Myth Story Beats
Updated: Apr 5
According to John Truby's The Anatomy of Genres, the myth story genre is for stories about gaining immortality in the form of leaving a lasting legacy. It is the home of characters who are beyond accepting death, like in Horror, and beyond merely fighting for survival, as in Action. These characters are now on a quest to create a life well lived, measured by the legend it leaves behind.
The life statement of a Myth story is always something like:
"Obtain immortality through a legendary quest of self-transformation."
Examples of stories that employ the Myth genre's beats:
Avatar: The Last Airbender
The Lord of the Rings
Star Wars: Original Trilogy
Wizard of Oz
Epic: The Musical
Iron Man
Horizon Zero Dawn
Spoiler warning for all of the above. Do not click the dropdowns for the later beats' examples if you wish to avoid spoilers.
Myth Story Recipe
Always read the ingredients before starting. The best way to describe these ingredients is with its name, a brief description, and examples. (see examples by clicking the dropdown arrows).
To write a Myth genre story, you will need:
Story World: Natural World and Two Cultures Establish the critical elements of the setting for a myth story: major cultures/societies (at least two), natural environment, technological level, and minor characters that illustrate everyday life. Make the major cultures opposite in a key way for strong conflict.
Example 1: In Avatar: the Last Airbender, there are four major cultures, one for each of the four elements (air, water, earth, and fire). These four cultures are all fundamentally different from the others. Fire values powerful emotions, while Earth values stability. This creates an excellent story world for the main character of this myth, Aang, to create immortality for himself by becoming the Avatar who can save the world. He can only accomplish this by becoming one with all four major cultures.
Example 2: The Lord of the Rings is full of excellent examples of using characters to illustrate their entire societies. The Elves are a nation of weary, suspicious, but ultimately caring protectors and nurturers, exemplified by Galadriel and Elrond. The Hobbits are an optimistic and humble people. They are more resistant to the lure of power than other races, exemplified by Samwise Gamgee.
Ghost: Difficult Birth and Losing the Father Create the hero of your story with a difficult birth. This can take the form of waking up after a long slumber, or being born in difficult circumstances, like the newborn heir fleeing a throne that is actively being usurped. The key thing is that the myth main character is introduced in the midst of a challenging life event that cuts them off from stability and forces them to start a journey of self-discovery.
Example 1: Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn is found outside the door of the All-Mother, a mountain and life goddess worshipped by the Nora who find Aloy. The mysterious and taboo circumstances of Aloy's birth mean she can only be raised by an outcast like Rost, setting her on a path apart from the Nora from the very beginning to find her own identity.
Example 2: Tony Stark from Iron Man is ambushed and captured using weapons he himself profited off of manufacturing and selling. This isolates him from the wealth and privilege that has insulated him for his entire life, and forces him to be reborn as a new man who is conscious of the effect his actions have on the world around him.
Character Web: The Great Chain of Being Myth worlds are shaped in large parts by the hierarchy all of their entities, from gods to minerals, exist within. You don't need to spell this out for your audience, but you need to spell it out for yourself so that as you write the story, the audience naturally picks up where these entities stand with one another in terms of power and importance.
Example 1: In the world of Avatar, the hierarchy goes something like this:
1. The Spirits of the Spirit World
2. Bending Animals (Sky bison, badger-moles)
3. Ancestors of the Avatar
4. The living Avatar
5. Leaders of Nations (Fire-lord, Earth King)
6. Benders
7. Non-benders
Example 2: Star Wars' hierarchy is shaped something like this:
1. The Force
2. Force-users
Jedi, at their peak, are always superior
Sith, at their peak, are always inferior
3. Everybody else
Character Web: Archetypes Now create characters to exist in the Great Chain of Being. Every character in a myth story is defined by at least one archetype. An archetype is a role in society. It comes with a strength, and its consequent weakness. The quality of your Myth characters depends on how interestingly you can write an archetype. Another great source of quality for a Myth character is hybridizing different archetypes in the same character.
Example 1: Tony Stark is primarily a trickster. The role of a trickster is to defeat more powerful enemies (such as the entrenched military industrial complex) using subversive methods and asymmetrical tactics. Tony's strength as a trickster comes from being a genius inventor who can build any tool he needs to solve a problem, as well as a charismatic politician who can embarrass any enemy and always come out looking like the good guy. His weakness is that his duplicity makes him difficult for other good people to trust.
