Story Charts

Story Chart of the film Schindler's List

Story Charts are visualizations of the structure of a story.

Story Charts are also a visual approach to screenwriting and story analysis.

Story Charts can help

• Gain insight into the emotional structure of the story
• Design the overall structure of a story to keep the big picture in mind

Story Charts are made up of

• 2-axis: time and progress
• Lines for each major sub-plot
• Progression of each major sub-plot towards success or failure
• Each sub-plot can represent internal change, relationship change or an external quest

Story Charts can be used to understand the story of movies, television, books, plays, anything with a story in it.

Story Charts have been used in the story development process to support numerous writing projects, including screenplays, scripts and books.

Story Charts at a Glance

Robert McKee has described CASABLANCA as the best screenplay ever written.

This is the Story Chart of the great script:

Story Chart of the film Casablanca

The Story Chart reveals the narrative structure of CASABLANCA at a glance. We can quickly observe these attributes about the script:

• It has 3 major plots: there are 3 lines.
• The same action often propels multiple plots forward: turning points on all 3 plotlines often line up on the same vertical line.The plots create obstacles for each other: their values often move in opposite directions.
• All 3 plotlines take us to increasingly powerful emotional values: the turning points are increasingly reaching higher and lower.
• The biggest emotional catharsis comes in Act 3: the Climaxes of all 3 plots reach their maximum heights and depths in Act 3.

We can also observe the core magic of the narrative structure of CASABLANCA. The main story of the film is the love story, yet we feel satisfied with an anti-climactic ending where the lovers are separated. Why? We can see on the Story Chart that even though the main plot plummets to an anti-climax, the two other plots finish with great positive climaxes: Ilsa and Victor escape the Germans and Rick has become a patriot. The film could have ended when Rick sends Ilsa and Victor off because this would have concluded the main love plot. But we have one more scene at the end in which Rick shoots the German officer. This scene is crucial because it ensures the safe departure of Ilsa and Victor (a positive climax for the escape plot) and seals Rick’s fate as a patriot (a positive climax for internal transformation plot). The story of the film is then about Rick giving up a chance at love for his patriotic responsibilities. The Controlling Idea is thus “true love leads to living responsibly”. The Story Chart helps us understand the Controlling Idea of CASABLANCA visually because we can see the interchange of the love and patriotic redemption plots at the Climax of the story.