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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots
“My prettiest contribution to the culture” was how the novelist Kurt Vonnegut described his old master’s thesis in anthropology, “which was rejected because it was so simple and looked like too much fun”. The thesis sank without a trace, but Vonnegut continued throughout his life to promote the big idea behind it, which was: “stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper”.
In a 1995 lecture, Vonnegut chalked out various story arcs on a blackboard, plotting how the protagonist’s fortunes change over the course of the narrative on an axis stretching from ‘good’ to ‘ill’. The arcs include ‘man in hole’, in which the main character gets into trouble then gets out again (“people love that story, they never get sick of it!”) and ‘boy gets girl’, in which the protagonist finds something wonderful, loses it, then gets it back again at the end. “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers”, he remarked. “They are beautiful shapes.”
"Thanks to new text-mining techniques, this has now been done. Professor Matthew Jockers at Washington State University, and later researchers at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, analysed data from thousands of novels to reveal six basic story types – you could call them archetypes – that form the building blocks for more complex stories. The Vermont researchers describe the six story shapes behind more than 1700 English novels as:
1. Rags to riches – a steady rise from bad to good fortune
2. Riches to rags – a fall from good to bad, a tragedy
3. Icarus – a rise then a fall in fortune
4. Oedipus – a fall, a rise then a fall again
5. Cinderella – rise, fall, rise
6. Man in a hole – fall, rise
This came out a few months ago and only recently came to my attention again. Does this work with your favorite movies? How about episodes in your favorite TV series?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @11:15AM (8 children)
The rise and fall of Reginald Perrin:
Rise and fall and rise and fall and...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by PiMuNu on Monday November 05 2018, @11:22AM (1 child)
Great! Smashing! Suiper!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @10:41PM
I didn't get where I am today by saying I didn't get where I am today by saying..... Oh, Grot!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday November 05 2018, @12:09PM (1 child)
Where it does seem to fall apart a little is when the main story consists of multiple overlapping stories that just happen to overlap at some point - e.g. Pulp Fiction, again. In that case you can't really apply the model to the work as a whole, but it would seem to hold true for each of the main antagonists/protagonists in their individual story arcs.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @02:53PM
the sad part is that someone got a publication out, using more time and more resources than you did, and I find your text as very informative and clear, much more than the summary (no, I won't waste time going to the original paper).
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Monday November 05 2018, @12:57PM (3 children)
"Ahhh, you're back"
Makes me think of my ex-mother in law.
Shouldn't #7 be Man tries to get in a hole - rise, fall, rise, fall rise, fall, rise, fall rise, fall, rise, fall rise, fall, rise, fall rise, fall, rise, fall .... success.
Rolls over and goes to sleep.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 05 2018, @09:56PM (2 children)
Yes... because the fucking do-gooders and their anti-smoking campaigns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday November 06 2018, @10:57AM (1 child)
"Do you usually smoke after sex, or did we do something wrong?"
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 06 2018, @11:54AM
Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford