Category Archives: Story Structure

What are Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre?

Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre have a secret meaning behind their obvious relevancy to stories.  In fact, they provide a clue as to why stories exist in the first place.

Stories exist because they represent what we do as individuals and how we relate to one another socially.  They provide vicarious experiences without the risk or permanent high passion of real life.  And, in the hands of a skilled author, offer a compelling message about the best way to behave in situations that represent or mimic the kinds of circumstances we encounter in our own lives.

Within this context, we can see that Characters illustrate the different kinds of drives and points of view we have, and the message of the story describes how each of these attributes or attitudes fares in regard to the problem at hand.

Plot delineates different methods, means or techniques we might employ to solve that kinds of problem, Theme outlines the propriety of one value standard over another, and Genre provides an overall perspective that is fully explored over the course of the story.

In this way, a story focuses on a particular scenario that stands as an analogy to any number of similar scenarios we face very day.

This much of an understanding of story structure is fairly obvious, even at face value.  But, beneath all that is an even more remarkable truth of what Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre truly are.

For a moment, consider why authors started writing stories in the first place.  Better still, consider why people started telling stories in the first place.  First you tell the truth to communicate.  Then you embellish to leverage.  Then you fashion a fiction to make a point.

The fiction you create must bear a substantive reflection of the real world or your audience will not accept the validity of your message.  And so, early storytellers sought to accurately represent how individuals go about dealing with problem and making decisions and also how people interact collectively.

Over many generations, the art of storytelling arrived at certain conventions of story structure that represented truisms of human nature.  And in this way, we arrive at today’s stories in which there are Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre.

As it turns out, there is a remarkable attribute of these structural conventions: while each is a story element, collectively they create a story that has its own identity, its own personality as if it were a person in its own right in which story elements represent facets of this overall Story Mind.

How did this happen?  Because it accurately reflects what happens in real life.  In our own lives, each of us has qualities such as reason and skepticism.  We use them all to solve problems and make decisions.

When we gather together in groups toward a common purpose, such as a collective goal, the group gradually self-organizes into specific jobs or roles, each of which focuses on just one of our human attributes.  For example, every organized group will have at least one member who stands out as the voice of reason while another will assume the role of the group’s skeptic.

Why does this happen?  The process of self-organizatin occurs for two reasons:  One, to solve a group problem we need to look at it from all the same angles we use in solving personal problems or we won’t have covered all the possibilities in which to find solutions. Two, if as a group each of us tried to look at all aspects of the problem identically, we don’t get nearly the resolution on the problem, not nearly the degree of detail and deep thought that the group can achieve if each individual becomes a specialist and focuses on just one aspect of the issue.

And so, the group member representing the voice of reason in the group spends most of his time looking into which potential solutions make the most sense and not paying nearly as much attention to other ways of examining the problem.  The skeptic in the group is always looking for flaws in potential solutions – alerting the group to shortcomings that may disqualify some solutions in favor of others.

In this way, as the problem solving process continues, the group comes to structure itself as a big mind – a group identity with a common purpose in which each participant represents a different facet of our own individual minds and in which the problem solving processes in which they all engage reflect those very same processes that go on in our own minds between our own facets.

The end result?  Stories seek to present the true nature and organization of human beings in a setting of fictional subject matter to make a point about how we the audience (both as individuals and as members of groups) should best go about solving particular kinds of problems.

And now we finally see the secret identity of Characters, Plot, Theme and Genre: by their very nature they reveal the form and function of our own minds, exploded outward into the elements of story structure itself.

 

Origins of Story Structure

Imagine the very first storytellers. Actually, what they told would certainly not be considered a story by today’s standards. Rather, they probably began with simple communications with but a single meaning at a time.

Even animals recognize a cry of pain or a coo of love from another creature, even across species. So it is not a great leap to imagine that rather than just crying out in immediate response, early man might have come to intentionally make sounds to indicate his physical and emotional conditions. Ask any cat or dog owner if their pets don’t speak with them!

Nevertheless, a grunt, coo, scream or growl does not a story make. First we need to ratchet things up a bit and take one small step away from simple sounds that have direct physical or emotional meanings.

