The shape of Story

 

The narrative arc

Plot, Setting, Characters, Conflict and Theme

"The purpose of a story arc is to move a character or a situation from one state to another; in other words, to effect change. This change or transformation often takes the form of either tragic fall from grace or a reversal of that pattern."

 

-Wikipedia

Three, Six or 20?

 

Happy ending, unhappy ending or tragedy.

-  Foster-Harris

 

How many basic story lines are there?

Overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy  and rebirth.

-Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots

The author Ronald Tobias, the researchers point out, came up with 20 “master plots”, including “underdog”, “metamorphosis”, “ascension” and “descension”

- Article in the Guardian

The arc of Cinderella

Rise

Fall

Rise

Once upon a time...

The beginning

Think of a Movie, the establishing shots of a Movie tells us something about the genre, the setting, the characters. 

Examples:

Exposition

Beginning

Exposition

The part in a book, play or a movie

when the theme and the main characters are introduced.

Middle

End

Exposition

We find out that there is a hero who lives in a world where there are monsters. The world and its rules are described and we learn things about our hero. He is afraid of water.

Beginning

Middle

End

Inciting

incident

Rising action

Crisis

Climax

The middle of the story builds up the tension until a climax is reached.

Inciting

incident

The hero hears that there is a monster that attacks a village.

Rising action

He gets a horse and supplies and rides to the village to help.

Crisis

He finds the monster but

"oh no" it lives in a lake!

Climax

He overcomes his fear, fights the monster

and kills it.

Beginning

Middle

End

Resolution

The end

Resolution

or "denouement"

Upplösning

avslöjande

The hero gets rewarded and never fears water again.

That brings us to the End...

And they all  live happily ever after...

OR?

Plot = Action, the quest for satisfaction

 

 

Setting = The where and the when

 

 

Characters = Carry out the action

 

 

Conflict = A struggle or crisis in the plot

 

 

Theme = The main idea, the central belief

How to summarize a story

Project Gutenberg

 

Text 1: Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Character building

Chapter 1

 

Text 2: The last of The Mohicans

by J. Fennimore Cooper

Setting

Page: 1-5

 

Text 3: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

​Plot

Paragraph 1-14

Instructions: Form pairs, read the texts and discuss the literary devices as laid out per book. Summarize the text to each other and use the guidelines laid out in the Youtube-video.

 

 

deck

By besskirsi

deck

  • 1,316