We understand a story’s meaning, in part, by tracking its causality, and a story’s power stems from our sense that its causality is truthful, which is to say, that its internal logic is solid.
We understand a story’s meaning, in part, by tracking its causality, and a story’s power stems from our sense that its causality is truthful, which is to say, that its internal logic is solid.
Saved by Alex Dobrenko and
In Into The Woods, John Yorke suggests that the way we tell stories is indicative of our desire to find order in the world. Stories are an attempt to tame the terrifying randomness that surrounds us. As we go through life, we are constantly absorbing chaotic information that we make sense of through narratives. Yorke writes that “every act of perce
... See moreAll stories at some level are about a search for the truth of the subject they are exploring.
One good way to investigate what causes that feeling: experimentally truncate a good story before the point where its creator actually ended it. Just cut it off and observe your reaction to that imposed ending. The resulting feeling will tell us something about what’s missing. Or, conversely, about what the remaining text does supply, once we read
... See moreIn workshop we sometimes say that what makes a piece of writing a story is that something happens within it that changes the character forever. (That’s a bit Draconian, but let’s go with it as a starting place.) So, we tell a certain story, starting at one time and ending at another, in order to frame that moment of change. (We don’t tell the story
... See moreWe could understand a story as simply a series of such expectation/resolution moments.