31–40 of 54 posts
Wow, thanks for the unrequested spoilers. You’d think an article about storytelling might be a little more careful.
Counterpoint argument based on the Japanese/Korean story structure called kishōtenketsu: > The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to…
> From one point of view, it’s obvious that, despite exceptions, most stories portray “goody-baddy” dynamics—from nursery rhymes to juicy gossip, from ancient folktales to Holy Scripture, from lowbrow reality shows to award-winning documentaries. The question is, why? Because they are all, actually, from the same culture, as becomes obvious when reading the article. The author is a little quick to call this universal…
Quillette is garbage: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/quillette/
I find many popular shows are quite moralistic, but I'm not sure if that's cause or effect. Are they popular because we like moralistic stories, or because story-tellers want to moralize us? Many 'indie' shows, often European, are much more ambiguous and reflective of real life.
This is especially noticeable in formulaic sitcoms. Any time a character lies, cheats, etc, they will get caught in the worst way possible. At some base societal level it's "correct" to punish the bad guy and reward the good guy. Our stories reflect this attitude.
A bit unrelated to the article - An (initial) portion of my academic experience was researching Interactive Storytelling systems[1]. I was particularly interested in the methods for ensuring certain qualities of the plots, and modeled some constraint solving problems - but I did had the absolutely outstanding opportunity to interact with researchers in this area, and to read the seminal works on plot structure, Aarne…
I like to think (based on my shallow understanding of technical aspects of stories) that the basic formula of the hero's journey (a hero goes somewhere else and brings back some kind of change) is a general scheme to codify how to change things Ramping up the abstraction (generality) to 11: the hero is in a home (A) the hero goes on an adventure (->) the hero returns home but things have changed (B) i.e. A -> B It is…
I worked particularly on a system that involved an automated planning paradigm - so there were 'goals' that the story wanted to be met (and could be determined/influenced by an author-user) and a catalogue of abstract definitions of events as planning operators. It worked somewhat like you said, except (for practical purposes) mostly backwards (as in backwards-planning)
I unfortunately lost contact with the research area a bit, and am not familiar with how it progressed - but it certainly is interesting in a distinct way; it really lets you explore a particular creative side that many things in computer science neglect
"We love the sensation of righteous indignation and the satisfying payoff of justice delivered. As the literary scholar Northrop Frye points out in The Anatomy of Criticism[1], “In the melodrama of the brutal thriller we come as close as it’s normally possible for art to come to the pure self-righteousness of the lynching mob.” And studies back this up: people get more satisfaction out of stories in which offenders are punished rather than forgiven.
The unstoppable moralism of stories has a big upside for within-group bonding. But the universal grammar of stories can also be paranoid and vindictive. Stories show us problem-drenched worlds and encourage us to turn on the people who are lousing things up. In other words, to proliferate narratives is to proliferate villains. To proliferate villains is also to proliferate rage, judgment, and division."
Counterpoint argument based on the Japanese/Korean story structure called kishōtenketsu: > The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I see it (as someone fascinated with this phenomenon), this is somewhat of an example of what the author is talking about. The claim: >> The golden rule of hunter-gather life is pretty simple ...post-processing, is perceived as: > There are at least as many "hunter-gather lives" as there are tribes, and probably more, and it's very likely the author knows about none of them. ...dropping "the golden rule of". Ironi…
You're playing with words. The rest of the paragraph in TFA does describe the life of hunter-gatherers, not just one "golden rule" (which is never enunciated). > If you happen to be blessed with muscle, don’t throw it around. If you happen to be a great hunter or a dazzling beauty, don’t flaunt it over others. Be one of the good guys, in other words. This is completely gratuitous and unsubstantiated. It's ridiculous.…
So you interpret and perceive (and then assert as True). But then, aren't we all "playing with words", at all times, to some degree?
For example, I could say that you are "engaging in persuasive rhetoric" when you say that.
>> If you happen to be blessed with muscle, don’t throw it around. If you happen to be a great hunter or a dazzling beauty, don’t flaunt it over others. Be one of the good guys, in other words.
> This is completely gratuitous and unsubstantiated. It's ridiculous. And then there is more of the same.
gratuitous: uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted
Don't throw your muscle around, don't flaunt exceptional characteristics over others, be a good guy - in the building and maintenance of a successful community, these things are "uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted"?
unsubstantiated: not supported or proven by evidence
Here you have a better case, but when it comes to the "not supported by" part, I suspect these are not entirely new ideas in the fields of anthropology and social evolution (I speculate).
Out of curiosity, did you read my other comment? I put a fair amount of work into it, and I believe it has some relevance. Perhaps you could critique it!
A bit unrelated to the article - An (initial) portion of my academic experience was researching Interactive Storytelling systems[1]. I was particularly interested in the methods for ensuring certain qualities of the plots, and modeled some constraint solving problems - but I did had the absolutely outstanding opportunity to interact with researchers in this area, and to read the seminal works on plot structure, Aarne…
I like to think (based on my shallow understanding of technical aspects of stories) that the basic formula of the hero's journey (a hero goes somewhere else and brings back some kind of change) is a general scheme to codify how to change things Ramping up the abstraction (generality) to 11: the hero is in a home (A) the hero goes on an adventure (->) the hero returns home but things have changed (B) i.e. A -> B It is…
How about the Odyssey?
The Epic of Gilgamesh?
The Kalevala?
The Mahābhārata (or just the Bhagavad Gita)?
Or the Ramayana?
Beowulf?
My guess is you can't. The "Hero's Journey" is too narrow and too simplistic to be applied to the major epic works of human cultures across the ages. It is a limited abstraction that only serves to describe perhaps a subset of literary works from a particular historical and geographical era and area, but by far not the universal story structure that it is claimed to be.