The six basic story shapes

[Hypoxia]

Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's fascination with the shapes of storylines, researchers recently fed a bunch of stories into their analysis warez.

The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling, as Identified by an A.I.

...a group of researchers, from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide, ...collected computer-generated story arcs for nearly 2,000 works of fiction, classifying each into one of six core types of narratives (based on what happens to the protagonist):

1. Rags to Riches (rise)

2. Riches to Rags (fall)

3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise)

4. Icarus (rise then fall)

5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)

6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)

Their focus was on the emotional trajectory of a story, not merely its plot. They also analyzed which emotional structure writers used most, and how that contrasted with the ones readers liked best...

Do you plot-out the emotional ups-and-downs as you write?

 

[Kantarii]

I usually keep my stories centered around redemption. A lost soul trying to change their life against overwhelming/impossible odds - a test of willpower Kant

 

[Kimikimidoll]

Hmmm..
Mine usually starts off fall-rise-rise-fall-fall-okay enough (sudden death or something)
Writing Opedius/Icarus-like storylines is in my blood. We don't like happy endings.
I don't plot it out, the characters and situations just make it happen.
I think people prefer happy endings.
Is it because they view their lives as sad?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I write noir.

Noir starts off dead in the water then sinks. Someone said noir are suicide notes.

 

[Kimikimidoll]

I write noir.

Noir starts off dead in the water then sinks. Someone said noir are suicide notes.

Option 2 then. A dead body.

 

[holliday1960]

..........

 

[jsmiam]

Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's fascination with the shapes of storylines, researchers recently fed a bunch of stories into their analysis warez.

The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling, as Identified by an A.I.
Do you plot-out the emotional ups-and-downs as you write?

All are erection euphemisms, if you ask me.. And man in hole??? Those scholarly types! ;-)

 

[NotWise]

Do you plot-out the emotional ups-and-downs as you write?

No. That's an intellectual analysis that I don't do as a writer. Maybe a critic would do that?

It is interesting (to me) to think about my biggest failure in that context. I posted the story to Romance and when the Romance reader's hated it I went to the feedback forum and begged to know why. The most concise reason I got was (paraphrased),

"Romance stories start with two people who aren't in a relationship. They struggle to overcome barriers to building a relationship and in the end they succeed. Your story starts with people in a successful relationship then places the relationship in great peril."

In the context of the shapes, the Romance category may see "the relationship" as the protagonist, rather than either of its members, then insist on a "rise" for the shape of the story. My story might have been a fall then rise, again viewing "the relationship" as the protagonist. The fall was unacceptable to the Romance readers.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's fascination with the shapes of storylines, researchers recently fed a bunch of stories into their analysis warez.

The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling, as Identified by an A.I.
Do you plot-out the emotional ups-and-downs as you write?

Depends on the story, but I've been known to plan out arcs for relationships. Each character gets their own arc.

Romance: two arcs approach, twist around one another, and converge so they end up running together.

Heartbreak: two arcs touch but then diverge, never to meet again.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm sure there are longstanding standard arc formulas that my stories fall into--I don't consciously plan that ahead, though, when I sit down to write a story. I'm, rather, looking for something fresh--setting; character; plot elements; or approach to the sex act, if I'm writing erotica. I'm looking for the opportunity to surprise and provide a twist at the end, though. I'm not worrying all that much if it's a story going from succeed to fail or fail to succeed. I'm sure I write both, and I don't have to have a happy ending. I don't even require that my characters are liked. I'm more interested in the dilemma (and, in erotica, with the heat being generated in the story).

 

[Haulover]

......a group of researchers, from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide, ...collected computer-generated story arcs for nearly 2,000 works of fiction, classifying each into one of six core types of narratives (based on what happens to the protagonist):...

I have difficulty with these over-simplified categories, and think you'd really have to streeeeeeetch many stories to fit any of them.

