4 ms·

Pfft, how about 36 basic stories? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Si

• the_gipsy 4y ago
  Or only one bit: rise/fall. Most stories have 2 or 3 bits, some have so many that you can't get a meaningful average.
• silicon2401 4y ago
  I was going to post that folklore framework. I love initiatives to formally catalogue and index everyday, organic, non-quantitative things like stories. Does anyone know of similar efforts in any other fields?
• marttt 4y ago
  Or 31 basic structural elements? Identified in Russian folk tales by folklorist Vladimir Propp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp#Narrative_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp#Narrative_struc...
• pklausler 4y ago
  There's also the late Blake Snyder's Save The Cat tenfold classification scheme for screenplays, which can be useful at least for ameliorating a bad movie watching experience by leading to debates over which one of the ten categories you just saw. On the other hand, if you know his categories, it can take away from the enjoyment of films; once you know you're watching a movie of a specific category, it's easy to anticipate the rest of the plot.