Dan Harmon's story circle: the eight steps, with an example

The story circle is an eight-step story structure created by writer and producer Dan Harmon: a character in a comfort zone wants something, enters an unfamiliar situation, adapts to it, gets what they wanted, pays a heavy price for it, returns to the familiar and comes back changed. It is a compact version of the hero's journey designed to work at any length, from a single scene to a season of television.

Harmon developed it as a way to break stories quickly in a writers' room. Because it is drawn as a circle rather than a line, it puts the emphasis on return: the character ends where they started, but different. That makes it especially useful for episodic television, where the world has to be roughly back in place for next week.

The eight steps of the story circle

It is usually drawn as a clock face with eight short prompts around it, starting at the top and moving clockwise. Here are the steps in our own words, with what each one does.

1. You — a character in a zone of comfort. Establish who they are and the ordinary world they live in.
2. Need — they want something. A desire or a lack disturbs the comfort.
3. Go — they enter an unfamiliar situation: a new place, job, relationship or problem.
4. Search — they adapt to it. They learn the rules, gather allies, meet resistance, try and fail.
5. Find — they get what they wanted. This is the bottom of the circle, often a victory at the midpoint.
6. Take — they pay a heavy price for it. Getting the thing costs more than they expected.
7. Return — they go back to their familiar situation, literally or emotionally.
8. Change — they have changed. The character is different, and so is the way they see their ordinary world.

How the circle works: halves and crossings

It works by sending a character down into the unknown and back up again. A horizontal line splits the circle in two: the top half is the familiar world and the bottom half is the unfamiliar one. The character crosses down at step 3 and back up at step 7; everything below the line is the adventure, everything above it is home.

Step 5 sits at the very bottom, directly opposite step 1 — the farthest the character gets from who they were. Steps across the circle from each other also pair up: the need at step 2 is answered by the price at step 6, and the comfort of step 1 is reflected in the change of step 8. Reading the pairs side by side is a quick way to check whether an ending answers its beginning.

Story circle vs the hero's journey

Harmon's version is a simplified hero's journey. Joseph Campbell's monomyth describes a mythic adventure in seventeen stages, and Christopher Vogler's twelve-stage version brought it to screenwriters; Harmon compressed the pattern into eight steps general enough for a sitcom subplot.

• Length: the hero's journey has twelve stages in Vogler's version and seventeen in Campbell's; the story circle has eight.
• Scale: the hero's journey suits epic adventures; the circle works as well for a five-minute B-story as for a feature.
• Emphasis: the circle stresses the price paid at step 6 and the return home, which keeps episodic stories grounded.

It also maps onto the three-act structure: steps 1 and 2 are act one, steps 3 to 6 are act two with step 5 near the midpoint, and steps 7 and 8 are act three.

Using it for TV episodes

In a TV episode, each storyline can run its own small circle, with the A-story, B-story and C-story turning at roughly the same moments. A half-hour comedy might give each step two or three minutes of screen time; an hour-long drama might give each act one or two steps.

1. Break each storyline separately. Write eight one-line steps for the A-story, then eight for the B-story.
2. Align the crossings. Put step 3 of each story near the first act break and step 7 near the last.
3. Find the thematic link. The B-story's price at step 6 often comments on the A-story's need at step 2.
4. Reset — mostly. Step 8 returns the world close enough to normal for next week, while a small change carries forward.

Across a season, a larger circle often spans all the episodes, with each episode a smaller circle inside it. For writing the first episode of a series, see how to write a TV pilot.

Story circle example

Here is an original A-story for a half-hour comedy episode, broken on the story circle.

1. You: BEN, a fastidious school librarian, runs the quietest library in the district and is proud of it.
2. Need: the library will lose its funding unless visitor numbers double by the end of the month.
3. Go: Ben agrees to host the school's after-hours gaming club in the reading room.
4. Search: he tries to impose silence on twenty teenagers, fails and grudgingly learns the games so he can set rules they will follow.
5. Find: the club is a hit, and visitor numbers pass the target with a week to spare.
6. Take: the reading room is wrecked, and his one regular — an elderly man who reads the newspaper there every morning — stops coming.
7. Return: Ben shuts the club down and gets his quiet back, but the room feels empty.
8. Change: he reopens the club on one condition: once a week the teenagers hold a quiet hour with the elderly regular, who turns out to be a former chess champion.

The price at step 6 is what makes the episode more than a gag: Ben gets his numbers and nearly loses the thing he valued. The ending answers both the need and the loss. In script form, the midpoint "find" can be a single image:

INT. SCHOOL LIBRARY - EVENING

Twenty TEENAGERS shout over a tournament bracket. BEN (40s) stands on a chair, ringing a hand bell.

BEN
This is a library. We use our library voices.

TEEN
This is my library voice.

Ben looks at the visitor counter on the door: 212. He lowers the bell.

Common mistakes

• Skipping the price. Without step 6 the story is a wish come true, and the change at step 8 feels unearned.
• A vague need. "Wants to be happy" cannot drive steps 3 to 5; "needs twenty more visitors a day" can.
• Treating it as a formula. The circle is a diagnostic tool — use it to find a missing step, not to force every story into the same shape. Compare it with other models in our story structure guide.

Write it in Scenaloom

Scenaloom does not have a story circle template. Its beats board starts from a three-act structure, a fifteen-beat sheet or a hero's journey, and you can add the eight story-circle beats by hand on the beats board instead. For a series, each episode has its own outline, so every episode can carry its own circle. See outline and beats or start a project.