Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit
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I wonder what they might say about "everything I don't like is wrong" reactions tho.
What is this in reference to?
Fiction is stuff that didn't actually happen (and in many cases, couldn't actually happen).
In both you take grand events, gestures, or themes. Weave together a “why” as to why something happened. Then take away some grand life lesson from those events.
With Psychoanalysis, it goes something like; 1. I feel exhausted all the time 2. Because I have nightmares 3. Nightmares about being a failure at work and school 4. I am constantly afraid of failure 5. Because my parents always nagged and harped on me about avoiding being a failure 6. I am told to "kill" the version
With a fictional narrative, they'll take this process and make it metaphorical. Maybe make the nightmares an antagonistic force, symbolic of failure and criticism. Have the patient literally fight the feelings of failure, make them embrace failure, and then kill the metaphorical symbol of their parents as a form of processing.
Meanwhile, the modern psychological approach to dealing with the initial problem is much less narratively satisfying. 1. I feel exhausted all the time 2. Talk to a psychiatrist, who may prescribe a combination of anti-psychotics (to reduce the amount of sleepless nights) and clinical talk therapy to help address coping mechanisms to enable reducing anti-psychotics. 3. Start taking pills and feeling more rested during the day, which allows one to feel less exhausted at work and daily life activities; which makes them less anxious of failure since they have the ability to properly address issues. 4. Go to a psychologist who may introduce CBT techniques and provide a failure-free environment to allow the patient to more adequately express and understand their issues. 5. During moments of high stress, the patient uses coping mechanisms which reduce the tendency for nightmares to occur. And allows them to wean off anti-psychotics, and allows them restful sleep once more.
The differences between the classical psychoanalytical framework of psychiatry, and modern evidence-based techniques illustrate why story tellers (like Dan Harmon) love and use concepts and ideas from psychoanalysis. It is already based around creating a narrative around life events to provide a life lesson for a patient.
Also, the term "101" should make it obvious that this it not meant to serve as an all encompassing compendium. It's an introductory piece that outlines a basic structure, to get started thinking about commonalities in story telling.
It's also nothing new. If you scroll down to the comments, you'll find a mention of the book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell which is a go-to treaty on the subject - and it's from 1949! (I personally find it a bit of a slow read, but it does cover an impressive amount of classic narratives.)
Of course, that is completely wrong, and while the hero's journey is indeed a very basic and common story structure, it is most certainly not universal (unless you stretch it beyond all reasonableness).
Im gonna give you a spoiler, he does.
Dan Harmon's sotry circle is how he wrote most of the episodes of Community and Rick and Morty, and tbh he uses it to great effect even when he tells anecdotes and stories (he famously played a DnD campaign where he would meta roleplay to add necessary steps to the circle to make the stories more compelling even if they were not the best strategy at the moment).
Due to his adherance to his own method, he sees it everywhere, to the point where most of us would be squinting to see what he even means.
Its just a framework and he really likes it. Essentially the same as a dude who really likes one programming language and uses it out of place, in a terribly complicated place because he just really likes it.
As he points out, there's a lot of troubling stuff in The Hero's Journey, but there's still a lot that is of interest, particularly with how it informed the Star Wars universe.
Here’s a YouTube link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY&feature=shares
You can also find it by searching for episode 403 of scriptnotes in whatever podcast app you use.
> You could argue that anything that smacks of formulaic storytelling should be avoided at all costs
One could effectively argue all good story telling is formulaic. There are certain aspects of a story that have to be in place otherwise it's just words being spewed.
I would instead describe structure as the act of launching an arrow, and giving the reader a promise that the arrow has a target to strike.
People say the same thing about music theory. It gets tiring.
The problem comes in when someone tries to analyse the structure of stories and assume that they can create a template for telling new stories. If you start with the template (or the music theory, or the best practices) you end up with something that feels formulaic and like crap.
Theories of art are always descriptive and inductive, not proscriptive or deductive.
It can be the consequences that are the interesting part. "Rules" provide structure and maps, and people like that up to a point. Sometimes it can be fun to stick to the map. Sometimes it's fun to take people off the map and make them a little uncomfortable, when you know how to reward them for taking that journey off the map with you.
