Understanding Dan Harmon’s Story Structure With HarmonQuest
Following article contains spoilers for HarmonQuest.
Everyone is a storyteller but a good storyteller like Dan Harmon know how to compel his audience with quirky stories; He believes, apart from following your instincts to write a great story one must understand the structure of hero’s journey.
HarmonQuest, unlike other television series is an animation/live action comedic journey of Dan Harmon and his friends where they participate in a role-playing game.The show has RPG and animation plus its Dan Harmon’s show who is also the writer of our very favourite ‘Rick & Morty’, and ‘The Communist’. Just like in Dungeons and Dragons(DND), Spencer Crittenden is ‘The Game Master’ and he tells the story and explains the plots to the role-players and makes all the decisions on how the game proceeds. And the characters then tell the game master what they want to do. As fun as it sounds, the show wouldn’t have excelled if animation was not done right as all the heavy lifting of the show is been done by the animation. And trust me, its animation is a treat.
There are three heroes in this quest. And each characters has distinctive traits. Harmon’s Fondue Zoobag is a half-orc ranger who is a coward, Erin Mcgathy’s Beor O’Shift is half-elf fierce barbarian warrior who has “no diplomacy” and Jeff B. Davis’s Boneweevil is goblin rogue and is opposite of what fondue is.
Even though it’s an RPG, a lot of thought has been deliberately put in to the character building which does justice with the story as their traits are gradually changing and upgrading with the quest. Also the relationship between the characters holds importance and calls for attention as it plays a key ingredient to make the story more compelling for the audience. According to Dan Harmon, the key to make audience glued to the series is using ‘self-pity’ as a tool and design the character such that the viewer can map themselves in to the characters.
If looked closely with applying the Harmon’s story structure circle to HarmonQuest, you’ll find that each episode follows this structure independently, and same goes for one complete season. As the show is still in production, so we can’t map the whole quest yet.
Harmon calls this circle as embryo. Inspired by Joseph Campbell’s monomyth “The Hero With Thousand Faces”, Dan Harmon simplified the structure of hero’s journey. He divides the circle into quadrants and divide the quadrants further. He then numbers it from 1 to 8. Each number represents the phase of the hero’s story(or any story).
This may sound difficult to relate to every story but almost all compelling successful stories follow this structure. The best and easiest way to understand this structure is HarmonQuest itself. As a beginner I started mapping this structure on HarmonQuest and I began to get this simple yet difficult to understand structure. Dan Harmon has explained his structure in a detailed blog which you can read here.
Story Structure of Season 1
- A character is in a zone of comfort (You)
-Fondue and boneweevil are in Earthscar village, living their normal lives. The rune-stone is protecting the seal of the portal to the demon realm.
2. But they want something(Need)
-Beor rushes in town, asking for protection from the chasers. Rune-stone is stolen by Vortheo. There rises the need to protect other two rune-stones. Need to protect the world from unleashing the great Manticore.
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation(Go)
-Heroes move out of their way to try to protect the remaining rune-stones. They start their quest.
4. Adapt to it(Search)
-They start searching for other rune-stones. Fail to do so. Lose all the rune-stones.
5. Get what they wanted(Find)
-To find the rune-stones they reach the secret hideout of Vortheo. There, they find the rune-stones is being used to unleash the Manticore in some ritual. They try to stop the ritual.
6. Pay a heavy price for it(Take)
-They fight with Vortheo but he kills himself by offering himself to the ritual. The ritual is completed. Heroes find the rune-stones and seize them. But Manticore is unleashed out in to the world.
7.Then return to their familiar situation(Return)
-With the help of rune-stones, Heroes open the portal to Earthscar village. They return to their own village. Fight with Manticore and seal it. But Boneweevil also gets sealed away in to the demon realm.
8. Having changed(Change)
-World is saved. Fondue becomes braver than before and Boer is getting a grip on the ‘diplomacy’ thing. They miss boneweevil. The friendship of heroes gets stronger.
Structure of season2
This season can be divided into two plots. First plot can be the journey to the demon realm to save Boneweevil. And the second plot can be from coming to real world to defeating Celty.
Both the plots fits easily into this structure without much brainwork. So go on, try to map this structure on every episode of HarmonQuest to master it.
Let’s Quest!
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