The Universal Structure of Storytelling
quillette.com
quillette.com
> The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? Does plot necessarily hinge on conflict? No. Such claims are a product of the West’s insularity. For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in”, so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.
https://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/post/25153960313/the-s...
Also, there are numerous highly regarded, non-Hollywood films that do not rely on the traditional confrontational story arc. "Killer of Sheep" and "Patterson" are two off the top of my head.
So "Universal Structure of Storytelling" seems a bit over-sold.
I'm trying to write fiction and this article helped me to build a tool box that I can use to decide what a story really needs. I don't have to use a hammer anymore to solve every problem!
Do you maybe have more resources like the one you shared, other than in this thread already?
Because they are all, actually, from the same culture, as becomes obvious when reading the article. The author is a little quick to call this universal. It may be a little more "universal" than the World Series, but not much.
There are many stories where there are no baddies, and others where there are no goodies (such as Greek Mythology for instance).
My favorite is the claims of the universality of divisive rhythm; where larger units (measures, phrases, the like) are subdivided into equal portions and those subdivisions are the building blocks of all rhythm ever. I think music education has gotten to the point where plenty of people (who are used to euro-centric western music, that is) are able to comprehend that some cultures use smaller than half-step increments or other scales, but the way our rhythm works is so ingrained that trying to explain additive rhythm is almost painfully mind-expanding, even those it's very very common outside of sub-saharan africa and western europe.
This also applies to people who try to make statements about A432 or whatnot, which relies on having a very narrow view of music theory as a whole
this work claims that the 12 tones system (IMO not a scale) seems "universal" is in fact so widespread because of the timbres in the instruments used (i.e. the haromic spectrum of strings, wind instruments, and human voice, etc).
Morale of the story: it's not just western music that's deeply ingrained into western peoples' minds. It goes the other way too.
Imagine where every bar was a different length while still keeping a pulse. One might be 3+2+2 then 4+3 then 2+3+2+3 and so on.
It’s like a meta game to outwit each other, but always finding the common ground immediately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeibekiko
It's 9/8s in uneven splits, but it's difficult to break it down without showing you (by tapping my hand!). The wikipedia page has a couple of different analyses.
The stuff that really messes with my brain is Greek Pontiac dances like dipat, like this one:
I don't even know what the rythm is for that. Me and my friend keep trying to count it and failing and dissolving in giggles because we just can. not. comprehend it. (I got halfway to a modern drums diploma and my friend has studied classic guitar for ages. So much for that).
Here's a modern vesrion with more prominent percussion:
Here's a different Pontiac dance, Kotsari:
And here's a Baidushka from Eastern Thrace:
Counting which are left as an exercise to the reader.
Have fun and sorry for the nerd snipe :)
An (initial) portion of my academic experience was researching Interactive Storytelling systems[1]. I was particularly interested in the methods for ensuring certain qualities of the plots, and modeled some constraint solving problems -
but I did had the absolutely outstanding opportunity to interact with researchers in this area, and to read the seminal works on plot structure, Aarne-Thompson's index, Propp and other very, very, very cool stuff
With no false modesty I can say that I had a 'knack' for writing from a young age, but after studying narratives in-depth, what they share, how they 'move', fabula and syuhzet, I became a much better writer - even a technical writer.
Turns out explaining a formal method shares a lot in common with telling a story. One of this days I'll try to pinpoint that overlap and write about it.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_storytelling
P.S.: this is a good resource: http://tecfalabs.unige.ch/mediawiki-narrative/index.php/Narr...
Ramping up the abstraction (generality) to 11:
the hero is in a home (A) the hero goes on an adventure (->) the hero returns home but things have changed (B)
i.e. A -> B
It is probably useful to turn down the generality a little bit for this to be more usefull; but I'm most certainly NOT a storyteller.
I worked particularly on a system that involved an automated planning paradigm - so there were 'goals' that the story wanted to be met (and could be determined/influenced by an author-user) and a catalogue of abstract definitions of events as planning operators. It worked somewhat like you said, except (for practical purposes) mostly backwards (as in backwards-planning)
I unfortunately lost contact with the research area a bit, and am not familiar with how it progressed - but it certainly is interesting in a distinct way; it really lets you explore a particular creative side that many things in computer science neglect
How about the Odyssey?
The Epic of Gilgamesh?
The Kalevala?
The Mahābhārata (or just the Bhagavad Gita)?
Or the Ramayana?
Beowulf?
My guess is you can't. The "Hero's Journey" is too narrow and too simplistic to be applied to the major epic works of human cultures across the ages. It is a limited abstraction that only serves to describe perhaps a subset of literary works from a particular historical and geographical era and area, but by far not the universal story structure that it is claimed to be.
For example the Illiad is about Achilles being a major asshole, throwing a hissy fit and then getting his arrogant self killed. What's hero's-journey about that? Yet people will find ways to (try and) do it anyway:
https://thetrojanwar.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/trojan-war-tra...
(Bonus Odyssey application in the link).
https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Supe...
Oh please. There are at least as many "hunter-gather lives" as there are tribes, and probably more, and it's very likely the author knows about none of them. This is rubbish of the highest order.
I guess we all do this to a certain extent given that there's so much content to parse through and anything that will allow us to quickly dismiss something lets us use that energy for something else
I'm sorry, but yes. This shows the author wasn't thinking and is intellectually lazy and incurious -- like if he was laying out bigoted theories in the first paragraph, and making whole deductions out of it.
This is actually bigoted, by the way: to declare that there is just one way to live the life of a hunter-gatherer, and that it's "simple".
