The Ultimate Storyteller/Illustrator's RING OF POWER
-
I'm obssessed not just with good stories, but with how the STRUCTURE of good stories works. Obsessed.
So obsessed that I took 5 of the most popular structures that people use for screenplays, novels, etc. and put then into one giant concentric ring that looks like the Eye of Sauron. Ergo, I call it THE RING OF POWER.
I discovered upon doing this that THEY ARE ALL THE SAME THING, just with slightly different focuses and levels of detail. This works for long stories as well as 7-page comics (I won two short comic contests using this method). Did I mention that I did this purely for my own amusement? I'm. That. Obsessed.
Structuring your story on this pretty much guarantees the structure of your story will flow, your characters will do interesting things, and the story will have a graceful rise and fall of action that leaves readers feeling satisfied. And that's before you even illustrate the thing.
Behold.
If you are writing, this obviously comes in handy, but it might also come in handy for illustrators who want to know what parts of a story to illustrate and include in a portfolio. Any of these major plot points makes for a great spot to put an illustration because they are the emotional pivot points of a story, and emotions are what we artists do real good, even if our grammar is bad.
Someone asked a question about writing in another thread and I figured why not share this monster of a thing I made in its own thread in case someone else finds it handy. Have fun
-
@StudioHannah this is wonderful!
-
@StudioHannah This is great! thanks for sharing
-
This is awesome, thanks for sharing it!
-
What am I even looking at??
-
@Mimi-Simon The product of my insanity hahahahahaHAHA
In case you were looking for an actual explanation:
So if you start at the top of the ring and go clockwise, there are 5 different "loops" representing 5 different people's explanations of how the "hero's journey" story structure works. They all turn out lining up wonderfully, showing how this style of storytelling is kind of like.. magic? Timeless? Nearly universal?
There are different styles of stories, but if you're writing a typical one it'll hold specific components. The character will experience an inciting incident that will force them out of their usual lives. Their adventure will have a rise and then a fall of action. There will be a dark night of the soul. Etc.
It's more of a visual for people (me) who have studied these structures, but it's also not a bad jumping off point for someone to go "so what IS Blake Snyder's Save the Cat structure?" and look it up from there. The references are in verrryyy small text so I am sorry about that, but they're all listed in that little paragraph at the bottom for further research.
