6 ms·
The basic dramatic situations, according to 1919 manual for screenwriters
- johncoltrane 6y agos/stories/situations
- dang 6y agoWe've put situations in the title.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoTo Sacrifice all for a passion -> 62 things to be passionate about https://designepiclife.com/things-to-be-passionate-about/ https://designepiclife.com/things-to-be-passionate-about/
- Udo 6y agoThe categorization is interesting, from today's perspective. Things that the author asserts are "without criminal intent": rebellion, vengeance, involuntary criminal love. And then even more interesting, "with criminal intent": struggle against god, sacrifice all for a passion, adultry.
- tudorw 6y agohttps://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories.
- jpp 6y agoThis is such a joy to watch ... 5 minutes well spent; thank you!
- dmos62 6y agoThat's a fun bit. Someone did this with sentiment analysis on texts and clustering. They looked at how sentiment changed during the book (the curve) and then they clustered them to identify 6-12 archetypical story "curves".
- Pet_Ant 6y agoSource? That sounds interesting. I did my graduate work in a related field but never came across that. May have been before that of course...
- Marcus316 6y agoHe might be referring to this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.07772v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.07772v2.pdf There's a link to it from the actual article.
- dmos62 6y agoLooks like exactly what I'm talking about. The paper I'm thinking of used a self-organizing map (SOM) for comparing arcs, if I recall correctly.
- homarp 6y agotext version: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/arts-letters/blackboard https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/arts-letters/blackboard
- jasode 6y agoWhen looking at human-generated categories or labels, it's useful to think about the meta layer of "lumpers vs splitters": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters This thread's article divides drama situations into 37 buckets. And another person divides stories into 7 types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots In music... a Lumper might think of only 2 types of music -- instrumentals vs songs with vocals. A Splitter says there are 1000s of genres because even within sub-category of rap music, East coast Miami rap is totally different and 180 degrees opposite from West coast Los Angeles rap. Lumping vs Splitting type of thinking happens in programming topics too. E.g. A lumper has no problem saying, "C/C++ are low-level languages with manual memory management" ; but a splitter will object with, "I hate it when C and C++ are lumped together! They are TOTALLY different languages!" Depending on what you focus on, everybody's customized taxonomy is "correct".
- BaronSamedi 6y agoLumpers vs Splitters is a fun categorization. When I see a group of things categorized I view it as a set partition and I wonder what equivalence relation is being used to distinguish the partitions (categories). The relation is usually unstated so it becomes a mental exercise to steelman the categorization by trying to think of one.
- klawed 6y ago“Lumpers vs Splitters” is itself a splitting or a lumping?
- smichel17 6y agoLumping, for sure. There's people in the middle who recognize the difference between rap and jazz, but not the different variants within.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
- goto11 6y agoNote that the article talks about 37 "possible stories", while the manual talks about "basic dramatic situations" which is a different thing.
- teddyh 6y agoThis reminds me of two things: 1. The Save The Cat! books by Blake Snyder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Snyder#Save_the_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Snyder#Save_the_Cat! 2. TV Tropes (warning: TV Tropes) https://tvtropes.org/ https://tvtropes.org/
- takinola 6y agoTV Tropes is basically the only NSFW website that does not feature any nudity or erotica. The big issue with it is that once you click on it, you find yourself wondering how the last 6 hours of your life flew past without you knowing
- stevula 6y agoLast time I went to TV Tropes I ended up with 60 tabs open to read later and it took me over a month to get though them all (every article led to me opening 3-10 new tabs).
- mamon 6y agoGiven that: 1. Some of those 37 situations are more interesting than others 2. You need more than one of them for a good screenplay 3. Some situations do not mix well in one story You will come to conlusion that there is limited number of possible stories. Now, Hollywood has been producing dozens of movies every year for over a century it becomes clear that it is slowly running out of stories to tell. That's why you see so many remakes/sequels: Star Wars, Rambo, Die Hard, etc. Or remakes with a twist: let's make main characters black/women/gay/trans and pretend that we created a brand new, original story. Hollywood is eating its own tail.
- jp555 6y agoHey, have you heard of "books"? over 1 million new books are published every year, and people have been writing them for like a really long long time.
- goto11 6y agoHollywood loves remakes and adaptions (and sequels and prequels and reboots) because name recognition sells tickets. This is nothing new, Hollywood have done this always. > Or remakes with a twist: let's make main characters black/women/gay/trans and pretend that we created a brand new, original story. Did you whine and complain when Hollywood remade Amled with a lion or Hidden Fortress with white people in space?
- gamblor956 6y agoStories aren't just about the plots; they're about the characters as well. The same plot with a different set of characters is a new story. See, for example, The Departed vs Infernal Affairs, The Office (UK) vs The Office (US), the multiple Superman and Batman series.