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Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit
- Leftium 4y agoA recent Ask HN[1] reminded me of this series of articles. Make sure to read all six parts: - https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Supe... - https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_102:_Pure,_Boring_Theory https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_102:_Pure... - https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_103:_Let%27s_Simplify_Before_Moving_On https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_103:_Let%... - https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_104:_The_Juicy_Details https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_104:_The_... - https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_105:_How_TV_is_Different https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_105:_How_... - https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_106:_Five_Minute_Pilots https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_106:_Five... [1]: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/34562930 https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/34562930
- guerrilla 4y agowow the second one is really bad, heavy on the psuedoscience, makes me question whether anyone can learn anything from this site.
- observer2022 4y agowhich part on the second one made you think that?
- simonh 4y agoI’m guessing the references to now thoroughly discredited Freudian and Jungian psychology.
- recuter 4y agoThat entire profession is thoroughly discredited. Jung and Freud will continue to fall in and out of fashion. I wonder what they might say about "everything I don't like is wrong" reactions tho.
- Turing_Machine 4y agoOgres and talking donkeys are also thoroughly discredited, but somehow the people who make Shrek still found a large audience and made tons-o-cash. Fiction is stuff that didn't actually happen (and in many cases, couldn't actually happen).
- guerrilla 4y agoThat's because they weren't trying to explain anything as if it were true, just telling a story. These posts are stating a bunch of psuedofacts as if they're true, more a form of misinformation than storytelling.
- simonh 4y agoOh sure, I mentioned this before in another comment here. All the pseudo-psychology stuff may be bunk, but it can still be useful as a framework to hang your story on, even if only in the training wheels stage.
- simonh 4y agoI don’t believe the claims that these concepts are eternal innate principles of storytelling. That’s bunk. However I believe it is true that if you need a starting point, a way in to structuring a story, any of these ideas can work. It’s just a matter of what appeals to you. Plenty of writers have followed guidelines like this to great effect. Others think it’s tosh and some of the greatest stories break the patterns he describes.
- npteljes 4y agoI agree. These articles are very heavy of style, and questionable on substance.
- nmilo 4y agoAnd yet Dan Harmon still manages to write popular and effective stories based solely on pseudoscientific principles. Storywriting is an art, not a science, after all; vague brush strokes are what you need to get the job done, and if it's possible to get good stories out of Jung's theories then maybe you should rethink how useless pseudoscience really is.
- guerrilla 4y agoThat's besides the point. He's here claiming to explain the mechanics of how it works, not telling us a story. Most athletes can do amazing things without understanding the first thing about the mechanics. In fact, we can do amazing things without understanding any biology, chemistry or physics.
- dnissley 4y agoAll models are wrong, some are useful
- tempodox 4y agoShort and to the point. This is how a tutorial should be.
- kilgnad 4y agoCan anyone name a movie that was really good and really popular that diverged from this model heavily. By really popular I mean pretty much universally popular. Not niche popular.
- swatcoder 4y agoOne of the reasons models like this feel universal is because they have a lot of wiggle room in how you interpret what they mean. So some movies fit them very plainly and other movies fit them only after somebody pulls a “well, actually” and makes an unobvious interpretation of who the story was really about, or what they wanted, or where they started, or where they ended. The easiest starting points to look for the “hard fits” are in any tragedy (which aren’t very popular in the US recently), any movie that’s in the middle of a trilogy, and some absurdist/surrealist comedies that happened to win success on humor or novelty rather than structure. But someone committed to the universality of this model can always make a case that those movies fit too. It’s just a more strained argument than in some others.
- rtpg 4y agoIt's kind of funny because we already have a great storytelling model that does fit almost all of these (including lots of the more absurdist stuff), that is in 8-ish points: the 3-act structure!
- number6 4y agoAct 1 is usually Point 1 - 3; Act 3 is 5 - You can Map the 3 Act structure to the 8 Points. Act 1: 1-3; Act 2: 4-6; Act 3: 7 - 8.
