How do you attack and structure a story? Do you see the situation first? Do you have an image or set piece in mind? Or do you begin with character?
For me, that’s typically the case. I tend to write from the idea of a thing that’s happening in the world—sometimes to me—and I imagine the person who can go through that thing in a bigger, more dramatic way. Codependency? Let’s make two ridiculously codependent characters. Someone lost in the deepest throes of yearning? Let’s tell a story of someone desperate enough to stalk a friend they want to make. Everything else builds around those elements based on the genre I choose.
Writer and story artist Adam Argot has spent 15 years working in film, TV, games, and publishing, and teaches story structure at CalArts and as a guest lecturer in USC's Screenwriting Program. His book, The Story Ritual: Character Arcs & Rites of Passage, came out in 2025.
In an interview with Film Courage, Argot walked through how he approaches character and structure. In his view, what most storytellers call a character arc is really a rite of passage, and understanding that connection changes what you're actually doing when you shape one. This structure is already baked into the three acts you know, he says. Some stories rise to the level of ritual and others don't.
What does any of this mean for a director on set? Let’s find out.
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The Rite of Passage and van Gennep
Argot found a familiar-looking structure as he was doing some reading, he says, and this structure led to new thinking in approaching character.
"My thesis is basically that what people are describing with the character arc is Arnold van Gennep's theory of the rite of passage, and the function of a rite of passage is ultimately about endowing the initiate, the subject of the rite of passage, with the proper values."
Van Gennep was a French folklorist who published Les rites de passage in 1909 and identified three universal phases in every ritual of transition: préliminaire (separation from the old status), liminaire (the threshold or in-between state), and postliminaire (incorporation into the new status). Fun fact—the word “liminal” comes from the Latin “limen,” meaning threshold.
"The more I dove into, ‘What exactly does this concept of thresholds tie into?’ that's what led me to reading van Gennep, and it's just brilliant insight."
When directors and writers talk about "crossing the threshold" into Act Two, they're using van Gennep's words literally. Van Gennep's three phases also directly informed Joseph Campbell's hero's journey (departure, initiation, return), which then filtered into modern screenwriting via Christopher Vogler and Save the Cat and all the rest of them.
Turns out the structure everyone uses is older than the industry that uses it.
What Is a Rite of Passage?
In thinking about these thresholds and rites of passage, Argot uses van Gennep's own house metaphor. In it, life is a house, each room is a stage of life, and rituals help you walk through the doors between them. Communities have used rituals for millennia to introduce members into new phases so they can "comfortably adapt" and know what's expected of them.
When people aren’t comfortable, that leads to disconnect.
"So much of what we talk about with the identity crisis has so much to do with the fact that we no longer feel oriented in the society that we're navigating," Argot says.
A character arc that works the same way a rite of passage does isn't just moving a protagonist from point A to point B. It's endowing them with values that let them function in a new phase of their identity.
The arcs that land emotionally are the ones where you can feel the character being remade. Their choices make sense and impact the story.
Learn more about the hero's journey in screenwriting and how the call to adventure is the initial threshold moment.
'Lawrence of Arabia' Credit: Columbia Pictures
So When Is a Story a Ritual?
Argot's argument up to this point sets up a question. If character arcs descend from rites of passage, and rites of passage are how communities have always shaped identity, then does that mean every character-driven story is doing ritual work? A romantic comedy, a superhero movie, a Seinfeld episode?
Argot says no. His framework looks at the difference between two kinds of values a story can carry. Practical values are the everyday stuff like social conventions, competence, cleverness, getting what you want. Sacred values are the deeper things, like who someone is at their core, what community they belong to, and what they're becoming.
Both make for legitimate storytelling, but only one rises to ritual.
"Not every story is a ritual,” he says. “It doesn't rise to the level of ritual, but every story does convey a certain amount of values. When the stories are interested in conveying a character arc, when those values are sacred, [and] have to do with identity, then it becomes a ritual."
Argot actually does look at Seinfeld as an example of something not doing ritual work.
“They're more interested in the practical values through irony, the subjugation of, you know, practical values. Like, why do we have to sit here and wait just because someone told me to wait?"
So while the show is funny and entertaining, its characters don’t really change, and it doesn’t rise to the level of being a ritual.
His contrast is a quinceañera. A 15-year-old girl publicly transitions into adulthood, dating, and eventual marriage. The whole community shows up. The dresses, the photos, the mother helping the daughter, all of it communicates a specific identity shift, and everyone present witnesses it.
Films that engage with sacred values around identity (who someone is, who they're becoming, what the community around them now expects) rise to the level of ritual. Films that engage practical values entertain. Both are legitimate ways to tell a story. A writer or director choosing between them is simply choosing what the film is ultimately for.
Why Does This Matter?
You make a lot of choices as a storyteller. Sometimes your character changes, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you work in one genre, other times you pick another.
"I just don't buy the escapism thing,” Argot says. “We're not engaging because we're like, 'Oh, I've got two hours that I want to fill.' We want to be engaged. We want to have a meaningful experience."
If you know your protagonist's arc is a rite of passage, you make different choices. You are more mindful of the moments where the character crosses from one identity to another.
As a writer, you’re not just delivering plot beats and hitting marks. You start making characters that engage the audience's own thresholds, which leads to deeper stories.