For example, if you are hungry you might make a “longing” sound and point at your belly with a wistful pointing motion. As simple and silly as this seems, it is actually quite a leap in communication. No longer are we tied to single symbols or single experiences; not we can string them together to create more complex meanings.

What about jumping up another level and stringing a few complex meanings together? Well, before you know it, early humans were chatting in non-verbal sentences, describing journeys, experiences, and even warnings.

And, of course, language would evolve as more and more people had more and more to say and discovered the benefits of a common vocabulary.

Now such a sophisticated communication is still not a story. But it is a tale. A tale is simply a statement that starting from a particular place and state of mid, if you follow a particular path, you’ll end up at a particular destination.

That’s what fairy tales are all about. Paraphrased, they all basically say, “If you find yourself in a given situation, you should (or should not) follow this given path because it will lead to something good (or bad).

As long as the physical and emotional journey is credible, the statement is sound. Now, your audience may simply disagree with your conclusion as author of the tale, but if your statement is sound, at least they can’t argue with your logic.

Of course, the very first tales were probably true stories about someone’s encounter with a bear or directions to find the berry bush that makes everything look funny when you eat them. But it wouldn’t take long or our early storytellers to realize that they could create fictions that summed up the value of their experience in a single, message-oriented tale.

But beyond this, a clever storyteller with an agenda might realize that he could influence people to take (or avoid taking) particular actions in specific cases. No longer were tales just descriptions of real events, means of imparting the value of experience, or entertaining fictions. Suddenly then became a tool with which to manipulate others.

To do this, there must be no gaps, no missed beats, no emotional inconsistencies. And in addition, the tale must be captivating enough to grab and hold the intended audience – to pull them in and involve them so deeply that they are changed by the experience.

And yet, despite all its power, the tale has limitations. Primary among these is that the tale speaks only to a single specific situation and a single specific course of action. So, as a storyteller, you’d need to fashion a whole new tale for each specific path you wished to “prove” was a good one or a bad one.

But wouldn’t it be far more powerful to prove not only that a path was good or bad but that of all the alternative paths that might have been taken, the one is question is the best or worst?

Now, the simplest way to do this is to simply say so. You write a tale about just one course taken from a given situation, and then state at the end that it is the best or worst. So, rather than being a simple statement, this new kind of tale has become a blanket statement.

If your tale is being told just to your own village, to the people you grew up with, then there is a good chance they will accept such a blanket statement since your tale probably reflects a local truism – some “given” that is already accepted by your audience as true. The tale simply serves to reinforce existing beliefs, and at the end everyone nods their heads in agreement with the outcome.

But what happens when the tale is told in another village. What if their givens are not the same. There may be one or two in the crowd who question the storyteller and ask, “I can see why that path is good, but why would it be better than xxxxxx?”

When confronted with an alternative approach, the storyteller might then briefly describe how the suggested path might unfold, and why is it not as good (or bad) as the one presented in the tale itself.

Again, being among friends (or at least among those who share a similar if not identical world-view) they will likely be easily convinced. And, it is also likely that due to that similar outlook, only a few alternative paths might be suggested, and all rather easily dismissed.

The development of story structure probably languished in this form for centuries, as nothing more advanced or sophisticated was really needed.

Enter that advent of mass media. As soon as books began to circulate across micro-cultural boundaries, ad soon as plays were performed in traveling road shows, to important things happened that forced the further development of the tale into what has ultimately become the structure of story.

First, the audiences became wide, varied and was no longer drawn from a homogeneous pool of consensus. Rather, they cam from many walks of life, with a variety of beliefs and agendas. And so, as the tale traveled, blanket statements were not nearly as easily accepted. Many more alternative approaches would be suggested or considered individually by audience members. So, such a tale would be considered heavy-handed propaganda and discounted unceremoniously.

And second, due to the mass distribution of the tale, the original storyteller would not be present to defend his work. Whatever other paths might occur to the audience would not be addressed, robbing the work of its previous ability to be revised on the spot as part of the performance.

In response to this reception, many authors no doubt retreated from the blanket statement form of the tale to the simple statement, thereby avoiding ridicule and strengthening the power of the tale. After all, is it not better to make a smaller impact than no impact at all?

