Hero's Journey: Beat by Beat

Here is the underlyng structure to most narrative.

1. Hero knows what he/she wants but not what he/she needs
2. Embarrassing incident that brings a dangerous opportunity
3. Hero commits and makes progress by doing it the easy way
4. The easy way leads to a big disaster and loss of safety
5. The hero tries the hard way, dealing with real consequences
6. The hero faces a spiritual crisis as a result of those consequences
7. The strengthened hero deals with the problem once and for all.

This is described in full by Matt Bird over at Cockeyed Caravan in the Hero Project.