Example 2: Aang is primarily a searcher. The role of a searcher is to go forth and find things of value, often solutions to problems. Aang's strength as a searcher comes from his ability to find superior answers where others resort to lesser means such as violence. His weakness is that when faced by immediate, overwhelming problems, his searching can make him dither and stall until it is too late.
Hero: The Searcher When creating the main character, remember that one of their archetypes must be the Searcher. Ultimately, they are searching for immortality of some variety. Often they know the location of what they want, and what they are searching for is a path to reach it.
Example 1: Odysseus is a trickster, but he is also a searcher. In his journey home to Ithica, he lies and deceives his way past far more powerful opponents, but he also constantly searches for solutions. To defeat his crew's hunger, he searches for food in various catastrophic places. To defeat Poseidon, he searches for and finds the wind bag, the prophet of the Underworld, and the Lair of Scylla. And in the end, the entire story is about Odysseus seeking a way home to his wife and son, through whom he will secure his immortality so he does not die far from home and forgotten.
Example 2: In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is a trickster who gets where he needs to be by escaping from danger over and over again. He is also a searcher, searching for a way to get to the Crack of Doom so he can destroy the One Ring. Often he loses his way there, either by losing his guides (such as Gandalf's death or the Breaking of the Fellowship), or by losing his will (such as being drained by the Ring).
Weakness-Need Give the main character a weakness-need. A weakness-need is a flaw the main character must overcome in order to achieve immortality. They are often not fully conscious or accepting of it until near the end of the story.
Example 1: Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz must learn that her family does care about her and that home is where she is safest.
Example 2: Avatar Aang must learn to be emotional like a firebender, flexible like a waterbender, and stable like an earthbender, without losing his original identity as a free and gentle airbender.
Inciting Event: Talisman Now you must kick off the story with an inciting incident, in which the protagonist acquires some important object that triggers the momentum of the story and drives conflict between them and the antagonist. Many myths feature multiple talisman-like incidents to move the story forward, but the ones toward the beginning are very important. The later ones are dealt with in the beat Drive: Symbolic Objects.
Example 1: Frodo acquires the One Ring from his uncle Bilbo Baggins, making him an enemy of Sauron and triggering the start of the journey to the Crack of Doom.
Example 2: Tony Stark builds and wears the first Iron Man suit to escape captivity. Throughout the rest of the story, he improves upon this first model to defeat his enemies from Obadiah Stane to Thanos.
Desire: Journey and Destiny As in every story, the protagonist's desire line forms the spine of events. What the protagonist wants changes over the course of the story, until eventually it becomes the same thing as their weakness-need, at which point they can finally succeed and acquire immortality.
Example 1: Luke Skywalker's desire line begins at wanting to escape the boring life of a moisture farmer on Tattooine. It then develops into a desire to save Princes Leia and defeat the Empire, which develops into a desire to destroy the Death Star, which forces him to realize and meet his weakness-need: he must trust the Force and his allies in order to succeed in the end.
Example 2: Prince Zuko's desire line begins at wanting to capture the Avatar to regain his honor. Then, when achieving this fails to fulfill his desire, Zuko's desire changes to protecting the world and those he loves from his father. His weakness-need, to restore his honor, is only fulfilled once he derives his self-esteem from within rather than from his abusive family members.
Allies To complete the journey for immortality, the protagonist needs allies to protect/acquire the talisman and overcome obstacles and enemies. Create allies with various archetypes that complement the hero.
Example 1: Han Solo, Obi-Wan, and Princess Leia complement Luke's warrior and searcher archetypes. Han is a rebel, Obi-Wan is a teacher, and Princess Leia is a leader.
Example 2: Aang's traits as a searcher are complemented by Sokka being a thinker, Katara being a healer, and Toph being a warrior. Most of them are also teachers.
Opponent: Successive Strangers In a myth, the hero faces various strangers in succession, often building toward one final antagonist who may or may not rule over the others. These different strangers should force the hero and their allies to defeat them in various ways.
Example 1: Odysseus's final enemy, the suitors destroying his palace, are not related to the myriad gods and monsters he faced on the way home. They instead serve as a way for him to demonstrate all the different ways he became more powerful in his journey by completely wiping them out. He defeated all of his previous enemies with a combination of savagery and trickery, such as the cyclops who he drugged and then blinded.
