Super Standard Story Structure

Hey guys,

After spending a couple years as a troper, and looking at story structure from a couple different perspectives, (3 Act, 5 Act, 8 Point, 15 Beats) I wanted to get a most universal story engine on paper to help build story and better get my stuff together.

http://mind42.com/pub/mindmap?mid=fc237c85-32c2-4b80-be13-0e5a674db8ac&rel=url

Start upper left, go clockwise. I wanted to link to some tropes under the different sections, but we really don't have as much on what a story goes through as opposed to content, so I'm just going to sit it here and see what you guys think.

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I always use 5 Act/Freytag's Pyramid Structure, but this is interesting.

...I can't figure out how to follow this for the life of me.

I am also confused with nrjxll.

I think those things work mainly as good catalysts for inspiration, and less as IKEA assembly instructions. e.g. I find the words "the world, if lost" to be very evocative - it is a good idea to make an effort and truly show what is at stake.

As for actual outlining, I'm of the opinion that the radical approach known as "chronological order of specifics" works best. When you're stuck on what your main character should do next, chances are you've already figured that there's going to have some sort of "intention" fueling their decision, and that some "action" or other is going to be involved.

edited 29th Jan '12 3:23:16 PM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

Thanks, original intention was to emulate something like Blake Snider's beat sheet that covered all the points in your average movie, and try and expand it and pick and mix it to further flesh it out, specifically getting the B-Story and A-Story untangled. Since a story can be broken into parts, and those parts resemble the original in tone and emotion, they could be modulated and translated. The driving force behind story being the pacing and order of actions, I tried to get a check list going for how to write a decent movie/story, and feed into that human need of "Start, Rise, Fall, Excel" as far as stories are made and interpreted. Snyder's method has caught flack for being too cookie cutter to translate to the "true art" films, but movies seem to adhere to it by nature, and when a movie goes completely off the rails, it suffers for it. I want to try and refine it to better organize story ideas, and then reverse engineer it into a proper manuscript, and that's it's purpose to me.

My webzone.

I think I get it now. It's divided into four acts, but the order wasn't what I expected. Shouldn't Set-up be swapped for Catalyst if it's going clock-wise?

edited 29th Jan '12 7:24:34 PM by chihuahua0

I'm not sure how to interpret a lot of these phrases (though I think "the world if lost" might mean Story Boarding The Apocalypse.)

(Also, did you misspell something in the Variable part? The A-plot has "Intension," but the B-plot has "Intention.")

edited 29th Jan '12 7:09:16 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I still have no idea how you're supposed to read this thing.

Okay, so I only think this is right - I could be totally wrong.

• You establish your setup and then bring in your catalyst, tie these two together and you have your "control", so the general direction your story is going in.
• After that you move to variable and introduce the subplots.
• You go on to analysis, which is basically your rising action point, this is the point where everything comes at you at once - you've run out of water, someone is wounded and the Big Bad looks to be winning.
• Conclusion - you resolve the main conflict and then finish the plot proper (so, the farm boy kills the evil king [conflict resolved] and instead of marrying the princess returns home [plot resolved])
• End of story.

That any help?

Again - this could be completely wrong, I never really bothered with the story structure thing anyway. I have some characters, they do their thing, story finishes, is my idea of an outline.

edited 29th Jan '12 8:29:18 PM by AwayLaughing

I consider Analysis to be "the darkest hour". It's the emotional low of the narrative, when all seems lost. Until the protagonist has a realization and goes to storming the castle, so to say.

Amen. I think I've soapboxed enough on my preference for character-driven stories that I don't need to state my attitude here.

Yeah, did misspell Intention. </Derp>

Though the guideline is vague, and probably filled with my lingo to the point of incomprehensibility, it does hold out for a surprising number of stories, my guess being that it's the way our brains distill experience and memory, conserving the before, what happened, how you felt, and how it was resolved, everything else going into the aether. So Away Laughing is right, The World if Lost was supposed to be a look into the Darkest Hour if things go the antagonists way, and even when writing from the hip, a lot of these elements are a part of the story process naturally, is just what comes out when you gotta tell a story about a guy who has a goal, does a thing, something pushes back, and a new status quo is established.

Here's the original Blake Snyder Beat Sheet for those intrested, it is a .doc file though: http://www.blakesnyder.com/downloads/beatsheet.doc (It assumes you're using a feature script, and 110 is the ideal script size to take to print.)

I tried to base it off of this, but so I could better plan what needed to happen in any given story so I don't get stuck getting someone from A to B.

edited 29th Jan '12 9:13:57 PM by moocow1452

My webzone.

The reason I'm so curious about this is that I recently finished a short story that doesn't fit very well into conventional structures. I'm hoping that proper definitions of the parts will allow me to determine how well they fit the story.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I wasn't very keen on outlines. Until I tried writing a thriller.

Yay! Idea!— Three scenes later: Plot out of steam. Hm. Can't bring random shocking realization from nowhere now. Gotta rewrite.

