To visually and logically plan out stories
Does there exist an abstract system that can help plan overviews or approximations of a creative writing piece, by way of symbols, conceptual abstract components, etc?
I want a system that can help me visually and logically plan out stories.
Do you know of any such systems?
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1 answer
One small point in addition to What's excellent summary: It is important to make a distinction between story and plot. In Aspects of the Novel E.M. Forster says that story is what happens, and plot is why it happens. Today, I suspect, we would reverse the terms when making this distinction. Plot is what happens. Story is why is happens.
Stories are driven by desire. The hero acts because they want something. Their actions are convincing or not depending on whether we feel they are proportional to their desire. Mapping out a plot simply as a series of actions will not get you very far if the hero's desire is not convincing and the hero's actions are not proportional responses to the desire and the things that oppose it.
The act structure of a plot, however many acts you choose, consists of successive attempts to achieve the desire, each more desperate or at a greater cost than the last, until the desire is achieved or lost. This is the moral arc of the story: what price is the hero willing to pay to achieve their desire?
Mapping the action with mapping the moral arc onto the action will give you a history, but not a story. The art is in weaving the two together convincingly.
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