Dan Harmon's eight-step adaptation of the hero's journey, boiled down to a dead-simple circle that works for episodes, films, and novels alike.
The Dan Harmon story circle is a storytelling framework developed by television writer Dan Harmon (creator of Community and co-creator of Rick and Morty) that compresses Joseph Campbell's hero's journey into eight memorable steps: (1) A character is in a zone of comfort, (2) but they want something, (3) they enter an unfamiliar situation, (4) adapt to it, (5) get what they wanted, (6) pay a heavy price for it, (7) return to their familiar situation, (8) having changed. Harmon drew these steps as a circle divided by a horizontal line, with the top half representing the known world and the bottom half representing the unknown. He developed it partly out of frustration with more complex structural models, wanting something simple enough to keep in his head while running a TV writers' room.
Harmon's version of the story circle became wildly popular because it solves a specific problem: how do you make Campbell's mythic framework useful on a Tuesday afternoon when you're staring at a blank page? The eight steps are short enough to memorize, flexible enough to apply at any scale, and concrete enough to actually diagnose why a scene isn't working. Its real genius is the horizontal line dividing order from chaos, which gives you an instant visual check on whether your story has genuine stakes and transformation.
Harmon developed the story circle specifically to write this show. Every episode runs the study group (or individual members) through the eight steps, even during genre parody episodes.
The story circle drives most episodes, though the show frequently subverts step 8 by having characters refuse to change, which becomes a running thematic statement about Rick's emotional avoidance.
Harmon first tested the story circle on ultra-short films for Channel 101, his DIY TV network. Proving the method worked in five-minute episodes helped him trust it at larger scales.
Steps 4 and 5 (search and find) usually take up the most space, especially in longer works. Steps 1 and 8 can be as brief as a single image or sentence.
Change doesn't mean improvement. The character might return worse off, more cynical, or having lost something precious. Step 8 just means they're different, for better or worse.
The line between order and chaos is the most important part of the diagram. If your character never truly leaves their comfort zone, or never truly returns, the circle breaks.
Harmon himself applies the circle to individual scenes and even joke structures. If a scene feels flat, run it through the eight steps and see which ones are missing.
Watch one episode of Community or Rick and Morty and identify all eight steps of the story circle. Write them down with timestamps. Then take a scene from your own writing that feels sluggish and map it onto the eight steps. Which step is missing or underdeveloped? Rewrite the scene with that gap filled in and see if the energy changes.