Most of them don't really satisfy this formula, except for trivial points like the protagonists wants something and the protagonist has changed or if you're deliberately trying to fit them by being extremely vague.
The reason is that there are many different types of stories and these can have very different internal structure. For example, Space Opera in science fiction is often just a fight of good vs. evil set at many different interesting locations. Of course, some protagonist should develop, hence change, and it's good to have some kind of unexpected plot twist, but these are trivialities.
I've written 10+ novels and am relatively certain that none of them would be better if I had based them on this "story circle" (Harmon's rendition of "hero's journey").
Commonly ignored critical insight:
Storytelling is for the HUMANS who hear the story, because our lives are in the format of heroes journeys. It matters not if most or some movies/stories follow it, because if the story doesn’t follow it - it’s not remembered by HUMANS. Because, you guessed it…our lives are in the format of a monomyth.
Joseph Campbell was an anthropologist. Not a script writer.
Christopher Vogler was a script writer for Disney.
They both understood that stories were just a vehicle for lessons. And if the structure wasn’t followed then the lesson wouldn’t be received, let alone passed down from generation to generation.
The super super basic shit is 3 steps: 1. Normal world- suspect something is wrong 2. Supernatural world- seek the thing that makes it right 3. Return- bring it back to share
That format fits not only every story ever told, but more importantly - it’s the dna of your life experience. And if you disagree, then ask yourself: am I refusing the call to adventure or a stage in the journey in my life? Give it a shot. It’ll change your life.
Side note: by “lesson” I mean the fundamental building blocks of your worldview. Lookup Weltanschauung.
"Be curious.
Ask questions.
Try stuff.
Tell your story."
I agree, but it's much too bold to suggest that the hero's journey fits every story ever told. It's entirely possible to demonstrate a lesson without having a journey at all. You don't need a protagonist to end up in a better place, and you don't even need the protagonist to experience any growth; sometimes the cruel indifference of fate is the lesson, and sometimes a character's lack of growth demonstrates by way of example the importance of growth.
It also isn't even universal for comedies: if we diagram the descent-into-hell as
____ _
\ /
\ /
\____/
____
/ \
/ \
____/ \_
The basic idea is that you still need a setup act to tell the people who the characters are, and those characters still are not perfect and still have flaws which may be addressed by the end of the work, but you do not need to motivate their ascent to heaven: everybody wants to go to heaven, it's obvious why they wanted to go too. Similarly unlike the Descent phase where everything is difficult to make the story believable, in the Ascent phase everything is candy bars and ice cream, the character is unreasonably successful, beyond what we would have imagined. Where the Belly of the Beast in Hell amounts to mounting successes in the face of overwhelming odds, the Belly of the Beast in heaven amounts to mounting friction in this place that is supposed to be paradise. And that needs to build up to a sudden explanation of the friction, a twist, where paradise is not what it seemed and the character must flee, having acquired nevertheless what they need to resolve their difficulties at home.
Another interesting subversion is when the last act of descent into hell is not Escape, is not Tragic Collapse, but is Redemption: Hell is turned into the mundane world. That's just a different sort of comedy that can work very well, I am thinking for example of Will Ferrell’s classic Elf where Hell is clearly NYC and its utter lack of Christmas Spirit, and Buddy the Elf brings that spirit back to NYC. This I would call a “Light-bringer” structure because it doesn't have the same motifs of descent or ascent...
As people try to generalize the hero's journey to claim it fits all stories, they simplify it by paring away many of Campbell's more specific elements, like "the meeting with the goddess" or "atonement with the father," but even the most pared-down version still does not describe all stories. How about The Stranger by Camus? That story doesn't map onto the hero's journey at all. Waiting for Godot? That story doesn't even resolve its narrative tension in any conventional way.
The urge to generalize narrative is understandable, but I think it's a mistake. Ultimately, the purpose of art is simply to provoke interesting or entertaining emotions in its viewers, and a story doesn't need any one essential component to do this. There are recurring conventions and useful tools that repeatedly crop up in genres and in the medium as a whole, but these are not necessary—only commonplace.
What does tend to happen as story elements get added and more tightly bound together is something resembling traditional story structures. But that's like observing that natural systems tend to look like scale-free networks: it's an "end-up", not a "fate". Most of the industrial products made to fit story templates are providing entertainment, but only a facade of information: the story is actually built on wish-fulfillment or appeal to preexisting beliefs(nothing sells like a story you want to hear because it validates you), and the formula suggests a way to fill up runtime reiterating that.
