The best book I’ve read on this topic is “Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them” by John Yorke.
The author is British, so it doesn’t suffer so much from the “Hollywood has all the answers” syndrome of American screenwriting guides. It’s definitely about mainstream stories, but with a bit of a wider perspective.
Word of caution regarding that kind of advice:
It is okay to read those helpers, to try them out and so on, but the surest way to write a totally bland story is to follow these narration formulae to the dot. You should always read them as "if nothing else helps use this"-type of advice.
That doesn't mean you could totally write a meaningful impacting story that follows that pattern, it just means if you have the problem of what to write, it is probably misleadingnyou into writing crap.
So my advice (as a MA of Arts who studied film and did their own writing) would be to read all of these helpers, extract the narrative advice from them and then write freely without following any simplistic formula that everybody and their dog has seen a million times in thousand low budget television series.
Or better: If you want to write good stories, instead of reading these "How to tell a story"-books take your favourite stories and analyze them meticulously: What are the major beats of the story? How does the story interact with the setting? How are figures introduced? What perspective is the story told from (and does that change throughout the story — if yes why)? Which part did impact you the most? Why did they impact you? What was used to create that impact? Which parts appeared to be just ornamental and without narrative function? What would happen if you left them out? And many more questions.
Do that with your ten favourite stories, series, films, theatre plays or whatever and you will probably learn more than in all of those books combined. And more important: You will do the thinking and it will give you story lessons that are relevant to material you like.
As my prof once said: the crows over Van Goghs field serve no direct function yet they are part of the picture, art does not need to be formulaic and it does not need to explain itself.
As with all entry-level advice, this isn't "how to write a great story", but "how to avoid writing a terrible one". You can't teach a beginner how to become a pro overnight, but you can teach them how to avoid the most basic mistakes.
This is like telling programmers they don't need to know data structures before writing a program. While technically true, it will hamstring you until you go back and learn it. You need to master the basics before you can branch out into more advanced things. Don't put the cart before the horse. Besides, some of the best stories out there, like Shaun of the Dead, stick to the formulas to a T. They're used in classes to teach the basics because their writers perfected them.
> as a MA of Arts who studied film and did their own writing
I say as an MFA of Writing who has also studied film (for whatever that's worth).
> This is like telling programmers they don't need to know data structures before writing a program.
Serious question: What did you refer to with "This"? You might argue against something I didn't say here.
I did not say people should not read these books — I actually said the opposite: read as many books as you can find, even the formulaic ones. What I did say however is that writing entails more than is said in these books.
To go with your analogy: Yes, beginner programmers should be aware that just understanding the data structures alone doesn't make you a master programmer and that there is more to the craft.
And taking your analogy to the next step, what does that make that blog article? That would be like an article on data structures pretending you can do everything with Arrays and not mentioning anything else exist.
Don't get me wrong, story structure is crucial, but doing as if there is only one doesn't help beginners and communicating why this one is common and what advantages it has over other choices would be much better.
I don't really have a sorted list of sources, but one thing that springs to my mind and isn't already on all lists out there is Yuri Lotmans Semiotic Theory¹, which with its focus on boundaries offers an interesting perspective and toolset that isn't found in a lot of other places. And if you read careful you will find that hero leaving there comfort zone (having to step over a boundary) as well.
The main characters have already entered their uncomfortable situation before the first scene. The twist happens unexpectedly and isn't even shown on screen. The uncomfortable situation remains, with the only change being in character understanding of it. I think it's best understood as the four act "kishōtenketsu"[0] structure, not the Hero's Journey type structure described in the article.
3. Get yourself to continue writing something you previously started.
4. Improve the quality of your writing with specific detail.
5. Learn that it's not enough to just have specific detail--it must be significant detail.
6. Learn about the architecture of story.
7. "Story Structure Architect" by Victoria Lynn Schmidt.
I have completed 13 book manuscripts, and had 4 published. My last thriller novel got me an agent. (Took me 2 years for the original draft followed by 4 years of rewrites over 30 drafts.)
I've been reading HN more this past week to avoid rehashing now unavoidable horrors in the news. And here I am, "hearing" this guy telling me that society is having a macrocosmic psychotic break - that the downstairs had been invited up to run things, but not the just the house, the country. Awesome.
>Re: Comment on "Story Structure 101" about escaping Trump news via HackerNews, finding perfect description of escape's impossibility. Two actors: Crusty (seeking refuge) and Analyst (theoretical trickster).
Back during the times of the Ancient Greeks, there were Tragedies and Comedies.
What kind of story it is comes from the architecture of the story:
Structure of a Tragedy: "They're going to win, they're going to win, they're going to win--they lose."
Structure of a Comedy: "They're going to lose, they're going to lose, they're going to lose--they win."
As you see, it is the reversal that makes the story pattern.
Great example: In 1840, Charles Dickens was writing the serial novel "The Old Curiosity Shop". It was published in weekly serial installments over 88 weeks. Dickens was writing it as it was being published. The story is about a Grandfather and his granddaugter Little Nell. The grandfather owes a huge amount money to a loan shark Quilp. Quilp says pay me by giving me Little Nell.
The story is about the flight of the old man and little girl across the London countryside with Quilp in pursuit.
As Dickens was writing the story (and published two chapters a week), his friend John Forster said: "You know you're going to have to kill her." Dickens was horrified because he realized he had been writing a Tragedy--which had to end in "they lose".
In the famous account, when oceanliners crossed the Atlantic Ocean with copies of the 88th and final installment, a crowd of 100,000+ were waiting on the docks of Boston harbor, all yelling the same thing to the debarking passengers: "Is Little Nell dead?" She was.
"Fiction is not interior decorating--it's architecture"--Ernest Hemingway.
Antigone can be better characterized as following the 5 act structure that Shakespeare used:
I. Introduction
II. Growth
III. Climax
IV. Fall
V. Catastrophe
The best example of Shakespeare's structure is in Macbeth
I. Introduction. The three witches tell Macbeth that after three things happen, he will be king.
II. Growth. The first two of the three happen
III. Climax. Macbeth himself kills King Duncan, fulfilling the third prophesy.
IV. Fall. Duncan's people figure out that Macbeth committed the murder.
V. Catastrophe. They kill Macbeth for the murder.
This structure shows that no event is finished until we see the backlash.
I also tracked down the original, which comes from the magnificent book "Dickens' Working Notes for his Novels" which I read in college and eventually bought my own copy:
"Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style was his exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those public reactions.
A fine example of this process can be seen in his weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In this novel, Little Nell and her Grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp. The progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit. As Dickens wrote and published the weekly installments, his good friend John Forster pointed out to Dickens: "You know you're going to have to kill her, don't you."
Why this end was necessary can be explained by a brief analysis of the difference between the structure of a comedy versus a tragedy. In a comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think they're going to lose, you think they're going to lose, they win." In tragedy, it's: "You think they're going to win, you think they're going to win, they lose". As you see, the dramatic conclusion of the story is implicit throughout the novel. So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the form of a tragedy, the sad outcome of the novel was a foregone conclusion. If he had not caused his heroine to lose, he would not have completed his dramatic structure. Dickens admitted that his friend Forster was right and, in the end, Little Nell died. Dickens himself admitted that he did not want to kill Nell, but he was a novelist and he had to complete the novel's structure. See: Dickens' [sic] Working Notes for His Novels."
The author is British, so it doesn’t suffer so much from the “Hollywood has all the answers” syndrome of American screenwriting guides. It’s definitely about mainstream stories, but with a bit of a wider perspective.
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