What Makes a Growth Centered Story?

November 2, 2026 Jess MahlerLeave a comment

Growth-centered stories are a relatively new idea for me, and I’m still exploring all the different facets of what they are and how they work. Today I want to explore what makes a growth-centered story and how it’s different from other stories.

So today, we’re going to take a look at that.

As always, I’m figuring this out as I go and I’m sure I’m missing some stuff.

For this discussion, I’m using Andre Norton’s Hands of Lyr as an example. The Hands of Lyr and the other Senses stories have a central conflict which is critical to the plot. But the stories are not centered on that conflict; they are centered on growth. As a story that walks the line between conflict- and growth-centered, I think The Hands of Lyr is a good choice to identify what makes a growth-centered story and how it is different from conflict-centered even when there is significant conflict. Expect major spoilers.

Several things make up a growth-centered story. Here’s my current take (subject to evolution and change):

The plot can be defined in terms of growth.
The story cannot happen without significant character growth.
The story doesn’t need an antagonist, and if there is one the protagonists are not focused on them.
The protagonist’s growth and actions affect the world around them/the wider community.

Destroy the Binary — it’s not just growth or conflict

I’m focusing on the line between growth and conflict-centered stories because most English stories are conflict-centered. But not all stories are one or the other. I mentioned in another essay LeGuin’s story Those Who Walk Away from Omelas as a Carrier Bag story that is not growth-centered. In fact, it rejects even the idea of growth, pointedly saying that none of the characters seek or achieve change. They only either accept or reject the horror their seeming utopia hides.

Defining the Plot — the one line summary

The first requirement of a growth-centered story is that the story can be defined in terms of growth. The one-line summary is probably the most common way to define a plot.

If Andre Norton used one-line summaries for her stories, I’ve never seen them. But if I were to write a logline for The Hands of Lyr, it would go something like this:

A priestess-in-training and a priest-hating warrior must learn to work together to find and restore a sacred relic and save a broken land.

There are several other ways you could put together a one-line summary. Still, I can’t think of any I’d write that doesn’t include the need for Alnosha and Kryn to learn to work together. Learning to work together is a form of growth.

So, this story can be defined in terms of growth.

Now, it is possible to define this story in terms of conflict. For instance:

A priestess-in-training and an embittered warrior must work together to defeat an ancient evil poisoning the land.

This summary is less accurate (and we’ll see why later), but it’s a workable summary for this story.

Some growth stories can be defined in terms of conflict, but that doesn’t make them not growth-centered. The important thing is that they /can/ be defined — accurately — in terms of growth.

The Story Cannot Happen without Significant Character Growth

This… almost goes without saying, right? You can’t have a growth-centered story without growth. This growth may take different forms, but it has to be there.

It Does Not Need an Antagonist

Many growth-centered stories don’t have an antagonist or a central conflict to overcome. Instead, they may have a series of small conflicts the protagonist must navigate or have other types of challenges.

If there is an antagonist —

The Protagonist Is Not Focused on the Antagonist

Just because there is an antagonist doesn’t mean that the protagonist is focused on them. Sometimes, you have a “I am your greatest rival!” “I didn’t know I had a rival” moment. The antagonist is obsessed with the protagonist, and the protagonist just… didn’t know they existed. Or they might know about the antagonist but consider the antagonist a ‘later’ problem while they try to focus on this other thing.

Or, as in The Hands of Lyr, the antagonist may be interfering with another quest.

Nosh’s goal in The Hands of Lyr is to reassemble the titular Hands of her goddess. Kryn gets dragged into her quest, initially unwillingly. This quest is a threat to the antagonist — the evil wizard who broke the Hands nearly a century ago. Having the Hands reassembled will be a major threat to his power in the world. But —

If the evil wizard got struck with lightning a few chapters into the book, the story would still have happened and had the same basic plot.

Nosh and Kryn would still have traveled across the land seeking the scattered Fingers. They still would have faced raiders, criminal lords, and blizzards. Kryn would still have needed to confront himself and his goals and accept that he had become a new person and his old goals did not fit the person he became. Nosh would still need to learn how to interact with people and function in society after being raised in total isolation by the last priestess of Lyr.

Now, the evil wizard doesn’t get hit by lightning a few chapters in. He is a threat throughout the entire story up until the final confrontation. But the main characters, when they become aware of him, are aware of him not as the goal but as an /impediment/ to restoring the Hands and, with them, the land once ruled by Lyr.

Even in the final confrontation, we see this. When Nosh and Kryn reach the statue, they find the evil wizard left a spell which threatens the Hands and the wizard himself slowly manifesting in the room.