The pattern I found mostly is - in comfort - something bad happens - try to get out of bad situation/get revenge - overcome many difficulties - maybe some plot twist - overcome last difficulty
What are good examples of the story setup in the articles?
Even the Homer Odyssey is more complex then this pattern (except for its most boring chapters).
And you are right; not all books are like that: I just finished “Catcher in the Rey”. The protagonist goes through his ordeal totally unchanged; it is infuriating. I wanted to scream: Dude, didn't you get any wiser! On the other hand: He goes from a safe place, in the underworld of NY, through the night, faces dangers, returns home; depressed and tired; having learned… nothing!
For example, sticking with ancient myths, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice ends with the hero's defeat, he fails his greatest challenge and returns empty-handed, nothing having been resolved, not even any wiser. You could say the story contains the first few elements, but it wildly diverges towards the end.
Tell us the title of a good story which does not at least resemble the pattern.
What is described here is super simple hero journey. Not everything is an adventure.
But if it doesn’t have the tell-tale elements we have a hard time recognizing it as a story, and then we don’t have expectations to subvert.
Which films are you thinking of?
“I just wanted to live an ordinary life, then bad stuff happened, and I struggled against adversity and prevailed, then everyone dies.”
- Revenge movies like John Wick (the first one), and video games like The Last of Us 2, where the protagonist originally just wants to go about his affairs, but bad things happen to them and they want revenge.
- "Catastrophe" movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator 2, where the protagonist needs to act to stay alive
From another commenter I understand that the revenge or will to survive becomes the want. But not sure if it really fits the presented scheme that well anymore.
Both have to happen, most of the time.
I think most story starts with the protagonist in some sort of _status quo_, where change is resisted, either because the protagonist doesn't want to change, or because the protagonist is incapable of change. Then, a catalyst happens (doesn't have to be something bad, though, for instance, in Harry Potter, the letter from Hogwarts is a good thing that kicks Harry out of the status quo), and the protagonist now wants or needs something so much that they has to enter and deal with unfamiliar situations.
Without "something happens to them", it's just strange that the protagonist suddenly decides to do something different without any reason. But ultimately, it has to be their choice to react to the catalyst. Making a decision is one of the most empathizeable elements of a story. It lets the reader step into the character's shoes and feel their inner debate.
It usually is both. If the protagonist doesn’t want anything then they (and the story) feels directionless. If there is no bad thing happening to them then the audience is left wondering why the protagonist deciced to go on a crazy adventure now, instead of some other time.
Let me illustrate this with the start of Star Wars a New Hope.
Luke clearly wants to leave his podunk life and seek adventure. Also and independently of this the Empire swoops in and kills the people who has raised him.
If the bad thing doesn’t happen he would finish his chores and then pick up some power converters.
If he wouldn’t have the want of an adventure he would hand over the droids, and grieve his uncle and aunt. He also probably would go and pick up some power converters.
For the story to happen you needed both, the want and the bad thing. Otherwise the farmer boy would have remained a farmer boy.
> What are good examples of the story setup in the articles?
How about you pick a story and if we also know it we can try to see if the pattern fits? It really is kinda universal. Not saying that all stories will fit but it is harder to find exceptions than examples.
It seems to me that most heros have a mentor that guides them on their way.
Originally, when I was trying to think about stories, the following came to mind - Revenge movies like John Wick (the first one), and video games like The Last of Us 2, where the protagonist originally just wants to go about his affairs, but bad things happen to them and they want revenge. - "Catastrophe" movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator 2, where the protagonist needs to act to stay alive.
The circle described by Harmon are just the overarching story beats, but there's plenty liberty to be had when moving from one beat to the next. There's also liberty in whether steps overlap or are combined, such as where the desire is defined/reshaped at the same time that they enter an unfamiliar situation (e.g., desire changes to one of survival at the same time as a catastrophe beginning).
In other words, the points on the circle may still exist regardless of what happens between them or if they happen simultaneously. Even acknowledging the liberty to be had, there's always exceptions to this heuristic and not every story will follow this structure.
