> It's not that the protagonist wants something, but something happens to them.
It usually is both. If the protagonist doesn’t want anything then they (and the story) feels directionless. If there is no bad thing happening to them then the audience is left wondering why the protagonist deciced to go on a crazy adventure now, instead of some other time.
Let me illustrate this with the start of Star Wars a New Hope.
Luke clearly wants to leave his podunk life and seek adventure. Also and independently of this the Empire swoops in and kills the people who has raised him.
If the bad thing doesn’t happen he would finish his chores and then pick up some power converters.
If he wouldn’t have the want of an adventure he would hand over the droids, and grieve his uncle and aunt. He also probably would go and pick up some power converters.
For the story to happen you needed both, the want and the bad thing. Otherwise the farmer boy would have remained a farmer boy.
> What are good examples of the story setup in the articles?
How about you pick a story and if we also know it we can try to see if the pattern fits? It really is kinda universal. Not saying that all stories will fit but it is harder to find exceptions than examples.
Yes, Star Wars seems to be a good fit. The first Harry Potter is also a good example of both "preconditions" being there.
Originally, when I was trying to think about stories, the following came to mind
- Revenge movies like John Wick (the first one), and video games like The Last of Us 2, where the protagonist originally just wants to go about his affairs, but bad things happen to them and they want revenge.
- "Catastrophe" movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator 2, where the protagonist needs to act to stay alive.
For revenge/catastrophe movies, the transition from 1 to 2 is changing what the character "wants". That original desire isn't the actual desire that drives the actions of the story. For example, John Wick wants to grieve the death of his wife, but a series of events changes his desire from grief to revenge. It's that want for revenge that the rest of the story relies upon. An argument can also be made that his desire to grieve in peace is still the ultimate desire, but he can't do so emotionally until he gets his revenge.
The circle described by Harmon are just the overarching story beats, but there's plenty liberty to be had when moving from one beat to the next. There's also liberty in whether steps overlap or are combined, such as where the desire is defined/reshaped at the same time that they enter an unfamiliar situation (e.g., desire changes to one of survival at the same time as a catastrophe beginning).
In other words, the points on the circle may still exist regardless of what happens between them or if they happen simultaneously. Even acknowledging the liberty to be had, there's always exceptions to this heuristic and not every story will follow this structure.
Wick has the call to adventure and the refusal, IIRC. In the encounter at the gas station the punks (who will go on to—this is surely not a spoiler at this point?—kill his dog, which is where they fuck up) are insulting Wick but, despite of course knowing he could take them apart in his sleep, he puts up with it. He's above that, and can't be goaded into breaking a promise to stay out of that life, by mere words. Their actions afterward are what rip him out of his life and drag him back into the game—violence finds him, not the other way around. But he does refuse that initial "call", and it's an important part of the story that he does.
(this is from memory, maybe that encounter goes differently than I recall)
It usually is both. If the protagonist doesn’t want anything then they (and the story) feels directionless. If there is no bad thing happening to them then the audience is left wondering why the protagonist deciced to go on a crazy adventure now, instead of some other time.
Let me illustrate this with the start of Star Wars a New Hope.
Luke clearly wants to leave his podunk life and seek adventure. Also and independently of this the Empire swoops in and kills the people who has raised him.
If the bad thing doesn’t happen he would finish his chores and then pick up some power converters.
If he wouldn’t have the want of an adventure he would hand over the droids, and grieve his uncle and aunt. He also probably would go and pick up some power converters.
For the story to happen you needed both, the want and the bad thing. Otherwise the farmer boy would have remained a farmer boy.
> What are good examples of the story setup in the articles?
How about you pick a story and if we also know it we can try to see if the pattern fits? It really is kinda universal. Not saying that all stories will fit but it is harder to find exceptions than examples.