The Dan Harmon Story Circle is an eight-step screenwriting structure that adapts Joseph Campbell's hero's journey into a practical tool for crafting compelling narratives.
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Storytelling & Screenwriting Terms Starting With D
The storytelling & screenwriting terms that begin with D, in alphabetical order.
1–15 of 15 entries
Definitions of Storytelling & Screenwriting Terms Starting With D
Open any entry for the full definition, where the term comes from and the films that show it best.
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The Dark Night of the Soul is the emotional beat where the protagonist internally processes their utter defeat before finding the strength to continue.
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The denouement is the final part of a film that ties up loose ends and depicts the characters' new normal after the conflict is resolved.
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Dialectical montage is Sergei Eisenstein's theory that new ideas are created in the mind of the viewer through the forceful collision of two conflicting shots.
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Spoken interaction between characters drives plot, reveals psychology, and shapes pacing.
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The fictional world in which a film’s narrative and characters exist
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In narrative theory, mimesis is the direct showing of an action, while diegesis is the telling of a story by a narrator, a fundamental distinction between two modes of storytelling.
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Disability-in-film tests are evaluative frameworks used to assess the quality, authenticity, and agency of disability representation in cinematic narratives.
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A documentary film is a non-fiction motion picture that presents factual information about real events, people, or phenomena.
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A nonfiction series that explores real‑world topics across multiple episodes.
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A doppelgänger in storytelling is a look-alike or double of a living person, often representing a hidden or opposite aspect of their personality.
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A narrative genre focusing on realistic character development and emotional themes.
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The dramatic question is the central question that the audience subconsciously asks and that the narrative is structured to answer, typically resolving in the climax.
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A film sequence depicting a character’s dream or subconscious in surreal, symbolic imagery.
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The DuVernay Test is a critical framework for analyzing racial representation in film, assessing whether characters of color have fully realized lives independent of the white characters.
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