(this is from memory, maybe that encounter goes differently than I recall)
For one thing, this only really applies to stories with a single protagonist. But lots of stories don't have a protagonist, and thus rarely fit this mold at all.
Don't confuse a story for the text.
For example, you could, in principle, analyze the story of each individual character in the Iliad, but that would be missing the story. The story of the Iliad encompasses all of these different characters doing to their part to advance or retard their cause. Different characters are more important in different parts, but there is a single cohesive story being told.
* though even here I would say that the stories of many of the characters don't match the circle model - notably, Ned doesn't return to anything.
Nancy Duarte's book Resonate covers this idea in detail.
Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unobtainium
Or the story types, where there are 3, 6, 7, 36 depending on how you categorize them. Reading about them and seeing how they are used in all our Media is fascinating.
https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/37-possible-stories.html
Kurt Vonnegut - the shape of stories:
It's just the one that Western European & American (continent not country) authors seem to prefer. I know it's not the default in East Asia (see Kishōtenketsu). I assume it's not the default in many other places. And if we set aside the major default ones there are still many other structures to choose from.
I return to this blog post often when thinking about different ways to tell stories:
https://www.kimyoonmiauthor.com/post/641948278831874048/worl...
What about stories where the hero gets what they wanted, it's a net good for everyone, and the only heavy price is a newfound responsibility to maintain this good rather than "returning to a familiar situation"? To me, that's an actual hero.
Aragorn was mighty - but he was absolutely changed. Beautiful but tragic.
But this is really not comparable to Luke losing his hand, or Frodo taking on the taint of evil (and losing a finger), or Iron Man losing his hear, or Gilgamesh losing Enkidu. Stretching the hero's journey so far would only show it to be a shallow trick.
One of the most trenchant pieces of advice I got from a workshop instructor -- an award-winning fantasy novelist -- when I was struggling with a novel outline was "come up with an arc for all of your major characters, not just Gail [the protagonist]." Every major character in a story has something they want, has a place they start and a place they end up. Obviously stories can have multiple protagonists, but not every character who has a discernible arc is a protagonist, and not every story with an "ensemble cast" is one with multiple protagonists. (e.g., Ocean's Eleven is about an ensemble, but structurally, Danny Ocean is absolutely the protagonist.)
Story structure tools don't work particularly well as blueprints -- the major failing of the (in)famous Save the Cat! is its relentless prescriptiveness in this regard -- but they can work well as lenses and, before writing, as brainstorming tools. You need to be able to tell who your protagonist is -- and, yes, there may be more than one, but you need to understand your story structure well enough to know whether you really do have a story with multiple protagonists. And if your answer to "what does your main character want" is "oh, nothing, really, they're just fine," then you need to at least consider the possibility that there is a problem with your story, not with the general principle that stories are about characters trying to resolve problems.
I would say that The Lord of the Rings is the story of the defeat of Sauron, not a story of a hobbit making it alone to Mordor to single-handedly destroy the One Ring. Tolkien could have absolutely told the story while only focusing on Frodo, and only included characters like Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Merry, Pippin, Legolas, Gimli sporadically, mostly when they crossed Frodo's path (such as in The Fellowship of the Ring). He very deliberately chose not to do that.
In comparison, in Ocean's Eleven, the focus is always on Danny's plan. Sure, we get to see how the others are playing their part in the plan, but it's Danny's plan, and nothing in the story happens without a direct (at lest tangential) connection with him and the heist he orchestrated. There is nothing equivalent to the defense of Helm's Deep, the conquering of Isengard, the ride of the Rohirim and so on - entire hugely important plot points that have nothing whatsoever to do with Frodo's journey.
I would also add that it's not that hard to argue that, if you were to chose a single protagonist, it should be Aragorn, not Frodo - after all, the third and final book is named for him (The Return of the King) - the only character to have a whole book named for him. He also gets the most traditional, heroic ending - he is wed to the love of his life, and he rules with a just and rightful hand over the now purified world.
It's cool that Aragorn is the descendant of the traitorous and flawed royal line of Numenor, but it would be cooler if Aragorn had just went off with Arwen to hide in a crevice somewhere and let Faramir rule over Gondor, who certainly would be more loved by his people and seems to have a decent shot at uniting houses with Rohan.