- rtpg 4y agoI think that that's saying that these 8 points are an instance of the 3 act structure but loads of stories match the 3 act structure without matching this.
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- manigandham 4y agoAlso known as the Hero's Journey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey "the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed."
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- DanHulton 4y agoShould be paired with "Character Growth 101: It's This Easy". - When the story starts, your character has a clear Want. - Over the course of adventure, they discover what they actually Need. - The Want and the Need are in conflict, and how they resolve that conflict changes them.
- bobsil1 4y agoCompare with the plot of “Back to the Future”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future#Plot
- ttoinou 4y agoSeems to fit. Also read about cinematic chiasmus
- notahacker 4y agoThe screenplay of Back to the Future is fun to compare with the original one[1] which lacks a Delorean, but had dull expository scenes, preaching about nuclear war and technical progress, a bit where Marty pirates videotapes and a lot of Coca Cola references. Perhaps more relevant to the heros journey ideas, a major reason why the original is actually a really bad script is that stuff that happens for a reason in the final screenplay (going to school, attempting to invent rock and roll) is just Marty screwing around and ignoring advice (from the guy he trusts enough to drive into a nuclear test), and he doesn't really get the motivation to get his parents together until quite a bit later. [1]https://www.mediafire.com/file/rzrz3tynumi/ https://www.mediafire.com/file/rzrz3tynumi/
- rspoerri 4y agoPixars story structure comes to my mind: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
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- aktenlage 4y agoMaybe I am watching the wrong movies, reading the wrong books and playing the wrong games, but I followed the prompt to think about those and they don't match. It's not that the protagonist wants something, but something happens to them. The pattern I found mostly is - in comfort - something bad happens - try to get out of bad situation/get revenge - overcome many difficulties - maybe some plot twist - overcome last difficulty What are good examples of the story setup in the articles?
- watwut 4y agoThe article is about how to write boring predictable story when you are not a writer. Of course good art - books, games or movies are not like that. And of course comfort food kind of stories are different too, because those have different formulas.
- number6 4y agoReally? Even the good books or the great are all: Start from a relative calm position and get to know the Characters. Something happens or something lacks. Go down in the underworld or into danger and returns with something (sometimes knowledge), but is changed. Uses this something to save the world (whatever the world may be, could also be the universe or his family) and arrives again at relative calm.
- watwut 4y agoThis assumes that all the great books end well and that they are all adventure books. Also, fairly frequent ending is cliffhanger, where author intentionally ends in conflict and suspense to make you buy next one. Even the Homer Odyssey is more complex then this pattern (except for its most boring chapters).
- number6 4y agoI guess you can end a book somewhere before or after the circle completes to have a cliffhanger ending. So maybe the story hasn't ended yet, but the book has. And you are right; not all books are like that: I just finished “Catcher in the Rey”. The protagonist goes through his ordeal totally unchanged; it is infuriating. I wanted to scream: Dude, didn't you get any wiser! On the other hand: He goes from a safe place, in the underworld of NY, through the night, faces dangers, returns home; depressed and tired; having learned… nothing!
- sublinear 4y agoKind of pretentious to call it "Story Structure 101" unless we're qualifying this as the author's types of stories. In which case, fine. What about stories where the hero gets what they wanted, it's a net good for everyone, and the only heavy price is a newfound responsibility to maintain this good rather than "returning to a familiar situation"? To me, that's an actual hero.
- wodenokoto 4y agoAny examples?
- tsimionescu 4y agoAragorn
- analognoise 4y agoAragorn was totally changed though; he had to watch Frodo leave on the elven ships to the land of the Maiar (iirc) because he couldn't deal with the pain of having been the ring bearer; the love of his life was immortal and she gave up her place in the Undying Lands for him, he watched the collapse of the Dwarves, and the light of magic leave the land - and because of his Numenorian blood he was to stand at this precipice, knowing everything the world had lost, and he'd have nobody to share it with - it would quickly become legend/myth. Aragorn was mighty - but he was absolutely changed. Beautiful but tragic.
