One Story: The TCR Framework
One Story reveals the hidden emotional structure behind all compelling narratives, moving beyond conventional external plot mechanics, to focus on the protagonist’s deepest psychological journey.
At its core is Tension-Collapse-Repair (TCR)—a process that integrates post-Freudian psychoanalytic insight with cinematic storytelling, reframing screenwriting from vague abstractions into precise emotional transitions.
Across every genre, stories that resonate deeply do so because they enact a fundamental transformation: the protagonist’s movement from fragmented unawareness to self-integrated creativity.
1: Tension
Realization / Neglect / Unfulfilled Self
the protagonist awakens to a neglected aspect of their becoming, sensing an urgent inner truth that demands active engagement.
2: Collapse
Fragmentation / Irreconcilability / Breakdown
the protagonist’s illusions of control burst, forcing deep loss as the psychic solution to fragmentation of self and identity.
3: Repair
Integration / Nurture / Becoming
the protagonist actively nurtures neglected aspects of self into creative wholeness, acting from an integrated acceptance.
There is only One Story.
Whatever the genre—whether Silence of the Lambs, Star Wars IV: A New Hope, Dances With Wolves, Three Billboards, Aliens, When Harry Met Sally—a protagonist worth our love and concern comes to love themselves and become concerned with the fragmentation or the creative integration of their self-parts.
Clarice suffers from a childhood pain she cannot integrate into her adult life. Luke struggles to integrate his skill with his intuition. Dunbar pursues the frontier of self (before it's gone), his True Self struggling to emerge and become. Harry struggles to accept that he passionately loves a woman he deeply likes.
All of them undergo a gradual transition—from pre-unintegrated selves, to unintegrated selves, to integrated compassionate self-loving selves.
One Story: Core Concepts
At the heart of TCR is a profound recognition: every compelling story mirrors the universal human journey toward psychological wholeness. Stories matter because they enact our deepest quest—the repair and integration of fragmented aspects of ourselves into a creatively authentic self.
TCR views drama as the protagonist’s shift from a fragmented existence—where inner conflicts, like love vs. hate / self vs. world / skill vs. intution / pain vs. creativity, feel irreconcilable—to a state of wholeness where these tensions coexist without need for resolution.
This process, driven by an innate human need to grow without breaking apart, is what fuels a narrative’s emotional pull, fulfilling our own longing to become more fully ourselves.
At its core, TCR embodies two mental states shaping this journey or process. Early on, the protagonist is trapped in a split mindset—seeing life in stark opposites, using desperate tactics like denial or control to avoid their neglected potential self. Later, they come to embrace a fuller perspective, accepting life’s destructiveness and messiness, and so becoming able to nurture-into-becoming what they’ve had to ignore. This shift from fragmentation to coherence isn’t just plot—it’s the psyche’s transition from fracture to repair, played out on screen in dramatic phases.
What makes TCR further unique is its recursive pulse: every scene, sequence, and act echoes this tension-to-repair rhythm. Every dramatic unit is a TCR unit.
Whether triumph or tragedy, stories reflect our capacity—or failure—to repair what’s been abandoned in our lives (within and/or without). This psychological engine turns screenwriting into a living act of integration, fusing the protagonist’s path with the writer’s daily craft and the audience’s unspoken hope, proving that a broken self may still find its way home... to its own becoming.
Why This Framework is Different
The One Story approach expands and deepens a screenwriter's existing feel for cinematic shape, genre, and tone. TCR grounds emergent narrative structure in the humanity and emotional truth of self-becoming, providing an incisive vision for crafting narratives that profoundly resonate with self, protagonist, and audience.
Unlike conventional screenwriting approaches that focus primarily on external plot and structure, TCR expresses the elephant in the industry: the underlying psychological engine that drives a truly engaging narrative. It accounts for how we come to care about a character and their journey. Beautiful images will only get you so far in film. TCR grounds narrative structure on the humanity-juice of self-becoming, providing a practical roadmap for feeling-out stories that resonate fundamentally with self, protagonist, and audience.
Author
Andrew Hewitt is a BAFTA-Nominated Composer who has forty years of professional international experience in film, television, and classical music. He has the LAMDA Gold Medal for Acting, and performed in the soundtracks to the Star Wars Prequels and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Andrew graduated with a Masters from Cambridge University, won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and has completed the Foundation course at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis. Andrew's profound belief in narrative as an expression of psychological integration inspired the creation of One Story, bridging the gap between psychoanalytic insight and cinematic creativity. www.andrewhewitt.co
Book Extract Summary
Act 1 – Tension: Realizing Neglect
Act 1 marks the critical shift from unconscious neglect to conscious neglect. Here, the protagonist experiences for the first time the tension between their fulfilled and neglected selves. They become increasingly aware that something vital has been left unattended, in the journey of their life as a totality. Each scene embodies a growing question of inner conflict: What neglected aspect of myself is longing for expression? How have I been blocking my becoming?
