Story structure formulas don’t work

Learn a better process for creating entertaining, meaningful fiction

No need to save this guy!

Pssst . . . you might want to put down that popular story structure formula book you’re reading. You know the one. 

Well, actually, there’s more than one. Many of these formula books are written for screenwriters; some are written for novelists, but all fiction writers tend to read them. And all these books are kind of saying the same thing and pushing basically the same story beat formulas.

Look, I get it — I read them too. I totally understand their appeal. They offer certainty and clear answers. Who doesn’t want that? A seemingly surefire path to achieving your writing dreams.

But it turns out working professional writers, particularly those in Hollywood, don’t use these formulas. Listen to the Scriptnotes podcast, hosted by two A-list screenwriters, and you’ll hear them making fun of these books.

In fact, studio readers will reject a screenplay if they spot telltale signs of it following certain prescribed story beats. 

Plenty of novelists have gotten by just fine without these books too. 

Maybe, though, you’re reluctant to put aside your story formula guide. After all, where does that leave you? Maybe still grasping for answers. 

I was there once too — unsure how to proceed, struggling to come up with engaging plots and interesting characters. And then I spent a lot of time (and, yes, a fair amount of money) on online screenwriting courses taught by Corey Mandell and Jacob Krueger. I listened to hundreds of episodes of the Scriptnotes podcast. I read the admired books of Brian McDonald. And, slowly, I put together a process for going from initial story idea to creation of an entertaining, meaningful work of fiction.

I took the best ideas from all these sources, filled in some of the gaps through experience and struggle, and developed a process that is infinitely simpler, more flexible, and more effective than any of the formula books out there. There are no story beats involved or any rules. 

I want to emphasize that I’m not presenting a grand unified theory of story design. There is no such thing. Plenty of books that get published and plenty of movies that get produced don’t follow what I consider best practices. 

Likewise, following my approach isn’t some assured path to success. What determines the commercial success of a book or movie depends upon many factors beyond its objective merits in terms of story design and execution. 

Nevertheless, if you find it daunting to marry story, plot, and character, I think you’ll find my approach will make things easier for you.

Why delivering meaning and entertainment is at the heart of my approach

In a moment, I will give you the first step in my process. But before that, I wanted to underscore something I said earlier — my process helps you create stories that are both entertaining and meaningful.

A lot of writers just focus on being entertaining. And I wouldn’t say that’s wrong. Many writers are very financially successful doing just that. People enjoy being titillated, whether it’s through thrilling drama or romantic tension.

Moreover, I’m not a snob when it comes to such content. I enjoy shows that are entertaining without being particularly meaningful. I’ll provide an example in a moment, but let me first define what I mean by “meaningful.”

A meaningful story, as I see it, is one that offers wisdom on how to deal with a universal human issue. Moreover, it delivers this wisdom in a moving way.

Two examples of movies that offer wisdom on universal human issues are It’s A Wonderful Life and The Shawshank Redemption. It’s A Wonderful Life deals with the universal issue of being disappointed by the gap between your dreams for your life and how it actually turned out. And the wisdom it offers is that you need to learn to see the many wonderful things in the life you have. This wisdom is delivered through the moving arc of George losing everything he loves and then regaining everything.

Likewise, The Shawshank Redemption deals with the universal human issue of feeling hopelessness over some set of circumstances. For the characters in the movie, those circumstances are long prison sentences, but, for the audience, those circumstances could be anything. The wisdom the movie offers is to keep taking action to improve your circumstances (get busy living) while guided by hope that your efforts can change things. This wisdom is delivered through the moving, dramatic, and surprising storyline of Andy escaping from prison and convincing his friend to join him in Zihuatanejo.

There's a reason these two movies are beloved, timeless classics. It’s because they offer such valuable, moving wisdom about universal issues.

An example of a meaningful story from the world of television is the third season of Stranger Things. The season finale features Hopper’s letter, read in voiceover: “Feelings. Jesus. The truth is, for so long I'd forgotten what those even were. I've been stuck in one place. In a cave, you might say. A deep, dark cave.”

The letter later concludes, “And when life hurts you, because it will, remember the hurt. The hurt is good. It means you're out of that cave.”

Great stuff, right? Here the universal issue is retreating into a cave to avoid painful feelings. And the wisdom is to get out of that cave and feel things, even if life outside the cave hurts you sometimes. We experience this wisdom in a moving way because it’s read in voiceover as we see the characters saying goodbye and experiencing difficult change.

So, those are three examples of entertaining and meaningful stories, with something valuable to say about life. What then is a story that is merely entertaining but not especially meaningful?

One entertaining story that I recently enjoyed is the Netflix show The Night Agent. It’s very engaging to watch, and I eagerly anticipate the second season. But I can’t say it has any wisdom to offer, so I will never value it as much as I value It’s A Wonderful Life and The Shawshank Redemption. I simply don’t see any universal human issues in The Night Agent. 

Another category of entertainment that has grown very popular in recent years is what I call stories about “bad people doing bad things.” I’m not the only one who’s noticed this trend. Frank Darabont, who earned his spot in the pantheon of great writers by writing and directing The Shawshank Redemption, made a similar observation recently: 

“Our content now is so filled with horrible people doing horrible things for greedy reasons . . . .”

