Simple lunch....

#Lunchstr

Goooood Moooooooaning !

All good? 😋

#GMooooooorningstr

Hello World! I'm new here.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is non-traditional story structures.

(Spoilers for The Matrix, Sicario, and John Wick if you haven’t seen them by now…)

A good example of a traditional story structure is The Matrix. It’s a typical three-act structure with an underdog protagonist who explores a whole new world, powers up via his mentor, and then takes down the stronger villain and gets the girl. But it’s more creative and better executed than most. Top shelf stuff.

In contrast, a movie like Sicario is less traditional. We mostly follow the story from the protagonist’s perspective. But then toward the end, she basically gets defeated and her worldview is invalidated. And then a supporting character, like a dark anti-hero type, kind of takes over as the main character for the final 20 minutes of the film. It’s quite highly rated and very good, but that kind of structure can be risky because the protagonist that we've come to care for goes through an anti-climactic and unhappy ending, with the dark/cynical side winning over the light/optimistic side. And it’s not even as simple as “villains win”, but rather, the anti-hero kind of takes over as the main character and defeats villains in the original protagonist's place, so we have partial "protagonist rotation", where a supporting character kind of ends as the main character. It’s a higher difficulty level to land that type of ending because the viewer is like, “Damn. I mean amazing too, but damn.”

A less complex example of a non-traditional structure is John Wick. It’s an action movie, one of the better ones for its genre, but the non-traditional element is that we know from the start that the protagonist John Wick is the biggest badass around. None of the villains are as strong as him individually, or even close really. The villains are the underdogs. And so to make that non-boring (“John Wick just kills everyone and wins easily”), it requires things like greater numbers of villains, and/or various schemes to surprise or outsmart the protagonist. It’s also a little harder to stick the landing because the climax can be less satisfying if you know from the start that the protagonist is stronger than the antagonist, and so it either needs emotional depth, complex situations, or other ways to make that ending satisfying.

I’ve been exploring some of these and thinking about it a lot because my novel has a number of these types of non-traditional elements, which elevates the difficulty in terms of making them satisfying despite going against the basic structure that people expect as a baseline.

Are there books, shows, or movies you like that go through rather non-traditional story structures?

Yes, make your own!

HOLD YOU FRIENDS & FAMILY CLOSE IN THESE TIMES OF TURMOIL

i just got the news today that a close friend of mine passed away. she was incredibly beautiful and kind to everyone she met. times are changing, it’s scary, check up on your friends and family. tell them you love them, before it’s too late.

REST IN PEACE AUTUMN ❤️❤️❤️

#stories #fiction #novels #literature

Gm buddy #Nostr

GM. Just testing to make sure it works 😁

nostr is good morning technology

I still do IG for the artists. Do you mind sharing her account?

I still do IG for the artists. Do you mind sharing her account?