And yet, there were some authors who took another tack. They tried to anticipate the alternative approaches that other audiences might suggest, and took the radical step of including and disposing of those other paths in the tale itself. A brilliant move, really. Now, even when the storyteller wasn’t physically present, he could still counter rebuttals to his blanket statement.

Of course, the key to the success of this approach is to make sure you cover all the bases. If even one reasonable alternative is left un-addressed, then at least part of your audience won’t buy the message.

As mass-distribution moved tales farther a field from the point of cultural origin, more and more alternatives we required. By the coming of the age of recorded media, a tale might reach such a wide audience and cross such boundaries that every reasonable alternative would come up sometime, somewhere.

Eventually, the tale had been forced to grow from a simple statement, to a blanket statement, to a complete argument incorporating all the ways anyone might look at an issue. This effectively created a new and distinct form of communication that we recognize as the story structure we know today.

By definition then, a tale is a statement and a story is an argument. And in making that argument, the structure of a story must include all they ways anyone might look at an issue. Therefore, it certainly includes all the ways a single mind might reasonably look at an issue. And, effectively, the structure of a story becomes a map of the mind’s problem solving processes.

No one ever intended it. But as a byproduct of the development of communication from simple tale to complex story, the underlying structure of a story has evolved into a model of the mind itself.

Story Structure – Part 12 of 113 (video)

“Bad Story Structure is No Joke!”

Here’s the link to the video:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/12%20Bad%20Story%20Structure%20is%20No%20Joke.htm

In this episode, I compare story structure to a joke and storytelling to the manner in which the joke is told.  Understanding the difference betweeen story structure and storytelling is crucial to separating the two so structure can be built logically, step by step, while simultaneously the Muse of storytelling can be unshakled to run free.  As long as these two essential aspects of a story are blended, structure is unclear and inspriation is hobbled.

Story Structure – Part 7 (video)

In this episode, I describe the difference between story structure and storytelling. Story structure has no subject matter involved – it is simply a map of the relationships among concepts. For example, if two concepts are in opposition, it doesn’t matter if they are night and day or sweet and sour, protagonist and antagonist or conscience and temptation. Similarly, if a goal is to obtain stolen diamonds and another story’s goad is to obtain a secret code, they are both goals of obtaining something – the structure is the same, only the specifics of exactly what the characters are trying to obtain is different , and that part is therefore storytelling. It is hard, sometimes, to determine what is structure and what is storytelling, for example, if someone wishes to become more compassionate as a goal, that is different than someone wishing to obtain the quality of compassion. Why? Because in the first case, the character wants to become a different kind of person, while in the second case, the person simply wants to add an attribute to their list of traits. We have often described “becoming” as a goal by saying that to become something, you can’t simply be like it is, but you also must “not be” like it isn’t. So, someone who simply adds the quality of compassion does not necessarily become wholly compassionate. They might simply have achieved a duality of having both a sense of compassion and also still have a conflicting quality of not caring.

Of course, that’s all “black belt” level structural stuff – too nit-picky for most purposes. But still, consider Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story and give some thought as to how they differ and how they are the same. They differ in storytelling, they are very similar in structure.

Here’s the link to the video which covers the more practical story development considerations on the topic:

http://storymindguru.com/dramatica-unplugged/7%20Story%20Structure%20vs%20Storytelling.htm

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Narrative Space in the Real World

In an earlier post I described how the term “narrative space” refers to the breadth and depth of the subject matter from which you will develop a story.  Like a cloud, the subject matter is just the raw material – a nebulous realm in which many story structures might be found.  Think of a story structure as a construct of tinker-toys about the size of a basketball.  And think of a narrative space as your bathtub.  With a tub full of subject matter, you can drop your tinker ball anywhere in it and encircle a different batch of water.  Without changing the structure at all, you can move it just an inch and still change the nature of the particular subject matter you’ll use in making your point.

Now look at it another way.  You have this tub full of subject matter than intrigues you.  You’d love to cram it all into the same story.  But, your ball just isn’t that big.  In other words, you’d need a book the size of an encyclopedia to cover it all, or perhaps a movie 8 days long.  Could it be done, of course!  But should it?  Not if you expect anybody to read it or go see it.

