By Leon Conrad

We’ve been telling stories way before we started writing them down.

The structures they follow are embodied within us.

There’s much we can learn about story—and about ourselves—from analysing the patterns that stories follow.

But how?

Tracing the Path of Story

My approach is to trace the patterns that each character in a story follows. Characters experience events. The events are related and follow in chronological order. The events, when whittled down to their bare minimum, form sequences which are recognisable as story structures.

1. To analyse the story structure(s) in a given character’s story line, I mark the opening of their story line with a mark of recursion (r) and identify the character in their initial situation using Spencer-Brown’s mark of indication (m) drawn from his Laws of Form (1969).
2. I then reduce the events to a series of ‘bare bones’ events—the minimum number needed for the story to be meaningfully related and arrange them in chronological order.
3. Following that, I map the events qualitatively according to whether they either impel or delay the character in their attempt to reach their goal using a forward barb (⇀) or a backward barb (↽) respectively.
4. At the end of their story line, the mark of indication is again used to denote the character in their final situation (m) and the story’s close is symbolised using another mark of recursion (r).

Outline Example from Metamorphoses

Here’s the most compressed story structure I’ve found—which is also the most impressive. It’s the structure which the gods’ story lines typically follow in stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

At step 5, while Cornix undergoes a metamorphosis, Minerva remains unchanged.

The approach allows for almost indefinite expansion and contraction, following simple rules.

Common Sequences in Story

Sequences of different step types can expand and contract as follows:

Using Sequences to Produce a Transformational Twist in Story

Where an encounter between two characters involves (i) an active intention to dupe (ii) a comic outcome, or (iii) a surprising outcome (Huh?!), I use a double barb (⇌).

When one character intends to dupe another, they invariably have the tables turned on them—the dupe ends up tricking the trickster and the status quo is reset. When there’s a comic outcome, there’s often a transformational twist. And for every ‘Huh?!’ there’s usually a balancing ‘Ah!’

While double barbs tend to come in pairs, they only seem to expand and contract in a 1:3 or 3:1 proportion.

The Quest Structure

A common structure is the Quest structure, which the three little pigs follow in the well-known story. The version below was collected by Hamish Henderson from Bella Higgins who heard it from her mother.

The two story structures depicted above can be compared and analysed. In the table below, step 3 in the Transformation structure symbolises a problematic (negative) 'transgression against the natural order'. It expands, giving rise to the first (positive) meeting (step 5 in the Quest structure) which will be with a friend or helper. The seed of the positive is contained within the negative. You can follow the implications of the expansion of step 4 in the Transformation structure yourself.

Two Dynamic Story Structures

The two structures analysed above are linear structures. But how and why are the events in them linked? This is where I see dynamic structures coming in. Dynamic structures map the qualitative change in the relationship between knower and known in a character’s story line. They symbiotically underpin Linear story structures.

I’ve identified two dynamic story structures to date:

The Revelation Structure

The Revelation structure follows a ‘veni, vidi, vici’ pattern (I came, I saw, I conquered). It’s typically found in sequences which build suspense leading to a dénouement. Marie Louise von Franz sees this as a ‘1,2,3,Bang!’ sequence.

It’s mapped as follows:

The Chinese Circular Structure

The Chinese Circular Structure, as I call it, is based on the interplay between yin and yang energies through the yearly cycle and the five-element system visualised in the Wu Xing arrangement.

In Chapter 18 of Story and Structure, I describe how the Chinese Circular Structure can be seen underpinning every one of the linear story structures identified to date. The approaches are informed by close reading of early Chinese texts which clearly map to the structure.

Three Classifications of Story Structures

First event in the story line

The 18 structures I've identified to date (16 linear and 2 dynamic) can be classified in three ways relating to what happens at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a story structure. The nature of the first event in a character’s story line gives rise to the following classification:

Middle Events in the Story Line

The ‘middle’ classification is based on whether or not a character crosses a threshold between transcendent (metaphysical or supernatural) and immanent (physical) dimensions of being. The Creation Myth structure straddles both conditions:

Ending Events in the Story Line

And the ‘ending’ classification gives the following:

We can learn a lot by looking at story structures. We can’t avoid the metaphysical, the transcendent. Story gives rise to embodied story structures. Story has a sacred dimension (as language does—especially when used in sacred chant). It shows how these simple patterns tell a universal story: a quest to find balance and harmony individually and universally. It highlights the important of us finding balance and harmony in the larger cosmos of which we are a part. Isn’t this ultimately why we tell stories?

About Leon

Leon Conrad was born in London, UK, to a Polish father and Coptic Egyptian mother. He moved to Alexandria at age 6, and grew up in a multilingual environment there, among the souks and bazaars of Egypt. He is currently based out of London.

As a writer, Leon sees the written word as sound on the page. Why else do we call nouns and verbs 'parts of speech'? He has written plays, and have published articles, poetry, and books.

As an editor, he offers in-depth proofreading, editing and review of manuscripts, focusing on a work’s structure, the reader’s journey, the narrative presentation, the style of a work, the sound, rhythm, musicality and the flow of a piece of writing.

Find out about his various projects, awards, and services at his website: LeonConrad.com.

Want more information on his writing method? Download a free sample of his book below today.

Story and Structure: What’s in it for YOU?

• Be inspired
• Learn new things about story that we’ve not realised despite the fact that we’ve literally been telling stories for millennia
• Use what you learn to perform more effectively in your life and work
• Improve your writing, storytelling, communication

In Story and Structure, I’ve outlined a new approach to story structure analysis inspired by six simple symbols drawn from George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form (1969).

I was Spencer-Brown’s last student and he guided me through the work himself. This is the first time his work (which has been successfully applied in both mathematics, computing, and logic) has been comprehensively applied to the analysis of story structure.

Download a sample from leonconrad.com/writer 

Copyright © Leon Conrad, July 2023. All rights reserved.
Leon Conrad has asserted his moral rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.