My personal goal is to resolve the confusion in my head about how the world works, which should theoretically make me much better at plotting and enable me to finally outline my novel and get it witten. [wink] The theory of fiction I am pursuing is to me what the unified field theory is to physicists; just because my natural instinct is to analyze everything and try to synthesize it into an understanding of how things work, I can't think about fiction without trying to find a unified theory of it, it's just what I have to do.

Story generation is a cool idea, but to me it's just a bonus arising from the simple fact that if I can really understand and describe how I create fiction, a computer ought to be able to emulate that.

Personally, I don't see why coming to a deeper understanding of the process of story creation would harm anyone's intuition. My own intuition tells me that the better you understand the tools and medium of your art, the more easily you can express yourself with them rather than fighting with them to try to make them do what you want because you don't understand how they work.

Also, people are always free not to read my book. Both the back cover copy and the introduction should describe the contents of the book sufficiently enough to warn away anyone who is afraid to be scientific about fiction. I don't understand that fear, but I do understand that it's a common fear among writers, and I'm not trying to make people think about something they're afraid of, that's not my goal at all, I'm just trying to understand my little corner of the universe and share my understanding with others. [smile]

My only problem at the moment is that I'm not exactly sure where to go next. Myth analysis maybe, or creating a plot diagram of an existing piece of fiction.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Personally, I don't see why coming to a deeper understanding of the process of story creation would harm anyone's intuition. My own intuition tells me that the better you understand the tools and medium of your art, the more easily you can express yourself with them rather than fighting with them to try to make them do what you want because you don't understand how they work.

As a side issue, my reading of Christopher Vogler's "The Writer's Journey" has harmed my appreciation of films, because I could his story pattern coming up in films all the time [grin]. I guess the danger is if you have an easy shortcut for making plots, there's a temptation to just rely on it a little too much.

Of course, that's a different thing from analysing the process of story creation in general.

The fact that you see heroic journey plots all the time actually has nothing to do with Vogler's book, because they were just as popular before it was published. Their popularity comes from heroic myths having always been the type most popular among boys and men who want to imagine they are a hero, an extremely common urge.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
My personal goal is to resolve the confusion in my head about how the world works, which should theoretically make me much better at plotting and enable me to finally outline my novel and get it witten. [wink] The theory of fiction I am pursuing is to me what the unified field theory is to physicists; just because my natural instinct is to analyze everything and try to synthesize it into an understanding of how things work, I can't think about fiction without trying to find a unified theory of it, it's just what I have to do.

I'm not sure if you can have a unified theory for fiction, if I understand the term correctly. Fiction is essentially meant to recraft the world as the author seems fit in order to improve the world somehow. It could be anything from pointing out the flaws in society, to making the reader excercise their emotions, to making people happier by making them laugh, to creating an ideal man to creating something that will sell so that the author can cash a cheque. Writing is motivated by trying to somehow make a better world.

Where it gets interesting is in what exactly makes a better world. Despite thousands of years of debate, there has never been a general consensus on what makes a better world. Every writer has their own opinion, and express themselves differently as a result. But as long as the specifics of what makes a better world remains elusive, so will a unified theory for fiction. If there's no common goal, how can there be a common method?

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Personally, I don't see why coming to a deeper understanding of the process of story creation would harm anyone's intuition. My own intuition tells me that the better you understand the tools and medium of your art, the more easily you can express yourself with them rather than fighting with them to try to make them do what you want because you don't understand how they work.

It doesn't harm anyone's intuition as this is merely understood as the basic elements of intuition, not the basis of creation. Again, it depends on the context in which you present it. If this is meant to be part of how one puts together a story, as opposed to how one analyzes a story in retrospect, I don't agree with its inclusion. But as a pure analysis tool, it may be useful. Context.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Also, people are always free not to read my book. Both the back cover copy and the introduction should describe the contents of the book sufficiently enough to warn away anyone who is afraid to be scientific about fiction. I don't understand that fear, but I do understand that it's a common fear among writers, and I'm not trying to make people think about something they're afraid of, that's not my goal at all, I'm just trying to understand my little corner of the universe and share my understanding with others. [smile]

My only problem at the moment is that I'm not exactly sure where to go next. Myth analysis maybe, or creating a plot diagram of an existing piece of fiction.

