Gangster Story Beats

According to John Truby's The Anatomy of Genres, the Gangster genre is for stories about the corruption of society and individuals. It is for stories about people with highly compartmentalized moral compasses serving as the story's protagonists, antagonists, or both. This guide explains gangster story structure and how to use plot structure across genres to create a compelling crime narrative.

The life statement of a Gangster story is always something like:

"If you allow yourself to be consumed by money and power, you will pay the ultimate price."

Examples of stories that employ the Gangster genre's beats:

• The Stormlight Archive

• The Great Gatsby

• Star Wars Prequels

• Frostpunk

• Breaking Bad

• The Cruelty of Mercy

Spoiler warning for all of the above. Do not click the dropdowns for the later beats' examples if you wish to avoid spoilers.

Frostpunk concept art, by 11Bit Studios

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Gangster Story Recipe

Always read the ingredients before cooking any recipe. The best way to describe these ingredients is with its name, a brief description, and up to two examples. This section will show you how to build story plot and naturally integrate elements that work for gangsta rap beats or dark crime fiction vibes. (see examples by clicking the dropdown arrows).

To write a Gangster genre story, you will need:

Story World: The Corrupted City Over the course of the story, paint the corrupted world that threatens to corrupt your characters. As with every story, no matter how simple or grand, this is also the beat that deals with the people, land, and technology of your story world.

• Example 1: In The Phantom Menace, this beat is part of multiple scenes introducing the Galactic Senate, the Trade Federation, and Mos Espa (Anakin's home city on Tattooine). The Corrupted City is the Star Wars galactic politics of the Prequel Era, and those politics will be a driving factor for the corruption of main characters.

• Example 2: In The Stormlight Archive, the Alethi Military on the Shattered Plains is a Corrupted City where powerful men are enticed to pursue wealth and glory over actually winning the war they marched so far to wage, at the cost of everyone beneath them (and eventually themselves). This Corrupted City doesn't so much succeed in our protagonists as our villains, although every character feels it.

Weakness-Need: Contradictory Character Introduce a weakness or a need that creates a contradictory main character. Often this manifests as two competing needs. One, a need for material needs (like money), and the other, a need for some moral good (like protecting one's family). Trying to meet both creates a character with a compartmentalized moral code.

• Example 1: The Steward of New London has the need to lead a city full of radical factions to stability and prosperity in a frozen world. However, the Steward is willing to use violent and destructive methods to achieve that stability and peace. The weakness of relying on these methods combines with the need to achieve their opposite to create a contradictory character.

• Example 2: Heemlik needs to protect the people of his homeland, and to make his father proud, even though his father slaughters thousands of their people year after year. What happens when he refuses to choose one of these competing needs?

Inciting Event: Petty Crime Show the contradictory character's first small steps toward corruption, for example by forcing them to choose between their material and moral needs, or between a moral need and a baser emotional need (commonly anger).

• Example 1: One of Walter White's best examples of petty crime early on is assaulting a boy who is bullying Walter's son. This shows his moral need to protect his family, disguising a baser need to release his anger.

• Example 2: Anakin Skywalker, on the other hand, is far more abrupt in escalation, but since his ultimate fall means the subjugation of the galaxy, slaughtering a village in his anger functions as one of his "petty crime" beats.

Desire: Money and Empire This beat comprises the desire line, or the way in which the weakness-need will be met and all the steps leading up to it. It is one of if not the most central and important beat a Gangster genre story can have.

• Example 1: Walter White is a character with many iterations of this beat, so many that the transition from this beat to the later beats (such as Mass Murder) is hauntingly smooth. But where it is first firmly established is when he decides to sell meth in order to meet his weakness-need of protecting his family from medical debt (which is a guise for protecting his ego). This desire line will drive the entire story.

• Example 2: When Gatsby brags about not knowing most of the people at his parties, or wearing a new shirt every day, he shows one of his desire lines, the one that makes him into a gangster character. He has done and will continue to do whatever it takes to maintain this lifestyle. Daisy is the incarnation of this desire line; she represents this moneyed life.

Allies: Gang Members Create allies that will contrast or mirror the gangster's character traits and extend their power. These allies can be earned by the gangster (as in trusting outsiders), or forced upon the gangster (as in family). These allies can be good influences, bad influences, or both.

• Example 1: Heemlik earns Saangra and Jadpers as allies in his rebellion by sparing Jadpers' life even though she is a Prisnidine, which is a race of people he's supposed to capture and eliminate.

• Example 2: The Steward of New London must quickly earn allies among the communities and political factions of the city, by researching ideas and passing laws that align with a consistent vision.

Opponent: Gang Boss, Rival Gangs, and Cops Create enemies that will challenge the hero in a variety of ways. The Gangster genre's story world is corrupt, so these opponents are often also serving an evil faction, but their rank-and-file can be more moral people if you choose. Many times, an ally and an opponent can be the same character (more on that in future beats).

• Example 1: Hank Schrader, Tuco Salamanca, and Gus Fring all oppose Walter in very different ways. Hank is part of Walter's family as well as the police, Tuco is erratic and violent, and Gus is calculated and connected.

