I'm obssessed not just with good stories, but with how the STRUCTURE of good stories works. Obsessed.
So obsessed that I took 5 of the most popular structures that people use for screenplays, novels, etc. and put then into one giant concentric ring that looks like the Eye of Sauron. Ergo, I call it THE RING OF POWER.
I discovered upon doing this that THEY ARE ALL THE SAME THING, just with slightly different focuses and levels of detail. This works for long stories as well as 7-page comics (I won two short comic contests using this method). Did I mention that I did this purely for my own amusement? I'm. That. Obsessed.
Structuring your story on this pretty much guarantees the structure of your story will flow, your characters will do interesting things, and the story will have a graceful rise and fall of action that leaves readers feeling satisfied. And that's before you even illustrate the thing.
Behold.
If you are writing, this obviously comes in handy, but it might also come in handy for illustrators who want to know what parts of a story to illustrate and include in a portfolio. Any of these major plot points makes for a great spot to put an illustration because they are the emotional pivot points of a story, and emotions are what we artists do real good, even if our grammar is bad.
Someone asked a question about writing in another thread and I figured why not share this monster of a thing I made in its own thread in case someone else finds it handy. Have fun 