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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).
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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!
In journalism/media school, we're taught "show, don't tell" in both our news and creative writing courses. You want to use detail to set the atmosphere/tone without flat out saying it.
"Show, don't tell" is not necessarily appropriate in news. News and writing for entertainment serve such radically different goals that it's worth carefully considering to what extent the same methods and models fit both.
When someone reads creative writing, they derive enjoyment from the mental reconstruction of the scene, the characters' intentions, etc. The writer may want the story to afford multiple interpretations and reward multiple readings.
But with news, the reader often just wants information. They may not be able to devote their full attention to the story, and they may lack the necessary contextual information to connect the dots you have laid out before them. The reliable transmission of information is more important than stimulating or entertaining the reader.
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…
Of cause it can, just because you have a character proclaim he doesn’t know doesn’t suddenly make it so. The curve goes down when his son breaks his leg and it goes up when he doesn’t have to join the army. There is no requirement to integrate all future development into the current state of the curve.
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…
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?
The timeline may be an infinite loop but your story still ended, with the revelation that the man is doomed to repeat his Icarus story for everytime. An author could play that as a sad or happy ending, as they like.
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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!
In journalism/media school, we're taught "show, don't tell" in both our news and creative writing courses. You want to use detail to set the atmosphere/tone without flat out saying it.
Gee thanks for that brilliant insight.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In journalism/media school, we're taught "show, don't tell" in both our news and creative writing courses. You want to use detail to set the atmosphere/tone without flat out saying it.
I have heard that this advice is given for news, and I think that this is unfortunate. "Show, don't tell" is not necessarily appropriate in news. News and writing for entertainment serve such radically different goals that it's worth carefully considering to what extent the same methods and models fit both. When someone reads creative writing, they derive enjoyment from the mental reconstruction of the scene, the cha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are no television scripts in the article.
Even revising the claim to "all novels follow these plots" is surely easy to disprove given the relatively small sample size compared to the sheer abundance of novels written, but at least it wouldn't try to assert specific literary structures on non-literary forms of storytelling (and even some (quasi)literary ones; I've encountered a lot of fanfics with Mary Sue characters who experience no change in fortune at all!).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In journalism/media school, we're taught "show, don't tell" in both our news and creative writing courses. You want to use detail to set the atmosphere/tone without flat out saying it.
I have heard that this advice is given for news, and I think that this is unfortunate. "Show, don't tell" is not necessarily appropriate in news. News and writing for entertainment serve such radically different goals that it's worth carefully considering to what extent the same methods and models fit both. When someone reads creative writing, they derive enjoyment from the mental reconstruction of the scene, the cha…
In my opinion, news has nothing to do with objective information. It has everything to do with entertainment.
I don't watch or read the news, specifically for that reason.