Story Grid
Principles
- Stories are made up of distinct parts, or units.
- Stories are about change.
- The change that happens in stories concerns Universal Human Values, the things that most people would say are necessary to survive and thrive in the world—or alternatively, the things that keep us from surviving and thriving.
- Each unit of story has a Story Event, a one-sentence distillation of what’s happening and what value is changing.
- Within each story unit we find a pattern of change we call the Five Commandments of Storytelling.
The Five Commandments of Storytelling
- The Inciting Incident, which kicks off the action;
- The Turning Point Complication, which turns the Universal Human Value at stake in the scene;
- The Crisis, which is a big question or dilemma for one of the characters;
- The Climax, which is the decision and action a character takes in response to the Crisis
- The Resolution, which is theoutcome of the action that happens in the Climax
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