Music has scales / raagas. What about storytelling in movies and prestige shows?
arc.quanten.co
arc.quanten.co
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots#The_plot...
One related thread is John Truby’s Anatomy of Story. His system is a 'story structure grows out of the hero’s weakness, desire, opponent, moral choice, and self-revelation.' And he then catalogues variations and popular versions of each of those ingredients.
He also has a follow on book that that goes even further toward what this project is doing. He treats genres almost like deep story forms with specific tropes: myth, horror, detective, comedy, action, fantasy, crime, love story, and so on each have their own worldview.
It's like one mans version of TVTropes, but with a underlying structure, more than a catalogue.
Reading Truby break down stories is pretty entertaining.
The world of narrative non-fiction also has their own versions of these structures. Storycraft by John Hart is a good guide.
A lot of hollywood's story telling circles around two predominant structures - the hero and saving the cat (or damsel). As of late, that trope isnt quite working as much. A majority of the films that are made are of the genre drama, not action/adventure the two structures struggle.
I have a copy of John's book and have read it. Been down this rabbit hole for a few years now :) Thanks for sharing though. appreciate it.
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Archetypal-Character-Arcs-Jou...
She has it all online for free here too, with a good comments section:
https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/how-to-write-arc...
The work ends up being a bit pop-psych in a strange but interesting way. A lot to learn there and take home, not ust for story writers.
This predominantly seems to be around character arcs (how a character evolves over a story) vs the overall narrative arc? Its interesting neverthless.
She generally separates out the internal state of the protagonist from their external state.
She has 3 arc types: positive, flat, and negative.
Positive arcs are the typical Hero's journey (along with the other 5 archetypes of the title). The protagonist comes back changed in a good way and the story world is better in gestalt. Her concepts of the Truth, the Lie, the Ghost, the Need, and the Want are all intertwined here and are developed in other books and on her website. Positive change arc are 'comedies' in the classical Greek sense.
Flat arcs have the protagonist already in possession of the Truth and mostly have them affecting the story world with that Truth. Sounds boring, but they tend to be the most memorable characters for audiences.
Negative arcs come in 3 varieties that I won't bore you with. Generally, the protagonist rejects the Truth and embraces the Lie. These are 'tragedies' in the classical Greek sense.
Her overall structure is on a 11 beat framework that fits nicely with 3, 4, or 5 act structure (she has a lot to say about that).
I would highly recommend her work for deep dives into narrative and story structure.
John Yorke's Into the Woods is also a great read:
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Woods-Five-Act-Journey-Story/dp/...
He dives more into the 'why' when it comes to the reason we tell stories at all.
Both he and Weiland (among others) have convinced me that 'story' is one of the more powerful things in our world.
Absolutely. It is the engine for civilization and the operating system for human belief.
I never read poetics, but merely heard Aaron Sorkin explain it in his master class. But he was big on it, and explained it was "objective + obstacle = conflict."
Sorkin said he loves court rooms for the reason that the aristotelian(sp?) story structure is so legible. Sports movies I guess would also fit into that.
I'm sure its too simple for your goals, but for a lay person understanding of why a story works: "Someone wants something, pursues it and then meets resistance." is a great summary. Much more general than the hero's journey.
Good luck with your project.
You are spot on.
The feedback that I got from a lot of you was, what about all the existing story frameworks that are out there - be it Aristotle's Poetics, The heroes Journey, Dan Harmon's Story Circle - and there are 23 of them.
So I took each of them, mapped their beats to this notation to see what that looks like. So now we can do a comparative of those beats in the notation that we developed.
http://arc.quanten.co/archetype/frameworks
it is interesting that these 23 frameworks, pretty much map to 10 of the archetypes that we spotted in successful films, which means there are atleast 8 more (we spotted a total of 18 so far) that are working archetypes, that just haven't been formalized yet with a framework
At the least, this becomes a good repository for folks to reference the various story frameworks that exist.
Thanks everyone for your inputs. It was greatly helpful in shaping this.
On a more critical note: separating a story (diegesis) from the telling (narrative structure) is like reducing animals to skeletons, disregarding the sinews, fascia, nerves, flesh, and fluids that make up an animal.
For example, describing Alain Robbe-Grillet's "La Jalousie" as a story about a man who suspects his lover of adultery is reductive to the point of atrocity. That particular novel tells the story using pioneering metafictive techniques and reducing it to its narrative types would yield very little insight.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
The Campbell structure is the Sa-dominant and is the linear ascent.
You shouldnt seperate a story from a structure at all. You should find the right bones for the story. Not suggesting otherwise in anyway.
