the "5 basic aspects of a story" are
1)Inciting incident: this is the incident that happens at the beginning that gives reason to the rest of the story. it mkaes the main character "involved" in some way or the other
2)Complications: situations that must be resolved before you get to ur goal.
3)plot points: this is where u get twists in the story. "ooo"s and "awww"s go in here. these are surprises, ... unexpected event. you can have one twist...or many, and u can have them anywhere in the story dont have to come right after complications...it could come before, then another one after...
4)climax: in other words the resolution of the story. everything is taken care of in this part.
5)denouement: ... conclusion.


those my good friend are the "5 basic aspecst of a story".

PS.if ive made a mistake....please....someone shoot me.


Al
"For us it''s a natural disaster....For him/she it''s a damn memory leak..."
[Triple Buffer]|[SCRIPTaGAME]|[My Old Site]

quote: Original post by Fidelio_
I always thought the 5 basics were "who, where, when, how and why". That''s how all good movies are made.

I thought that was for newpaper articles/reports?

BTW, ''what'' should be in there too, I believe...

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

Hey... this is interesting, but...

quote: Original post by akudoi
I didn't know if I should post this here or in the Writing Forum but since the original thread was here I'll try here. [If im wrong can a mod move it ]

yes, Writing is more appropriate.

quote:
Thanks in advance.

np!


--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

[edited by - Wavinator on September 5, 2002 4:25:46 AM]

quote: Original post by alfmga
the "5 basic aspects of a story" are
1)Inciting incident: this is the incident that happens at the beginning that gives reason to the rest of the story.

>Aka as the ''hook'', and it is _not_ necessarily designed to give reason to the rest of the story per se, it is more designed for the setting into motion conflict, which will drive the rest of the story. The setting of the conflict is the primary engagement tool used in linear narrative, but works quite well nonlinearly. It drags the viewer along rapidly, as people will forget what they saw about seven seconds ago, perceptually, and pacing the conflict will either put them to sleep or move them to the edge of their seat. Setting the conflict by the hook sometimes involves the introduction of both the protagonist and antagonist, but not necessarily, sometimes preferentially, sequentially. I''m not going into the debate over whether conflict is story or character is, I think it takes both, and which is used more depends on the story you choose to relate/design.


it mkaes the main character "involved" in some way or the other

>usually because of some major challenge he cannot avoid sooner or later.


2)Complications: situations that must be resolved before you get to ur goal.

Often cliched and hackneyed, lending amateuristic flair to a tale should you not observe some groundrules for complications. One, they must be relevant to the time, place and circumstance, no matter where you are in the timeline of the story (also known as the ''aristotelian consistencies''), two, they ought to contain aspects of the subplots using secondary characters or devices introduced in earlier exposition, and three, they should be consistently more difficult. It helps if they shape the perceptual changes (as I call them; character arc consequences as others may call them) when they occur.


3)plot points: this is where u get twists in the story. "ooo"s and "awww"s go in here. these are surprises, ... unexpected event. you can have one twist...or many, and u can have them anywhere in the story dont have to come right after complications...it could come before, then another one after...

Plot points are a little more important than that. Usually, there are two of them, one is near the end of what could be considered Act I, and is not a twist actually, it is a peak of sufficient and significant dramatic power as to not ooh you and ahh you, but to wow you on an order of magnitude that your breat gets taken away for the first perceptual time in the plot. It is there for a reason, and that reason is called the suspension of disbelief. Now, put shortly, the suspension of disbelief is where you have to get your audience (interactive or not) to not quite believe your story is real, but to suspend disbelief that it is not, so they go along with the ride investing in your main characters, or sub characters if they identify with those more. If that is happening, you either have a wierd class of viewer/player, or, you didn''t design your main character (either protagonist or antihero, depending on whether they reach their goal or not) compellingly enough.

The real main reason for the peak of the plot point about the end of act I is that for dramaturlogical purposes, your audience barely knows who you main or secondary characters are, who up to this point have just been visually introduced, have had some action scenes or sequences, and not much more. If you have going to have effective suspension of disbelief (the primary precursor required for catharsis), you''ve got to expand the characterization of those major and minor characters, and that usually comes during Act II, so you need the high plot point near the end of act one to bring your audience down while getting to know your characters, serving two purposes (well, actually more than that) with your exposition, dimensionalizing characters, to make them more human, perceptually investable in by the audience, so they have character empathy, and at the same time, set up for the catharsis later by nesting empathy now.

The second story peak is the point where the conflict is locked into the final confrontation, leading to the face to face of the personification of the conflict, the protagonist and antagonist. While you were patiently building up the characterizations of your cast, hopefully you were discussing the dilemma progressively in the dialogue, and it had an effect on the protagonist where he gets to a place in his mind he must go one way or the other before the end of the story.

That place is called the ''point of no return''. And if you are in the camp of character is story, this would be one of the major aspects of storytelling (who numbered them five, and why, there are dozens if you are into it professionally, and all of them matter to quality). The point of no return is the place in the characters mind or actual physical location (but usually it is referred to as where the person comes around to accepting the reality of the situation they are in) where they can no longer go back, avoid, or deny the conflict situation the series of events to this point have put them in, and mentally make up their minds to just "go for it" (Aliens 3 had a good example of it when the criminal guy stands up and says, "F*ck it, let''s go for it."