- tsimionescu 4y agoThe point is that Aragorn has not had to sacrifice any major thing. Of course he is changed in many ways, and he does feel the weight of the events, and his invreased responsibility. But this is really not comparable to Luke losing his hand, or Frodo taking on the taint of evil (and losing a finger), or Iron Man losing his hear, or Gilgamesh losing Enkidu. Stretching the hero's journey so far would only show it to be a shallow trick.
- e12e 4y agoSee also: Kurt Vonnegut - the shape of stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc
- Barrin92 4y agoThis is pretty much just a riff on the Hero's Journey which is a very common narrative structure, featured a lot in Jung's psychology and just about every (fantasy) epic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
- simonh 4y agoMichael Moorcock hated the hero’s journey stuff and the identikit generic material it engendered. He wrote his fantasy fiction in ways that deliberately broke all the tropes and patterns, to great effect.
- fyresala 4y agoWhat's the circle about?
- LoveMortuus 4y agoThe story structure that Dan shows is a distilled version of Joseph Campbell's Hero's journey. A more get it done version. Mind you, this isn't something that you have to follow. It's something that appears whenever you're telling a story. It's like gravity it's there even if you don't believe in it. ~source: https://youtu.be/SndbyN4u0j4 https://youtu.be/SndbyN4u0j4
- tsimionescu 4y agoIt's really not - it's something that appears if you want to follow the basic structure of most folk tales, that's it. The vast majority of stories diverge significantly from the Hero's Journey model, unless you deeply contrive to cast them as that. There are plenty of examples in this thread, but to take a wide category, mystery novels almost never follow this structure. Just look at any of Agatha Christie's Poirot novels (some of the most read pieces of literature in history!) and see how badly they fit. And this is not some kind of new phenomenon. Even something like Dante's Divine Comedy doesn't fit this, or even the Iliad.
- teamonkey 4y agoThe Divine Comedy is an archetypal Hero's Journey. Dante literally (literarily?) crosses the threshold, meets a guide (Virgil), jouneys to the depths of hell, meets the goddess (Beatrice), all the while struggling with the sins he's committed and the events of his life; in the end finding resolve.
- tsimionescu 4y agoThe Divine Comedy begins with our hero in a place of great discomfort and fear. Then, he is taken on a journey where he is shown Hell, Purgatory, and at the end Heaven. Along the way, he only observes these places and is moved by them, but he never has to struggle or adapt, he only learns and understands. He pays no price for the journey, and in the end he sees God, is marveled by the beauty, and that's it - so no return. One could argue that the first-person style narrative implies a return to the world of the audience; on the other hand, since it is the metaphorical journey of a swimmer's soul to God, there is really no form of return. So, out of the original Hero's Journey model, this only matches the call to adventure, the threshold, and perhaps the challenges and the transformation. Looking at Campbell's precise steps there is even less match with all his original steps.
- jonathanstrange 4y agoHere are some of my favorite movies: The Graduate, Taxi Driver, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Badlands, Mars Attacks, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Most of them don't really satisfy this formula, except for trivial points like the protagonists wants something and the protagonist has changed or if you're deliberately trying to fit them by being extremely vague. The reason is that there are many different types of stories and these can have very different internal structure. For example, Space Opera in science fiction is often just a fight of good vs. evil set at many different interesting locations. Of course, some protagonist should develop, hence change, and it's good to have some kind of unexpected plot twist, but these are trivialities.
- svnt 4y agoThe trivial points as you’ve called them are not really trivial, but they could be considered cliche, or if you like, ubiquitous, which is Harmon’s entire point.
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- jonathanstrange 4y agoWhy teach something cliché and ubiquitous as a general storytelling advice? I've written 10+ novels and am relatively certain that none of them would be better if I had based them on this "story circle" (Harmon's rendition of "hero's journey").
- citizenkeen 4y agoSounds like you don't need a website with a 101 label, then.
- jonathanstrange 4y agoFair enough. I just don't think it's good advice.
