What every good story theory should have, Storyteller's Log

Ok, now that I know what I don't want. Here's is what I want, need and desire from a story structure theory.

MY IDEAL STORY THEORY 

1. It should be easy to apply.
2. It should be easy to remember.
3. It should be inspiring and insightful.
4. It should be prescriptive, not only post analytical.
5. It should help you find problems with your story.
6. It should help you find solutions to problems in your story.
7. Like a map it you should be able to see where you are.
8. It should make the story structure visible while working on it but invisible to the viewer.
9. It should allow for structural variations in different types of films.
10. It should fit every story ever told.
11. It should make you want to write.
12. It should have psychological depth.

Sound impossible? Yes, but aren't stories about overcoming impossible odds. If it exists why hasn't someone seen it before? I believe that the answer to this question is that some have seen pieces of it.

Remember the story of the six deaf elephants? It's a story that started in India. Or was that six blind mice? In my version it was two blind mice, a pig with a blindfold and a Scared Bunny without his glasses. Each one encountered an elephant and felt it. One felt a tusk, another felt a leg, another a tail and another a trunk. They all got together and couldn't agree on what they encountered.

Now imagine these same mice were walking along in a well worn rut dating back to 300 B.C. They wouldn't have encountered the elephant at all.

So everyone went along following the rut never looking outside of it and they never found an elephant.
"Denying something you cannot perceive ends up becoming an argument for your limitations." Wikipedia on the Blind Men and the Elephant

I'd like to examine the criteria in depth.

1. Who says it needs to be hard? The writing itself is hard work. But just because something is easy doesn't make it less valuable, does it? According to the great Wikipedia, Occam's razor is a scientific principle that states among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.
This method is extremely easy to apply. I've written four children's picture books with outlines for a dozen more and one psychological thriller screenplay (my first) using this approach all in 4 months. (The research for the screenplay took a lot longer.)

 The feedback from those who have seen my presentations on it usually have an aha! moment.

2. I should be easy to remember. Once you see it you'll never forget it and once you see it, since the pieces are all logically connected you'll remember all the pieces in order. Can you name the stages of Campbell's Hero's Journey in order?

3. Inspiring and insightful. I have been on a creative roll since I discovered this and I'm continuing to learn new insights about storytelling from it.

4. The hero's journey, plot points and Aristotle's drama curve all can be used to analyze movies that have already been made. They are not as useful when trying to create a new story, in my opinion. I want a theory that will guide me without limiting my creativity.

5. & 6. It should help you find problems in your story and help you find solutions. I was working on a feature at a studio that had story problems. One morning I awoke and there it was fully formed how to solve the problems.

7. It is exactly like a map that shows you where you are.

8. It is visible to you when you see it but invisible to your audience, unless they're looking for it. It's like those magic eye pictures. It looks like one thing but put on the special glasses or squint your eyes just right a new image emerges.

9. It should allow for structural variations. I have found 5 types of structure variations, all with logical reason for the variation. There may be more that I haven't discovered yet. It even applies to games. They're still easy to remember. And when you don't have a clear structure it shows.

I will present many examples of films with post analysis along with stories that I've created using it prescriptively. If you create some using it, I'd love to hear about them and maybe include them in the book properly credited, of course.

10. It should cover every story ever told. Why? Just because Joseph Campbell said there is only one story?  I don't want to tell every story, I just want to not get lost trying to tell my story. I don't want a cookie cutter, I want singularity.

11. It should make you want to write. Maybe this is asking too much, however if writing becomes less frustrating because of it, maybe you will want to write more.

12. It should have psychological depth. This will probably be a chapter to itself so I'm going to save this for the next storyteller's log...

What do plot points plot? Storyteller's Log 12-5-2012

 

DISCLAIMER: I am presenting parody of story writing books that I've read to make a point. While it's meant in good fun, I don't want to diminish the fact that there is great information in these books which have informed my owning thinking on the subject. My advice, read them all.

Before we get to plot points, I wish to explore plots. Here's what Apple's Dictionary has to say on the subject of plots.

plot |plät|noun1 a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful: [ with infinitive ] :there's a plot to overthrow the government.2 the main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.3 a small piece of ground marked out for a purpose such as building or gardening: a vegetable plot.4 a graph showing the relation between two variables.• a diagram, chart, or map.verb ( plots, plotting , plotted ) [ with obj. ]1 secretly make plans to carry out (an illegal or harmful action): the two men are serving sentences for plotting a bomb campaign | [ no obj. ] : Erica has been plotting againstme all along.2 devise the sequence of events in (a play, novel, movie, or similar work).3 mark (a route or position) on a chart: he started to plot lines of ancient sites.• mark out or allocate (points) on a graph.• make (a curve) by marking out a number of such points.• illustrate by use of a graph: it is possible to plot fairly closely the rate at which recruitment of girls increased.PHRASESlose the plot informal lose one's ability to understand or cope with what is happening: many people believe that he is feeling the strain or has lost the plot.the plot thickens see thicken.
What parts of this apply to story writing? I believe they all do but in different ways. Obviously, number 2 is the most common usage of plot- the main events of a play, novel or movie. The first could be considered an example of one type of plot- a group making secret plans.
The last two, 3 and 4 are interesting for their application to story structure. What do plot points actually plot?