Like Frank, I’m not a fan of this content even if I can still say that, objectively, it’s well structured and engaging. But I simply don’t want to watch bad people pursuing bad things.

Similarly, even though I enjoy content like The Night Agent, I have no desire to write anything like it. It’s not deep enough for me. 

The good news is whether you want to just be entertaining or to be entertaining and meaningful, my process can work for you. It’s a process that helps you develop both entertainment and meaning in your stories, but you can choose not to use the techniques relating to meaning.

The first step in creating an entertaining story (plus how to make it meaningful — if you want)

Okay, enough theory and table setting. It’s time for the main course. And while I’ve mentioned a few examples of existing content, I don’t think dissecting existing content is a good way to learn or practice creating new content. So, while many of the popular formula books out there analyze popular movies and tv shows, I won’t be doing that. I’ll be applying the process I developed to new ideas.

Here’s step one: take your initial idea and figure out its narrative engine.

Now, writers’ initial ideas sometimes concern a character, a plot, a world, or a theme. Wherever you start, though, you need to figure out the narrative engine, which is the main, stakes-infused goal, question, or goal and question that we’re reading/watching.

I’m going to run this first step on a vague plot idea. On purpose, it’s not an idea of my own, but one that I encounter a lot when browsing through Kindle daily deals. This plot idea comes from what Amazon calls “women’s fiction.” Here’s the vague plot idea, which is really more accurately described as a situation:

Three sisters in their late 30s, their lives having gone very different paths, return to a beach house from their childhood for the summer, as they struggle both with things that happened in the past and issues in their current lives.

Haven’t you seen some form of this idea in a thousand different books? Plenty of books with this situation have managed to get sold to publishers and to sell reasonably well to readers. But whatever the merits of these books, whether it’s good prose or interesting moments of interiority, I would argue that they lack a narrative engine. There’s not a goal or compelling question in sight.

And while there may be questions that arise in the reader’s mind as they read — What happened in the past? How will these characters change this summer? — these questions are different than having a main question or goal serving as a narrative engine.

By giving this situation an overarching goal, question, or goal and question, we can elevate its entertainment value and make clear to the reader at the start of the story where it’s going. 

Let me brainstorm some possibilities on the page. The brainstorming process works best when you generate a lot of ideas because your first ideas are likely to be the ones that are obvious or have been done before. However, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus only on one initial idea that occurs to me, even if it’s a bit weak.

Here’s one idea: the family matriarch has recently died, and the will requested the sisters come to the beach house. The will reveals that the mother has left a challenge for them involving a series of clues, and the first one to unravel the mystery will get the mother’s most valuable possession.

Each sister has a different theory as to what this possession is, and at least two of them think it’s an item worth millions. We could add context to the story that some of the sisters have considerable debt and need a financial windfall.

With this change, a vague situation now has a main question — what’s the most valuable possession that the mother has left behind? The sisters also have a main goal — solve the mystery the mother has left behind. And this goal has stakes — whoever solves the mystery may also solve their money problems.

Perhaps the mother’s clues also involve the sisters in interactions that touch upon their past trauma and their current lives.

Is this the most original idea? Not really. It feels a little like the movie P.S. I Love You with elements of The Inheritance Games and The Westing Game. For the moment, though, let’s ignore that, and explore how to give this story meaning. 

To give a story an uplifting meaning, one approach (but not the only one) is to give each of the main characters the same recognizable life issue in different forms, and have the plot be the thing that helps them learn a better way of living.

For example, let’s say each of the sisters has a life that to the outside world seems like a success, but none of them like the way their lives are going. And each of them is too scared to make a change. 

As the sisters work through the mystery of discovering their mother’s most valuable possession, that journey and ultimate revelation will be the thing that makes them change.

Imagine, for instance, that what each of the sisters need is courage to make a change. Perhaps whatever thing that is haunting them in the past somehow made them scared to make big changes in their lives. And the mother’s most valuable possession is some kind of object that relates to her courage in making some past change in her life.

Now, all of this is very hazy and abstract. And there may be much more interesting ideas if I spent more time brainstorming possibilities. But I think you can see that, already, this story sounds a lot more focused, engaging, and meaningful than the vague situation we started with. It has a narrative engine and a point to it. 

Moreover, if I hadn’t tried to inject some meaning into the story, I think the narrative engine alone isn’t sufficiently novel or compelling enough to make readers care.

Once you have a narrative engine and meaning, what do you do next?

Once you have settled on a narrative engine and point for your story, both of which will most likely be somewhat hazy, how do you begin to make your ideas more specific and clear? And how do you ultimately tell the story in an engaging way? 

I’m currently writing a book that presents every step of this process. This book also shows how I apply my process to multiple ideas in different genres. That way, you can see how to apply the process to your own ideas and go from the initial idea to a completed story that is entertaining (and meaningful if you want).

If you’d like to learn when this book comes out, please subscribe. Don’t worry: this substack will always be free. 

Please also share in the comments your reaction to this article. Was it useful to you? What do you struggle with the most when it comes to story design, execution, and fiction craft?

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