The Anatomy of a Story

1. What is the book about as a whole?

It's a practical book on storytelling - in particular, novels, plays, and movies. The book analyzes successful stories and gives a recipe for authors to follow.

2. What is being said in detail, and how?

A story usually has a has a main character. It follows him closely on his journey towards a self-revelation (or failure to achieve one). The character has a flaw and everything in the story is defined in relation to his development. The end result could be that he overcomes the flaw or that he fails to do so and suffers the consequences.

Story

A story tracks what the main character wants, what he'll do to get it and what costs he pays. There might be more than one main character, but that's more advanced technique. The interesting bit about a story is the character(s) reaching a self-revelation; everything else in the story should exist to help him(them) get there.

Premise

A premise is a one-sentence summary of the story. It makes the story more understandable for the author as well as everyone else.

Structure

There are 7 steps to a story:

1. Main character has a weakness and need. The character is not usually aware of his need
2. He actively desires something
3. Opponent, ideally someone that desires the same thing
4. Plan of how to overcome the opponent and achieve the desire
5. A grand battle with the opponent
6. Self-revelation - the "growing" of the character
7. New equilibrium

Characters

There is a taxonomy of characters - hero, opponent, second opponent, opponent that appears as an ally, ally, ally that appears as an opponent. A character that doesn't serve the main character or their conflict should be cut.

There are several character archetypes such as king or rebel that are easy for the audience to relate and don't require that much setup.

Moral argument

The moral argument is the vision of how the world should be, according to you (as the author). The story should serve this moral argument told through the characters - their actions and choices.

Story World

The world in which a story takes place should serve the characters and especially the main character.

Symbols

A symbol is something that reinforces a message in the mind of the reader.

Plot

There are 22 building blocks in creating a plot. Basically - create the characters and the desires/needs, then have a structure of several revelations leading up to a battle that sets up the most important revelation of the story. The revelations should grow in importance and come faster as the plot progresses.

Storyteller helps with structure but there should be a reason for him to be there - ideally his own revelation.

Scenes

A scene must be a ministory. Each scene must advance the story or a character. Scenes must be driven by concrete desire.

The never-ending story

The best stories never end - and there are multiple ways to interpret them.

3. Is the book true, in whole or part?

There is some useful advice in the book - such as building stories around character development and revelations. I find it useful to have the whole story be connected with a single character's development. The story as a moral argument is a useful framework.

With that said, I found a lot of the book to be analysis and retelling of successful movies like Casablanca and Tootsie. The author tried to give general advice but so much of it just doesn't generalize. The taxonomies of the story worlds, characters, the 22 steps - those sound a forced. I felt like the author was bending over backwards trying to explain how cities and jungles can be alike.

4. What of it?

I found the recipe for building a character around desire/need/weakness an interesting one. I will use this for my game to bootstrap the characters.