Instead of a big climactic battle, Nosh /ignores/ him. That’s her big challenge: ignoring the big bad and his threatening magic while she restores the fingers. To trust in herself, her goddess, and Kryn at her back. And Kryn, who does confronts the evil wizard, defeats the big bad not by attacking /him/, but by attacking the magic cord that ties him to the spell.

The evil wizard is, as far as the world is concerned, the big bad. He broke the world, destroyed the old order, and laid waste to entire countries. But as an antagonist, he is a distraction. It is by not being drawn into a confrontation that Nosh and Kryn win the day — because the wizard may fill the role of an antagonist, but he is not their focus.

Their focus is on healing and restoration, not conflict.

The Protagonist’s Growth and Actions Impact the Wider Community (Maybe)

I’m not sure about this one, but it’s a pattern I am seeing. Growth-centered stories generally focus on the growth of the protagonist, but growth does not happen in isolation. The growth of the protagonist will impact the world around them. If all change is internal, it is not true growth.

It’s been over six months since I first wrote this and posted it on my old website. Maybe over a year, I kind of lost track in there. Reading it over now, I’m pretty happy with it. I think this is a good litmus test for what is and is not a growth-centered story.

What do you think? Drop a comment and let me know!

Growth-Centered Story Structures

My Cyclical Growth-Centered Story Structure

November 2, 2026 Jess MahlerLeave a comment

A couple years ago I wrote and posted a couple of essays about growth-centered story structures. Growth-centered story structures have existed for a long time, but have been ignored or forgotten in the emphasis on the conflict-centered 5-act story structure.

If you haven’t yet, you should definitely check out Worldwide Story Structures by Kim Yoonmi. It’s a wonderful introduction to the variety of story structures around the world, and will really help you begin to understand the full palette available to us as writers, beyond the 5-act plot.

My own growth-centered story structure is the result of trial and error over about a decade, as I jettisoned the centrality of conflicted and focused on writing the kind of stories I wanted, regardless of if they were ‘right’. Everything I write about my story structure is me trying to describe something no one has ever described before, and which may not have existed before I created it.

When I wrote the previous essays, I was just beginning to analyze and understand how my stories, and other growth-centered writing, work. I wouldn’t say I’ve figured it out yet, but I’m definitely getting a better handle on things.

With that in mind, one thing I’ve figured out is a better way of describing and understanding how my particular kind of growth-centered plot works.

So let’s take a look at it.

Cyclical Growth Plot

Here I am borrowing Kim Yoonmi’s format for analyzing a plot structure.

My plot structure is a cyclical one. There are six stages to it, with three stages making up the central cycle.

Upper left arrow labeled ‘Break’ points into the ‘Problem’ step of a three-step cycle – ‘Problem’, ‘Growth’, and ‘Change’. Lower left arrow, the ‘New Normal’, branches off from the third step, ‘Change’. Several smaller arros labeled ‘Branching Out’ extend from ‘New Normal’. The diagram illustrates the steps of a growth-centered story structure with the first step being the ‘Break’ from normal and the final steps being the ‘New Normal’ and ‘Branching Out’ after an number of three-step cycles determined by the story being written.

Number of Acts: As many as needed

What is it?:

Break with Normality
Problem the characters can’t/don’t know how to deal with
Growth
Change in the situation/characters understanding of the situation
1. repeat 2-4 as necessary until
New Normal
Branching out to help others grow

Story Driver(s): ?

Notes:

Some stories have a ‘central conflict’ in the sense that an outside force creates the ‘Break with Normality’ and continues to interfere in establishing a new normal. However a central conflict is not necessary. If one does exist, it may be resolved before, during, or after the establishment of a new normal. Or not resolve at all.

The Break

The first stage is the Break with Normality. Before the break, characters existed in a situation they have considered ‘Normal’. ‘Normal’ usually has some built in stability or homeostasis so characters know what to expect and how to deal with the situations they run into.

‘Normal’ isn’t necessarily a good or healthy situation. In Bound by His Oath, ‘Normal’ for Mildthryth was being under frequent attack by lordlings who sought to conquer her lands and force her into marriage. ‘Normal’ for Reimund was being one of those lordlings. In the upcoming A Smear of Blood, ‘Normal’ is the goddes and Called slowly dying out under the oppression of the monks. But ‘Normal’ can be a healthy, happy situation — at the beginning of Planting Life in a Dying City, ‘Normal is Lefeng looking forward to traveling with the family ey loves and eir upcoming marriage.