So, you assess your tub.  You’d really like the rubber duck in your story so you put the ball around that.  But, you’d also like that particular lump of suds – it just intrigues you.  You gently push that little bubbly heap into your ball as well.  In fact, you go all over your basin and pull all the water and floating things you’d specifically like into your ball.  Eventually, you can’t get anything new into the ball without pushing something else out.  That is the story equivalent of the speed of light constant.  I call it the size of mind constant, because it describes the maximum size a story can be and still be held at one time in the mind of your reader or audience.

Of course you can always plop another ball into the same tub to gather in a different collection of subject matter.  Thus, by writing a series of books, penning a television series, or hammering out a bunch of movie sequels, you might be able to get almost all the subject matter that interests you covered in one story or another – just not all in the same story!

(Naturally, you could create an over-arcing story structure in which each of the smaller stories becomes just an element in a bigger structure, but then the read or audience won’t be able to see the subject matter detail in the smaller stories at the same time that they appreciate the subject matter in the over-arcing story – just too many degrees of separation or magnitude from the biggest to the smallest to capture in a single glimpse.)

Some of your tinker balls might actually overlap in the tub, like galaxies colliding, in which they each share some elements of story structure.  Others may carve out sections that are completely separated.  And, some may nudge up against each other just close enough to have a topical point of connection.  In the end, though, you need to decide for any given story what subject matter you will include and what you will exclude.  Or, put inversely, you need to determine where in the tub to drop your ball.

Finally, to the point of this particular posting – narrative space in the real world.  By this I do not mean the practical application of story structure in fiction, but the projection of story structure concepts into the actual, physical world of living, breathing people.  Quite a departure, I know.  But recall that Dramatica is a theory of the story mind.  It holds that every story structure is a model of the mind’s problem-solving processes.  Even more, it goes so far as to contend that story structure represents the underlying structure and dynamics of our own minds upon which our unique experiences fashion our singular personalities.

Hey – too talky…  Let me try that a little more conversationally…  What works in story structure works in understanding everyday life as well.  The story mind is the same as our own minds.  It is a fully functional model of how we think – how we organize things in our own heads.  So it should not come as much of a surprise that the way we organize our stories is all the way we organize our lives.

Everything we do in life is represented in stories, at a structural level.  I’m not talking about whether you like red or blue or whether you play football or go bowling – that’s all just subject matter.  (And when I say “just” subject matter, yes I know that is where the passion lies.  We only care intellectually about structure.  In short, our heads are into structure but our hearts are into the subject matter.  Still, we’re talking about the relationship between structure and subject matter here, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter much anyhow.)

Now one person will organize his life in many story structures.  Your life is your tube and you’ll have lots of balls in it – some bigger (up to the size of mind constant, at times) but mostly smaller structures of various sizes.  You’ll have a structure for your parents and one for your kids.  You’ll have a structure for your job and, within that, one for your boss.  You’ll have a structure for your future, one for each hobby, and one for the concept of hobbies in which each smaller structure is an element in the overall concept.

We don’t think about structure, we think in topics and organize in structure.

So, one person will have many nested and isolated structures all bouncing around in his or her head all the time, shifting around the the subject matter of our lives, driven by the passions of our personalities.  But underneath it all, logistically, organizationally, there is sense in the midst of the chaos when you recognize the structures of your life and don’t try to create a “life story” but more like a “life pageant” of the ongoing progression, collision and evolution of all the little stories that make up your pitiful existence.  Oops…  got a little carried away there with the rhetoric….

Point is, one person has many stories.  And within themselves, they can see all the characters you find in stories – the Reason character who represents our intellect, the Emotional archetype who stands for our passion, the Protagonist who is our initiative, the Antagonist (our reticence), the Sidekick (our confidence) the Skeptic (doubt), the Guardian (conscience), and the Contagonist (temptation).

But here’s the fun part – when we get together in groups, us humans take on the role of characters in the group story.  In short, we organize ourselves as part of a a larger group-story because story structure is how we organize.  Sounds recursive, but when you consider that the whole point of stories is to show us how to deal with situations that reflect (at some tiny or grandiose level) our own lives, add to that the notion that story structure evolved because it represents the way we think, and add to that the fact that of course we try to organize our world they way our heads are organized – well then maybe it isn’t so much recursive as it is fractal.  In fact, when I first thought of this concept, I called it “fractal psychology” – that’s my name for it and I’m sticking to it!  (Check out my videos on fractal psychology on YouTube.)