Yay! Idea! Totally going to work this time!— Six scenes later: Plot out of steam. Huh. I really thought I had something there. Suppose I write in this politician, and he starts driving the plot via watching the Cabinet? Wait, who wants to read about a character driving the plot by watching something? And I'm not going to make an actual person calling actual shots a main PoV character in a thriller, that's way beyond my league to pull off. Where are my main characters again? Why don't they have anything to do? God. Gotta rewind and redo this thing.

Yay! Idea!— Inspiration has struck. The pieces are finally falling into place!— Five scenes later: The pieces are done falling into place. My protagonist has a neat one-fifth of the puzzle, a glaring lack of leads to lead him anywhere in the direction of the rest of the puzzle, zero motivation and no clue.

Wash, rinse.

edited 30th Jan '12 12:41:43 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

Story structure is really well explained here, especially if you want the universal, super standard structure: http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html

^ Impressive. The PDF is a bit much for me at the moment, but the page itself is a decent read.

My webzone.

Off Topic, but I just had to get this out of my system: I was wondering why this thread's title was so catchy. And then I realized.

edited 31st Jan '12 9:57:38 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

This looks interesting, especially since my main work at the moment is all over the place in terms of story structure.

Actually, I would label Act One (first book) as solely "Control" going off your graph.

Read my stories!

@OP: Are you, by any chance, writing for film? I ask because all of the examples posted so far list movies as a reference, and while I'm not entirely sure, I think the structure of a screenplay is different than a novel or short story.

Just wondering.

Now I'm gonna start all my topics with trochee titles.

Yeah, I dabble in script format, have some specs in the works, but mostly for shorter form web stuff and tv pilots over feature film. But on them not being the same pony, I really think they are, or at least have the same bones. Novels do have setup, goals in mind, dark points, and payoffs, but are under a little more freedom since it's a written piece. Literature can go on for pages and pages to describe the scenery, wander around a little, and set up tales within the tale without losing anyone's attention, since their English teacher has them by the balls, since it's more tolerable to go off the beaten path in Literature when you have a story to tell. World Builders are allowed to go nuts on the smallest things, because that's the tradition of the form. You'll have people call them out on extraneous scenes, but if they are enjoying the book's ride, people aren't going to mind as much. Screenwork is different only in that you need to cut everything down into the most prudent form possible, so the structure stands out more. Short Stories and Poetry also have to deal with that, but it's more at the emotional level than literal, so it's a little easier to hide your tracks. In a movie, initial description of a setting is cut down to "EXT: PLACE IN QUESTION," and the director and crew handles the rest. At your stage, you can't go on about length, or how the cars are chasing each other, because you do not have that luxury unless it is vital to the plot.

Main difference is this: Movies have to start by necessity as close to the end of the story as possible, while novels can take their sweet, sweet time because they have that privilege. Other than that, mostly the same deal regarding story, since the epic length stories are starting to split into two seperate stories. Each perfectly capable of standing on their own, but form a bigger picture. (Pun)

If Book 1 is all setup, it probably still has ups and downs at different points, making a complete story on it's own, unless it is the day to day actions of a guy who needs to change and stuff only starts happening halfway through. In which case, you better not make the AP list, or I will hunt you down.

edited 31st Jan '12 3:25:37 PM by moocow1452

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Ah, okay, I understand now.

I guess my objection to this and other structures boils down to one thing: what do we do with stories in which the hero fails to grow and change, and is ultimately defeated because of it? (I suppose we can separate the tragic structure from the standard heroic, but a lot of stories of failure aren't formally tragic. Consider a good 50% of Franz Kafka's work, a bit of Samuel Beckett*

, and much of the horror genre for good measure.)

Edit: Removed Animal Farm from the list, since you could argue that it's tragic.

edited 31st Jan '12 4:18:16 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Then you invert the ending. Never said the hero has to learn something and win, the hero has to make a realization, put a last effort in, and there's a catharsis. Even if that revelation is that he's going to die, he jumped off the slope, or he's a martyr in his own mind, he always has a last stand, and then something happens.

Something like Dr Horrible, where Doc pulls out the freeze ray, and zaps Hammer is his initial plan. We saw him prep for it earlier, and he came to that resolution at the tail end of Act 2. The last surprise is where he finds out he just can't pull the trigger, and Hammer socks him across the room when he thaws out. Then the moment for all the marbles consists of Hammer pulling the trigger on the busted death ray, boom goes the gun, and the catharsis is Penny's death. Same structure with Macbeth, Hamlet, all the tragic things. Where it differs is in what it says. Humanity is 99.5% the same genomes, but that half a percent can make a ridiculously huge difference on who you are, and that's not even factoring in what went on in their lives. The same, but different. The One Story.

Sorry to get on my soapbox there, but for me it's like The Secret with movies. Except it actually makes sense, and it's better than getting decent parking spots all the time.

edited 31st Jan '12 6:01:47 PM by moocow1452

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How nifty. Although I don't think the standard story structure would cover every experience in writing, I do believe that some universal templates frequently occur, over and over in the plotting.