Step 4: Trace the Interplay of God's Story With Another - Framing Stories with God's Story (cont'd)

© 2026 Dane M. Bundy. All rights reserved.

Editor's Note: This is the fifth installment in a series on Framing Stories with God's Story. Click here to read all the installments.

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In our last entry, we discussed the third step in the process: Note the Hero's Motivational Journey. Today, we'll explore the fourth step in the Framing Stories approach - Trace the Interplay of God's Story with Another.

With a printout of the God’s Story chart, we can trace the plot of the story we are teaching or studying on top of God’s Story.

If the story begins in a state where all is well (e.g. Frodo in the Shire), start tracing the plot over the tree in Creation as seen below.

Trace plot into Fall

It is common in storytelling to say that the author’s job is to disrupt the hero’s peace and drive him up a tree and throw rocks at him. When you see conflict like this in the story, it is your signal to trace the plot line downward into Fall.

Now, as the hero makes his way toward his objective seen in New Creation, trace the plot upward along the green line of Redemption. When an obstacle presents itself again, the plot travels downward near the red line.

In most stories, there will come a point where the hero will face an obstacle that seems insurmountable. A friend recently described this as the hero’s dark night of the soul. For Jesus, this may be his time in the Garden of Gethsemane, or to his apostles the Saturday when he laid dead in his tomb. We show this “dark night” by tracing the line so it either touches the red line or, if you want to make a point about how low the hero is, the plot line can go beneath it.

Tracing a Whole Story

If you are tracing a whole story, right after the “dark night,” a turn takes place in which the story races back toward the line of Redemption and New Creation. What makes this turn? Often a great sacrifice ushers in this change. In The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe it is Aslan offering his life. In the illustration of God’s Story, I have drawn a cross noting the hero’s, or another character’s, sacrifice.

After the sacrifice, there comes victory over evil and a joyful unraveling of the plot (i.e. the denouement). Here we trace the plotline in and over New Creation, leading to a happily ever after.

Trace a Whole Story

Tracing a Broken Story 

A broken story parallels a whole story for much of the plot. Good is still distinct from evil, but the ending separates the two types. As seen below, when the hero falls short of his objective, we trace the line downward and stop short. 

The value of tracing a broken story against God’s Story is that it stirs longing in our hearts for New Creation. In some stories, like the book of Judges, the story ends tragically, but because we know the full picture, we remember Judges is but a broken story within a whole one.

Trace a Broken Story

Tracing a Bent Story 

Tracing bent stories requires a reader or viewer to interpret what the author is trying to say. To complicate it even more, many bent stories look almost identical in structure to whole stories. 

The starting point for guiding students to think about bent stories is the gut test. Michael Hague, a leading Hollywood script consultant, explains in his book Writing Screenplays that Sell, “All filmmakers, therefore, have a single goal: to elicit emotion in an audience” (3). Movies make you love, hate, sympathize with or have disgust for individuals or ideas. Stories are not like essays built upon valid and sound arguments; stories aim for the heart and imagination.

Thus, in the gut test, we ask ourselves: What is the author making us feel? If you hate the town leaders but love the outlaw robber (Robin Hood), you may be dealing with a bent story. If you find yourself rooting for a mob boss, hoping he succeeds in his ventures (The Godfather), you may have encountered a bent story. If you want the good-looking bank robber to escape with someone else’s riches (Oceans 11), say hello for me to the bent story.

Trace a Bent Story

When tracing bent stories, you can approach them as whole stories, with notes on the illustration that the author is actually portraying red (evil) as green (good), or that the villain is actually the hero. Or, you can invert the tracing, drawing an upside down assent into New Creation. 

Now, let us explore two examples. 

Judges and Hamlet as Examples

Below is the book of Judges outlined against the bigger view of God’s Story. The illustration becomes a commonplace for observations about the plot, the key verse, Israel’s objective, and the moral universe the author offers in the story.

Tracing of Judges

The next example is Hamlet. The tracing looks simpler in this example because I used more symbols to act as references and footnotes connected with a fuller analysis of the play. At the bottom of the chart, you can see that I have marked the five acts of the play with letters that stand for the act in a word. 

Act I – Revealing. 

Act II – Beginning. 

Act III – Confirming. 

Act IV – Conniving. 

Act V – Maturing 

The phrase ‘three-fold’ is used to show the three-fold mission Hamlet receives from the ghost of his father: (i) avenge his murder; (ii) bring Gertrude to repentance; and (ii) do not taint your mind. I have traced Hamlet as a whole story because, although Hamlet dies leaving a wake of destruction, he completes his three-fold mission, and Fortinbras ascends to the throne of Denmark, a much nobler man than Claudius.

Tracing of Hamlet

Conclusion

That is it! The Framing Stories with God’s Story approach is one way to make biblical integration more seamless for those who learn well with story and image. It keeps the full picture of God and his Story at the forefront of our minds, framing the novel or movie or play that we are studying. 

The sweet spot of the approach is with upper grammar to sophomore age students, though my wife, a 2nd grade teacher, uses step 1 (echoes of God’s Story) when she teaches literature. I have used the Framing approach in a senior level Philosophy of Film course. 

When you or your students bring together all four steps, you have a commonplace of reflections ready to fuel classroom discussion, aid essay writing, or speech preparation. I also use it for movie reviews! If you would like to download the chart and begin today, here you go. Or, if you are artistic, you may draw your own. 

In conclusion, my prayer is that you will find this approach fruitful and fun, helping you keep Christ at the forefront of your imagination!

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Dane Bundy is the president of Stage & Story and Fine Arts Director at Regents School of Austin.