Feeling
A flatness of existence, quiet dissatisfaction, sense of unspoken absence, transitioning toward the unsettling discomfort of knowing something must change.
TCR Examples
- Star Wars: Luke Skywalker senses his deeper purpose beyond life on Tatooine, feeling he must become something more than a farmer's hand.
- The Silence of the Lambs: Clarice Starling experiences a confrontation between her adult ambition and her internal childhood pain (the premature death of her father).
- Dances with Wolves: Dunbar experiences profound alienation, falseness of being, within his own culture, realizing he’s neglecting his deeper, authentic self in need of fulfillment of being.
- When Harry Met Sally: Harry and Sally initially dismiss their attraction and emotional-psychological compatibility, unaware they're neglecting their deeper relational selves.
Act 2 – Collapse: Facing Fragmentation
Act 2 plunges the protagonist into the painful depths of fragmentation: a self in bits. Their manic strategies of avoidance of this incompatibility of self-parts fail, revealing irreconcilable internal divisions. This prompts them to confront profound vulnerability and loss of coherent identity. The psychological collapse is pivotal—it's the existential crisis that every protagonist must fully experience, to move inward into their own self-dependence.
Feeling
Disorientation, loss of control, grasping at failing strategies to solve irroncilability. Transitioning to the psychic climax where everything that the protagonist depended on dissolves.
TCR Examples
- Star Wars: Luke struggles to embrace his intuition. Experiences devastating loss with Obi-Wan's death, collapsing into the uncertainty of a crisis of dependency.
- The Silence of the Lambs: Clarice’s loss of Lecter leaves her with no option but to internalize his voice, and use her own sense to pursue Buffalo Bill on her own.
- Dances with Wolves: Sukmanitutanka Obwaci’s integration into the Lakota clashes violently with his old regiment's insistence he return to being Dunbar, and betray his self and people.
- When Harry Met Sally: After struggling with accepting their deep connection, Harry and Sally sever ties, convinced their togetherness is an illusion produced only by superficial convictions.
Act 3 – Repair: Integrating the True Self
Act 3 embodies the protagonist’s conscious and active commitment to repair—the integrative nurturing of their previously neglected self. Their actions embody personal wholeness, making external narrative resolution inevitably an expression of psychic-structural integrity. They act from psychological acceptance, resilience, and emotional authenticity.
Feeling
From collapse/chaos, into self-integration or centeredness, through to a repairing of the object/self. Protagonist’s actions flow naturally, no longer driven by fear, but by the integrity of integration.
TCR Examples
- Star Wars: Luke, with Obi-Wan's voice internalized, trusts the co-enactment of his skill and intuition, obviating the need for technological-guidance, and launches the decisive shot at the right time and place.
- The Silence of the Lambs: Clarice takes in Lecter's voice, relying on her sense of the world, and the violence inherent in human nature, to lead her on her own to the site of reparation.
- Dances with Wolves: Sukmanitutanka Obwaci integrates his fragmented identities, accepting a life with the Lakota that authentically expresses his True Self.
- When Harry Met Sally: Harry chooses vulnerability and openness about doubt and need with Sally, repairing his relationship to her, to himself, and their relationship to each other.
Contact
We'd love to hear from you—for any enquiries, and for individual, collaborative, or corporate consultation, please email Andrew Hewitt:
One Story: The E-Book
Go beyond traditional screenwriting frameworks. One Story introduces the groundbreaking Tension-Collapse-Repair framework, the radical psychoanalytic approach that unlocks the secrets to envisioning truly compelling and emotionally resonant narratives. A model that unites plot with profound inner change.
Packed with film breakdowns, character case studies, and step-by-step guidance, this book is both a transformative new vision for the Hollywood industry and a hands-on creative tool for screenwriters.
One Story
Screenwriting as Self Integration
Part 1 - A Language for Becoming
Chapter 1
Why One Story?
Chapter 2
The Problem of Conventional Language
Chapter 3
Psychoanalysis as the True Language of Character
Chapter 4
What is the One Story?
Chapter 5
Metapsychology: A Language of Becoming
Part 2 - A Journey of Becoming
Chapter 6
The Tension–Collapse–Repair (TCR) Framework
Chapter 7
Act 1 – Realizing Neglect (Tension)
Chapter 8
Act 2 – The Pain of Fragmentation (Collapse)
Chapter 9
Act 3 – The Power of Reparation (Repair)
Chapter 10
Psychological Faith: The Ground of Repair
Chapter 11
Tragic Character: The Failure of Personal Integration
Chapter 12
Why Films Fail: The Lack of Formal Integration
Chapter 13
The Formal Recursion of TCR
Part 3 - A Pragmatics of Becoming
Chapter 14
Screenwriting Talent: Writing the Feeling of Becoming
Chapter 15
The Screenwriter’s Journey
Chapter 16
From Screenwriter to Audience: The Triadic Integration
Chapter 17
The Pragmatics of Psychological Integration
Chapter 18
Screenwriting as Survival and Hope
Appendix
Glossary & Further Reading