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Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

bbc.com

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Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#41

Post by manwe150 »

tlb wrote: post #15
hprotagonist wrote: post #8

I wonder if I can construct a Cantor-like diagonal proof that creates a definitively non-countable plot.

Here, the only tokens are rise and fall and they must alternate. So you can enumerate plots by picking a starting token and a number of alternations. Thus there are Aleph_0 plots. If you tracked multiple hero/protagonists then their interleavings could be uncountable.

Is it required that “rise” and “fall” be boolean/digital operations? I think it would be more reasonable to characterize them as analog/continuous. That could then lead to infinite variations in rates, even just with a single character. And that’s before considering whether the characters and reader are correct in determining their current trajectory—much as in real life.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#42

Post by MrTonyD »

mrob wrote: post #21

Counterexample: A poor man finds a magic lamp. He summons the genie, and wishes for great fortune. (Rags to riches.) He makes another wish, and it horribly backfires. (Icarus.) No longer trusting genies, he wishes he'd never found the lamp. The genie rewinds time. A poor man finds a magic lamp.... (Infinite loop plot not included in the classification.) EDIT: Downvoter, how would you classify this story?

It took me a while to figure out that on HN you get downvoted if you aren't agreed with or your opinion is disliked - quite often nothing to do with any actual intellectual argument. I've learned to ignore all the downvotes that I get - they are meaningless, and usually associated with what I consider to be my more insightful posts. (Since more insight implies that more other people haven't made the same observation - thus more downvotes.)

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#43

Post by weeksie »

Plot structures are tools. All else being equal it's a good idea to pick a plot that's as simple as possible and hang the interesting stuff off that. The classic mistake of beginning writers is to go for complexity in plot and then spend their entire time serving that plot to the detriment of their characters.

That said, of course not every story fits into some basic set of plot outlines without some serious mental acrobatics. Plot isn't even necessary, what's necessary is getting inside people's heads. The classic plots (however they're formulated) are all good ways to do that but you can also do that with meandering unstructured prose, if you're good enough, though few people are and the further you get from universal tricks the more likely you are to run into serious disagreements over who writes really good nonconformist stories.

Maybe a good example is dialog. The beginner's mistake is to write as if people are listening and responding to what the other has said. e.g.

"Hey Joe, what's up?"

"Just whippin' up some breakfast."

versus

"Hey Joe, what's up?"

"Jesus, you look like shit. Want some breakfast?"

In the second example the reader fills in the blanks mentally. It creates engagement. Do that in the small throughout your book and few people will complain that you lack a plot. Easier said than done.

Plots are good. Use them. But they're not the whole, uh, story.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#45

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #37
nprateem wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Hollywood wanted a formula and found one in Campbell. After reading that book or others about the "hero's journey" most mainstream films are quite bland. Having said that, there are only 7 notes in the major scale and look what that's done for us...

> Hollywood wanted a formula and found one in Campbell. Insofar as there is a Hollywood formula, it's more Save the Cat than Campbell (or even the Writer's Journey ), and the former does not derive from the latter.

Campbell has been more of an influence on genre fiction than Hollywood. Genre writers obsess about characterisation in a way that screen writers - at least the ones who get regular work - clearly don't.

I used to know a screen writer, and he described Hollywood writing as a theme park ride you watch on a screen. There are standard scenes that every action movie is supposed to have, usually delivered in a standard order, sometimes with standard dialog. There are optional scenes from the Generic Hollywood Scene Library Sorted By Genre that writers can add as needed. The rest is CGI, costumes, and camera moves.

And it's this way because it's what the middle of the bell curve pays for. Anything too clever or original or interesting or challenging may win awards and/or critical praise, but it's not what The Average Movie Ticket Buyer wants.

To add: the original research is pretty much useless, as others have pointed out. That doesn't mean someone who actually understands the industry couldn't codify the tropes and cliches and produce a Plot and Character Machine that generated commercially valuable output. There are quite a few steps from that to generating a filmable script, but even a relatively simple outliner that hit the spot would have real value.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#46

Post by jacobkg »

weeksie wrote: post #43

Plot structures are tools. All else being equal it's a good idea to pick a plot that's as simple as possible and hang the interesting stuff off that. The classic mistake of beginning writers is to go for complexity in plot and then spend their entire time serving that plot to the detriment of their characters. That said, of course not every story fits into some basic set of plot outlines without some serious mental a…

Can you give reference(s) for that beginner’s mistake? I’ve never heard it before and it’s definitely something I do. Would love to learn more about this!

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#47

Post by __s »

jacobkg wrote: post #46
weeksie wrote: post #43

Plot structures are tools. All else being equal it's a good idea to pick a plot that's as simple as possible and hang the interesting stuff off that. The classic mistake of beginning writers is to go for complexity in plot and then spend their entire time serving that plot to the detriment of their characters. That said, of course not every story fits into some basic set of plot outlines without some serious mental a…

Can you give reference(s) for that beginner’s mistake? I’ve never heard it before and it’s definitely something I do. Would love to learn more about this!

Philip K Dick's Gather Yourselves Together had pretty banal dialogue

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#48

Post by __s »

mrob wrote: post #21

Counterexample: A poor man finds a magic lamp. He summons the genie, and wishes for great fortune. (Rags to riches.) He makes another wish, and it horribly backfires. (Icarus.) No longer trusting genies, he wishes he'd never found the lamp. The genie rewinds time. A poor man finds a magic lamp.... (Infinite loop plot not included in the classification.) EDIT: Downvoter, how would you classify this story?

That's alright, next you need to make the sequence normal so that it's never repeating

Another counter example: https://serprex.github.io/w/Ad%20nauseum%20ad%20nauseum

This is a story I started writing last year, it doesn't have rises & falls, just someone reminiscing on the way to the corner store for a bag of chips

If my writing doesn't count since it's just some random page on the internet, there's Bob Dylan's Tarantula, & he's won a Nobel for literature. You'll be forced to say "Every story has one these six basic plots, where a story must have a plot, & a plot must be composed of rises & falls" since anything that would go against that gets categorized as a "sub story" or "not part of the story"

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#49

Post by yellowapple »

busterarm wrote: post #16

This feels pretty reductive. They chose one variable to measure stories on, fortune, and then of course all of these stories follow a short list of possible patterns. This counts as research?

I'm curious if they count television as storytelling here. If so, then the whole premise is demonstrably false; your standard soap opera will go beyond the stated one or two fortune-inflections in a single episode, let alone a season, let alone a series run.
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