Anyways, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Tolkien should have known that.
Aragorn's sacrifices occurred before the story began. He was the rightful king, yet had wandered in the wilderness for something like 90 years, defending people who not only did not appreciate him, but were actively suspicious of him.
He also had little or no hope of regaining the kingdom -- and also little or no hope of marrying the woman he loved (as Elrond had forbidden her to marry him unless he somehow became king).
That's gotta wear on a guy after the first, say, 50 or 60 years.
“For some characters, [7. Return] is as easy as hugging the scarecrow goodbye and waking up. […] or in a love story, having realized what’s important.”
Based off your description, I’m imagining a heartwarming and simple story about a scientist who wants to find a cure for cancer:
1. ESTABLISH A PROTAGONIST: We meet her in college.
2. SOMETHING AIN'T QUITE RIGHT: We learn that her brother has cancer, and that she wants to cure it.
3. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD: She gets hired at a prestigious cancer research lab.
4. THE ROAD OF TRIALS: Night after night, she stays up late pouring over data.
5. MEETING WITH THE GODDESS: She finally discovers a cure for cancer.
6. MEET YOUR MAKER; The late nights have taken their toll and she’s exhausted, but she’s overwhelmed with happiness that her hard work has paid off.
7. BRINGING IT HOME: She begins to feel the weight of how important her work will be for both her brother and humanity at large.
8. MASTER OF BOTH WORLDS: She accomplishes what she set out to do; cure her brother’s cancer. She also sends the entirety of her research to universities, science journals, and news outlets the world over, ensuring that no single company can own the manufacturing process of this cure.
If you know you're not going to be writing it especially well, use the tropes.
One of the problems with US television in the broadcast and early cable age was that all television series were 22-26 episodes long. Another was that after the first air date, viewers would be likely to encounter them out of order.
As a direct result, television series avoided having one episode refer to another. The major exception were soap operas, which often ran 4-6 episodes every week and specifically maintained continuity -- there are/were digest magazines devoted to catching watchers up on current storylines.
- When the story starts, your character has a clear Want. - Over the course of adventure, they discover what they actually Need. - The Want and the Need are in conflict, and how they resolve that conflict changes them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
"Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do."
This reasoning doesn't follow, it's just a hollow appeal to nature. If people would work so well out of the box, they would not need parenting, and 10-20 years of that even.
Dan Harmon has talked extensively about his story circles concept, and they’re explicitly a refinement of the Hero’s Journey.
1) Are so generic they doesn't say anything useful (like a horoscope which fit everybody).
2) Only matches some select stories.
A good litmus test is if the system is compatible with Shakespeare's Hamlet. Given how populuar and well-regarded the play have been for centuries, we can safely say it is the system rather than the play which is at fault if the play does not fit the system.
We immediately notice that Hamlet does not "Then return to their familiar situation", since he dies (along with most other characters). Also it is not really clear he have changed. Indeed, the genre of tragedy does not match the requirement to have the protagonist safely home in the end, so Romeo and Juliet is also out. These are not obscure examples, these are the most famous and well-regarded plays in the English language.
TV-shows like Rick and Morty does tend to have the characters safely home in the end, so they can start in the "zone of comfort" in the next episode. On the other hand the characters rarely change. Even if they learn some lessons, they have usually forgotten them by start of the next episode. So I'm unsure if the system even matches Harmons own writing.
It seems to give a good starting point for a bildungsroman/shonen manga/... (depending on the medium) type of story. The guide does seem unaware other type of stories exist.
Mind you, this isn't something that you have to follow. It's something that appears whenever you're telling a story. It's like gravity it's there even if you don't believe in it.
~source: https://youtu.be/SndbyN4u0j4
There are plenty of examples in this thread, but to take a wide category, mystery novels almost never follow this structure. Just look at any of Agatha Christie's Poirot novels (some of the most read pieces of literature in history!) and see how badly they fit.
And this is not some kind of new phenomenon. Even something like Dante's Divine Comedy doesn't fit this, or even the Iliad.
So, out of the original Hero's Journey model, this only matches the call to adventure, the threshold, and perhaps the challenges and the transformation. Looking at Campbell's precise steps there is even less match with all his original steps.
