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”. 

Continue reading “The Nonfiction Story Circle” →