One character. One want. Eight beats. Dan Harmon's circle is the simplest map of how a story works — and it fits any story, at any scale. This workshop shows you how to use it, with worked examples from a real script.
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Dan Harmon developed the Story Circle as a simplified version of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. Eight steps. One person. One thing they want. What they have to go through to get it. What it costs. How they come back different.
The key insight is that the circle works at any scale. It describes an epic. It also describes a Tuesday. The want doesn't have to be grand. The journey doesn't have to be dangerous. The structure is the same regardless.
The circle belongs to one character at a time. Not the plot. Not the world. One person, one want, one journey. Everything else — every other character, every scene, every obstacle — exists in relation to that one circle. If you don't know whose circle you're on, you don't have a story yet. You have a setting.
This workshop uses And You Will Forget My Name — a 1930s comic script about a chaotic anarchist woman named Miss Nameless, a reluctant detective named Mx. Logic Laine, and two star-crossed lovers trying to get married while everyone around them is terrible — as the worked example. Every beat below has multiple characters from that script to show how the same beat reads differently depending on whose circle you're tracing.
Work through all eight beats. Read the examples. Fill in the boxes for your own character. At the end, generate your circle.
Miss Nameless
Mx. Logic Laine
Roniette
Yulio
The Boss
The Mayor
Click any character tab under each beat to read their example
01
COMFORT
Harmon: "A character is in a zone of comfort or familiarity"
The thinking principle
Before anything happens, establish where your character lives — not physically, but emotionally. What is their normal? What system are they operating in, and why does it feel safe? What do they assume to be true about the world?
This beat is easy to skip. Don't skip it. If you don't establish the before, the change at the end has no weight. The circle only works as a measure of transformation if we know where the character started.
Comfort doesn't mean pleasant. It means known. A character who lives in chaos is comfortable in chaos — it's their chaos, ordered in their own head. A character who works alone is comfortable alone.
Ask: what does my character assume to be true, right now, before this story begins?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
She lives in motion. She has a system — she knows who needs protecting, who needs confronting, and what needs to be blown up. The world is full of Friar Lawrences who botch things through incompetence and cowardice, and she is the corrective force. Her comfort is being the one who acts when no one else will, and acting loudly. She is not comfortable being still. She is not comfortable being helped.
She works alone. She calls her mother. She solves cases methodically, quietly, professionally. The world makes sense when you look at it closely enough. She has never had a partner and never wanted one. She is good at what she does and does it better without interference. Her comfort: control over the process, no variables she didn't introduce.
She knows her father runs a construction company. That is the story she has been given and accepted. She loves Yulio and wants to marry him. She believes that if she waits long enough, does things properly, the world will eventually let her have what she wants. Her comfort: patience and belief that the adults around her are fundamentally reasonable.
His father is the mayor. The mayor tells the truth — he has to, it's his job. He loves Roniette and believes their families' opposition was the main obstacle, and that obstacle has been removed. He is standing at a wedding venue. Everything should be fine.
He has built the city. His construction company has its fingers in everything, and that is how it should be. The arrangement with the mayor is stable. He has people for problems that arise. His comfort: problems can be made to go away.
He has a deal that will free the city from mob money. He has been careful and political. His son's wedding is complicated but containable. He has managed this city for years and he will manage this too.
↪ Your character
Who are they? What is their normal world? What do they assume to be true?
02
DESIRE
Harmon: "They desire something"
The thinking principle
Something stirs. The character wants something — and the key word is specific. Not "love" or "freedom." Something concrete. Something you could hold in your hand or describe in one sentence. The more specific the want, the stronger the engine.
No desire, no story — just a character in a setting. The want doesn't have to be noble. It just has to be real to the character in this moment.
There is often a gap between the surface desire and the deep desire. The surface want is what they say out loud. The deep want is what the story is actually about. The gap between them is where your most interesting material lives.
