About Stories, Plots, and academics
I’d like to take this post and turn it into an attempt at answering a question that was raised in B's last blog post:
Is there no new story to be found?
If you ask Christopher Booker (2004 in “Why We Tell Stories”), he’ll tell you that there are only seven basic plots:
Quiller-Couch formulated seven basic conflicts that make up a story.
William Foster-Harris (1959) insists that there are only thee basic plots to be found:
Happy Ending, in which the protagonist makes a sacrifice
Unhappy Ending, in which the protagonist fails to make the sacrifice
The Literary Plot, which starts with fate, an event not at the hand oft he protagonist occurs and they have to follow the laid-out plans.
There are also those who will go into double digits with the numbers of stories/plots that they say exist. Ronald B. Tobias (1993, in “20 Master Plots”) claims, unsurprisingly, that there are 20 Master plots. (Quest, Adventure, Pursuit, Rescue, Escape, Revenge, The Riddle, Rivalry, Underdog, Temptation, Metamorphosis, Transformation, Maturation, Love, Forbidden Love, Sacrifice, Discovery, Wretched Excess, Ascension, Descension) – with a little thinking you can probably come up with examples from all over classical and modern literature and film which fit these labels.
And Georger Polti, a French writer and theorist, claimed 1916 that there were 36 dramatic situations upon which any story was built (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations)
A slightly different approach to the whole question is presented in Joseph Campbell’s „The Hero with a Thousand Faces“ (1949). Rather than just listing different plot situations and plot-driving mechanisms, he describes a so-called „monomyth“ that is found in myths and stories across the world and across different cultures. This monomythical structure has 17 stages, and it is entirely possible to map any kind of tale onto the pattern – be it a fairytale, a romantic comedy, the story of a business or a comedy like „Bridesmaids“ – and it’s certainly always interesting. This is aptly demonstrated by Christopher Vogler in his “Practical Guide”, which has now been turned into the book “The Writer's Journey” (1998) – still a seminal work in storytelling theory, especially for the screen, but useful to anyone who wants to create compelling stories.
What differs Campbell’s approach to that of the others listed is further that it is possible to “write by numbers”, send your protagonist along his “hero’s journey” and you will end up with a complicated, engaging story (if done right – and by “right” I mean: learn the rules, break them, and fix the story where it needs be fixed by going back the the rulebook, and jumping off again from there.). George Lucas has outright admitted that his “Star Wars”-films are heavily inspired by the Hero’s Journey – both Luke and Han go through the stages Vogler describes. For example, Luke completes his journey into adulthood in the first film, which does not necessitate him to face the “big bad” – Darth Vader – but to transform into the fighter pilot that saves the rebels this time with his precise manoeuvring skills. Han, on the other hand, acts as a helper to Luke, but his story of becoming a “good man”, worthy of Leia, has only just started.
The Hero’s journey is always about the development of the hero, his or her transformation, journeying into the unknown – this may be an outer or an inner journey, of course.
And I’d like to argue here that a story can focus on any part of the journey and the transformation, and still feel like a complete story. Let’s look at last year’s would-be blockbuster “Pacific Rim” for an example: Main character Raleigh outwardly goes through the classical heroe's journey – he is driven out of his “normal world” by his mentor (and commanding officer), Stacker Pentecost who recruits him to Hongkong and a new world. He then spends the second act getting to know the goals of this group of heroes, finally joining them and defeating some of the enemies – big sea creatures calles Kaiju. However, the true goal is to prevent any other sea monsters from attacking earth – so Raleigh and his ragtag band of heroes has to group one last time and throw an atomic bomb into the Mariana Trench (it makes sense in context). Raleigh almost dies during this ordeal, but in true Hollywood fashion survives the explosion and returns to his new-found family (his normal world was destroyed when his real family, his brother, was killed).
This is his outward journey. His inner journey, I'd like to argue, is only compromised of the second act of Vogler's “hero's journey”: Raleigh crosses the threshold when he loses his brother, and is now trapped in some sort of inner hell, where he cannot forgive himself for his brother's death. All the following interactions with fellow humans are his trials, and the final reward is his re-connection with Mako, which in this scenario can be read as both a romantic connection as well as one based on friendship.
(Pacific Rim was one of my favourite movies from 2013, and I might be slightly biased when interpreting a film that was basically an excuse to have huge robots fight huge sea monsters. But so be it.)
The argument can be made that there may be several “heroes” in one story, and that their journeys can intersect. One hero may serve as the mentor to another, while he or she serves as the helper in somebody else’s journey.
This is why I am immensely fond of Campbell’s monomyth and Christopher Vogler’s adaptation of it in “The Writer’s Journey” (2007). A book, incidentally, every (aspiring) screenwriter should read, if only to say that since they know the rules, they can break them.
Campbell and Vogler argue that there ultimately is only one story – what do you think of that, B? And how could be interpret this one story (of the seven or 20 or 36 found above) differently? Or do we not need to? Man is the storytelling animal, after all, and that one seems to have worked for thousands of years.
Earth, The Milky Way, Our Universe
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
janainaart
vaporwave