Cognisant
Prolific Member
- Local time
- Yesterday 4:13 PM
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2009
- Messages
- 10,593
What are you theories on storytelling?
What are the essentials of a story, what kinds of story are there, what makes a good story, what are different storytelling methods and how can they be used, etc.
Please discuss stories you like and try to examine why you like them.
As I see it every story has at least one conflict, this conflict isn't necessarily between people it can be a goal to be achieved, a challenge to overcome, a situation to get out of, a question to be answered, etc, the point being that there's something preventing the resolution of this conflict. The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a great example of this, the goats want to get to the other side of the bridge and to do that they have to cross the bridge but there's a troll guarding it. There's an obvious conflict between what the goats want and what the troll wants but interestingly even though the goats are the protagonists (the ones with a goal) and the troll is the antagonist (the one preventing the goal being achieved) the story is more about the troll than the goats and how his greed is ultimately his undoing.
Something the Three Billy Goats Gruff doesn't have is a character arch, as I understand it a character arch is about how a character changes throughout a story. This can either be passive, something happens to the character that either changes them directly or forces them to change, or active, when a character has some sort of barrier/challenge that they can only overcome by changing themselves.
Character development can be seen as the character overcoming the personal flaws that were holding them back and that's often true but you can also have negative character development where a character progresses through the plot by becoming more flawed. Positive character development is like Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender having to overcome is passivity and undertaking the responsibility of being the avatar, his big kaiju moment at the end of season one happens because the death of the moon spirit forces upon him the realization that his passivity has consequences for those around him. On the other side of the coin we have the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie in which a damaged but kind person becomes increasingly unfettered as a result of his dire circumstances, watching someone fall to villainy can be just as interesting if not more so then watching someone rise to heroism.
What are the essentials of a story, what kinds of story are there, what makes a good story, what are different storytelling methods and how can they be used, etc.
Please discuss stories you like and try to examine why you like them.
As I see it every story has at least one conflict, this conflict isn't necessarily between people it can be a goal to be achieved, a challenge to overcome, a situation to get out of, a question to be answered, etc, the point being that there's something preventing the resolution of this conflict. The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a great example of this, the goats want to get to the other side of the bridge and to do that they have to cross the bridge but there's a troll guarding it. There's an obvious conflict between what the goats want and what the troll wants but interestingly even though the goats are the protagonists (the ones with a goal) and the troll is the antagonist (the one preventing the goal being achieved) the story is more about the troll than the goats and how his greed is ultimately his undoing.
Something the Three Billy Goats Gruff doesn't have is a character arch, as I understand it a character arch is about how a character changes throughout a story. This can either be passive, something happens to the character that either changes them directly or forces them to change, or active, when a character has some sort of barrier/challenge that they can only overcome by changing themselves.
Character development can be seen as the character overcoming the personal flaws that were holding them back and that's often true but you can also have negative character development where a character progresses through the plot by becoming more flawed. Positive character development is like Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender having to overcome is passivity and undertaking the responsibility of being the avatar, his big kaiju moment at the end of season one happens because the death of the moon spirit forces upon him the realization that his passivity has consequences for those around him. On the other side of the coin we have the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie in which a damaged but kind person becomes increasingly unfettered as a result of his dire circumstances, watching someone fall to villainy can be just as interesting if not more so then watching someone rise to heroism.