PS: if by any chance, you come across the script for that film, do share. Would love to see what it says. Im curious myself now. If i had to guess, reading the synopsis of the film, i'd say : https://arc.quanten.co/archetype/anishchit
While there are six general shapes, I've noticed that there are nuances to it. Also the medium significantly changes the form. Just as youtubers creating content follow a different format, compared to tiktokers - even within produced content, I have noticed that Film, Franchise Films, Prestige Drama, Network TV, Mini Series, Shorts etc have nuances.
[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%A9ma_narratif (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%A9ma_quinaire is also describing the same thing)
But as stories get more complex, with multiple stories weaving in and also as you bring different genres in, some structures are better than others for different stories.
While I have figured out 15 so far, I want to take the WGA 101 screenplays of all time, which goes all the way from Casablanca, - and i want to see how some of these structures have evolved and are evolving over time.
For eg, since the past 2-3 years, leaving an open end (like in the case of Project Hail Mary in a new universe) shows up in 12% of films, compared to less than 1% before that. Those kind of insights are interesting.
Thanks for sharing that link.
https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Supe...
http://blog.janicehardy.com/2018/07/the-plot-clock-structure...
Appreciate you sharing it.
Edit: typo fix + "execs" added
You'll be surprised to know that the first version of Iron man, starring Robert Downing Jr started with the comment from Stan lee as "I don't care for the script" and had to be completely rewritten. So doing 4-5 rewrites is quite normal.
The benefit with a system like this is, you can decide which archetype best tells your story, and also you can benchmark versions of the story to see how close / further away you are as you do your rewrites.
Film executives work with something called comps, what they believe are their comparables - in terms of similar stories and similar structures. The structure of your comp could give you some hints of where you might want to lean towards - or you can go the opposite direction too.
As someone who is building a tool, we take a conscious decision to be at best descriptive + suggestive, but never prescriptive. present the data, let the creators decide how they want to take it forward. I believe that is where originality will thrive.
I have friends who are filmmakers and they'd write me off if i had any other thoughts :)
The primary audience for these are producers and development executives on the studio side, and independent filmmakers if they want a tool to evaluate and give them insights to build on it.
https://blog.quanten.co/why-quanten-arc-does-not-tell-you-wh...
My musician friends who are scholars in indian music tell me that there is a difference between a written raaga and a performed raaga and in a performed raaga, the actor has the right to improvize on that.
Im trying very hard to not go into the rabbit hole which might become purely academic :) But i would think that if we take how youtube content is structured, or tiktoks are, each format would lend to a new structure.
Thats my sense, i could be wrong. What do you think?
I totally get why you would want to avoid the rabbit hole but your work is super interesting and I hope that you do get the luxury of being able to dive into adjacent formats and comparing them.
But yes, I do believe that if AI is going to get so good at things that we are all going to have free time, we are going to have more time for entertainment. It is either going to be the arena or protests - and theatre might reclaim its glory days.
Ive been watching some of the shows by the National Theatre via streaming and do enjoy them.
Adjacency wise, a few startups have asked if they can use this framework to finetune their storytelling. Im still thinking.
Slaying of a kinsman unrecognized.
Disaster.
Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune.
The Enigma (solving a mystery).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situat...
Stability Incitement Pursuit Reversal Crisis Revelation Climax Resolution (sometimes) Epilogue / New Beginnings
You win too :)
So insight: Polti's insight isnt really useful as a story structure. However it does label all the possible dramatic moments. So it doesnt care much for introducing the characters or how their life is resolved, but talks how about transition in the middle happens - so how act 2, act 3 play out.
I took all the 36 situations and mapped it. It predominantly maps to 4 beats. Which isnt surprising because it is the middle drama.
This is quite useful for writers to analyse - especially if they have a "your act 2 is sagging" note and need to look at how to fix it. Definitely useful as a prescription layer. Thanks for helping me discover that.
Anyway the site is too clever for its own good and crashes out with a "We hit an error" modal overlay on Safari on Mac, so I'll never know.
Check the sample page for Anora, it might help : http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film
(scroll down to the bottom to see the narrative beat structure)
e.g. in a series there is likely a structure to the season as well as a structure to each episode, as well as potentially longer form structure over multiple seasons
The system identifies it, we havent started naming it yet, though we can at some point. I need to work with more showrunners to understand their thinking and process on it. Know anyone?
The question we started off with was - if there are scales and raagas for music, is there something similar for storytelling. What goes well after what beat.
That took us through a journey.
Building Quanten Pulse, which led to Quanten Arc (real data, that led to a model), which then allowed us to create a benchmark database of more than 400 films.
So if you breakdown 400 hollywood blockbusters, and break them scene by scene, map emotions and durations, and character arcs, what is the patterns that you see - and if you step back, do you see clusters of patterns that resonate well.