- kleiba 4y agoFor those complaining that this structure doesn't fit their favorite stories - of course not all story types can fit into this one (or any one) scheme. The one presented is a trope sometimes called "The Hero's Journey", and while not all stories fall into that category, a lot of them follow the basic tenet outlined in the article. Also, the term "101" should make it obvious that this it not meant to serve as an all encompassing compendium. It's an introductory piece that outlines a basic structure, to get started thinking about commonalities in story telling. It's also nothing new. If you scroll down to the comments, you'll find a mention of the book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell which is a go-to treaty on the subject - and it's from 1949! (I personally find it a bit of a slow read, but it does cover an impressive amount of classic narratives.)
- tsimionescu 4y agoThe problem is that the author is claiming (at least in the next parts of this series) that essentially any story follows this formula - from scripts to books to anecdotes we tell each other to our more vivid dreams. Of course, that is completely wrong, and while the hero's journey is indeed a very basic and common story structure, it is most certainly not universal (unless you stretch it beyond all reasonableness).
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- Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago> unless you stretch it beyond all reasonableness). Im gonna give you a spoiler, he does. Dan Harmon's sotry circle is how he wrote most of the episodes of Community and Rick and Morty, and tbh he uses it to great effect even when he tells anecdotes and stories (he famously played a DnD campaign where he would meta roleplay to add necessary steps to the circle to make the stories more compelling even if they were not the best strategy at the moment). Due to his adherance to his own method, he sees it everywhere, to the point where most of us would be squinting to see what he even means. Its just a framework and he really likes it. Essentially the same as a dude who really likes one programming language and uses it out of place, in a terribly complicated place because he just really likes it.
- npteljes 4y agoThe author seems to avoid to call it what is it: The Hero's Journey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey "Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do." This reasoning doesn't follow, it's just a hollow appeal to nature. If people would work so well out of the box, they would not need parenting, and 10-20 years of that even.
- mistercow 4y ago> The author seems to avoid to call it what is it: The Hero's Journey, Dan Harmon has talked extensively about his story circles concept, and they’re explicitly a refinement of the Hero’s Journey.
- npteljes 4y agoI see, thanks! I wasn't aware that all this is a part of a larger something, Dan's name didn't ring a bell either. But of course, seeing how accomplished he' is in the industry, it makes sense that he knows about the Hero's Journey much better than a random drive-by commenter, such as myself, knows.
- the_gipsy 4y agoIf you want to distill all stories, ever, to its atoms, you need only one bit: rise and fall. Of course a single bit (usually) makes a boring story, so combine at least two: rise & fall, or fall & rise. Now these are still pretty basic, it's best to take three, or four if you're daunting. You can make more, but at some point the reader will take a step and view a sequence of rises and falls as a single rise or fall. Go ahead and try to apply this (admittedly a bit absurdist) scheme to any story known to mankind, ever.
- camoufleur 4y agoMore or less the theory behind Finnegans Wake
- rspoerri 4y agoThere is tons of fascinating things on storytelling. One page i like to browse is tvtropes. It's collecting aspects of stories and categorizes them. For example unobtanium: ""Unobtainium is engineering jargon for, "a material that would be perfect for our purposes, if we could get it, which we can't." "" https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unobtainium https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unobtainium Or the story types, where there are 3, 6, 7, 36 depending on how you categorize them. Reading about them and seeing how they are used in all our Media is fascinating. https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/37-possible-stories.html https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/37-possible-stories.html
- dsign 4y agoTo any budding writers out there: please don't. I can't read any more hero stories, I've developed allergies. And, let's go a little deeper into them: a) They assume that there exists an area of comfort for characters, and the story will empower the reader to see it right at the beginning, so the story is asking the reader to make a judgement with incomplete data. (Do you like when your product manager asks you to estimate how long X will take?) b) They "addict" the reader to this structure, which means writers who want to write other types of stories will be out of luck when it comes to their story being liked. Which takes me to c) They shoe-horn the writer into writing a specific type of story. What if the writer is more interested in exploring a notion or a concept, but they don't want to do it through the exposition of the inner world/private life of a character? (like, should we understand US politics by following Donald Trump through his private life with camera, microphones and telepatic devices?)