Without a point of no return, you will get this queasy feeling of ambiguousness as an audience member if your protagonist goes into the final face to face conflict for all the marbles if they have not come to some sort of resolution in their character. It''d be like Sigorney Weaver saying, "hmm, how do I really feel about saving this little girl and killing the queen mother alien? Let me think about this a second."

4)climax: in other words the resolution of the story. everything is taken care of in this part.


>This is actually and technically called "The climax-anticlimax sequnence" and it is comprises of two components, obviously, not one.

The climax/anticlimax sequence happens at very high rates of speed perceptually, so it is often mistaken for one thing, but it is actually two. One is where the final grapple in the long hand to hand battle between protagonist and antagonist occurs, and the hero throws the bad guy over the cliff (climax), but the bad guy grabs his arm and pulls him over with him (anticlimax), but the good guy holds on, his sleeve tears, and the bad guy has nothing to hand on to anymore, and plunges to his death. There are several other examples of this that are more revealing, but the point is that when the climax arrives, you can rest assured the anticlimax is planted in it seqeuntially somewhere, usually afterwards. In "The Jackal", it would be Bruce Willis coming back around a second time even though he has been shot in the neck and appearantly dead, and the audience begins to feel some sort of relief as the woman tends to the wounded Irish hero, but then all of a sudden Bruce Willis gets new life, and has to be shot again several times to make sure he''s dead. This whole technique arises from Greek Tragidian plotting where ''evil doesn''t go down that easy'', and it is wise to have your story mirror the reality of that statement.


5)denouement: ... conclusion.


Denoument, is something that is more often blown that done correctly, but hey, I''m not david mamet, so I''m not going to be all authoritarian. Denoument is often presented and the final calm, in fact, I think that is the translation in french, I could be wrong here. It''s the part where we go to a new master establishing shot just long enough to show that everything is going to be allright. In some films, we just pull back from the bloody battlefield to an over the shoulder of the hero who has survived, continue to pull back so they are totally in frame, and have the girl run up from behind, they kiss, swell the violins, cut to the end, hold shot and roll credits.

This was all that was needed in simpler times, but as filmmakers and others have learned how to milk audiences emotionally even more, they have let the denoument lengthen, sometimes to it''s detriment. They show some conversation at the end after the girl and guy have kissed, where they talk about something not quite fully addressed from before it all began, usually in the form of an intimate joke or something. Denoument for the most part, means "relax." and that is exactly the effect you want to impart after having ejected the queen alien into space at the risk of your own life.


those my good friend are the "5 basic aspecst of a story".

Aspect is more of a visual perspective terms, utilized in establishing POV from one of many interpretations, visually, emotionally, figuratively, literally, you get it, so a good look at "The Elements of Screenwriting" about seven bucks, would be an invaluable tiny little book you will treasure for a long time, as it has a lot in it for such a small book, but then again, so did "Da Vinci''s Advice to Artists" something else you should have and treasure in your library.

HTH,
Adventuredesign

quote: Original post by akudoi

What are the 5 basic aspects of a story?

I''ve heard of two things (other than the Freytag''s Pyramid parts which have been mentioned) which might be what is referred to here. One is called the Circle of Story Elements and one is called the Unities.

The Unities comes from classical theory (Maybe Aristotle''s Poetics? I forget) and is intended to apply more to plays than stories. The idea is basically that plays should display unity of time (the story should take plae within 24 hours), place (the story should take place in one city or castle and the surrounding countryside), characters (characters should not appear oce and then vanish, they should appear throughout the play), emotion (it should not be a mix of genres like tragedy, comedy, action, myster, romance, etc.) and... er.. I forget what the fifth one was.

The Circle of Story Elements is a much more modern theory and one I am fond of. It states th there is a circle of 6 aspects that you must work your way through before you have created a complete story - you may start at any point on the circle, but you have to get to all of them before you''re done. The circle goes like this:

charcters---character dynamic---worldbuilding---plot---register---atmosphere---then back to characters again.

I personally start with characters and character dynamic, but I know many writers who start with plot or worldbuiding. Register (ths is basically word choice and rhetorical elements) is sometimes left out of the circle, resulting in a 5-element system tht may be what the is being referred to above.

Game Architecture and Design has a good although small section in it about making good stories. Part of it is originality, but if you believe that nothing is original, you just gotta make it seem like it is.

It mentions how in the movie Total Recall, they even give away how the story works out at the beginning and still make it cool.
A big surprise about 1/3 and 2/3 into the game is good. They did it in Lord of the Rings (Gandulf dying almost at the beginning of the quest when the whole quest was to go with him to Mount Doom).

There are other things, but I''d say find the book mentioned above (not Lord of the Rings, but "Game Architecture and Design") in a library or at a bookstore for $5 like I did. Great deal!

That book is like $50. I''m surprised you were able to find a used copy!

Personally, I found the book very hard to get anything out of. The author really seemed to enjoy reading their own writing. Which is to say, it was very wordy.

_________________________
The Idea Foundry

You''re right, it is $50 regular price. I was at Microcenter, which apparantly has only 4 stores across the US, and I saw it for only $5. Grabbed it as fast as I could! B-)