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Dialectical Story Structure

Hello guys, I'm writing some drama theory, and I'd like to hear comments!

[SIZE="+2"]Dialectical Story Structure[/SIZE]
[SIZE="+1"]by Denis Shershunov[/SIZE]

[SIZE="+1"]Formulation of the problem[/SIZE]​

As far as I know, here is the most influential works on story structures and its parts:

  • 31 Narrative Units by Vladimir Propp
  • 22 Building Blocks by John Truby
  • 36 Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti
  • 20 Basic Plots collected by the TSA
  • 23 Actions a Hero must take by Eric Edson
  • 1,462 Building Blocks by W.W.Cook

  • Pulp Master Plot - 4 acts in 19 Beats by Lester Dent
  • the Hero’s Journey - 3 acts in 18 Beats by Joseph Campbell
  • the Modified Hero’s Journey - 3 acts in 12 Stages by Christopher Vogler
  • Screenplay Beat Sheet - 3 acts in 15 Beats by Blake Snyder
  • the Virgin’s Promise - 3 acts in 13 Beats by Kim Hudson
  • Inner Movie Method - 3 acts in 11 Elements by Viki King
  • The Heroine’s Journey - 3 acts in 10 Stages from Maureen Murdock

  • 9-Act Structure for Movie Plot Development (from David Siegel)
  • 8 Stages of the Harmon Story Embryo (from Dan Harmon)
  • 8 Film Sequences (from F. Daniel via P. Gulino)
  • 7 Beats of The Story Pyramid (from Gustav Freytag)
  • 7 Essential Plot Points of the Screenplay Paradigm (from Syd Field)
  • 7 Basic Romantic Comedy Story Beats by Billy Mernit
  • 7 Basic Plots (from Christopher Booker)
  • 6-Stage Plot Structure (Michael Hauge)
  • 5 Beats of the “Story Spine” by Linda Seger
  • 5 Beats to the “Central Plot” (from Robert McKee)
  • 4-Act Structure of Dramatica
  • 3 acts divided to 7 by Jake Krueger
  • 3 Elements of Unified Plot Structure (from “Poetics” by Aristotle)

But reading them is only learning some working plot schemas. No author will tell you, why (or how) this particular schema is working. It just does! From the theoretical point of view users of such schemes are helpless - they can only but copy a chosen solution, and if story logic doesn't fit the pattern - the worse for the logic.

Is it true that logical and interesting life was described in fore-mentioned schemas and no life of interest could be found outside of them ? I guess not. It is more likely that Campbell, Snider, or McKee has paved the road for other dramatists and we are about to see not 20, but 30.. 40.. who knows - maybe 100 of working story schemas. It's without mentioning some TV show patterns, of course. So I guess we can take control of that and fasten the making of such schemes.

[SIZE="+1"]Dialectics[/SIZE]​

Since most dramatists agree that story has dialectical nature, I will try to introduce as little new terms as I can to get the job done. If you do not see your favourite terms, do not worry. They are probably here. The only reasons that I moved from well-known terms is either they are too concrete for the problem, or they are too abstract, has no object-subjects in them, and cannot be of any use for database programming and formal logic. So here are these little guys:

Development - a process of revealing, rising, and resolving contradictions
Story structure - depiction of development in time
Powers - any objects or subjects of development, having their contexts
Character is just a special type of power, capable of changing its context
Speaking of context, I will boil it down into two categories:
Connection - inner (invisible) context of a power
Closeness - outer closeness of one power to another

Maybe we should use just one term, context instead of these two, but I feel that it is more convenient to make such a division. Also, there are two more special powers, author and the Audience, with contexts of their own. Using Audience's context directly or creating some context in frame (I mean, not by using characters) is optional, but audience must also be often considered as part of a story structure.

Tension - contradiction between two or more contexts
Action - action that results in risen or lowered (resolved) tension

So:

The man, the world, tension and release - these are the only 4 bones that we need to describe any skeleton of an Academy-awarded short or feature. Actually, any (classical) story structure could be expressed in terms of powers and characters, their connections and closenesses, resulting in tensions and actions.

Once we could have a database of world's notable screenplays and maybe any work of drama, we could start building analytical instruments, instruments for composition and incorporation of modal logic. Formal logic is already a built-in feature (see my demo below).

From here we could easily move to quality suggestions and autoscript feature, that will allow to combine existing database elements to something logical and production-proved. Surely, anyone will enjoy 'brainstorm' feature.

Equally important is the ability to categorize powers, tensions, actions and their interconnections. For example, by categorizing tensions we will get something similar to the Maslow's pyramid of needs. Then we could introduce subcategories and stable drama patterns. Then, finally we could talk the number of possible screenplay patterns.

This introduction is pretty short (maybe just 10% of what should be said), but I'm inviting you to see the early demo at http://drama-definition.rhcloud.com (also here) and ask some questions. And if you want to see this action theory in action, so you could name any (short) movie and I will try to answer.
 
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