Exploring the story shape: dragons, dinosaurs, and Argo

So, stories have the shape of a dragon. Who would have thought? Maybe that's where dragons came from in the first place! Or am I just wishful thinking.

For this blog post I'd like to go over the shape in a little more detail. I've been amazed at how much insight this shape has yielded once I found it. Today we'll start by looking at the spikes.

The spikes are why it had to be a dragon. It could have been a Stegosaurus but I like the mystical and mythical quality of dragons better. And on closer inspection Stegosauruses have big sharp spikes on their tails. What does this mean in terms of story story structure? Let's look at the dragon first and well come back to the extinct stegosaurus.

Dragon spikes

If we look at the dragon's back we see a series of spikes. What are these? We're mapping the hopes and fears of the audience and our character. So the spikes represent the audience going from fear to hope and back again. A short story might have 3 of these spikes, during the doing it wrong section, which could represent scenes. A complex story might have many more. The whole dragon's spine is covered with them. Is this the infamous SPINE OF THE STORY???? Have you ever seen the spine of your story before?

The Stegosaurus has sharp spikes on it's tail- the start of the story. These spikes are sharper than the rest of the Stegosaurus's spikes. That would mean that Act 1 would have to have something really big and exciting to bring the audience up to hope and down to fear that quickly. The problem is that the story hasn't been set up for this yet, and secondly, this would make the rest of the story anticlimactic.

Where'd the hope go?

The overall shape of the Stegosaurus is wrong it starts to go up right away towards hope with obstacles along the way. But we haven't set up the problem yet. Then it gets worse as a story structure. It goes down at the right time but it never goes back up! The audience would be left hanging wishing for something better. We never give them more than they expected.

What about a Brontosaurus? What about that shape? The Brontosaurus shape takes us upward towards hope then a sight dip and then way up to hope! Great right? No. There are two problems with the Brontosaurus shape. There are not spikes so the story won't have ups and downs and twists and turns to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. Secondly, no one would sit through an Act 1 where nothing happens. The tail is flat.

Boring Act 1 won't take off.

The other problem with the Brontosaurus is that scientists now claim that Brontosaurus's are not a new species but rather a variant of the Apoatosaurus. Not only are Brontosaurs's extinct, but they never existed in the first place!

To learn more about the great Brontosaurus hoax...

One could argue that a James Bond movie has Stegosaurus-like spikes in Act 1. The spikes at this point are pure action without too much emotional involvement. The spikes would have to start at the end of the tail (beginning of the story) but the spikes on a real Stegosaurus start a little further along the spine. However, another way to look the Bond series is that they are all part of a continuum. One Bond movie carries over to the next. (We haven't gone into what happens in the backstory or after the story is over yet.)

QUESTION: Do we have to "willingly suspend our disbelief "that James Bond is played by different people in the different films. I've always thought that the theory of "willing suspension of disbelief" was bogus. I've never gone into a movie theatre, got my snacks, waited for the lights to go down and the movie to start and willingly suspended my disbelief. I have also never heard anyone in the audience yell out, "Stop the projector! I haven't willingly suspended my disbelief."

 Pierce Brosnan

    Daniel Craig

     Roger Moore

 Timothy Dalton

 George Lazenby

      David Niven 

      Barry Nelson

      Sean Connery

List of Actors playing James Bond with films, dates and salaries

Metaphors We Live By- Lakoff & Johnson

According to George Lakoff, in Metaphors We Life By, metaphors have entailments. Some fit and some don't. We need to be careful with the metaphors we choose in our lives to make sure they don't unconsciously undermine us. The dragon shape is a metaphor which has very powerful explanatory power as well as explaining the emotional involvement of the audience. The thing about metaphors is that some aspects fix and act like a flash of illumination, and other aspects may not fit and are ignored. The dragon shape has many aspects that fit story structure and illuminate aspects of storytelling. Other aspects of the metaphor don't fit.

Getting back to our dragon, I actually like to use two colors. One color shows the spine very clearly as it goes up and down over time. The second color is used to show the interaction with the plot events of the story- all the smaller obstacles along the way. This helps you not confuse your plot and your story.

2 color story weave

I'm reminded of the ending Argo. Without spoiling the ending, the escape in Argo had many close calls of fear dips and back to hope.  There was one point where they piled on one more obstacle and I said to myself, "Enough! That was one too many." The result was that it momentarily took me out of the film. If the directors do their job, the audience gets sucked into the world of the film, like a dream. They don't have to willingly suspend their disbelief. The director only needs to guard the dream by creating a seamless illusion, so the audience doesn't wake up until the end. For that one moment in Argo, I woke up but then quickly went back to the dream.

Argo

We still need to go over what happens if we change the shape. More to come...

Double O Iggy, Storyteller's Log 12-10-2012

In addition to Aristotle, the plot point theories and the hero's journey there are other approaches to try to understand how stories are put together. The structuralist school is once such approach. Today we're going to look at Umberto Eco's analysis of the James Bond movies.

Eco proposed that the characters basically serve functions in the plot, which he likened to a chess game.

Here are the chess moves of a typical James Bond movie according to Eco.

A. M moves and gives Bond his mission.

B. Villain moves and appears to Bond. Often very charming at first.

C. Bond "checks" villain. Or Villain checks Bond.

D. Woman moves and appears to Bond.

E. Bond moves to Woman.

F. Villain captures Bond. Sometimes Woman too.

G. Villain tortures Bond. This is usually frowned upon in chess.

H. Bond checkmates Villain. 

I. Bond recovers with Woman. (He will lose the woman in time for the next installment.)

Simple. 

