As early 20th-century writers produced technical writing manuals and aids for constructing plots that punctured the notions of literary genius, literary scholars were drawn to more analytic and algorithmic means of dissecting the structure and patterns of texts. Part of the larger Structuralist movement, which sought to uncover the common structures underlying culture, language, and society, literary structuralists isolated archetypal narrative elements such as genres, plots, character types, and settings. While such systemic literary analysis was by no means an invention of the 20th century (Aristotle’s Poetics painstakingly breaks down literary forms in the 4th century BC), the examples displayed here demonstrate an increasing focus on extracting the constituent components of literature, which were, simultaneously, also being used in writing manuals and how-to texts that sought to hack the process of writing. The coincidence of academic structuralist analysis and professional writing aids points to a formalist wave in both literary spheres.