This is where I have problems with plot point theories of story. What do plot points plot? They've left off the last two aspects of the definition of plotting as a verb. They don't mark out points on a graph, they don't make a curve from the points and they don't illustrate anything. They don't show me my story's structure.

In the last post, we saw that Aristotle tried to make a plot by graphing time along the x axis and audience involvement along the y axis. But we also saw that this had limited usefulness, mainly as to help pacing.

"What if we plot something else?"

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Bunny. The problem as it exists is that each of the plot point theories followed Aristotle's rut of plotting audience involvement. Each author of the plot point theories tried to differentiate themselves by how many plot points they chose and what they called each point.

Let's look at some of these theories. (Without naming names)

One has five points.

Another one has nine points.

One might have twelve.

Why not go for fifteen?

Why stop there?

Help, I can't stop!

It's all going dark...

There is even one version that has 120 points, one for each page!

But how big is a plot point? They don't say. Does it matter? Do they come in different colors?

How to you get from one plot point to another? Jump? Careful Bunny. 

This is my problem with the plot point theories. They don't clearly show how they relate to one another.    They are too abstract to show a relationship between them. So this still leaves me lost in Act Two. How can I see if something belongs in it or not?

One theorist suggests that the plot point are like a suspension bridge taking you from the beginning to the ending. Again, like Aristotle who told us that stories have a beginning, middle and end, this is someone with a keen sense of the obvious but not really helpful to me as a writer.

There's one theory that suggests arranging them strung out on a clothes line. Interesting metaphor but it still doesn't differentiate the difference between the socks and underwear from the shirts. That reminds me, I have to go do my wash.

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.

Lost in the story- Storyteller's log star date 11-26-2012

Lost in the story. What does that mean? If your audience is lost in your story, that is a great thing. It means that they are totally engrossed in the imaginary worlds that you've created. This is exactly what you want. 

You also don't need to suspend your disbelief. I've never gone into a movie theatre and yelled out, "Stop the projector!, I forgot to suspend my disbelief." I wouldn't even know how to begin to suspend my disbelief, do you? When I'm "lost in the story" the only way I come out is if the director does something stupid to bump me out of it, like a jump cut, or if I have to go to the bathroom. 

But there is another sense of being lost in the story, when you're writing a story and don't know what to do to fix it. This is a horrible kind of being lost in the story. Unfortunately, its very common. Every movie I've every worked on our whole crew has been lost in the story at times. For those of you who work in animation you know how often we'll do act one over an over and over and over. And then when we finally get to act three we realize we have to redo act one again to fit with act three. We all longed for the day when we could just put the whole movie up as fast as possible and then critique it. There's a reason for this that we'll learn along the way.

Is this destiny?

I know when I work on my own stories I get lost in the story. What do I do next? Where do I go? Does this even work? Should I add another character, a car chase, a song? Well, one of the places I went was to map my way was screenwriting books. I've read thousands of them. (Well, maybe a hundred, maybe twenty) but it feels like thousands. Each one has made me a better writer and storyteller. Each one has it's own unique take on storytelling that has something valuable to offer. And each one shares certain assumptions, some dating back as far as Aristotle.

Well, I had an intuition that there had to be a better way. I went down many dead ends but also learned insights along the way. I read stuff no animator would read. Survey question: How many of you have read, Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind? What can I say, I'm weird that way.

As I promised, at my Creative Talent Network Animation Expo presentation, I'm going to share with you the writing process of my next book on my new theory of story. My students helped improve my first two books. I would love your input and feedback. Don't be shy.

So join, Iggy, the impulsive pig, Scared Bunny and me as we search for the untold secrets of storytelling.

You really didn't think I'd tell you it all the secrets in the first blog did you? What kind of storyteller would I be if I did that. Scheherazade knew the secret of storytelling is story delaying. Leave your audience with a cliff hanger.

That way they'll stick around to see what happens.

Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story

Well, the  CTN Animation Expo was amazing. I finally got to meet my Focal Press publishers of the Animator's Eye and Directing the Story. They were wonderful. I hope you checked out some of their awesome animation titles.

This is why I've be swamped. I presented my new revolutionary VISUAL approach to story structure at CTN. 340 image slides told the story, explained film examples and showed the audience how they can do it. There was consensus that everyone would like to see the development of the theory posted here in my blog as I create it. 

I self-published a book on Amazon.com to present with the workshop. It stars Iggy, the impulsive pig and Scared Bunny, two characters from my Focal Press book the Animator's Eye. It's an introduction to the story process in three parts. First, is the story of Iggy, the impulsive pig, who tries to make it big in Hollywood leaving behind his best friend, Scared Bunny. See what Iggy learns and then read an overview of the process and finally learn how to do it yourself in a step by step demonstration.

It's called- Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story.
Amazon link: Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story

CTN presentation!

Sorry that I haven't added many posts lately but BIG things have been in the works. I'm presenting my new theory of story at CTN animation expo in Burbank CA on Sunday Nov. 18 at 2 pm. And I've been self publishing a book which demonstrates how to use the new theory. A bigger more comprehensive book in also in the works, but one step at a time.

I'm really excited about it. After researching and studying story for over 20 years, stories are coming to me fully formed! Of course there is still a lot of work to writing a story but this method helps you not to get lost along the way.

I hope to see you there.

Don't forget about The Animator's Eye contest at Focal Press! Win free books.
Check it out at: http://www.focalpress.com/character_mentor_contest/