STORY STRUCTURE COMPARISON
The chart below highlights popular story structures and provides an overview of their story beats. The story beats are aligned in the chart to show how the story beats from the different structures often roughly correspond to one another. But it is important to keep in mind that each story structure works independently from one another and for a given story, the mapping of story beats relative to another structure may differ from how they are portrayed in this chart.
Download a high resolution image of the Story Structure Comparison Chart.
References
Three Act Structure:
Hollywood Structure:
Save the Cat:
Five Act Structure:
Seven Point Structure:
DREAM:
Hero's Journey:
Heroine's Journey (Murdock):
Heroine's Journey (Carriger):
Dan Harmon's Story Circle:
Romantic Comedy:
Romancing the Beat:
SAMOSAS:
Kishōtenketsu:
Is there a story structure you would like to see added to the chart? Contact me and let me know.
Thank you to all of my writer friends from SiWC, WXR, and the Potted Plant for helping me compile and organize this work.