How to use structure to wreak havoc 🎉🖊️

A simple formula to unleash your writing demon 👹

I will not pretend that I’ve read Madame Bovary, but here is a great quote by Flaubert: 

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work”.

Best example? Rick & Morty. 

If you haven’t watched Rick & Morty. No worries, I got you. 

Here is a summary of one of the show’s greatest hits: Pickle Rick

1. Rick, a genius scientist. 

2. To avoid a family therapy session, he transforms himself into a pickle. 

3. But being a pickle with no limbs, he accidentally falls into the sewers.

4. To survive, Rick adapts by constructing an exoskeleton from cockroach and rat parts. 

5. He’s achieved his goal of escaping therapy.

6. But battling through a violent gauntlet of rats, sewer critters, and a secret agency. 

7. Leaving a trail of death and destruction. Rick returns home and turns himself back to human.

8. Rick reluctantly attends therapy, at least willing to listen.

The creator -Dan Harmon- uses the “Harmon Circle” to structure every episode. 

1. You

2. Need

3. Go

4. Search

5. Find

6. Take

7. Return

8. Change

This absurd premise - a scientist-turned-pickle action-packed journey - thrives within the Circle's constraints.

Structures are liberating, structures are life.

Now, off to my 7:20 coffee

See you tomorrow!🫶

Matias

If you want to become a better short-form storyteller using AI, sign up for my free newsletter at www.atomicstories.net ✏️❤️⚡️