Ask: what does my character want right now, in terms they could actually articulate?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
She wants these two specific kids not to become Romeo and Juliet. She has studied the play, identified the responsible party (Friar Lawrence, obviously), and her desire is to prevent a repeat. She also, beneath that, wants a partner — someone who corrects her and is correct right back. She doesn't know she wants the second thing yet. She would deny it if you asked.
She wants to solve the case of the missing officiant, get paid her usual fee, and be home for dinner by eight. She also, beneath that, wants someone to make her laugh. She will not examine that want.
She wants to marry Yulio, leave this city, and have a life that belongs to her. The deep desire is the last part. She is starting to suspect the surface and deep desire are the same thing.
He wants to marry Roniette today. He has been patient. He is standing in a wedding venue. He wants this to happen and then he wants everyone to leave him alone. Deep desire: to not be his father's son more than he has to be.
He wants the scandal to disappear. His enforcer shot someone connected to a national company with federal ties. He wants this to go away quietly. He would also want his daughter to be happy — but he has filed that under problems to solve later.
He wants the Eminent Domain deal to go through cleanly and his involvement to stay buried. The wedding is now a complication — too many people in one place, a detective asking questions. He wants to scatter the witnesses. Deep desire: to be a good mayor. He has stopped knowing what that means.
↪ Your character
What do they want — specifically? One sentence if possible. What's beneath that?
03
UNFAMILIAR SITUATION
Harmon: "They enter an unfamiliar situation"
The thinking principle
To get what they want, the character steps into territory where their usual tools don't automatically work. This doesn't have to be a new physical place. The unfamiliarity is about what they can't control the way they usually do.
The threshold moment. What makes the new situation specifically unfamiliar for this character? A careful person steps into chaos. A controlling person steps into something they can't control. The unfamiliarity should feel inevitable given who this person is.
Ask: where does my character have to go to pursue this want, and what makes that territory uncomfortable for them specifically?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
She has to work alongside someone who keeps correcting her. Laine says "it's officiant, not fishy ant" and "we are NOT partners" — and Nameless finds herself doing something she never does: wanting the correction. The unfamiliar situation is not the wedding venue. It's the detective.
She is working with a variable she cannot account for. Every detective process has an input and a predicted output. Nameless is an input with no predictable output. She appears in telephone wires. She splits into two. She is already married to Laine by the time Laine realizes it's happening. The unfamiliar situation is someone she cannot outthink.
She has to confront what her father actually is. Her comfort was built on not looking. The unfamiliar situation is one where not-knowing is no longer available. She doesn't get to marry Yulio and also keep the comfortable fiction about where the money came from.
He has to face that his father lied to him. Yulio believes institutions are honest — the mayor tells the truth, it's his job. The unfamiliar situation is finding out the two men he trusted most have been running the city on a handshake between corruption and ambition.
He is in a room full of people who cannot be bought off with his usual tools. His daughter is angry. A detective is asking questions in public. A chaotic woman appears to be everywhere at once. His methods require a stable situation. This situation is not stable.
↪ Your character
Where do they have to go? What makes it specifically uncomfortable for them?
Beats 1–3 are setup. They establish the before state. The circle's bottom half — adapt, get it, pay the price — is where most of your scenes will live. Everything from Beat 4 is the character in motion.
04
ADAPT
Harmon: "They adapt to that situation"
The thinking principle
The character tries to navigate the unfamiliar situation using the methods available to them — their personality, their intelligence, their particular flavor of avoidance or aggression or humor. This is the longest beat. It's where your character is most active, most themselves, and most tested.
Adaptation doesn't mean success. It means trying. The character brings their specific self to the unfamiliar situation, and we watch what happens. The adaptation should feel inevitable given who this person is. If you could swap in a different character and get the same adaptation, it's not specific enough.
Ask: how does this specific character try to handle the unfamiliar situation? What does that reveal about them?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
She adapts to having a partner by pretending she isn't doing that. She follows Laine, feeds her information, physically attaches herself at various points, recruits a preacher, calls Laine's mother, organizes the entire resolution — and does all of it while claiming they are not partners and this is just coincidence. She adapts by making herself indispensable without ever asking to be.
