Outline a Novel with Dan Harmon's Story Circle

Plotting a story is hard. However, there are a number of storytelling principles and guidelines that attempt to tackle this problem. Dan Harmon took one of the most popular, Cambell’s Hero’s Journey, and simplified it into just eight steps. To learn more about how this works in practice, we broke down the film Shaun of the Dead to see how its script follows (or doesn’t follow) Harmon’s plotting format along the way.
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//VIDEO CREDITS//
Script and audio by Adam Bassett: / adamcbassett
Animation and illustration by Cole Field: / acolefield
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Check out Dan Harmon’s video on the story circle: • Dan Harmon's Story Cir...
Industrial Scripts’ interpretation of the story circle via films like Taken: industrialscripts.com/dan-har...
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[@AroundTheCampfire]

Thanks for watching! ❤ Leave a comment down below if you’ve tried Dan Harmon’s story circle! Or, swing back on through if this video’s inspired you to give it a shot. Tell us what you liked about it, or what you didn’t.

[@Avionne_Parris]

Thank you so much for this, Adam! Plot is my weakest area so I will definitely be rewatching this several times and taking notes. I love the simplicity of Dan Harmon's story circle. It makes plotting a bit more manageable and not as intimidating :-)

[@AroundTheCampfire]

Plot is probably one of the areas I'm not my best in either (I like worldbuilding in case that wasn't clear by now), so that kind of made it fun to do the research for this. I'm hoping to do some more of these plot breakdowns, but they tend to take more time to write and animate so while I know what the next one is I have absolutely no idea when it might be published haha.
Thanks for watching! I hope it helps. 🧡

[@GreenBlueWalkthrough]

Meanwhile I mostly write my novels comprise on connected short stories with the same cast with just step 1 and step 8 of this circle as I don't want my novels to be generic. Which I get it to work really really well as I frame it as you are looking into the lives of the character not watching a movie made to be a movie. I also use the FPS trop of a liner progression things keep getting better till they win... what makes itt interesting is how they did it, the jokes, the life like dialogue, twists and other good writing techhics. Which if you have a good concept but no plot being genic is normally good enough which that movie was a great example of that.

[@lenaeospeixinhos]

Hmm, gonna take that and compare it to my outline, see how much of it corresponds to the circle to see how much I have absorbed this structure just from reading books and watching films or shows that might have it

[@Zelein]

Great video, however - the early music was really distracting being so upbeat imo. I couldn't really hear your voice too well, and it made the video feel a little too speedy.

[@AroundTheCampfire]

I'll pass along the note, thanks for letting us know!

[@Godisgood137]

I see the work you put into this video it’s actually amazing brother keep it up ❤ RUclips should of blew this video up

[@catpollins]

amazing video, love your ideas with the art. inspiring

[@themagicalkat]

Thank you for the info! I also found the music distracting

[@hunterblainauthor]

Very well done

[@samuelgennara]

The original "Star Wars" follows the hero's journey exactly.

[@109thstar]

Tremendous video!

[@ernststravoblofeld]

All stories that work follow the story circle. And the Hero's Journey. And Save the Cat. And the three act structure... it's all the same thing.

[@shyrobot4643]

I'm sorry. I think the process as described is too narrow-minded and plodding. It is not universal enough to apply to most stories that aren't Shaun of the Dead.

[@AroundTheCampfire]

I get that, but aren't *all* plotting methods are a bit formulaic? They're best when to take one and adapt it to fit your story, as I mentioned at the end.
That's one of the reasons I chose Shaun of the Dead as the main example. It fits the Circle, but it doesn't fit perfectly. Harmon himself doesn't always follow it to the letter. His work would be more boring if it did. 🤷‍♂️

[@kiethveseyofficial]

Looks like somebody didn’t watch the whole video.

[@kiethveseyofficial]

I tried it on my comic script it works rather than writing in the dark. We don't want boring or flowery written stories.

[@nettietrees7238]

You’re kidding? This has been used to write Community and Rick and Morty! Lol. You can use it to see the plots of most of the great tv series/movies.