- Turing_Machine 4y ago> I can't read any more hero stories, I've developed allergies. Given that the oldest stories we have are hero stories (e.g., Gilgamesh) and that the most successful stories of modern times are also hero stories (e.g., MCU), as well as pretty much every bit of fiction that has withstood the test of time in between, I would not expect that many share your opinion.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoActually, the stories that are by far the most successful in modern day, romance stories, don't follow this structure at all. Romance has its own fairly strict story structure and expected beats, to the point where the industry has its own jargon (HEA, aka the happily ever after, describes a common-enough ending structure such that some folks interpret as a lack of it being a disqualification for considering the story a romance story!) Also, the many of the oldest stories we have also don't follow this structure. Consider traditional Australian Aboriginal storytelling, ancient Mayan storytelling, or even specific story structures in reference to current events: German storytelling had an entire genre that focused on postwar economic hardship and didn't at all follow hero stories. Thrillers rarely follow this structure, nor does horror.
- qeoricvhasf 4y agoMike Hill made a great video about this topic, using "Terminator 2" as an example, as well as a few other excellent videos about storytelling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWeJ22mIlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWeJ22mIlE
- splatzone 4y agoIf you enjoy this, I highly recommend the podcast Craig Mazin (writer of Chernobyl and The Last of Us) made about structuring movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY
- simonw 4y agoA great piece of advice I got for public speaking is that you can structure a talk around the hero's journey... but you aren't the hero. You are the Yoda-like advisor character who's helping guide the hero (your audience) along the path, from their current default state to a new, improved mental model of the world at the end. Nancy Duarte's book Resonate covers this idea in detail.
- aeonque 4y agoExcellent reminder. Thank you. Commonly ignored critical insight: Storytelling is for the HUMANS who hear the story, because our lives are in the format of heroes journeys. It matters not if most or some movies/stories follow it, because if the story doesn’t follow it - it’s not remembered by HUMANS. Because, you guessed it…our lives are in the format of a monomyth. Joseph Campbell was an anthropologist. Not a script writer. Christopher Vogler was a script writer for Disney. They both understood that stories were just a vehicle for lessons. And if the structure wasn’t followed then the lesson wouldn’t be received, let alone passed down from generation to generation. The super super basic shit is 3 steps: 1. Normal world- suspect something is wrong 2. Supernatural world- seek the thing that makes it right 3. Return- bring it back to share That format fits not only every story ever told, but more importantly - it’s the dna of your life experience. And if you disagree, then ask yourself: am I refusing the call to adventure or a stage in the journey in my life? Give it a shot. It’ll change your life. Side note: by “lesson” I mean the fundamental building blocks of your worldview. Lookup Weltanschauung.
- maroonblazer 4y agoThis maps nicely to some advice I read somewhere recently about how to increase your value at work. "Be curious. Ask questions. Try stuff. Tell your story."
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- kibwen 4y ago> They both understood that stories were just a vehicle for lessons. I agree, but it's much too bold to suggest that the hero's journey fits every story ever told. It's entirely possible to demonstrate a lesson without having a journey at all. You don't need a protagonist to end up in a better place, and you don't even need the protagonist to experience any growth; sometimes the cruel indifference of fate is the lesson, and sometimes a character's lack of growth demonstrates by way of example the importance of growth.
- crdrost 4y ago
- securingsincity 4y agoThe extreme version of this structure is Save The Cat[1] where each of the beats should happen on this page number of your script. Like others have mentioned these are largely based on the Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. [1] https://savethecat.com/products/books/save-the-cat-the-last-book-on-screenwriting-youll-ever-need https://savethecat.com/products/books/save-the-cat-the-last-...