She adapts by trying to contain the variable. She keeps saying "we are not partners." She keeps walking away. She keeps trying to reintroduce order. The more she tries to work around Nameless, the more useful Nameless is. Eventually she gives up and just uses her — "drop the guns or I'll let her have five minutes with you." The adaptation is surrender dressed as strategy.
She adapts by getting angry. Not at Yulio. At her father. At the situation. She slaps the Boss. She calls him out. She demands answers. The patience that was her comfort snaps and she becomes someone who acts rather than waits. Her adaptation is the thing her comfort zone was suppressing.
He adapts by focusing on what he can still control: marrying Roniette. He doesn't try to fix his father. He doesn't try to expose anything. He keeps coming back to the simple fact of what he came here for. His adaptation is a deliberate narrowing: this one thing, just this one thing.
He adapts by escalating. He tries to shut down the investigation, call off the wedding, use the police, use the mob. None of it works because none of his tools were designed for Miss Nameless. She cannot be intimidated. She doesn't have a reputation to protect. He runs out of moves.
↪ Your character
How do they try to handle the unfamiliar situation? What method do they use, and why is it specifically theirs?
05
GET WHAT THEY WANTED
Harmon: "They get that which they wanted"
The thinking principle
At the bottom of the circle, the quest is resolved. The character gets the thing they were after — or a version of it — or it becomes clear that they won't. The "want" and "need" diverge most visibly here. This is the pivot point.
The word "get" is loose. Sometimes they get exactly what they wanted. Sometimes it's wrong or distorted. Sometimes they fail, and the failure is the point. What matters: the original desire has been answered, one way or another. Now the story is about what that costs.
Ask: does my character get what they wanted? What does getting it (or not) actually look like?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
Roniette and Yulio get married. Mission accomplished. She also gets something she didn't know she was after: Logic Laine, and a partner who corrects her and means it. She gets both things. The second one she has to notice. She notices.
She solves the case. She exposes the Mayor and the Boss. She gets paid. She is also accidentally married to Miss Nameless. This is not what she came here for. It is, structurally, exactly what she needed. She is not ready to look at this directly yet.
She and Yulio get married — quietly, in a kitchen, witnessed by a chicken and a dog. It is nothing like the wedding they planned. It is entirely what she wanted. A life that belongs to her.
He marries Roniette. With rings held by a chicken and a dog. It's perfect. He didn't need it to be the big ceremony. He needed it to be real.
He does not get what he wanted. The scandal is out. His daughter knows who he is. He is about to lose her. Getting what he thought he wanted — suppressing the deal, cancelling the wedding — reveals that what he actually wanted was the opposite.
He does not get what he wanted. The deal is exposed. His son watched him get caught lying. He has to decide, right now, whether his son matters more than the deal.
↪ Your character
Does your character get what they wanted? In what form? Is it what they thought it would be?
Beat 5 is the hinge. Everything before it is the character going out. Everything after is the character coming back. The story does not end when they get the thing.
06
PAY A HEAVY PRICE
Harmon: "They pay a heavy price for it"
The thinking principle
Getting the thing — or not getting it — costs something. The price doesn't have to be tragic. It can be comic, small, embarrassing, irreversible. But something has changed that can't be unchanged. This is what makes the story fair: you pay for what you do.
The price is what distinguishes a story from a sequence of events. Events happen. Stories happen and they cost something. Sometimes the price is actually what the character needed — the loss turns out to be the gain — but it still has to feel like a real cost in the moment.
Ask: what did it cost? What is different now that can't be put back?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
She is no longer untethered. She has allowed herself to be known. She has a marriage certificate (forged, but real), a partner who corrects her, a person she can't just walk away from. The cost is not a small one — and she chose it, even if she's still pretending she didn't.
She is married. She solved the case. She is also driving to Vegas with Miss Nameless buying dental dams. She is never going to have a quiet case again. The cost is exactly the thing she said she wanted — solitude and control — and she is just starting to suspect she's okay with that.
