STORY ARCS
Story arcs are an innate function of design narrative. What is meant by this is that a story requires some form of rising action and falling action between the exposition (beginning) and the resolution (end). Story arcs can appear is multiple forms, but a prime example can be ‘a man in a hole’ type arc (see fig. 1) which was coined by Kurt Vonnegut. ‘A man in a whole’ shows that towards the beginning of the story, all is well and positive. However, towards the climax (generally seen towards the middle), we begin to establish some form of negativity throughout the film, and how this adventure goes south – literally. We understand that as a basic story, we would like to see a happy resolution, meaning the curvature will spike upwards as to how it began.
Of course, not all plots follow this curvature (fig. 1), some are linear, stepped, and many more shapes. However, no matter the shape, ‘we’ the audience are able to resonate with the story because stories provide meaning and purpose. The ‘man in a whole’ story arc is an arc common in film, because it follows a simple human path of happiness to sadness and eventually hope for happiness once again.
STORY CIRCLES AS ARCS
A story circle is an evolution of story arcs developed by Dan Harmon. It has other names such as ‘the story embryo’ or ‘the plot embryo’, and this form of story telling can be applied to almost anything with a simple 8 step process. The 8 steps that define a characters journey and the evolution of the story are as follows:
- You — A character is in a zone of comfort,
- Need — But they want something.
- Go — They enter an unfamiliar situation,
- Search — Adapt to it,
- Find — Get what they wanted,
- Take — Pay a heavy price for it,
- Return — Then return to their familiar situation,
- Change — Having changed.
Dan Harmon believes that narrative is a function of society that allows us to experience life, whether it’s a dream we had on the train that needs to be told to our friends, or an adventure in the woods that no one will believe, or maybe a dream about who you want to be because of who you are now. Harmon believes that his idea of the story circle has a natural essence to it, that that stories we tell as real people follow these steps, but also can explain intangible moments with fictitious characters. A more clear example of what I mean can be shown with how Dan Harmon uses his story circle to depict two things within Rick & Morty: the character circle and the story circle, and how they intertwine and blend together.
Hero Character Archetypes
There are multiple archetypes to a story to help it progress. A simpler way to express a story is that it’s about two things colliding, if there is no friction, the story is stale and can’t progress. Therefore we have eight archetypes that express these collisions and their roles.
- The Hero
- The Mentor
- The Threshold Guardian
- The Herald
- The Shapeshifter
- The Shadow
- The Ally
- The Trickster
If you have a story that only has four characters, then these characters will need to play double roles, as there would be no collision otherwise. Of course, you are not limited to these eight character types, by no means are you constrained by them and force the narrative to be limited by eight. You can have combinations of these types to create limitless archetypes that fit the story you need.
Finding all these traits can help the hero lead the story to an end, which by all means is probably the most important part, the resolution. The need a story that can satisfy the psychological hunger of your audience, leaving them hungry for more, wanting to watch your story again or tell more people to see it and increase the audience size. The hero can sometimes be misleading when (some of) these archetypes are not met correctly, causing chaos and confusion, which if not intended can be detrimental to the stories health.