The Nonfiction Story Circle

What can nonfiction writers learn from writers of fiction? In my view, the answer is how to quickly and efficiently write something using structure.

Dan Harmon’s “story circle” is a popular framework for structuring fiction writing, from short stories to screenplays. It is a simplification of the better known Hero’s Journey, and Harmon has famously used this framework to aid his writing process for Community and Rick & Morty. 

In Harmon’s view, all stories are “circular” in that they are about starting from somewhere familiar, going somewhere unfamiliar, and then returning with some lessons learned. This can be broken down to 8 simple words: You, Need, Go, Search, Find, Return, Changed. This framework is very popular, and has been applied to analyze many other works of fiction (see, for example, here and here).

However, this original framework lacks natural transitions between each stage. This makes it easy for This is where Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s idea of connecting story beats with either a “but” or a “therefore” is really powerful. (The opposite of but/therefore is “and then”—which indicates a list of chores, not anything logical or structured.) 

In a previous post, I combined these ideas in what I called the “But-Fore Story Circle”. 

This simple yet logical approach makes the writing process efficient. More importantly, it ensures that the story is easily understood by the audience. 

While nearly all discussions of the story circle (and similar frameworks) have focused on their applicability to fictional storytelling, the idea can be applied to nonfiction writing as well. 

In this post, I’ll share three variations of structuring nonfiction writing, all of which are fundamentally based on the story circle. I’ll also provide examples of each. 

Since you are trying to communicate specific points in support of a larger narrative in nonfiction writing, I also have a section on effectively presenting and defending individual points. In the final section, I’ll address the issues of how to gain and keep a reader’s interest. 

1. The Nonfiction But-Fore Story Circle

While the story circle was created to help with writing fiction, it is also a great outline for writing non-fiction. Simply changing the words makes its application clearer: 

1. Situation (“You”) – describe the current context: who, what, where, when, why, how. Include current ideas/beliefs. 
2. Complication (“Need”) – What is missing in the current context: contradictions, unmet desires, upcoming challenges.  
3. Motivation/Inspiration (“Go”) –  Introduce some urgency to the situation and complication. Why does the problem need to be solved now; what’s at stake if it isn’t. 
4. Exploration (“Look”) – explore potential solutions to the complication. What other people have done, potential frameworks, and why they all fail. 
5. Revelation (“Find”) – discover the solution. Has to look like a logical connection from the previous section in order to be believable, otherwise it will come across as random and weak.
6. Evaluation (“Take”) – go through the costs of implementing the solution you found in the Revelation/discovery. Consider why others did not find or use the solution before. There must be a real sacrifice or tradeoff for it to be meaningful. 
7. Application (“Return”) – Apply the solution to the original problem in full. Go through all the benefits of the solution. 
8. Implication (“Changed”) – This is the conclusion of the piece. This is not a mere summary of what you did before! Look at the logical implications of implementing your solution. What will change? What will stay the same? What does this reveal about other facts that must also be true? Framing the implication in a positive, optimistic light is more compelling to most people than being negative and pessimistic. 

The key to the above is that each stage must transition to the next with either a “but” or a “therefore”. It looks like this: 

1. Situation, but/therefore… 
2. Complication, but/therefore…
3. Inspiration, but/therefore…
4. Exploration, but/therefore…
5. Revelation, but/therefore…
6. Evaluation, but/therefore…
7. Application, but/therefore…
8. Implications 

It is important to note that equal time does not have to be give to each of these sections. Most academic articles roughly give 10% to the first 3 stages, 85% to stages 4 through 7, and only 5% to the implication section. In a typical “Introduction-Literature Review-Methods-Results-Conclusion” paper, stages 1-4 line up with the Intro and Literature Review; stage 5 aligns with Methods; stages 6 and 7 align with Results; and stage 8 is the Conclusion. 

The implications section does not need to end with a “but/therefore” transition, because the whole purpose of the section is to explore any remaining “buts” and “therefores” that apply when solving the original problem. Note that this is different from a typical “Conclusion” of an article, which often is merely a “summary”—simply restating everything you have written before. Instead, you are exploring the logical implications of the ideas you presented here.

Order, Chaos, Stasis, and Change 

In the story circle diagram above, you’ll notice that the circle is broken up in half both vertically and horizontally. The vertical division splits the circle into left and right: the right side (stages 1-4) is labeled “Stasis”, while the left side is (stages 5-8) is labeled “Change”. The circle is also split into an “Order” half (stages 1, 2, 7, and 8) and a “Chaos” half (the middle 4 stages). 

These divisions represent the internal and external “story arcs”. The stasis/change arcs are the internal arcs: how the protagonist is dealing with the world. The order/chaos halves represent the external arcs: how the world responds to the protagonist. These apply equally to the Nonfiction Story Circle as well. (Confusingly, in the original graphic, I labelled the Order/Chaos arcs inside the circle, and the stasis/change arcs outside the circle. Below I correct this for the nonfiction story circle.)

