Stories are used by people to convey information in a way that adds meaning and emotional strength to it. When the story has inner cohesion, the message will stick better. A good story is effective, due to the fact that it is connected to the mythical depth-structure of human experience. The mythographer, Joseph Campbell described this primal story as the Monomyth. Later, it became known as the Hero’s Journey, the story w...

In this chapter, we’ll provide you with an overview of the structure of stories. We first will look at the story-mood that we have simplified to positive / cheerful or negative / gloomy. Then we will discuss the content more extensively as well as the many variations of complex emotions and of moral dilemmas that underlie stories. We will talk about the main character in the story, for whom we will use the term ‘protagoni...

So, the S-curve can be considered a perfect metaphor for the course of human development. A broadly elaborated model based on this story curve is the Double Healix model of human development. In this chapter, we will first briefly run through this model and subsequently provide several examples of story structures that go with it.

We have now travelled extensively through the land of stories. In the previous chapter, you were briefly introduced to the Double Healix model as foundation for a suspenseful story or good speech. In this chapter, we will work on building stories ourselves. Step by step, we will go through the possibilities per phase.