That said, one of the most basic story lines has always been:
- Boy meets (or has) girl.
- Boy loses girl.
- Boy does something really cool/dangerous/interesting/etc. to get girl back.

It's often not the main story line, but rather a sub-plot to add an extra layer to the story.

 

[sr71plt]

I have difficulty with these over-simplified categories, and think you'd really have to streeeeeeetch many stories to fit any of them.

That said, one of the most basic story lines has always been:
- Boy meets (or has) girl.
- Boy loses girl.
- Boy does something really cool/dangerous/interesting/etc. to get girl back.

It's often not the main story line, but rather a sub-plot to add an extra layer to the story.

Last time, I posted to this that it leaves out boy meets boy, etc. This time I'll point out that it's a little oink oink by not covering girl meets (or has) boy, girl loses boy, etc.

Next time we'll get into girl meets girl, etc.

At some point people will recognize how broad the context of this Web site is, even if it heavily favors just one cut at relationships.

Gee, maybe the possibilities of story arcs is a lot broader that a lit think.

 

[NotWise]

Last time, I posted to this that it leaves out boy meets boy, etc. This time I'll point out that it's a little oink oink by not covering girl meets (or has) boy, girl loses boy, etc.

Next time we'll get into girl meets girl, etc.

At some point people will recognize how broad the context of this Web site is, even if it heavily favors just one cut at relationships.

Gee, maybe the possibilities of story arcs is a lot broader that a lit think.

The story lines in the OP were not about this web site, and completely not about gender or sex or about all possible story arcs. They were about the emotional track of a story.

In context, whether it's boy meets girl, girl meets girl, or girl meets frog doesn't matter. It's about the emotional status of the protagonist through the course of the story.

I think that to embrace some stories, the concept of 'protagonist' needs to include the relationship between characters, rather than being limited to individual characters.

 

[NoJo]

My real life has no such discernible fortune trajectory. I would describe it as a random walk. Ditto quite a few of my stories.

Kurt Vonnegut was a big fan of dramatic irony, and used it in quite a few of his stories. I always remember the phrase, like a Greek Chorus, that periodically punctuated Galapagos, my favourite story of his: "Little Did He Know".

This phrase was used to indicate that the protagonist, like in life, is completely unaware of his own story arc.

But at the end of the tale, the reader is shocked to discover the second meaning in the phrase.

The story in my Ms Word right now has many ups and downs, but the gradient is overall a riches to rags, literally, but Rags to Riches emotionally. And that's the whole point of the story: What we may think of as progress towards happiness may be misguided.

That's not something you should do with screen writing (or adaptation). You need to have a much simpler, less undulating arc.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

The perfessers ignored horror, hard crime, and westerns to name a few, that don't fit the story arcs..

 

[sr71plt]

The perfessers ignored horror, hard crime, and westerns to name a few, that don't fit the story arcs..

That's a different dimension that runs parallel to the story arc forms mentioned. They happen together.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The perfessers ignored horror, hard crime, and westerns to name a few, that don't fit the story arcs..

They list the books used in the study here.

I didn't notice any hard crime or westerns (could've missed them, I wouldn't recognise a lot of titles and most of the ones I do know are too modern to make it into Gutenberg). But it definitely includes horror:

The Turn of the Screw
The King in Yellow
The Castle of Otranto
Carmilla
The Great God Pan
Dracula's Guest
Lair of the White Worm
The House of the Vampire

A couple of those are collections of shorts, which shouldn't be in the study; the paper says they tried to weed out collections but obviously they missed some.

 

[CyranoJ]

Do you plot-out the emotional ups-and-downs as you write?

Not as such. With the exception of one story series whose acts are plotted out like a television show -- those fit the Cinderella arc perfectly. I guess most of my stories fit either 5 or 3.

 

[Hypoxia]

I'd not thought of 'shapes' till I read this article but looking back at my longer pieces I see emotional roller-coasters, moods bouncing up-n-down with extended plateaus. Hmmm, I wonder if the analytical warez are publicly available, and if I can run my stuff through for graphing... ?? Naw, that's too anal.