The “internal” halves of Stasis and Change relate to consistency. Stasis half focuses on internal consistency: setting up your assumptions and empirical facts you want to explain, and revealing the logical implications thereof. The Change half deals with the ramifications of new information: be it a fact that was overlooked earlier, or a new kind of method for examining established facts, or whatever.  

The “external” halves of Order and Chaos refer to your audience’s expectations. The Order half appeals directly to the audience’s expectations of how the world is supposed to work. This is where you demonstrate your expertise of the subject matter, your audience, and the logic and empirical facts of your field. 

The Chaos half deals with ideas that will be unexpected for the reader. What they used to know is wrong, and their view of the world (and how they will interact with it!) is about to change. This is typically the most confusing part of a report: the details on your model, your experiment, setbacks, proofs, counterexamples, and more. 

In the Order and Stasis quadrant, you are consistent with your internal logic and the external expectations. This is the world as it is: you should be describing the world in such a way that your readers immediately recognize it and agree with you.

In the Chaos and Stasis quadrant, you remain internally consistent but in directions that are unexpected by your audience. This is where you reveal cracks in the facade of the old way of thinking. It ends with you revealing your method for solving these problems.  

The Revelation will necessitate a break from your original consistency. Hence, Chaos and Change. This is where the solutions to the previous problems are uncovered and evaluated using the insight that was Revealed in the previous section. Since you are breaking both internal and external expectations, this is where you will find the most resistance. You should anticipate any objections and answer them in the text.

Finally, there is the Order and Change quadrant. The best solution is then applied to solving the problem in a step-by-step manner. The first steps go through the exact methods for applying the solution. Then the logical implications are drawn out: did this solve all of the problems identified earlier? Are any new problems revealed? 

(The keen reader may have noticed that the process through the external arc is like a three-part cylce: order-chaos-order. Here are some other cycles that are triune: Life-Death-Rebirth, Past-Present-Future, Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, Id-Ego-Superego, Earth-Hell-Heaven, Body-Mind-Spirit, and General-Specific-Abstract. Dan Harmon called these “rhythms.” Larry McEnerny shows how Lincoln used a variety of these themes in his Gettysburg Address.)

2. Example

Here is a quick example the nonfiction story circle in action:

1. Situation: Most writers struggle with developing an overarching narrative, whether when writing fiction or nonfiction. But…
2. Complication: While many tools and frameworks exist for fiction writers, very few are designer for nonfiction writers in mind. But…
3. Inspiration: The but-fore story circle is a very useful tool for fictional stories, and can be modified to be framed for nonfiction writing too. Therefore…
4. Exploration: In order to transform the story circle from fiction to nonfiction, the differences in needs of fiction and nonfiction writers must be understood. Therefore…
5. Revelation: The difference between writing fiction and nonfiction is that nonfiction has more of a focus on problem-solving language, so the nonfiction story circle should reflect that. Therefore….
6. Evaluation: By replacing “You, Need, Go, Look, Find, Return, Changed” with “Situation, Complication, Motivation, Exploration, Evaluation, Application, Implication”, we preserve the core structure of fictional story circle, while modifying it with vocabulary that a nonfiction author would more easily relate to. The “but/therefore” connecting each section of the circle remains. But…
7. Application: Having a good structure is not the only requirement to good nonfiction writing. It must also be valuable to the reader. The story circle assumes you already have something valuable to say. Therefore…
8. Implication: While the nonfiction story circle is a great tool for ensuring your writing has a coherent structure, it takes more effort to understand whether your writing will be interesting and valuable to others. This takes a kind of entrepreneurship to figure out.

You can continue iterating on these steps until you get enough details that you can start really writing. 

3. Conclusion

The story circle method is an effective framework for quickly outlining both fiction and nonfictional narratives. Connecting each stage of the outline with either a “but” or a “therefore” creates tension while also building a logical sequence between them. This ensures that the ideas presented are cohesive, coherent, and create value.

Despite the similarities, there remain some differences between nonfictional and fictional storytelling within the framework of the story circle. For example, in fictional stories, the “You” phase may be intentionally vague in order to build intrigue. This is does not work with nonfiction writing: in order to gain the attention of the reader, the writer must demonstrate and communicate every relevant fact about the situation upfront. This is because, unlike readers of fiction, readers of nonfiction know something about the world which they are reading about, putting them in a position to question the expertise of the author.

In other words, nonfiction writers must work hard to craft an introduction that communicates their knowledge of the situation in a way that builds trust with the reader. Otherwise, readers will have skepticism and doubt regarding the value of the work —which ultimately means the work does not get read.

This doesn’t mean that there may be no surprises in nonfiction writing. Only that authors must be more careful in how they set them up.

There are, of course, many other differences between fiction and nonfiction writing. But they all fundamentally come down to managing reader expectations. And what readers of both fiction and nonfiction expect is that the writing will have some value to them. Knowing how to deliver value requires writers to understand what their readers know, don’t know, and—most importantly—want to know.

This means that writing is an entrepreneurial endeavour. While this may sound daunting, there are frameworks available (e.g., here and here) to help understand what readers find valuable. I will write about these in the future.