Every time you join a club, participate in a class, get involved in a political party or show up to work, you are taking a role in a bigger story than yourself, but completely like the way your own mind is organized.  So, one of us will be the voice of Reason, another the Emotional (passionate) perspective.  By each taking a role, we cover all the ways we can possibly think about the issues the group faces, we create a “big giant head” a la the old television show Mork and Mindy and populate its roles.

Now if you join an already existing organization, there might not be the position open to which you are best suited.  And, because of seniority (or lack thereof) you have to take a role that isn’t all that natural to you.  But if you don’t, you won’t have a place at the table.  So, you cram yourself into that position as best you can in the hopes that if somebody else leaves or dies or gets kicked out or whatever, when the musical chairs of reorganization occurs you may be able to snag yourself a better seat.

Though these things are always to some degree in flux (like molecules, heated, agitating and vibrating to one extent or another), there is a general inertia to each story system that holds the group together.  In time, like a person, a group may grow old and die, lose its vibrancy, or simply go to pieces.  And then, the pieces will gather together or be sopped up by other groups (again like solar systems forming from the remnants of a super nova) and the process will begin all over.

Now the last notion I’ll lay upon you (hallelujah!) is that even groups gather together in groups.  Cities become States become Nations.  Factions become Movements become Parties.  All of humanity is arranged as nested or separated groups, vibrating and evolving and overlapping as they pass through one another in the great subject matter tub of life.  Seems largely like a mess (if you watch the evening news or try to find a job) but beneath it all, very sound, stable, predictable and consistent patterns are a work, all fractally related to that little bitty brain stuffed into each of our puny heads.  A world within and a world without.

Finally, just to poke the bear one more time, go ahead and write your fictions, shoot your movies, and tell your tales.  But wouldn’t it be interesting to try and apply these same Dramatica principals not only to the realms of your creation but to all creation?  What’s the story with your spouse?  Your job?  Your future?  Which of those countries is the Skeptic in this particular international melee?  How does what happens in my town fit in with what happens in my county, and how does it mesh with the next burg over?

You want to think about it.  You know you do.  (That’s just me falling into the role of Contagonist….)

Narrative Space

“Narrative Space” describes the complete breadth and depth of subject matter in which you seek to define a story.

Simply put, most authors don’t come to a story with a complete structure immediately in mind.  Rather, they are attracted to the subject matter, which may include setting, time period, activities and events, personalities, snippets of dialog, situations and anything else that is not inherently part of the argument of a narrative.  For example, take Santa Claus.  You can have him be the main character or a victim or a villain.  You can make him a spirit or a man.  You can have him involved in a western, a science fiction, a romance, a buddy picture or a tragedy.  In and of itself, subject matter is not part of a structure but just the raw material from which a structure is formed.  That is part of the reason that in Dramatica theory we named a story’s structure the storyform as it brings form to story.

Think of subject matter as the interstellar gas and material from which solar systems are formed.  This is the narrative space.  Just because you carve out a piece of this space – enclose a particular cloud of star stuff – does not create planets that orbit in understandable patterns.  The job of an author is to look into the nebulous nature of an area of subject matter – a particular historic event, an aspect of human nature – and to coalesce that material into a tale or a story.  A tale in a given narrative space would simply explore the subject matter and make a statement about it.  A story would transcend that and make the case for the best (or worst) of all possible ways to organize (or live through) that material.

As you might expect, there does not have to be a just one single storyform within a narrative space.  In fact, there can be an infinite number of stories told within a given realm of subject matter.  Some of these may exist in different corners, completely separated from each other.  Some may overlap slightly, covering similar areas of subject matter with two complete different structures and messages.  In fact, two completely different storyform arguments may actually occupy the exact same portion of the overall narrative space but form the raw material toward two contradictory purposes, much as two scepters might fashion artistically incompatible statues from identical pieces of clay.

As a final thought in this brief introduction to the concept, consider that when you are developing your story’s world, who’s in it, what happens to them, and what it all means, just because there are parts of the narrative space subject matter that are the reasons you want to write this story does not mean that they can all fit into the same storyform.  Often, to make a complete argument, we must exclude favorite subject matter pieces that would have to be ham-handedly crammed into our story and would never truly fit.  Further, we may have to include additional elements that really don’t inspire us, because if we went with only the parts we truly care about, our overall argument would be full of holes.

