Dan Harmon Story Circle

Embryo of a Story

Dan Harmon, the creator of acclaimed television series like Community and Rick and Morty, developed the Story Circle as a simplified, practical application of Joseph Campbell’s seminal work on the monomyth, or ‘The Hero’s Journey.’ Frustrated by the esoteric nature of Campbell’s 17-stage model, Harmon distilled it down to eight essential steps that focus on a protagonist’s journey of change. He often refers to it as the ‘story embryo’ because it contains the fundamental DNA of a satisfying narrative. The structure is cyclical, making it exceptionally well-suited for the repeatable format of episodic television, but its principles are universal and can be applied to feature films, novels, and even individual scenes.

The Eight Steps

The Story Circle maps a character’s journey out from and back to a place of comfort, but with a fundamental change having occurred. The steps are as follows:

1. You: A character is in their zone of comfort.
2. Need: They want something; a desire or problem arises.
3. Go: They cross a threshold and enter an unfamiliar situation.
4. Search: They must adapt to this new world, facing trials and tribulations.
5. Find: They find what they were looking for or achieve their goal.
6. Take: They pay a heavy price for it; this is the major turning point.
7. Return: They cross the threshold again, coming back to their familiar world.
8. Change: They are fundamentally changed by the experience, demonstrating their growth.

A Cyclical Journey

The genius of the structure is its circularity. The character at Step 8 becomes the ‘new’ character at Step 1 of the next story, now with a new, slightly evolved ‘zone of comfort.’ This allows for continuous character development over a series. Harmon has famously stated that this structure is hardwired into our brains as a natural way of processing information and making sense of the world. He applies this framework not only to the overarching plot of an episode but also to the character arcs within it and even to the structure of individual jokes. For example, in Rick and Morty, nearly every episodic adventure can be cleanly mapped onto these eight steps, providing a reliable narrative skeleton that frees up the writers to focus on inventive concepts and sharp comedic dialogue.