 

[Wifetheif]

plott

I'd not thought of 'shapes' till I read this article but looking back at my longer pieces I see emotional roller-coasters, moods bouncing up-n-down with extended plateaus. Hmmm, I wonder if the analytical warez are publicly available, and if I can run my stuff through for graphing... ?? Naw, that's too anal.

I read the study. It's not especially new as it has been long known that nearly all fiction and nonfiction follow the same basic plots and have done so since before Homer. ALL genre fiction can fit generally into those six or seven models IF it is straight narrative. Genres are just different flavors of known narrative. Until the pulp publishing explosion of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, there was only fiction and non-fiction. That is STILL true today but artificial barriers exist between say SF and serious lit and between fantasy and horror but a plot is still a plot and people like plots they can follow. A quest that ends in questions, a romance where the couple never meets, a mainstream novel that fails to hold together simply frustrates the reader and makes them feel cheated. Try writing something truly plotless. It's a difficult but not impossible task.

I remember a story by Lester Del Rey told from a dog's perspective after an apocalypse had killed every human on earth. Since the dog knows nothing of the human mind, it can't explain where the people went, it just feels loneliness for his dead master, but since he's a dog, his emotion is not our emotion, so really the whole story has NO plot. Just about every editor rejected it because of that fact. Del Rey wrote it to see if it could be done. A real sketchy magazine did at last buy it, mainly so that they could put Del Rey's name on the cover. The human mind abhors plotlessness, that is why we create religions and conspiracies to explain the mundane and the inexplicable. There HAS to be an answer and humans will find one even if it is not there.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Last time, I posted to this that it leaves out boy meets boy, etc. This time I'll point out that it's a little oink oink by not covering girl meets (or has) boy, girl loses boy, etc.

Next time we'll get into girl meets girl, etc.

At some point people will recognize how broad the context of this Web site is, even if it heavily favors just one cut at relationships.

Gee, maybe the possibilities of story arcs is a lot broader that a lit think.

No offense... but to people who aren't gay, gay is often just about unimaginable, and entirely foreign. I have gay friends; the girl I talk to every day has distinct bi tendencies... and still, ask me to describe "a relationship" and I'll talk about a guy chasing and winning a girl because, straight down to my genetics, that's what romantic relationships *are* to me, and always have been.

It's like being asked about food. I know some people eat insects. I know they can be tasty when prepared right. I know it can be an important source of protein. But ask me about food and I'll picture a burger, a salad, some cooked chicken.... Larva don't occur to me. I don't even get as far as mushrooms or raw fish. Food considered at an instinctive level is what *I eat*, not what's possibly edible.

You cannot change this in other people and it's absurd to try. I know gay sex and gay love is a thing because sometimes people mention it; but it holds 0% of my imagination and 0% of my experience and I'm perfectly ok with that.

 

[sr71plt]

Oh goodie, you have gay friends. I'm sure you're very enlightened then.

 

[SecondCircle]

I'm sure if you put your mind to it, stories can be broken down to follow very similar patterns that conform to the reality we know. Split enough hairs, and you may even wind up at "Things happen, you are told about them."

I once heard (maybe as far back as grade school?) that a story cannot exist without someone to tell it. The story can be narrated by anyone and told about anything. Even if the characters are rocks and trees.

I find it's best not to focus on any sort of formula, nor investigate if one's stories follow any. Since language has existed there has been storytelling. And I don't think it matters what the story is or what it's about. Ultimately, I'm interested in the actual telling of the story. Because that's what makes me want to listen to it. You could put 10 people in front of the same campfire, to tell the same story that follows the same arc, to the same audience and get 10 different stories and reactions.

A storyteller needs to be something of a wizard. Be it casting real spells or hiding behind a curtain, the audience must be enthralled by the spell.

If I write one story that enthralls me, or five other people, or five thousand, then something is happening.