- skottk 4y agoSave the Cat specifies page numbers because scripts are formatted to one page/minute of screen time, and movies have ideal lengths. If you can't turn to the exact center page and find the climax, the script is either formatted wrong (wasting your time) or written wrong (wasting your money). Overall, when someone says _my favorite movie X_ doesn't fit this pattern or _legendary novel_ Y doesn't do this at all -- well, sometimes they might be right about that, but many, many non-linear movies and books still hit the beats Save the Cat describes.
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- masukomi 4y agobecause no-one appears to have said it explicitly yes, this is the "Hero's Journey" but MORE IMPORTANTLY this is just one of MANY story structures. It's just the one that Western European & American (continent not country) authors seem to prefer. I know it's not the default in East Asia (see Kishōtenketsu). I assume it's not the default in many other places. And if we set aside the major default ones there are still many other structures to choose from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu
- antirez 4y agoIt's more in the ancient European culture (Greek and Roman classic structure) and in the American culture, but in Europe the best cinema of '60s and later considered this a cliche and hardly followed such structure. For instance in many great movies of French or Italian directors things start normal and monotonically get worse.
- mcnrny 4y agoThere are as many types of narrative structures as there are cultures in the world. I return to this blog post often when thinking about different ways to tell stories: https://www.kimyoonmiauthor.com/post/641948278831874048/worldwide-story-structures https://www.kimyoonmiauthor.com/post/641948278831874048/worl...
- maxutility 4y agoCraig Mazin, the screenwriter of HBO's Chernobyl and the Last of Us series, once gave an awesome 45 minute lecture on his ScriptNotes podcast titled “How to write a movie,” in which he walks through how he thinks of storytelling and story structure. If you have any interest in storytelling or screenwriting, it’s a fabulous listen. (You could argue that anything that smacks of formulaic storytelling should be avoided at all costs, but I think it’s still critically important to understand the basic tenets of strong storytelling structure. And as someone who enjoys both of Craig's HBO series, I would say he’s proven he knows how to tell a good story.) Here’s a YouTube link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY&feature=shares https://youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY&feature=shares You can also find it by searching for episode 403 of scriptnotes in whatever podcast app you use.
- russdill 4y agoI got to watch him talk at the LA festival of books along with Adam Higginbotham just before the series came out. Will definitely be digging into the podcast.
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoThanks for this. > You could argue that anything that smacks of formulaic storytelling should be avoided at all costs One could effectively argue all good story telling is formulaic. There are certain aspects of a story that have to be in place otherwise it's just words being spewed.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoI disagree with calling it formulaic. Formulaic is when the exact trajectory or beats is wholly predictable to the point where personal investment or intrigue isn't possible. I would instead describe structure as the act of launching an arrow, and giving the reader a promise that the arrow has a target to strike.
- klodolph 4y ago> You could argue that anything that smacks of formulaic storytelling should be avoided at all costs… People say the same thing about music theory. It gets tiring.
- tagami 4y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots
- goto11 4y agoDan Harmon is a great storyteller, but this system, and indeed all these "universal story structure" systems all either: 1) Are so generic they doesn't say anything useful (like a horoscope which fit everybody). 2) Only matches some select stories. A good litmus test is if the system is compatible with Shakespeare's Hamlet. Given how populuar and well-regarded the play have been for centuries, we can safely say it is the system rather than the play which is at fault if the play does not fit the system. We immediately notice that Hamlet does not "Then return to their familiar situation", since he dies (along with most other characters). Also it is not really clear he have changed. Indeed, the genre of tragedy does not match the requirement to have the protagonist safely home in the end, so Romeo and Juliet is also out. These are not obscure examples, these are the most famous and well-regarded plays in the English language. TV-shows like Rick and Morty does tend to have the characters safely home in the end, so they can start in the "zone of comfort" in the next episode. On the other hand the characters rarely change. Even if they learn some lessons, they have usually forgotten them by start of the next episode. So I'm unsure if the system even matches Harmons own writing.
- woolion 4y agoTV shows are addressed in a later part of the series, for exactly the reason you give. It seems to give a good starting point for a bildungsroman/shonen manga/... (depending on the medium) type of story. The guide does seem unaware other type of stories exist.