People don't always have the best judgement. I'm not saying that your book will hurt them, because I don't really know that much about it. But it's still your responsibility to ensure that your book is as helpful as possible. Not everyone knows what they're getting into.

I can certainly explain the fear behind using such a system. A work of fiction is often highly personal. If you pour your entire being into it, you come to feel that said fiction is a representation of who you are as a human being. If you reduce that fiction to numbers and charts, you reduce it to something that can be done by anyone. What came from that person, what came from what made them unique, has been made into something that can be replicated by other human beings. That's why there's a fear.

So it does bother me a little, but I don't have a major problem with it. I do believe in the common patterns of fiction as much as I believe in the ability of the writer to infuse a story with a reflection of their soul.

Here's a potentially relevant reference: Vladimir Propp

Quote:
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (St Petersburg, April 29, 1895 – Leningrad August 22, 1970) was a Russian structuralist scholar who analysed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. His Morphology of the Folk Tale was published in Russian in 1928; although it represented a breakthrough in both folkloristics and morphology and influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, it was generally unnoticed in the West until it was translated in the 1950s.
...
Ignoring narrative tone or mood, or extraneous decorative detail, and breaking down a large number of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units, which he called functions, and some of his modern followers like to call "narratemes", Propp was able to arrive at a typology of narrative structures. By analysing types of characters and kinds of action in a hundred tales, Propp was able to arrive at the conclusion that there were just thirty-one generic "narratemes" in the traditional Russian folk tale. While not all are present in every tale, he found that all the tales he analysed displayed the functions in unvarying sequence. He claimed that “[F]ive categories of elements define not only the construction of a tale, but the tale as a whole.”:

1. Functions of dramatis personae (see below)
2. Conjuctive elements (ex machina, announcement of misfortune, chance disclosure – mother calls hero loudly, etc.)
3. Motivations (reasons and aims of personages)
4. Forms of appearance of dramatis personae (the flying arrival of dragon, chance meeting with donor)
5. Attributive elements or accessories (witch’s hut or her clay leg)

...

As well as finding the 31 narrative functions of Propp's theory he also discovered that there are ONLY 8 broad character types in the thousands of tales he analysed:

1. The villain (struggles against the hero)
2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)
3. The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)
4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)
5. Her father
6. The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)
7. The hero or victim/ seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess
8. False hero/ anti-hero/ usurper — (takes credit for the hero’s actions/ tries to marry the princess)

See also: The 31 narrative units of Propp's formula and Proppian Digital Fairy Tale Generator

Quote: Original post by Oilers99
I'm not sure if you can have a unified theory for fiction, if I understand the term correctly. Fiction is essentially meant to recraft the world as the author seems fit in order to improve the world somehow. It could be anything from pointing out the flaws in society, to making the reader excercise their emotions, to making people happier by making them laugh, to creating an ideal man to creating something that will sell so that the author can cash a cheque. Writing is motivated by trying to somehow make a better world.

Where it gets interesting is in what exactly makes a better world. Despite thousands of years of debate, there has never been a general consensus on what makes a better world. Every writer has their own opinion, and express themselves differently as a result. But as long as the specifics of what makes a better world remains elusive, so will a unified theory for fiction. If there's no common goal, how can there be a common method?

There can be a common method without a common goal because there is a common _type_ of goal. It's like speaking English - you probably have a different goal every single time you build an English sentence, yet you follow the same rules of grammar to build them all. My theory says little about what would improve the world except to define a range of possibilities anyone might want to argue for or against. I am interested in _how_ a piece of fiction argues for and against various visions, but I'm not interested in telling people _what_ to write about. That why I think my theory _is_ appropriate in the context of how one puts together a story - precisely because it's about the _how_, about technique like all the other technique books out there, not about the _what_ which makes every story unique.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Here's a potentially relevant reference: Vladimir Propp

Ah yes, I studied him when I wrote the very first piece of my theory, "Sunandshadow's Theory of Plot-based Game Design" Back in 2000. But it probably would be good to look at him again, because I didn't pay too much attention to the details the first time, being more interested in the overall idea. Also Gerald Prince, I seem to recall him having a plot tree diagram which illustrated action and reaction in plot progression... *wanders off muttering*

This Gerald Prince?

