of escalation through unforeseen complications. And it has to involve high stakes (life and death literally or figuratively). Otherwise why would we become emotionally invested in the outcome?

Finding potential unusual situations for writer is not difficult. But whether or not the situation is big enough to develop into to a full-blown story is much harder. Or at least, that’s my experience.

Let’s suppose you find a unique situation that has the potential to meet these requirements. The next step is to find a main character or characters that uniquely fit the needs of the story situation. This is not necessarily as simple as it sounds as the psychology of character’s beliefs, wants and needs will drive the direction the story takes. If you can replace your hero with any old hero then you haven’t properly matched the hero with the situation.

Lastly, to make the story feel real you will need to weave in a web of relationships with the other characters affected by the story.

When you have all these components together then you have the ingredients of a story and you can get on with writing it. Great writers do this instinctively. The rest of us have to work at it.