How do we define ‘Normal’ then? ‘Normal’ is a (more or less) straight line trajectory. The characters’ lives are moving in a certain direction and are expected to continue moving that way.

The Break creates a sudden change in trajectory, wrenching characters lives in a new direction.

There are several ways a Break can happen. A character may make a choice that creates a Break, as when Mildthryth chooses to offer vassalage and marriage to Reimund rather than trying to ransom him, creating the possibility for a new relationship. It may be chance, like in Planting Life in a Dying City, when the tsunami destroys Lefeng’s family and village. It may be that a character from outside ‘Normal’ enters the story — as Iberto does in A Smear of Blood when he literally crashes into the high altar.

Whatever it is that causes the Break, there is a clear before and after.

A Problem

If the before is ‘the Normal’ then the after is ‘a Problem.’

A Problem is a situation that the characters need to deal with and don’t know how to. A Problem may be a new problem, an old problem the characters have a new perspective on, or an existing problem that is new to these characters.

A Problem is the first stage of the cyclical part of the story. Which is why it is ‘A’ Problem and not ‘The’ Problem. There will be multiple Problems throughout the course of the story.

The existence of multiple Problems is the biggest difference between a Problem and the ‘Conflict’ in a conflict-centered story. Many (though not necessarily all) Problems /are/ conflicts. But in a conflict-centered story there is a single central conflict. In a cyclical growth-centered story there are many not-central Problems.

The first problem in Bound by His Oath is that if Reimund accepts Mildthryth’s offer, he will shame himself. This is a new problem, as during the Normal, he was a proud man who refused to act in a way he would consider shameful.

In A Smear of Blood, the first problem is that there are not enough priests. Specifically, it is Iberto realizing that there are not enough priests. There have not been enough priests for a very long time before Iberto arrived at the temple. The lack of priests was a key part of the Normal, in fact. What has changed is not the problem itself, but that after the Break Iberto can see the problem.

The most important thing about a Problem is that the characters existing way of dealing with things won’t work to fix it. Reimund cannot automatically reject the shame — not unless he is willing to condemn his friends and followers. Iberto has no idea how to even begin fixing the lack of priests. If the characters attempt to continue doing things the same way they always have, the problem will continue or get worse.

Growth

If the characters want to deal with their problem, they need to grow. They may grow emotionally in some fashion, learn a new technique or skill, or if it is an ensemble story the main characters may grow in numbers, recruiting new members or allies to fight with them. There are probably dozens of ways a character can grow in response to a Problem.

Reimund, in Bound by His Oath, grows emotionally when he chooses to accept the shame for the sake of his men. This resolves the current Problem and he and Mildthryth are able to move forward together.

Importantly, Growth is a response to a Problem, not necessarily a fix for it. In A Smear of Blood, Iberto had been content to train for his new role and do his goddess’ bidding. On learning about the lack of priests and how it affects the goddes, Iberto stops being passive. He makes the decision to act — to hunt down the reason for the lack of priests and do something about it.

This is Growth, but it is not Growth that will immediately fix the problem. The problem will remain and Iberto and his friends and allies will spend most of the story addressing it in one way or another. That’s okay.

If Growth doesn’t fix a Problem, what’s its purpose in the story? Well, Growth leads to Change.

A Change

A Change is the new situation the characters find themselves in after after they grow. The last time I wrote about my story structure I called this stage ‘temporary stability.’ I’ve changed it because whether or not the situation is stable for any period of time has more to do with how fast the story is moving than the way the plot develops.

Like Growth, a Change can take several different forms.

In Bound by His Oath, after Reimund swears his loyalty to Mildthryth, she and all her people stop treating him as a prisoner and begin treating him as her betrothed. This is a Change in how the characters interact with each other.

Iberto, in A Smear of Blood, sees a different kind of change. Because he sets himself his own hunt for the first time, he begins to learn things. Most importantly, he learns that the monks are actively working against the goddes. This is a Change in perspective. A Change in how he understands the situation he finds himself in.

For Iberto, this leads to a new Problem, or new understanding of an old problem — there are not enough priests because potential priests aren’t coming to the temple where they can be recruited.

The Cycle

For a while, each Change will lead to a new Problem. Which leads to more Growth, another Change, a new Problem, etc.

The relationship in Bound by His Oath faces another problem when Reimund refuses to accept his new position and seeks to undermine Mildthryth, this leads to more growth, more change, more problems. Each turn of the cycle sees the characters and their situation growing/changing further and further from their original Normal.