Yep him. [smile] The book of his I read before was Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (unless possibly I've mixed it up with Pavel, Thomas G. The Poetics of Plot: The Case of English Renaissance Drama... *looks confused* I should have made notes on what I used from each book when I made this list. :/ )


Oh I know, I might as well just show you my works-cited list if you're interested.

Works Cited

Plot and Narrative
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1984.
Bywater, Ingram. Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980.
Clay, Cynthia Joyce. Vector Theory and the Plot Structures of Literature and Drama.
Cooper, Lane. An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy With an Adaptation of the Poetics and a Translation of the ‘Tractatus Coislinianus’. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1922.
De Sousa, Ronald. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987.
Dibell, Ansen. The Elements of Fiction Writing: Plot. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1988.
Fludernik, Monica. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge, 1996.
Goldman, L. R. Child’s Play: Myth, Mimesis, and Make-Believe. New York: Berg, 1998.
Newton, Steven E. The Thirty-Six Basic Plots
http://www.io.com/~jlockett/RPG/HEGGA/Stuff/frp-plots.html 6/29/00
Pavel, Thomas G. The Poetics of Plot: The Case of English Renaissance Drama: Theory and History of Literature, Volume Eighteen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
Phillips, Melanie Anne and Chris Huntley. Dramatica: A New Theory of Story.
Pitkin, Walter B. How to Write Stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1923.
Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. New York, Muton Publishers, 1982.
Rossi, Terri. Wordplay Columns: Screenwriting Column 12: It’s Been Done http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp12.Been.Done.html
Schwartz, Ursula Verena. Young Children’s Dyadic Pretend Play: A Communication Analysis of Plot Structure and Plot Generative Strategies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1991.
Storey, Robert. Mimesis and the Human Animal: On the Biogenetic Foundations of Literary Representation. Evanston, Illinois: North Western University Press, 1996.
Tompkins, Jane P., ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Romance
Estrada, Rita Clay and Rita Gallagher. You Can Write A Romance. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1999.
Falk, Kathryn. How to Write a Romance and Get It Published: With Intimate Advice From The World's Most Popular Romantic Writers. New York: Crown, 1983.
Gallagher, Rita. Writing Romances: A Handbook. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1997.
Lowery, Marilyn M. How to Write Romance Novels That Sell. New York: Rawson Associates, 1983.
Pianka, Phyllis Taylor. How To Write Romances. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1998.

Science Fiction
Bova, Ben with Anthony R. Lewis. Space Travel. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1997.
Gillett, Stephen L. World-Building: A Writer's Guide To Constructing Star Systems and Life-Supporting Planets. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1996.
Ochoa, George and Jeffrey Osier. Writer's Guide To Creating a Science Fiction Universe. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1993.
Schmidt, Stanley. Aliens and Alien Societies. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1995.

Myth and Archetype
Feinstein, David. The Mythic Path: Discovering the Guiding Stories Of Your Past--Creating a Vision Of Your Future. Los Angeles: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1997.
Feinstein, David. Personal Mythology: the Psychology Of Your Evolving Self, Using Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination To Discover Your Inner Story. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, Inc., 1988.
Frey, James N. The Key: How To Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power Of Myth. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
Jung, Carl Gustav. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press, 1969.
Lesser, Simon O. Fiction and the Unconscious. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
The fact that you see heroic journey plots all the time actually has nothing to do with Vogler's book, because they were just as popular before it was published. Their popularity comes from heroic myths having always been the type most popular among boys and men who want to imagine they are a hero, an extremely common urge.

I know; it's also very similar to the "journey" told in the major arcana of Tarot, for example. It's just really irritating for your mind to be working its way through a checklist in your mind ("yep, hero refuses the call, check!") when a normal person would be enjoying the film [grin]

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Here's a potentially relevant reference: Vladimir Propp

Propp's work is used a lot as the basis of story generation engines, because he managed to express a formula for Russian folk-tales in a structure similar to a context-free grammar. A typical computer science graduate, after reading Propp, often goes away thinking they can implement a story generator in a week, and is still trying to make it work several years later [smile].