Eco goes on to show that by sometimes repeating elements this adds variety. Thus in one Bond movie Bond might be tortured twice or maybe get two women. The character of the villain, their sidekicks, their plan for world domination, Bond's gadgets and the method of torturing Bond also help to distinguish each Bond film from another. The Austin Powers series plays with these ideas.

The other thing to note in his approach is that the elements are arranged into binary pairs such as Bond/M, Bond/Villain, Bond/Woman, Free world/Bad guys, Love/Death, Loyalty/disloyalty. A very important theme explored in the Bond films is that of domination between dominators and dominated. This is expressed in relationships between Bond and his boss, the villain, the woman, the free world and the bad guys de jour. Originally the Bond series emerged during the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. 

If you wish to read more on Eco's approach check out: The Law of Bond Richard Taulke-Johnson

The Bond films are about spying. This is perfect for cinema because it's two primitive conflict structures are peeping and chases. Can't get more fun than that. 

This is great if you ever find yourself being asked to write the next 007 movie. Is it helpful for the rest of us mere mortals? Before we answer,  next time we'll explore another structuralist  thinker and examine the pros and cons of this approach. (I'm still finishing the artwork for that blog post. Shaken but not stirred...)

Was Aristotle wrong? Storyteller's Log 12-4-2012

Aristotle was an ancient greek who wrote one of the first books on storytelling circa 300 BC. He wrote a book called the Poetics. I bet he never dreamed that 2000 years later you could buy it over the internet. Well, Aristotle's Poetics is still affecting writers everywhere.

Aristotle gave us the three act structure- a beginning, a middle and an ending. He also suggested that we map the involvement of the audience over the time of the play. His chart looked like this.

This can be helpful in ways that Aristotle never imagined. We can use it to help our pacing. Watch what happens when we vary his structure. Start with a bang! We can start with something that gets the audience involved right away. After we have their attention, we can calm it down and build our story.

Another pacing issue structure is to provide a calm before the storm. Give the audience a change to rest before the big crisis and climax. Have you ever been in a museum and you get museum fatigue? Oh, another Matisse. Yawn. At a certain point you get saturated and can't take anymore in. You need to rest. Some action movies can be notorious for not giving the spectator a change to catch their breath. Ironically, instead of making the action bigger, it deadens us to the action through burnout. This calm period also provides a contrast in pacing. The calm before the storm creates tension with the audience waiting for the storm to hit.

The other thing I found useful with Aristotle's map was what happens when you vary the ending. Sometimes structural flaws can still be successful movies. Take this quiz and see how you do. 

What movie starts with a bang like this?

What movie looks like this camel back?

What movie looks like a receding mountain range? It's not Snow White and the Seven Drawfs.

What movie looks like a sand dune that was blown away?

What movie looks like a shark fin?

No, it is not Jaws.

So there is your quiz. The answers are below. But first I have some more thought about Aristotle. I think what happened is that with Aristotle we got into a rut that over time became a freeway that every writer rides along without thinking that there's no other way. In some ways he's like the philosopher, Descartes. You know, the,  "I think, therefore I am" guy. Well, we've been suffering with the cartesian subject ever since. He split reality into mind and matter and everybody believed him. (except mystics and post-cartesians)

Here's my problem with Aristotle. There are three parts to a story a beginning, middle and end. OK, I grant you he had a keen sense of the obvious. But tell me, does that help you write a story? It doesn't help me. He also never told anyone that you should start at the end but that's another subject.  

Does his mapping audience involvement help you write a story? I find it helps discover my pacing but it doesn't help me write a story.

I have learned from Aristotle but it wasn't enough. I, like Diogenes*, have kept searching.

ANSWERS

Yes, good old James Bond. Every 007 movie starts with a big action sequence. Then he returns to headquarters to get his new mission (the one of the movie) and he gets his cool gadgets.

Remember, Remy, the little rat chef from Ratatouille? I felt like the movie ended in the middle about an hour into it. There was a big fat happy ending right in the middle of the movie and I thought it was over. My spider sense was saying something's wrong here. Then the villain came back and the movie started over.

I loved Lord of the Rings and never wanted it to end. But I really didn't want it to end six or seven times! 

I hated The Remains of the Day. (My personal opinion) Most people will love or hate a movie because of the ending. Think if that's true for yourself. This movie felt like Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, the romantic longing was so intense you could cut it with a knife. The filmmakers promised us fireworks. But all we got was a dud. Anthony Hopkins never went after Emma Thompson. I mean come on, it's Emma Thompson. She's right up there with Emma Peel. 

No Country for Old Men was even worse. (My personal opinion) This movie was good. It took me along for the ride right till the end and then... nothing. I was angry when it was over. Couldn't they write an ending? 

Interestingly, some people read my clues as iconic images rather than graphs. In retrospect, I unconsciously did this when I pointed out that the graph that looked iconically like a shark fin was not Jaws. The other one was The Remains of the Day graph looked iconically like the deserts of  Lawrence of Arabia.

* Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived around the time of Aristotle. He was also known as Diogenes the Cynic, and most famous for carrying a lamp and searching for an honest man. I did not know that he was notorious for his philosophical stunts and this was one of them, he would carry his lamp in the daytime.