A New Normal

Eventually, a Change will come with doesn’t lead to a new Problem. The characters and situation have changed enough, grown enough, that whatever problems they are facing are no long a Problem – that is, the characters have learned how to cope with and/or fix these problems and no longer NEED to grow in order to cope with them. The cycle is broken. The characters settle into a New Normal. Their lives are moving in a different direction then they were before the Break, but they are again moving ‘forward’ in a stable fashion.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that all their problems are solved. Life doesn’t work that way, and stories don’t need to either. What it means is that the characters have grown enough, and the situation has changed enough, that the characters are confident in their ability to handle the problems they are facing.

Branching Out

Characters who have grown to the point of being secure in a New Normal and who care about other people will want to spread that security. The final point of our story is the beginning of someone else’s story — when the characters reach out to help other characters. Sometimes that help will Break the other character’s Normal, it might provide guidance or resources for someone else’s Growth or Change, or something else.

Branching Out will usually come at the end of the story, but sometimes, for various reasons, it may come earlier. Planting Life in a Dying City is broken into six parts, one part focusing on each of the main characters. In the second part, the character Tsouchm instigates the Branching Out after one of eir Growth stages. Tsouchm’s life has improved considerably in the early part of eir story section, and ey wants to share that improvement with eir old friends, a desire the other family members support and aid.

So Far, It All Fits

I previously said that there are four things that make a growth-centered story:

The plot can be defined in terms of growth.
The story cannot happen without significant character growth.
The story doesn’t need an antagonist, and if there is one the protagonists are not focused on them.
The protagonist’s growth and actions affect the world around them/the wider community.

What I’ve outlined here for my growth-centered plot structure includes all four. Well, at least three of the four. We didn’t really talk about characters at all. The lack of an necessary antagonist can probably be inferred from the story structure, but I didn’t actually address point three here.

Growth-Centered Story Structures

Growth Centered Story-Structure

November 2, 2026 Jess MahlerLeave a comment

The Most Dangerous Game got me interested in story structure. It has long been a popular short story in American high schools. Most USian folks I’ve spoken with are familiar with it and I’ve seen some good rewrites and alternate takes over the years.

The thing is, in US English class they teach that there is only one story structure – the 5 act (sometimes the 3/5 act) with the Hero’s Journey as an incredibly detailed take on one type of 5 act story. And then they present you with The Most Dangerous Game, which fits the 5 act structure by courtesy only.

My English teacher used it as an example of the flexibility of the 5 act. “The resolution is only a single sentence! Everything else is implied.”

You know what else is implied?

The climax. It does not exist in that story. Not in the usual sense. Like, you can cram it into the definition. But say “We are going to have a to-the-death fight, winner takes all,” jump straight to “Victory was sweet” and tell me there was a story climax there? Bullshit.

The climax is in the blank spaces between the words. It’s a beautiful piece of writing. But it’s not 5 act.

(And don’t get me started on Shakespeare and 5 act. How any English teacher can claim with a straight face that the Bard wrote in ‘classic’ 5 act baffles me.)

The point is if you still think ‘5 act structure’ and ‘conflict-based narratives’ are universal and important, I have a reading assignment for you: Worldwide Story Structures by Kim Yoonmi

For me, even though a bunch of stuff made me question the 5 act structure, it was years before I ditched it for my stories. I kept having stories that didn’t work and trying to ‘fix’ them by adding more conflict/better climax/what have you.

Yeah, that was going nowhere, no way, no how.

So I stopped thinking about it and just wrote what worked. For nearly ten years, I hardly thought about the structure of my stories. I read a shit ton about story structures and tried to read a variety of stories with a variety of story structures. But my stuff? I let it be what it was.

Mostly worked, but caused some problems.

One problem was the serial, Mighty Hero Force Epsilon.

Overall, the serial came out well, but I spent over a year fighting it because Season 2 did NOT want to come together for me. Which is why I wrapped it up and pinned “the End” on the piece.

It was also what made me sit down and think about my story structure, if I have a consistent one, what am I doing with my stories?

It turns out, I do have a story structure I follow fairly consistently. It’s just not one I’ve ever seen described.

My Growth-Based Structure

To start with, my story structure is built around growth – character growth and relationship growth mostly. This is why I kept failing when I tried to fix the conflict in my stories. Conflict is a side issue in my stories. By increasing story conflict I actually distracted from the central plotline, which only made the stories worse.

