The Universal Shapes of Stories

[ysabetwordsmith]

 ... by Kurt Vonnegut.

Oh look, he's missing lack-lack liquidated-lack from the Aarne-Thompson index and there's nothing about the Asian spiral plot.  Also I'm fascinated by stories that have a double-tap somewhere in them; I've seen doubled beginnings, doubled endings, and stories with two climaxes somewhere in the middle.  The hurt/comfort cycle looks similar to the stepped pyramids in some of those illustrations, but angled and jagged like a sawblade.

Yes, stories have shapes, and to some of us this is obvious.

Comments

[dsgood]

Spunds like you may have a form of synesthesia.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

My senses often do overlap. I seem to have more influence over that than most people do; I can push it up or down somewhat. I can take pretty much any sense and map it through another, which is really useful.

I think part of that may just be that most of my magical senses parse as analogs of physical senses; so for instance, structure-sense is tactile and auras are usually visual.

Plot is customarily drawn like a mountain peak. But not all plots really follow that pattern, so it's useful to illustrate them in different ways. That's actually taking an audio or visual story, which has kind of a kinetic feel to its rising and falling action, and then rendering it in a visual illustration.

Synaesthesia can be fun.

[natf]

I'm with you and Kurt on this.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Spiral plot? I'd like to hear more about this, because I'm having trouble finding references elsewhere. (Lots of references to a movie titled Spiral, but little to nothing about a spiral-shaped plot structure.)

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

It's hard to find a description in English. The basic idea is that a character moves through a cyclic plot, facing one or more thematically similar challenges over and over again, gaining experience and resources along the way, until eventually managing to overcome the obstacles. With nonfiction, the structure builds on one or more central ideas, returning to them to add more information. To western readers this can seem repetitive or disorganized. To eastern readers, the linear construction seems boring and simplistic.

Re: Well...

[zeeth_kyrah]

Ah! I like this sort of plot as long as the actual events aren't always the same. Your origami and kirigami mages would do well with this sort of thing.. maybe I'll try to keep them in mind for a future fishbowl.

Spiral plots like that, where themes repeat, are rather like incarnation with karma: Someone starts off breaking off an important relationship to pursue something else, beginning a cycle of troubles with the heart that eventually tops out with being shot in the chest (or similar intense heart-related trauma) -- and each step along the way, while the potential exists to realize what's wrong and change, there's always something else that calls the subject away for a different activity.

Now add a second (or even third) character with an intersecting or related character arc, who makes the necessary realization regarding their karma about one-half to two-thirds of the way in to the story arc. Suddenly we have a spiral that starts wobbling upward instead of downward, and a visible contrast that isn't necessarily about conflict between two people. Make it subtle enough that the consequences of the choice aren't just Deus ex machina but a clear follow-through of action and reaction, and the contrast of characters helps clarify for Westerners what the point of the story is...

I like this. Heck, it's how I tell stories anyway, half the time, just spread across multiple characters.

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> I like this sort of plot as long as the actual events aren't always the same. <<

I have found it very useful.

>> Your origami and kirigami mages would do well with this sort of thing. <<

That is exactly the plot structure that series uses. The fundamental repetition is that they keep meeting each other and conflicting, until they work it out eventually.

Re: Well...

[westrider.livejournal.com]

One of the Willow/Tara fanfics I follow has a structure like that, and it's wonderful for showing that the characters are growing, but that it's a gradual process, and they're not just suddenly better after one thing.

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's something I really like about the spiral structure. Linear structure can be too fast for handling complex issues or challenges that take time to overcome.