How to Create Story Charts

Before reading this, it may be useful to check out the simple Overview of Story Charts.

What's the story basically about?

So you want to figure out why a movie really connects with you. Let's begin.

First let's see if we can figure out what the story seems to be basically about. The name of the movie often gives it away:

• Finding Nemo: Might have something to do with, em, finding Nemo.
• Saving Private Ryan: Seems like someone wants to save this Private Ryan.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: no clue for this one.

Once we figure out what the story seems to be basically about, let's think about how the story ends:

• Finding Nemo: Does Nemo get found? Yes he does.
• Saving Private Ryan: Does Private Ryan get saved? Yes he does.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Let's say this is a love story (the DVD cover has a guy and a girl on it), let's say they find love.

Now we can represent this basic story with a line.

• Finding Nemo: Nemo is lost, then found:


• Saving Private Ryan: Private Ryan is at the war front, then saved:


• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: the couple find love:

What's the Big Idea?

That was the easy part.

Now let's see if we can figure out what the story's Big Idea is. Experts call this the Controlling Idea. We can call it the point of the story. To find it, let's see what else happens in the movie. It helps to focus on the obstacles our heroes go through to reach the happy ending.

• Finding Nemo: Nemo's dad finds Nemo by learning to trust others.
• Saving Private Ryan: Our heroes save Private Ryan, but they all die in the process.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The couple find love with each other twice but only get to keep it when the guy completely accepts the girl for who she is.

Let's draw this something else that happens the same way:

• Finding Nemo: Nemo's dad learns to trust others:


• Saving Private Ryan: the search party die in the process of saving Ryan:


• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: the couple find love when the guy completely accepts the girl for who she is:

If we take a look at what we have drawn above, we can see that something else had to change aside from the main story in order for the main story to come out the way it did. This change gives us enough to take a guess at the point of the story:

• Finding Nemo: Parents needs to trust their children to avoid losing them.
• Saving Private Ryan: Some causes are worth dying for.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Love can only be when we completely accept someone for who they are.

The Details

Of course, there are many details we have ignored so far. Each Plot goes through many ups and downs before the eventual ending. For example, here is the full Story Chart of the movie Casablanca:

All these details fully complete a story that is about:

True love leads to living responsibly

And you can see that by looking at the three Plots simply:

In trying to figure out a story, it will help to remember that Plots can be made of anything that Changes, and things that change in stories generally fall into three categories:

• External Quest: for example the quest to find Nemo.
• Internal Change: for example Rick in Casablanca becoming a patriot.
• Relationship Change: for example the couple in Eternal Sunshine falling in and out of love.

Of course, movies are personal and subjective experiences. One person's connection with a movie might be very different than someone else's. Story Charts hope to help anyone create their own interpretation of a story and share it with the world.

Story Problems

Story Charts can sometimes help explain why we get bored at certain points in a movie:

Lack of Obstacles

The heroes go from win to win to win without real obstacles. We know life is not like that.

Non-Sequitor Huh?

We just got used to rooting for one story and the movie starts spending all the time on a different story. One way to tell this happened is to see if the things that mattered at the end of the movie mattered at the beginning.

Confusion

Sometimes there are so many stories going on, it's hard to figure out which one is the main one. It's hard to figure out what the point of the story is (the Central Idea). Then all we can do is enjoy the eye-candy or maybe see what time it is or maybe go get some popcorn.

Check out the simple Overview of Story Charts or get more in depth with some Story Theory.