• Example 2: No matter what action the Steward takes, she will create an enemy who is the opposite of whoever supports her. If she supports the Overseers, she will anger the Bohemians, and if she supports the Technocrats, she will anger the Icebloods. Her enemy always contrasts her ally.

Plan: Deception and Violence Plan how the gangster character will get what they want, and execute it with lots of hiccups and improvisation on the character and allies' part. Make the specific actions escalate in moral cost to their perpetrators.

• Example 1: Heemlik's determination to straddle the line between protecting his father and destroying the system he embodies leads to him making more and more compromising decisions for his rebellion, until it stops being a rebellion and becomes complicit.

• Example 2: Anakin Skywalker gradually makes more and more excuses and exceptions for himself against the Jedi code, from marrying in secret to confiding with outside political actors against the council.

Fake Ally: Gang Members A fake ally is one or more of the characters established in the previous beat Allies: Gang Members. Like any gang, these characters want the same thing. This makes them allies, and later enemies, when what they want either changes or the protagonist becomes an obstacle to getting it. This eventual transition into an enemy is what makes them a fake ally.

• Example 1: From a story perspective, Obi-Wan and Palpatine are both fake allies to Anakin, because in reality, neither of them wants the same thing Anakin does (for Anakin to protect and be with his wife).

• Example 2: Every political faction in New London is a fake ally to the Steward. They pretend to want the same thing, but in reality, the Steward's primary motivation is staying in power, and the other factions' primary motivation is imposing their ideology on what's left of humanity.

Reveal: Betrayal The part you've just set up in the last two beats is revealed. The protagonist's plan of deception and violence combines with fake allies to create a huge shift in the status quo. Sometimes the protagonist comes out on top in this reveal, and other times they do not, but always the protagonist descends further toward the final beats.

• Example 1: Many stories highlight this beat with a shout of "we had a deal!"

• Example 2: Tuco Salamanca (a fake ally) kidnaps Walter and Jesse in a betrayal fueled by paranoia, which completely upends Walter and Jesse's plans of deception. Even after surviving the ordeal, they have to start over with their approach.

Drive: Accelerating Violence When the protagonist survives the betrayal beat, they are forced to either give up or change their tactics and resort to worse and worse means to get what they want. Think of this beat like the earlier "Plan: Deception and Violence" beat but more extreme.

• Example 1: "What's changed, Jesse?"

• Example 2: Once the betrayal beat of Frostpunk 2's Civil War has occurred, the Steward is faced with an onslaught of choices concerning not whether someone will live or not, but who will die.

Battle: Mass Murder/Mass Destruction The competing plots of all parties (including the protagonist's) are all cut short by whoever makes the first decisive move, often in the form of string of arranged accidents or outright murders that permanently removes competition and establishes firm supremacy of the winner.

• Example 1: Anakin's participation in Order 66 by massacring the Jedi Temple.

• Example 2: Almost every Frostpunk 2 game climaxes with a civil war, in which the Steward has a critical choice to make: which warring faction will be wiped out? The Steward can choose to reconcile the factions, but this is a subversion of this gangster story beat and usually comes only at a high cost, very careful execution, and fortunate circumstances.

Self-Revelation: None After the dust settles, the gangster either never learns a moral lesson, or they learn the wrong lesson, or they learn the right lesson too late. The contradictions of their weakness-need have destroyed everything, and they fully abandon their old weakness-need and moral code, often without admitting it.

• Example 1: Walter White says to his wife that by this point, he knows he didn't do all those terrible things for his family. "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive."

• Example 2: "Perhaps Abadir wasn’t solely fueled by hate. No, Heemlik knew there was love in there somewhere. He’d seen it when Abadir cared for a wounded soldier, or when he had taught Heemlik the tender lessons of childhood. When he held Heemlik’s cheek and gazed fondly down at his young son. There was love in the way Abadir approached the world. But with so much hatred mixed with it, did it even matter? Heemlik had always thought it did."

New Equilibrium: Death of the Soul The gangster either dies a violent and often pitiful death, or triumphs with their soul gone forever. This beat ends the story, and the main purpose is to give the reader a clear picture of what course the rest of this gangster's life (and the world around them) is going to follow from this point.

• Example 1: "Steward, you have set the city on a steady course. Progress, Equality, and Reason: these are the pillars of our society. Not everyone will like it, but they will get used to it in time. There is no turning back now."

• Example 2: Anakin Skywalker both dies a violent and pitiful death, and triumphs without his soul intact at the same time. After his defeat on Mustafar, Anakin is narratively killed, replaced by Darth Vader. He submits and becomes the Emperor's loyal and most feared enforcer. The empire he helped create reigns supreme.

Notes

Remember that most good stories are a mix of the beats from multiple genres. The beats of Gangster stories are frequently mixed with those of Crime and Science Fiction stories.

Gangster is called that because many of the stories that first popularized it were about gangsters. Gangster encapsulates all sorts of corrupted cities, from feudal kingdoms to dystopian Sci-Fi settings.