I don’t have a name for my particular growth-based story structure. But (borrowing Kim Yoonmi’s analysis format) I can break down how it works –

Number of Acts: As many as needed

What is it?:

pushed out of normalcy/comfort
lack of stability causes discomfort and upset
growth leads to temporary stability which cannot be maintained
repeat 2-3 as necessary until
characters grow enough they can establish actual stability in a new ‘normal’

Story Driver(s)?: discomfort/unhealthy personal situation

Notes:

Most stories have a ‘central conflict’ in the sense that an outside force disrupts the ‘old normal’ and continues to interfere in establishing a new normal. However a central conflict is not necessary, and if it exists may be resolved before, during, or after the establishment of a new normal. Or not resolved at all.

Other Growth Based Story Structures

This is not the only way to write a growth-based story. It’s just my way. When I look at my reading over the years I recognize other authors using what could be called growth based story structures, all using different structures. There are also some structures, like the four act ki-sho-ten-ketsu and it’s many variants, which don’t necessarily center growth OR conflict, but can center either or neither as the author wishes.

Below is a short list of other authors who have written growth-centered stories

This list is not meant to be comprehensive or academic. It covers the growth-centered stories I am familiar with, which is probably a small portion of the growth-centered stories out there. My goal here is to get a few ideas for different kinds of growth-centered story structures on paper. If you are writing or know other types of growth-centered structures, please reach out!

Maeve Binchy:

Maeve Binchy wrote what I call braided stories. Her novels have one or two ‘main’ characters, but in and around the main character, many other characters twine their own stories. Binchy truly grasped the ‘we’re all the protagonist of our own story’ idea, and wrote books where every character was a protagonist. The story they were protagonist of may have appeared only briefly, but it was there.

In braided stories there is not a climax, any crisis will be a ‘normal’ life-gone-to-hell moment and these happen throughout the story. Lovers may come together without any great declarations, quietly sliding into and through each others lives until it’s obvious that they belong together without anyone needing to say anything.

Instead, each character has a story thread. Most of them start distinct, others are already twined together – often in unhealthy ways. Over the course of the story, these threads come together and pull apart in different ways. Usually, ways that support and buttress each other. By the end, with the direct and indirect support of the stories around them, most characters have grown into a new normal and a healthier life. Those that don’t stand out as examples of what happens when we reject the growth and support offered by people around us.

Andre Norton

Andre Norton is best known for Witch World, but for me her stories that stand out most have always been the Senses and Dipple series. (serieses? How do you plural that?)

In these books, the main character gets caught up in a conflict that was none of theirs – until the wider world forced it on them. Surviving this wider conflict requires growth, often a great deal of it. These stories often include a traditional 5-act conflict structure. But I would argue this conflict structure essentially acts as a macguffin to drive the growth.

The climatic scene in the Senses books particularly often have an almost staged quality. All the characters know their parts, and there is very little tension. They have all grown in knowledge of themselves and their compatriots. Everyone will act in the right way at the right moment, everyone trusts the others to do their part.

This growth may come in the form of new abilities and powers, learning to trust others, giving up harmful goals like revenge, or moving beyond the role one has been trained in all their life. But this growth and how it happens is the center of the story, with much of the conflict never being fully explained, happening off screen, or taking part on a much wider scale than the character’s story.

Miyazaki Hayao

Miyazaki mostly writes ki-sho-ten-ketsu structured stories. Ki-sho-ten-ketsu can be used for either growth centered or conflict centered stories or center something else entirely. Much of anime is ki-sho-ten-ketsu, but Miyazaki Hayao’s stories stand out as unique among anime. I don’t know what Miyazaki calls his fiction structure, if he calls it anything in particular. But to me, his movies always flowed like water, moving from one place to another, sometimes meandering, sometimes rushing and white with rapids. But his stories often focus on his characters growing and becoming.

I’m thinking especially of Spirited Away because it’s the movie I’ve seen most recently (and I can’t watch video these days, brain stuff). But I remember watching Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa and how different they were from everything I had seen before, how much they focused on characters. There were battles, but they seemed to take place almost in the background, even while they were happening. Secondary to the characters and how they interacted with and affected each other.

And Spirited Away, well, that movie is ALL about growth with almost no on-screen conflict.

Ursula LeGuin

Long before I started writing, LeGuin was calling out the conflict-focused view of fiction as a false and imposed restriction based on an unhealthy view of the world. Her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of fiction is still available online and I highly recommend it.

“I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.”

“…its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process.”

It’s stretching things to say that the carrier bag is growth-centered. LeGuin never claimed it as such or talked about growth much that I recall. Certainly not all of her stories were growth centered (Olemas comes to mind, as one that wasn’t). But many of them were. The carrier bag theory certainly has room in it for growth centered stories.

A carrier bag, by definition, has room for many things.