How it works

Screenwriting teacher John Truby laid out this model in The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (2007). His starting point is the hero’s flaw and the moral need it creates, with act breaks pushed to the background. Seven key steps form the core, and the full method expands them to twenty-two. An opponent who attacks that need sets the rest in motion.

Weakness and Need (0–10%) shows a flaw that is hurting the hero and the need to overcome it. Desire (10–20%) supplies a specific goal, and the Opponent (20–30%) wants the same thing while attacking the hero’s weakness. From 30% to 80% the Plan carries the hero’s strategy and the long fight once it meets the opponent. The Battle (80–90%) decides who wins the goal. Then comes Self-Revelation (90–96%), as the hero learns who they really are, and New Equilibrium (96–100%) settles desire and need at a higher or lower level. The book gives no percentages; these positions are estimates.

The seven steps mark no midpoint, and the Plan runs straight through the 50% line where most models turn. Its weight sits at the two ends, with character set up in the first 30% and the payoff packed into the last 20%. Because Self-Revelation follows the Battle, the climax of meaning trails the climax of action. Hauge also tracks inner change, pinned to fixed turning points, while Truby makes the flaw the engine and lets plot follow. Todorov’s last stage shares the name New Equilibrium, though his describes the world and Truby’s the hero.

A practical way in is to write the hero’s moral need in one sentence and then design the opponent as the person best placed to exploit it. Because the Plan covers half the story, mapping it as moves and counter-moves between hero and opponent keeps the long middle changing shape. When seven steps feel thin, the full twenty-two give the middle more to work with.