3 Simple Storytelling Frameworks to Turn Your Stories into Powerful Articles or Notes
Easy-to-use templates to help you share meaningful, memorable stories that resonate with your readers.
Even though humans are born storytellers, when it comes to writing stories, we often find the process frustratingly difficult. Why? Because we expect stories to pour out of us effortlessly, smooth, emotional, and complete.
But here’s the catch: we haven’t learned the frameworks that make stories work.
All good stories follow a structure.
The earliest known storytelling framework dates back to Aristotle, who introduced the Three-Act Structure in his book Poetics. He broke down drama into a beginning, middle, and end, what we now know as setup, confrontation, and resolution.
Since then, many writers and thinkers have uncovered their own story frameworks. For example:
Kurt Vonnegut mapped out seven basic story arcs based on emotional highs and lows—like "Man in Hole" (fall then rise) or "Boy Meets Girl" (rise, fall, rise).
Joseph Campbell introduced the Hero’s Journey, a universal story template found in myths across cultures, popularized further by screenwriter Christopher Vogler.
Freytag’s Pyramid, developed by Gustav Freytag, outlines a five-part dramatic arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.
These frameworks aren’t meant to limit your creativity, they’re meant to guide it. Once you understand the shape of a good story, you can start crafting your own with confidence and clarity.
Today, I’m sharing three of my go-to storytelling frameworks for non-fiction writing, simple structures I use all the time with consistent success.
These aren’t theoretical models; they’re practical tools that help you shape real-life experiences into engaging, relatable stories that connect with your audience.
Love learning how to tell better stories?