What is the Tension-Collapse-Repair (TCR) Framework?

The Tension-Collapse-Repair (TCR) framework is a psychoanalytic model of storytelling that maps character development across three phases: Tension (realization of neglect), Collapse (inner fragmentation), and Repair (psychological integration).

How is One Story different from other screenwriting methods?

One Story focuses on the internal psychoanalytic transformation of the protagonist, rather than external plot beats or steps. It is rooted in a character’s interior struggle with wholeness, offering the most deeply human and emotionally resonant structure.

Who is Andrew Hewitt?

Andrew Hewitt is a BAFTA-nominated screen composer and founder of One Story. He has studied psychoanalysis extensively and combines deep psychological insight with cinematic storytelling expertise.

What kind of stories work best with the TCR method?

Stories that focus on a protagonist's deep inner conflict, such as Silence of the Lambs, Star Wars, or Sicario, naturally align with the TCR process. Any genre works, as long as there's a character struggling with becoming whole.

Why do some screenplays feel flat or episodic?

According to the TCR process, screenplays feel flat when they lack metapsychological transitions. Without a protagonist undergoing real internal change, the narrative lacks emotional gravity and feels disconnected.

How does the TCR model apply to individual scenes?

Each scene should further the protagonist’s internal progression within one of the three phases. Ask: Is this scene revealing the neglected self, dramatizing collapse, or showing integration and repair?

Can this framework help with writer’s block?

Yes. The TCR framework describes a clear internal process, making it easier to identify what your character is resisting, suffering from, or growing toward—keeping the dramatic engine alive.

Andrew Hewitt — Writer & Story Consultant

Writing On Film

Good Films

Heat Conceit

Innocence Polarity

Genderflip

Wobbly Mayor

Postmod Junkies

Ripley’s Dream

Clarice Integrated

Biometallica

Electronic Worlds

Maternal Unity

Disturbance

About Andrew

Writer, character and narrative consultant, psychoanalytic thinker, screen composer.

I help shape stories, films, and experiences at the intersection of cinema and psyche.

I have forty years of international artistic experience in film, television, and music, and a BAFTA Nomination as a screen composer.

Born in England in 1976, I live in Los Angeles on the Greencard, and hold British citizenship.

STUDY & PERFORMANCE

After an early career as a child classical performer, I earned a Masters in Music from Cambridge University (Thesis: Wagnerian Thematic Technique in John Williams's Star Wars Trilogy), won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and gained the LAMDA Gold Medal for Acting.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

On graduation, I completed the Introductory and Foundation courses at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis—including a year's clinical observation at London's Halliwick Center for Borderline Personality Disorder—and began two decades of in-depth personal psychoanalysis. I also attended shorter courses, lectures, and workshops at the Philadelphia Association, the London Centre for Psychotherapy, the New Center for Psychoanalysis, and the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies.

FILM SCORING

After performing worldwide in hundreds of classical concerts, recordings, and operas, and in soundtracks including the Star Wars Prequels and Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I went on to compose the orchestral and electronic scores to over twenty feature films, as well as numerous television productions and commercials. (See the Scoring Portfolio section.)

ONE STORY

My lifelong passion for cinema, and for narrative as psychological process, led to my creation of the One Story approach to screenwriting. The One Story section here introduces this unique fusion of psychoanalytic insight with cinematic creativity, in a powerful new understanding of character and story process.

SCRIPTS

You can browse the Spec Scripts section to discover the feature screenplays I currently have in development.

Spec Scripts

Selected feature screenplays currently in development.

SILHOUETTE

Espionage Drama. 1999. A psychologist joins a clandestine inter-agency taskforce, to hunt a double-agent threatening the pursuit of a foreign cyberwarfare cult.

INTIMATE SECRETS

Drama, Alt History. 1885. Young lab assistant Freud travels to Paris to study with Charcot, the inventor of neurology—leading to mentorship, fallout, a radical theory of mind, and an encounter with the astronomer who discovered 'dark matter' that will change the world.

FLAKE

Horror. A genetic archeologist in search of a cure for the rare disease that killed her brother, uses ancient egyptian dna to bear a child, inadvertently reawakening an ancient demonic force.

THE TREATY OF ORION

Sci-Fi. 2084, three centuries after the treaty of paris enabled the independence of the US. From a depleted and divided Earth, a secret service agent, torn by guilt after a leader's assassination, seeks redemption through a solo interstellar voyage—to attempt First Contact, and enable humanity's membership of a galactic community.

SILENT KIND

Horror. A film librarian in an old movie studio campus becomes haunted by characters in a hundred-year-old damaged film she is trying to restore.

AFTERMATH

Psychological Sci-Fi. Researchers in a private island underground biotech lab unearth alien technology that evokes their individual traumas and latent, murderous insanity.

ANGORA BLUE

Drama. A young man in a small town, desperate to escape living with his fractious lonely mother, begins an erotic affair with the newly-widowed wife of his employer, with catastrophic consequences.

One Story { write1story.com }

AN INTEGRATED LIFE

In my One Story screenwriting framework, a character engages and deeply affects us only if they enter into a specific process.

They must use the story to engage with the integration of split-off parts of themselves—for the first time in their lives.

That's why the story means so much to them, and therefore to us.

Clarice Starling, Michael Clayton, Ellen Ripley, John Dunbar, all begin their stories at a time where their unintegrated self stands at a critical turning point. In a sense they can't bear it, being unintegrated, any longer. Either they take the opportunity for transformative integration, or fester and die an existential death.

Their story offers them the specific possibility and opportunity to integrate their self parts—for the first time. This is the deep power of living, gripping, dramatic stories. Without this character process, films are undramatic and feel dead.

UNIQUE INSIGHT

One Story reveals the psychological core beneath all gripping narratives—a profound internal struggle determining why we care deeply, why films resonate, and why characters come vibrantly alive. For the first time, One Story articulates this fundamental process.

Central to this insight is the Tension-Collapse-Repair (TCR) character process—a fusion of psychoanalytic insight and cinematic storytelling, that trades vague industry abstractions (arc, transformation, hero, villain, tragedy) for exquisitely sensitive psychological reality.

THERE IS ONLY 'ONE STORY'

Across genres—whether Silence of the Lambs, Star Wars IV A New Hope, Dances With Wolves, Three Billboards, Aliens, or When Harry Met Sally—truly gripping characters compel our love and concern from loving themselves, preoccupied with the urgent transition from fragmented to integrated self.

Clarice suffers from a childhood pain she cannot reconcile with her adult life. Luke labors to unite skill with intuition. Dunbar seeks his emerging True Self ("before it's gone") at the 'frontier' of his being. Harry struggles to accept that he passionately loves a woman he deeply likes.

Without such an inner transitional process, we simply don't care enough to keep watching. Our hearts don't go out to them, and no amount of visual or sonic fireworks will engage us.

This essential journey—struggling to become more themselves—is the true pulse of gripping storytelling.

WHY TCR IS GROUNDBREAKING

Conventional screenwriting methods emphasize external structure and plot mechanics, without recognizing that audiences connect through psychological struggle. Structural process emerges from the TCR process, not the other way round. What grips us is not action per se, but the raw, existential struggle of an unintegrated self—the agonizing psychic frustration that drives all compelling drama. TCR reveals this missing psychological and personal core.

Rooted in a century of psychoanalytic insight, One Story translates profound psychological realities into practical narrative tools. No other approach integrates psychoanalytic depth, as old as cinema itself, so closely with the heart of drama.

Going beyond formula, One Story reveals the inner struggle of becoming—offering a deeper, more intuitive lens for storytelling.