A Talent Agency in LA

Will A New Story Paradigm Soon Rule A New Hollywood?

Aztec Sun God / Horace Silver

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John Fraim

Perhaps the main area of Story Grid that is different from most writing advice books today is that it is not written by some screenwriting guru or “how to” book author but rather a respected NYC book Editor. As author Shawn Coyne writes in the subtitle to Story Grid, “What Good Editors Know.” 

To me, what separates this book from others but is the repeating structure of the five-step sequence of (screen and literary) drama today. The modern paradigm of drama. Not that it will not change but it is the current scene focus in popular storytelling: 

1.The Inciting Incident 

2. Complication

3. Crisis 

4. Climax 

5. Resolution. 

This screenwriting system has gone under a lot of different names. Perhaps the first to give popular labels and divisions to film in Hollywood was Syd Fields and his 1979 book Screenplay and its division of Act I Set Up, Act II Confrontation and Act III Resolution. Within this 3-act structure others have placed their systems. 

However, many screenwriters have for more steps in stories today. There is the Save the Cat System. There is the USC Sequence method. In fact, perhaps the most famous book on the steps/journey of the hero through mythology is Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Spielberg was a great fan of the mythologist. Campbell describes 17 stages of the monomyth. Screenwriting guru Jon Truby who suggests 22 steps. 

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The repetition of the five sequences moves the story – to me – moves towards a repeated theme, squeezing the 5-step pattern usually spread over 3 acts, now repeated in each of the three acts. Told in a little different way, as the Hero/Heroine moves through the story and learns or doesn’t learn or doesn’t want to learn.

Again, the one major area Story Grid leaves for the magic of change rather than repletion is the key change in Internal and External changed of the Protagonist. This much be the true key to change. Story Grid allows the author to choose whereas most screenwriting books (and leading screenplays) provide a roadmap to the screenwriter. The specific steps related to the genre. Story Grid allows more choice to the writer. 

The examples in The Story Grid (https://storygrid.com) are far more detailed than I suspected. Especially the detailed diagram of the great film Silence of the Lambs. The analysis goes on for 30 pages or so and is one of the most detailed analyses I’ve ever seen. I’m sure there is much to it and I admit, I need to read over this analysis.

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I’d like to see something using Story Grid outlines for me on a page or so. Something like Syd Field might have coached screen writers in the late 70s. Now, though, like all modern products, the Story Grid brand, it’s been important for the brand to expand into sub-categories and books. As it is for all “brands.” It’s the same way with the Story Grid brand. 

Certainly, a growing brand, with many books and various courses. I will say that the site of Story Grid is probably a suggestion of a very strange structure replacing some of old screenwriting gurus and the scripts. 

It is one thing about the natural evolution of products or things in culture into finer and finer, smaller and smaller, more niche brands, more specific genres “expected” by the current, media savvy consumers.  As we age, there are more and more things in our culture. A fact in our late stage of capitalism, even when the Chinese container ships are sent back. 

Genres or story types, like everything else, tends to get smaller and smaller and more niche related. In effect, the stories we tell each other (and ourselves) tend to get smaller and smaller. While news on the outside, over the past five years, seems to exist into some type of strange memory experiment after the covid years.

To assume that the five-step sequence is still common to all drama is perhaps something than needs to be re-examined. In this time of AI and news that seems to come faster than ever before.

I wonder how the leading story paradigm of the time develops. It is not always the same. The three-act structure was not around at the time of Shakespeare and its five-act structure.

dividing the narrative parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. 

It seems time for a new arrangement of the dramatic paradigm it seems to me. It’s a question that no one ever seems to ask. Do we need a whole new way of telling stories today? A new sequence of steps? A new approach in the era of AI?

Story Grid might be this product. Or, on the way to this product. Hard to see which one right now. 

Story advice is a product of its culture. Hard to recommend Story Grid other to say its got my curiosity. Story advice I’ve heard yet haven’t heard before. How set are we to the current dominating paradigm in drama? The three acts? The five-step sequence? 

Who is it that gets through and attempts a new paradigm for writers? Different from the old structure in common all over Hollywood. Is this being proposed here? After outlining it all, the Story Grid system is still intriguing to me and so different from all the other screenwriting books I’ve written about. 

We are in need of a new story paradigm. A new way of telling our modern stories. The old ones no longer work. All that seems happening in storytelling is that it gets smaller and smaller as genres become more defined and audiences more “expectant” of a certain niche in entertainment.

I’m cynical about storytelling methods. I’ve seen so many of them come and go.

Still learning about the Story Grid system. 

Where will our new story sructure form come from?

No, not just another genre off the genre tree, but rather a whole new way of structuring stories.

Yeah, I know the content and ideas and characters of movies suck today.

But what about the structure of drama? That paradigm that no one has touched for all these years?

Maybe structure has a lot to do with a lot with what movies suck today?

Syd! Where or you when I need you!

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John is the author of Battle of Symbols and Spirit Catcher. He has written many articles and essays and wrote a regular column for Script Magazine for screenwriters. He is author of Hollywood Safari: A Dangerous Trip Through Modern Storytelling Theory. Soon to be published. He is founder of Midnight Oil Studios at https://midnightoilstudios.org.