Learning and understanding is the struggle. Dante is tormented by a number of fears and doubts and he doesn't know how to deal with them. His journey into hell and heaven highlight aspects of these and helps him come to terms with them, one by one. The book ends with him having resolved that struggle, he could only see the face of god after reaching clarity.
There are a lot of ways you can interpret the book, but it's fundamentally a quest to find inner peace.
Perhaps more relevant to the heros journey ideas, a major reason why the original is actually a really bad script is that stuff that happens for a reason in the final screenplay (going to school, attempting to invent rock and roll) is just Marty screwing around and ignoring advice (from the guy he trusts enough to drive into a nuclear test), and he doesn't really get the motivation to get his parents together until quite a bit later.
Go ahead and try to apply this (admittedly a bit absurdist) scheme to any story known to mankind, ever.
[1] https://savethecat.com/products/books/save-the-cat-the-last-...
If you can't turn to the exact center page and find the climax, the script is either formatted wrong (wasting your time) or written wrong (wasting your money).
Overall, when someone says _my favorite movie X_ doesn't fit this pattern or _legendary novel_ Y doesn't do this at all -- well, sometimes they might be right about that, but many, many non-linear movies and books still hit the beats Save the Cat describes.
By really popular I mean pretty much universally popular. Not niche popular.
So some movies fit them very plainly and other movies fit them only after somebody pulls a “well, actually” and makes an unobvious interpretation of who the story was really about, or what they wanted, or where they started, or where they ended.
The easiest starting points to look for the “hard fits” are in any tragedy (which aren’t very popular in the US recently), any movie that’s in the middle of a trilogy, and some absurdist/surrealist comedies that happened to win success on humor or novelty rather than structure.
But someone committed to the universality of this model can always make a case that those movies fit too. It’s just a more strained argument than in some others.
You can Map the 3 Act structure to the 8 Points. Act 1: 1-3; Act 2: 4-6; Act 3: 7 - 8.
While the end of the movie is the protagonist ends up in the same situation, having changed nothing and it's basically a bad end
Or, look at The Avengers - how does this apply to The Hulk,for example?
So, to answer your question: basically all movies in the most successful franchise ever diverge significantly from this formula. As does any other movie where the antagonist drives the plot significantly.
There are other movies that play with the model, like The Big Lebowski, in that it skips a lot of the character development on purpose. Things may try to move his world, but The Dude abides.
I think also the Horror genre often ignores or subverts the Hero's Journey.
Harry Potter is not this.
Despite what you might think, I think most Marvel movies don't really follow this! Sometimes a single character follows this and they end up being the tragic character.
Not a movie but I think we get to Romeo & Julliet and this doesn't work.
Jurassic Park is not this. Terminator is not this. The Terminal is not this.
Avatar _is_ this I think! Kind of.
It's basically hero's journey
"the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed."
I can't read any more hero stories, I've developed allergies.
And, let's go a little deeper into them:
a) They assume that there exists an area of comfort for characters, and the story will empower the reader to see it right at the beginning, so the story is asking the reader to make a judgement with incomplete data. (Do you like when your product manager asks you to estimate how long X will take?)
b) They "addict" the reader to this structure, which means writers who want to write other types of stories will be out of luck when it comes to their story being liked. Which takes me to
c) They shoe-horn the writer into writing a specific type of story. What if the writer is more interested in exploring a notion or a concept, but they don't want to do it through the exposition of the inner world/private life of a character? (like, should we understand US politics by following Donald Trump through his private life with camera, microphones and telepatic devices?)
Given that the oldest stories we have are hero stories (e.g., Gilgamesh) and that the most successful stories of modern times are also hero stories (e.g., MCU), as well as pretty much every bit of fiction that has withstood the test of time in between, I would not expect that many share your opinion.
Also, the many of the oldest stories we have also don't follow this structure. Consider traditional Australian Aboriginal storytelling, ancient Mayan storytelling, or even specific story structures in reference to current events: German storytelling had an entire genre that focused on postwar economic hardship and didn't at all follow hero stories. Thrillers rarely follow this structure, nor does horror.
The box office disagrees.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross/
One could maybe argue that "Titanic" (number 8) and "Beauty and the Beast" (number 18) are romances, but both of those also have strong action-adventure elements.
The first one I see that I would qualify as a pure romance is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", all the way down at number 149.