Example 2: Frodo faces the Ring-Wraiths, the Balrog, Gollum, Shelob, and the Ring itself to reach his goal. He does not know any of these people before his journey, and not all of them are in league with one another (though some certainly are). Frodo needs different allies for each enemy (Gandalf beats the Balrog, Aragorn saves him from the injury the Ring-Wraiths give him, etc.)
Drive: Symbolic Objects The Myth genre is highly symbolic. The talisman is the object that drives the inciting event, but these other symbolic objects and places drive the story forward along the way.
Example 1: Epic: The Musical has many symbolic objects:
The wind bag, which represents Odysseus's ruthless plans hidden in a black box which his crew ultimately cannot trust.
The Underworld, which represents Odysseus facing his dark inner tendencies which he must lean into in order to make it home.
The Lair of Scylla, which manifests the dark contents of Odysseus's black box of schemes that render everyone around him expendable.
Example 2: Frodo's journey also includes many symbolic objects that drive the story forward:
The One Ring, which itself serves as the main antagonist of the story and offers a trade-off of immediate safety for corruption of the soul.
The Mithril Coat and Sting, gifts from his uncle Bilbo who serve as reminders that no matter where he goes, Frodo has the protection and the strength of his friends and family.
Revelation: Opponents Attack To defeat each opponent, the hero needs a self-revelation of some variety. This revelation tells the hero how each opponent attacks, and therefore how to defeat them.
Example 1: To defeat Co, the Face Stealer, Aang learns to completely hide his emotions. To defeat Admiral Zhao, Aang learns to become one with the power of the Ocean Spirit. To defeat Ozai, Aang learns the technique of taking away bending from the lion turtle.
Example 2: To defeat the first Death Star, Luke learns to trust in Obi-Wan and the Force. To defeat Darth Vader, Luke learns to be patient and complete his training, and turning his anger into patience and faith in the goodness of people.
Gate, Gauntlet, Visit to the Underworld The protagonist and their allies must traverse a deadly location to acquire the next symbolic object, further align the weakness-need and desire line, and defeat the next successive opponent.
Example 1: The first Death Star's trench run, the duel in Cloud City with Darth Vader, and the final confrontation with the Emperor in the second Death star all serve this same purpose for Luke in their respective movies.
Example 2: Aloy's journey through the Horizon: Zero Dawn program archives and ruins is the most implication-heavy part of the entire story.
Violent Battle This beat is often mixed with or directly adjacent to an iteration of the previous beat. The final battle of a Myth story is violent, fierce, and high stakes. Immortality is on the line here. The opposite (death and being forgotten) is almost always the only alternative.
Example 1: To save the world of Horizon: Zero Dawn, Aloy must fight and shut down the HADES program and the FAROS plague before it devours everything.
Example 2: To save the balance of the world, Avatar Aang must fight and defeat Ozai before he burns the Earth Kingdom to the ground, mirroring the genocide inflicted on the air nomads a century before.
Self Revelation: Cosmic/Public Revelation In order to triumph in the final battle, you must provide a dedicated revelation beat where the hero's desire line and weakness-need finally align, giving them the power to defeat the final opponent.
Example 1: Luke decides at the very end, before striking down Darth Vader, that in order to defeat the Emperor, he must reject the call to give in to his anger and replace his father. This is ultimately what sways Darth Vader to the light and destroys the Emperor.
Example 2: Aang, ever the searcher, finds the cosmic revelation he needs to resist Ozai's corruption of his soul in the high-stakes final gambit to defeat the fire-lord without taking his life and violating the airbender way so crucial to his heart.
New Equilibrium: Outgrowing the Code The hero returns home and re-enters the society into which they first entered via a difficult birth. Show the audience enough to demonstrate that the protagonist has fulfilled their weakness-need and give an idea what the rest of their life will be like.
Example 1: Dorothy returns home, having gained a new appreciation for her home and family, as well as her own ability to find the things she needs. She has achieved a form of immortality by saving Oz and becoming a comfortably integrated part of her family.
Example 2: Odysseus returns to his wife after returning home and freeing Ithica of the scourge of her suitors. He begins the remainder of his life as a present father in the life of his son, Telemachus, and an immortalized king of his people who he left twenty years ago.
Notes
Remember that most good stories are a mix of the beats from multiple genres. The beats of Myth stories are frequently mixed with those of Action and Fantasy stories.
Remember: Immortality takes many forms, and most often in myths it takes the form of creating a lasting legacy.
Myth is incredibly popular in big-budget movies because several of the highest-grossing franchises (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) are myths and many Hollywood movies try to replicate this success.
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