Most people in hollywood write stories in two structures - predominantly. It is either Save the Cat, or the Heroes journey. But what if you don't want to save cats or go on the journey? (imagine if someone telling a musician, you have two scales - thats it).
We took a peek into the 400 and found 15 different narrative structures that work well. I have a feeling as we expand - into regional cinema, and different formats, we will find more.
Tell me what you think : https://arc.quanten.co/archetype
PS: While we started with Hollywood, we are starting to do this analysis for Bollywood films too (though finding scripts has been difficult)
There was this snide remark that someone in hollywood made where they said, they make movies whereas Europe makes (art) cinema.
I havent figured out how to resolve that yet.
But yes to korean, japanese films - that's very much on the list.
> How do i find the signal to identify whats a good film or not.
What is your the definition of 'good'? Without having that, answering the question of a signal is impossible, of course.
Popularity is not necessarily a signal of resonance. It's arguably a consequence of distribution; marketing; appeal to the population of potential movie goers, often thought to be males in their late teens and early 20s going in groups; non-challenging content; etc.
Many films considered 'great' have not been popular, which of course is true in many artforms. Also, what matters more in your measurement, a film that resonates a little for many, or one that resonates a lot for few?
(Sorry if these questions are answered on the website; it's not loading for me.)
So curiosity aside, I do keep reminding me what problem am I solving and for whom? Auteurs don't care for anyone's opinions and they don't need the tools nor will pay for it.
I definitely do want to study "great" films - not just popular, but films that are timeliness. The next thing on my agenda is to benchmark the WGA 101 Best Screenplays of the 21st century and after that benchmark the WGA 101 Best Screenplays of all time (which starts with Casablanca).
Even if there are no users for it, I'd be curious to find out how things have evolved and what stands out. But as a nimble startups, don't think auteurs and art house filmmakers would be customers. And they shouldnt - they should do what they do, and go with their gut.
http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film (Anora) http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/series (The Pitt S01E01)
How do you deal with emotions that only exist (as their own concepts) in certain cultures (saudade in Portugal, hygge in Scandinavia)?
Emotions are universal. Even if some hypothetical language has a particular term for an emotion that in English would fall somewhere between "guilt" and "shame", it doesn't mean that English-speakers don't often experience it; they simply lack a term with the exact nuance, because it rarely matters that much, and we can express the idea with the help of a longer sentence.
You are mistaking culture for language here. That's mistake number one.
Mistake number two is assuming that a language is merely a purely biological response you can easily map to. Emotions as we conceptualise them, exist in a sociocultural context.
You say emotions are universal but, are they? Have you ever experienced what an edo period Samurai was going through after failing his lord? Ever experienced the feeling of passing your rite of passage in an amazonian tribe. No. You can surely interpret those situations through your own lens and experience feelings about your interpretation but that doesn't mean you are feeling what they are feeling. You could have your own interpretation of what falling from a high altitude feels like. It doesn't mean that is going to match the emotion of someone who has actually jumped.
Mistake three is assuming that your own cultural context (which you have ignored) has the same emotional interpretation of a situation as any other context. A situation that in a cultural context might elicit feelings of belonging, in another might elicit feelings of entrapment, anxiety or lack of freedom.
The very idea that everyone experiences the same emotions is itself a cultural byproduct of a culture that often sees itself as the mirror of the world rather than as an additional perspective of it.
Not pitching, but giving some context here : The first product we built is an audience analytics platform. We use near eye headsets while audiences are watching films during test screenings, to collect occulometric and biometric data to map engagement.
Emotions are a messy thing to map and rely on. For eg, there was a film that we were testing, and three of the 50 audience members had a totally off-beat engagement signal compared to the rest of the audiences - and this was a scene in the park. So after the film was done, I had flagged the moderator to ask those three audience members what happened in the scene. So he casually brought up what parks meant to them. And one of them said, it was a weekend routine to spend time in the park with his mother whom he lost recently - so the minute he saw that park shot, thats all he could think of, and had nothing to do with the film.
So if you really base a narrative structure on emotions, we will have to baseline every single person on earth for all of their experiences, and wade through that - and it would be impossible to produce a mass media outcome.
Stories hinge on emotion (absolutely) but beyond that it is also a journey, where the audience participates, pays attention, and engages - we see this with occulometric and biometric data. And to truly engage, audiences must understand the words being spoken - i could watch a portuguese film without subtitles and as much as i could guess maybe 10% of the narrative, i wouldnt have a clue whats going on - let alone participate in it.
Our system currently cannot accomodate for languages other than english (we are doing some tests with German, French, Spanish and Hindi - but i wouldnt rank the confidence levels on those to be high enough yet). Beta, at best.
