One way to tell a story
“A plot is something you bury a body in. A story is like a level of a building. It’s something that gets you closer to heaven.” – Beth Lapides
Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl (or girl-boy, girl-girl, etc.). That’s the classic 3-act structure; a linear chronological progression. And that’s the way a lot of people try to tell their own story when they’re developing a script, one-person show, personal essay or memoir. But there are other options.
Scott Brown makes some good points about the limitations of traditional linear structure and the need for modern storytelling in this month’s Wired. But he doesn’t offer any real solutions.
The most popular alternative to chronological structure is to use a voice-over from an omniscient (or at least more knowing) narrator who takes you through a (usually) chronological linear sequence in their past. A lot of people use the device to set up a dramatic high-point when the flashback catches up to the narrator’s present. “Stranger Than Fiction” used the VO device nicely to take self-conscious story-telling to another level. And “Lost” has taken flashbacks to a new level, especially in the turn from the end of Season 3 into Season 4 when (spoiler alert) they start flashing forward while maintaining the flashbacks, so you become totally disoriented in time. Time dislocation and the inherently more organic, spiral structure that goes with it, is obviously a strategy employed by Tarantino, Memento and so on back to Last Year at Marienbad and probably beyond. Film nerds please chime in.
My creative guru Beth Lapides says she thinks a lot of modern storytelling now starts at a dramatic high point then loops forward and back in time as background or forward momentum are called for. That’s certainly the way most standup comedy works best.
This is also highly-related to a thematic essay structure, where the theme or argurment becomes the spine and timeline follows function. The problem, I mean ‘challenge’ of the organic spiral approach is that each story has to find its own unique shape, and that can be a little, uh… time-consuming.
But even when you’re going from a chronological point A to point B (and don’t forget about C and beyond), there are a lot of ways to take the ride. We recommend taking a look at these amazing pictures of vibrating strings as a graphic illustration of the variety of ways one string can vibrate – and some different ways the same story could get told.
Click here for more free creative resources. Subscribe to our e-mail list for updates and more useful stuff.
The WordMill 