The claim:
>> The golden rule of hunter-gather life is pretty simple
...post-processing, is perceived as:
> There are at least as many "hunter-gather lives" as there are tribes, and probably more, and it's very likely the author knows about none of them.
...dropping "the golden rule of".
Ironically, this is followed up with:
> This shows the author wasn't thinking and is intellectually lazy and incurious -- like if he was [laying out bigoted theories in the first paragraph], and making whole deductions out of it.
I wrote more about a theory I have about this phenomenon in a recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29430192
> If you happen to be blessed with muscle, don’t throw it around. If you happen to be a great hunter or a dazzling beauty, don’t flaunt it over others. Be one of the good guys, in other words.
This is completely gratuitous and unsubstantiated. It's ridiculous. And then there is more of the same.
So you interpret and perceive (and then assert as True). But then, aren't we all "playing with words", at all times, to some degree?
For example, I could say that you are "engaging in persuasive rhetoric" when you say that.
>> If you happen to be blessed with muscle, don’t throw it around. If you happen to be a great hunter or a dazzling beauty, don’t flaunt it over others. Be one of the good guys, in other words.
> This is completely gratuitous and unsubstantiated. It's ridiculous. And then there is more of the same.
gratuitous: uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted
Don't throw your muscle around, don't flaunt exceptional characteristics over others, be a good guy - in the building and maintenance of a successful community, these things are "uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted"?
unsubstantiated: not supported or proven by evidence
Here you have a better case, but when it comes to the "not supported by" part, I suspect these are not entirely new ideas in the fields of anthropology and social evolution (I speculate).
Out of curiosity, did you read my other comment? I put a fair amount of work into it, and I believe it has some relevance. Perhaps you could critique it!
It seems the author is extrapolating game-theoretic choice beyond what they've experienced to examine it's generality
Agreed the phrasing is more than unfortunate, though to try and pull good from it; the author's game-theory probably does apply; and the rule of seeking the best for society at the disadvantage of self is probably the missing key here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29416606 (The break down of distributed society)
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.’ ... But I tell you, love your enemies
Or, unhelpfully, the Code of Hammurabi: If a man proceeded by force and deflowered the virgin slave-woman of another man, that man must pay five shekels of silver.
If a man knocked out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver.
If a man knocked out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
My question would be: does game theory ever enable the golden rule?
"We love the sensation of righteous indignation and the satisfying payoff of justice delivered. As the literary scholar Northrop Frye points out in The Anatomy of Criticism[1], “In the melodrama of the brutal thriller we come as close as it’s normally possible for art to come to the pure self-righteousness of the lynching mob.” And studies back this up: people get more satisfaction out of stories in which offenders are punished rather than forgiven.
The unstoppable moralism of stories has a big upside for within-group bonding. But the universal grammar of stories can also be paranoid and vindictive. Stories show us problem-drenched worlds and encourage us to turn on the people who are lousing things up. In other words, to proliferate narratives is to proliferate villains. To proliferate villains is also to proliferate rage, judgment, and division."
This is simply not true. At all. Sure, good vs bad is a very simple narrative and so is commonly used, especially in things like children's stories.
But the whole form of Greek Tragedy is based on the idea that bad things happen to good people. That there are no "goodies and baddies". Fortune gives and fortune takes away.
Some of the most popular and retold stories in Western literature are not good vs bad. There are no "good guys and bad guys" in Romeo of Juliet, To Build a Fire, The Gift of the Magi, etc
There are, of course, challenges. But those challenges are not evil or bad. They are just the human (or natural) condition. Childlike minds might demand a good guy vs bad guy narrative, but it's not universal.
In fact, I would wager that many of the hunter-gatherer societies that the author hand-waves away as simplistic have very complex story-telling mythology and cannon.
IMO, the universal structural aspect is about how to tell good stories (hero's journey and such), however this article is actually about how storytelling in all cultures brings us together as a group and the actual universal about stories described in the article is moralism (good vs bad).
What is right and correct thinking, and if there are exceptions, does that tie into some sort of meta-rule about rightness, and how should it inform our own internal storytelling as we manifest our lives?
I'm always left at the zen koan: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Reality is that which remains after you stop believing in it. Interpretations and narratives with subjective contexts need to tie into the "chop wood, carry water" reality of the author, or your interpretation is invalid.
Norms for spoiler tagging would be awful in articles like this.
“Antagonists should be hyper-individualistic bullies. They should threaten the social order and induce righteous indignation in protagonists, incentivizing them and their peers to band together, fight back, and finally affirm their prosocial values.”
I disagree. The above describes someone like a Bond villain, which are easily dealt with, or whose legacy quickly dissipates after they are dead. The really dangerous antagonist is one who creates powerful memes and bands together their followers against the established order.
Defining them this way dissociates antagonists from simplistic , because the "evil" antagonist of today is tomorrow's charismatic leader, as happens many times in life.
The 'bad guy' in those stories wasn't the zombie horde (often a fictional stand in for disease or other other non-human dangers), but the selfish character who ruins other people's chances of surviving by being a selfish asshole. By being put in the survival situation, they didn't need to be comic book style villains with lairs and evil plans, they could just be ordinary people put into situations where they could get other people killed via their actions.
I feel this doesn't apply to The Wire or other things I consider good stories, say Terry Pratchett, but does apply to stuff I don't like say 24 or several religious stories. Is it really inherent in storytelling?
Turns out I like all kinds of stuff, provided it's done right