Plotting Propositions – the Mathematics of Persuasion

Might be worth mentioning that there's a small Mandalorian spoiler at the end of the "Bringing them back for more" section.

Northrop Frye analyzed biblical stories[0] and considered comedies to have a U-shaped structure(starting high, falling to a low-point, and ending on a high-point) that's comparable to Wadge's "La-di-da; oh shoot; la-di-da."

Tragedies have an inverted U-shaped structure (rising to a high, crisis, and then decline). There are lots of formalist structures of this variety: Freytag's [1] five-part pyramid structure is another one, but focused on tragedy not comedy.

[0]: https://itstartstoday.com/the-bible-and-literature-the-shape...

[1]: https://thewritepractice.com/freytags-pyramid/

Although the questions posed here are thought-provoking, the notation of + and - feels a bit reductionist. In the vein of lambda calculus, it would be more interesting to determine the smallest, most atomic patterns with which you can compose plot lines that are broader in scope, but in a way that will maintain clarity as you compose more and more patterns together.

Additionally, categorizing events in a plot in terms of good or bad makes it difficult to apply this in general without very specific definitions. I know it may seem obvious that the boy getting the girl is a positive, but that is from the perspectives of the boy and girl. Stories are usually made of many characters whom all respond and feel differently about a given event, and the audience relates with that array of characters in a variety of ways based on their own life experience, identity, etc. that informs their idea of what is good or bad. When you are analyzing the structure of a plot, ideally this should be done in a way that focuses on aspects of the story that will not vary from person to person.

The idea of applying mathematics/rationalization to storytelling is interesting, but I feel like models get bogged down eventually. There's a reason why the humanities exist as a discipline - any attempt to broadly systematize storytelling (and by extension human experience) gets bogged down in epicycles.