Lastly, take solace that you can always write a second story or a series of them about the same narrative space (subject matter) until you have devised enough structures to powerfully explore them all.

—Melanie Anne Phillips

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Is Story Structure a Myth?

By Melanie Anne Phillips

A whole flock of Story Gurus (myself included) will tell you that stories have structure. Therefore, if you learn that structure you’ll improve your stories. Ostensibly, this will lead to fame, riches, a keen sense of accomplishment, and the unparalleled pleasure of the act of writing itself.

But is that true? Do stories have a structure? And even if they do, is there really any way to figure out what it is? Based solely on the number of competing theories, one might suspect that either stories don’t have structures or that even those who spend their entire lives trying to figure it out, can’t!

But there’s an alternative explanation – actually, a couple of them, and I’d like to share those with you now….

First of all, we have two questions:

1. Do stories have structures?

2. Can we ever really define what they are?

We’ll take them in turn.

Stories have structure. There, I said it. But now I have to prove it. And so I’ll say something else – not all written works are stories. And many of those other kinds of writing don’t have any structure at all. In other words, when people use the term “stories” in a casual way to mean any durn thing an author writes, well, then it is impossible to agree if stories have structure or not, ’cause some of them do and some of them don’t.

So the first thing we need to do is divide what we commonly think of as stories into two different camps. One includes all those written works that have structure and the other contains all the written works that don’t.

Now its pretty silly to say that that any written work could exist that has absolutely no structure. So I’ll go back a bit on what I said. Even a dictionary has structure, sentences have structure, and paragraphs follow the conventions of a particular gramatic form.

Every random collection of words with no intent behind them has structure. Why? As a species we see animals in clouds, mythic figures in glops of stars, and impose images on inkblots. From this we can surmise that the human mind tries to impose structure even on chaos. No matter what written work we might examine, no matter how fluid and free-form, there will be those who see a clear structure in the thing.

Let’s no be so picky. If you see structure in everything, then you already don’t think structure is a myth so my work is done here. But when most people think of structure in regard to writing, they are not talking about grammar or form. Rather, they have “formula” in mind. In other words, writers tend to equate structure with a rigid formula for telling a story – a list of requirements that must be met or the story will suffer.

So let’s go with that and refine our first question to read as follows:

1. Is there a rigid formula that must be followed to write a successful story?

No.

Wait a minute! Didn’t I just say “Stories have structure,” and now I’ve turn ’round and proclaimed , “No they don’t.”

Yes. Yes I did. And here’s why…. Stories have structure but that structure isn’t a rigid formula; it is a flexible form. That’s why its so hard to see – its never quite the same from one story to the next.

Yet, the elements remain the same: There are Characters, Plot and Theme. There are personal problems, and goals, and moralities. There are acts, and scenes and beats. We feel their necessity, we sense their consistency, yet these are just impressions. The actual nature of the structure remains elusive, seen only in glimpses in shadows, never showing itself clearly.

This is not surprising. It is like the old story of three blind men trying to describe an elephant: One feeling the trunk, “It is long and twisty like a snake”. Another, examining the leg, “It is tall and round like a tree.” The last, exploring the ear, “It is thin and flat like a rug.”

Story Gurus are each describing the same elephant in the room. Each is seeing a portion of the truth. While the descriptions seem in conflict or at least disparate, they are really just parts of the same beast.

I’m not here to promote my particular view of the critter. Rather, I figure my “truth” is also just another facet of a greater “Truth”. So in regard to the questions I posed, let me answer like this:

Yes, stories have structure. No, we’ll never see the whole of it. But the more story gurus you study, the more sides you see of what stories are, what they can be, how they work, and how to build them.

Embrace what works for you, reject what feels wrong, and strive to develop your own take on story structure, always remembering that no matter how clearly it appears to you, its probably just another piece of the puzzle.

The bottom line is apply structure only in ways that enhance your productivity and your enjoyment in pursuing your craft. Anything else has no more place in your writing life than a rigid structure can be applied to every kind of story.