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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

#61

Post by lozenge »

projectramo wrote: post #28
ummonk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they should research next: "every story falls into one of these basic length categories!"

Short, medium and long. Researchers could not find other lengths although they hypothesized that if someone wanted they could create a “mega” category. “It’s possible,” they concluded.

Funnily, book and story lengths actually do bunch up for commercial reasons. I read of one author whose kids book was semi accepted, but they needed another 80 pages to hit the next price point. (Basically, the unusually thin book would not "communicate value" on the shelf). Extending the story ruined the flow, so he decided to self publish online.

The same is true for film - opportunities to tell a 10 minute or 70 minute story are pretty rare, and I think techniques of film have just developed around that limitation. A 70 minute film might just leave viewers feeling confused.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#62

Post by yesenadam »

lozenge wrote: post #61
projectramo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short, medium and long. Researchers could not find other lengths although they hypothesized that if someone wanted they could create a “mega” category. “It’s possible,” they concluded.

Funnily, book and story lengths actually do bunch up for commercial reasons. I read of one author whose kids book was semi accepted, but they needed another 80 pages to hit the next price point. (Basically, the unusually thin book would not "communicate value" on the shelf). Extending the story ruined the flow, so he decided to self publish online. The same is true for film - opportunities to tell a 10 minute or 70 m…

It's interesting how in filmed stories there are the 2 main types - movie and tv series, where the shorter movie seems the more serious/central/important/prestigious etc form, the opposite of the situation with short story/novella vs novel. That's just from the historical accident of people seeing movies in cinemas, and series on TV, I guess.

70min movies can work fine - the 68 min Detour (1945), one of the first noirs, doesn't seem too short at all. Rick and Morty at 22 or so minutes does more than most 1 hour tv shows - an hour at that pace might be too much. Also, it seems that in the first decades or 50 years of cinema, plenty of 10 and 70 minute stories were shown, but recently you get the 'main feature' and nothing else.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#64

Post by yesenadam »

sambeau wrote: post #23
vichu wrote: post #9

A great book on this subject is Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. His theory of the archetypal hero and the theory of the monomyth is a great influence on anlyses like this one (and also on some artistic works - including a small film series known as Star Wars). It's fantastic to see these natural language processing techniques applied to this topic.

I blame Joseph Campbell for ruining modern cinema with it's simplistic boring plots (like Star Wars's) where yet another hero battles some evil tyrant to save the world, universe or forest. There are so many more interesting, surprising stories to be told that leave the viewer with unresolved things to think about and captivating cul-de-sacs along the way. The 1970s films were full of odd, interesting plots and films…

It sounds like you're talking about US movies only. There's a whole world of cinema out here. 'modern US cinema' =/= modern cinema. every US film =/= every film. Sounds obvious, but (to take one example) the majority of "Best films of the year" lists I come across online actually have only US movies, and seem oblivious that movies are made in any other country, let alone most of the good ones. 'Grown-up films' of the world, not just the USA, are thankfully not in such a sorry state as you describe. Well, the marketers/advertisers/etc that made people in the US think that 'movies' = 'US movies' did a great job.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#66

Post by affinity100 »

rayalez wrote: post #58

There are dozens of writing mentors/gurus, and every one of them has discovered the story structure, or the 3/7/10/50 basic plots. All of them are different. From vague and meaningless "beginning-middle-end but not always in the same order" to Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet or Dan Harmon's story circle(Campbell's hero's journey). They all are kinda true, for the same reason you can find the proof of UFO in the Bible, or d…

Very nice take.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#67

Post by sacado2 »

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?

There's a traditional variant of this schema:

A poor man uses all his money to buy a horse. "You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man.

The next day, the horse escapes. "Your hard-earned money, and your horse, both gone. You must be sad", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man.

A few days later, the horse comes back, with a female horse. "Now you have two horses, and very soon a third one. You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man.

The next day, the man's son tries to care about the new horse, but the horse rebels and the son has his leg broken. "That's your only son, and know he won't be able to work or provide for you in your old days anymore. You must be sad". "I don't know", answers the man.

A few days later, this is war. All young men must leave and go to war. Since the man's son is injured, he doesn't have to go. "Your son won't have to face the horror of war. How good for both of you ! I wish my own son was still there with me".

Some versions of the story stop there, but it can keep going, and end either on a positive event or on a negative one. Basically, this is a story about how you can never know if an event will be good or bad, no matter the first impression. It cannot fit any of those story patterns.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#68

Post by weeksie »

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!

I can't think of a specific ref off the top of my head but there are great books out there. Also, I used dialog as an example but what makes a story addictive is the act of filling in the blanks. You can do that with emotional transitions or imagery and that's what I meant by "do that throughout your book and few people will complain about a lack of plot"

Plots are a great tool in that they have that part built in.

I'm several champagnes in at this point on a transatlantic flight and we're landing but I'll go through my list of fave writing books when I get settled

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#69

Post by sacado2 »

stewbrew wrote: post #33

Or maybe, every story has one of this one basic plot: (1) setup/intro/beginning, (2) stuff happens, (3) things somehow come to an end (for now).

Not sure you even need the first part. A character has a problem and tries to solve it, until he either succeeds or definitely fails. Lots of stories start with a conflict at the very first line, without any kind of setup (especially thrillers).

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#70

Post by shakethemonkey »

gaius wrote: post #5

Thanks to new text-mining techniques, this has now been done Thanks text mining techniques! Here's an article saying the same thing almost word-for-word from 2004 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3632074/Everything...

And then there's TV Tropes[1] which uses a finer measure

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Plots

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