She knows who her father is now. She can't unknow it. She has her marriage and her freedom, and she is driving away from a father whose world is coming apart. "Not our problem, baby." It costs her the comfortable version of her family. The price is knowing.
His daughter is leaving. His deal is exposed. He is about to watch his child drive away from everything he built and never look back — unless he does something he has never done in his professional life: asks instead of tells.
His son is leaving. The deal is gone. He has to decide whether his political identity is worth more than his child. He slapped his son earlier in this same story. He has to live with that too.
↪ Your character
What did it cost? What is different now that can't be undone?
07
RETURN
Harmon: "They return to their familiar situation"
The thinking principle
The character comes back — not necessarily to the same physical place, but back to the world they came from, carrying what they found. The familiar world is now going to look different because of what happened.
The return is often the quietest beat. The noise is over. The character is back in their world, bringing something — knowledge, loss, a changed perspective. If Beat 1 established a worldview, Beat 7 is where we see how much of it survived.
Ask: what does the return look like? What do they bring back?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
She gets in the car. She is in motion — her comfort zone. But she is in the car with someone. She is moving the way she always has, but the destination now has another person's name on it. She is in her familiar state and it is not the same.
She is driving. She is in control — she is the one driving. She has solved the case and is bringing someone with her. The stop for supplies is a decision. She is going somewhere on purpose that is not home for dinner by eight. That is the whole return.
She is in a car, married, leaving. Her father ran after her and apologized. She said "not our problem, baby." She means it and also doesn't mean it — the apology was real and she knows it. She brings back a father who remembered why he makes decisions. That's something.
He is standing outside the Gordian Knot, waving after a car. He just said "I love you" to his daughter and meant it more than anything he has said in years. His familiar world — the deals, the arrangements — is still there waiting for him. He is waving at a car.
He is standing next to the Boss, his enemy, shaking hands. Not in a deal — in a "we'll figure something out." His son waved back. He is in the rubble of his plan, standing next to the man he was trying to edge out. "They'll kill each other as soon as we leave." "Not our problem, baby."
↪ Your character
What does the return look like? What do they bring back with them?
08
CHANGED
Harmon: "They have changed as a result of the journey"
The thinking principle
The character has changed. Not necessarily by much. But something specific is different — one observable moment that would have gone differently at Beat 1. Show it. Don't announce it.
Big dramatic transformations are usually less convincing than small specific ones. A character who never asked for help asking once. A character who always worked alone going somewhere with someone. The change doesn't need narration. It needs a moment.
Ask: what is one small, specific, observable thing that is different about my character at the end?
↪ Script examples
Click each character to expand
She is in a car going somewhere with someone. She has always been in motion — but always alone. She says "not an annulment? Don't you have to... you know... to get a divorce" and she blushes. She has never blushed before in the whole script. That is the change. One blush.
"Vegas. To get a divorce." Then: "Dental dam." She bought supplies. She called it supplies. She made a specific, deliberate decision that is not about the case and not about calling her mother. She is going somewhere on purpose that is not home for dinner by eight. That is the whole change.
She let her father apologize. She didn't forgive him, not yet. But she heard it. "You have a funny way of showing it, both of you." She heard it and kept driving. That is not the patient girl who believed adults would sort it out. That is someone who sorted it out herself.
He ran after the car and said "I love you." He did not manage the situation. He did not send someone. He ran. He said it out loud. He will probably be terrible again. But he ran.
He is shaking hands with the Boss — not in a deal, but in a "so are we" when their children said they were happy. Two men who ran the city as competition, standing next to each other waving at a car. That is new.
↪ Your character
One small, specific, observable thing that is different at the end. Show it, don't explain it.
Your Story Circle
Pull it all together
Fill in your eight beats above, then generate your circle to see it whole. If any beats are missing, the summary will show you where the gaps are — almost always Beats 5 and 8.
ONE-LINE STORY
Does this feel like a real story? If yes — you have a circle. If not — check beats 5 and 8. That is almost always where it goes missing.