Thank you for asking that very crucial question. I appreciate it.
> The very idea that everyone experiences the same emotions is itself a cultural byproduct of a culture that often sees itself as the mirror of the world
I was raised by people from different regions, who spoke a common language. When I was a child, we moved to another region that spoke a different language. By that time I had already became bilingual and multicultural.
Then, I learned English. Yeah, not my first language, nor my second.
Eventually, I married a foreigner from a completely different culture to mine. We moved to a third country, then a fourth. We currently live in what is arguably the most cosmopolitan city in the world, with over 50% of foreign-born residents. And no, I have never lived in the US, although I've had coworkers there.
Does this help clarify how much I conflate language and culture, or how much my thinking is "a cultural byproduct of a culture that often sees itself as the mirror of the world "?. Or is it possible that my thinking is shaped precisely by the variety of languages, cultures and nations I've been exposed to?
As one lives with various cultures and languages, it becomes clear that people experience and express the world very differently. Some experiences are universal, others are cultural, and they are all uniquely personal. There's a limit to what can be translated. Outside of that limitation is a whole unknown expanse of "dark matter" that are lost in translation, no matter how many words or longer sentences you use. For deeply cultural or personal experiences, some things are not only impossible to translate, they are impossible to communicate.
First, it's hard to read, it needs a white background with black text and larger font.
Second, I know this is aimed at English speaking south Asian/Indian readers, so it's like stepping into a strange new world for me. I do a lot of story structure work and it's really fun to learn about this totally new universe of story structure. I wonder what the cross over will be like when you do 'western' film and media.
Third, have you tried translating these monosyllable words (ga, ma, pa, etc) into English? I know that it may not be really possible, as I think you're borrowing from Indian musical traditions that evolved totally separately. But it would be nice to a westerner (eventually!) to have something to work from to try to understand it all.
Fourth, it's really dense reading here too. You might want to have a way to tie this to something that the user has already seen as an intro. Just loading us up with data and reading is hard. Maybe try to dissect a film or show or book first? Like maybe have a little button there that we can use to click into something and see what is going on in like a really popular Bollywood film (I have no idea about south Asian media, sorry!)? Then walk the user through how you're dissecting that film. Maybe have some diagrams too.
Fifth, why do this? I'm interested in why you all wanted to do this project at all. Is there an 'About' page or something?
Great work!
There is a toggle on the top that goes from Swaras to Solfrege - which is the western notation for music.
There is a floating window now that shows what the mapping is between each register and the note, so that it becomes easier for folks to understand the correlation.
"I wonder what the cross over will be like when you do 'western' film and media."
All of the 405 films that you see there is Hollywood films. The list of the movies that constitute this data is listed here : http://arc.quanten.co/browse
"You might want to have a way to tie this to something that the user has already seen as an intro."
If you want to see how this breaks down, We've put out two sample content - one is Anora (which won the Oscar for Best picture last year) and in terms of TV Shows we have also mapped the Pilot episode of The Pitt (though the data used for the analysis was only films)
you can access the complete breakdown for the film and series here:
http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/series
"I'm interested in why you all wanted to do this project at all."
I used to host a filmmakers club in my open floor office for a few years and used to listen to filmmakers talking about how they make films. While I come from the software world where everything can be A/B tested and there is a beta, test, feedback, iterate, release cycle, it felt odd that films lack any of it - and it is pretty much a hit or miss. And unlike software, you don't get a chance to re-release a film. And the lack of any meaningful audience data and structure data, felt like a huge gap - one that artistic sectors like music and culinary arts have quite well bridged, but the visual story telling world hasnt. That's where the wheels started to churn - that was almost 11 years ago.
There are 72 major raagas - called mela kartha raagas - those are the root raagas, and there are combinations and permutations done that generates the janya raagas - which is children raagas (there are thousands of those - and different artists can create variations on these).
Most films in Hollywood have narrative beats - its 7-8 beats. Each tv show for eg, has 5-6 beats. Most micro drama episode has 2-4 beats. Its quite structure that way.
If you take a structure like Save the cat, or Heroes' journey, the order of the beats are also quite well laid out - just that those two structures dont cover the span of stories, and rest is all quite undocumented.
Im trying to work backwards - and quite aware that i am probably identifying derivatives than the root, but even the derivatives can be quite useful to guide others from generating engaging content.
I am not aware of Aarne Thompson's work. I'm looking it up right now...
I'm totally at a loss as to any of the content itself, or the method, or the results. And I've never really heard of any of the films either. But I'm just looking at it and I can 'smell' that there is something here. Man, I really hope this is not a hallucination or some AI slop.
Thank you for your kind words.