6

Other Perspectives on Story

Stories are lies; and the storyteller is a liar. But few think in such terms. Honest, hardworking people sit enraptured, willingly absorbing the lies, finding within them reflections of themselves and their views of the world: right defeating evil, the worth of an individual will, the triumph of justice, the spirits of both man and woman raised above the mean existence of everyday survival. In the storyteller’s lies, they find a kind of truth. Perhaps not the kind of truth that is but the kind that should be. During the story, the truths are lived; afterwards feelings of those truths remain, to be remembered and touched during reality’s unceasing efforts to drive men and women into the futile mire of sameness. (From A Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop-I: An Introduction to Fiction Mechanics by Barry Longyear)

So one way to look at story creation is to consider it as the organization of events. Even Bill Idelson’s simple plan for the creation of a story requires that within the hero’s quest for the goal, and the constant struggle against the obstacle, there should be an ordering of what happens. Essayist Bill Johnson expands on the idea by describing story this way:

Through experiencing a story’s arrangement of its events, a story’s audience has experiences of “life” more potent and “true” than real life. “Life” with meaning and purpose. Where people get what they want if they really believe. Wherein true love exists. Where inexplicable events are resolved. Where even pain and chaos can be ascribed meaning.

This makes a story unlike the real world, where experiences happen, events unfold, time passes, but not always in a way that offers resolution or is fulfilling. Every element in a story is chosen to create its story-like effect of a resolution that creates a quality of potent, dramatic fulfillment.

Thus, a story takes life-like events and gives them a sense of meaning and purpose that touches us. Even a story about chaos and the meaninglessness of life, if well told, can ascribe a quality of meaning and purpose to those states. (From A Story Is a Promise by Bill Johnson)

So, in order to create a story it is important to structure events in a certain way. Of course there may be many ways to structure a story, but, after all, the members of the US Military who came to Paramount looking for our approach to storytelling were looking for the Hollywood way. And there is a Hollywood way to tell a story. Make no mistake about that.

THE HOLLYWOOD STORY

In his book, Story, noted writer and lecturer Robert McKee goes into great depth on the structure and mechanics of Hollywood storytelling and screenwriting, further explicating the model identified by other screenwriting theorists such as Syd Field and Linda Seger.

In a nutshell, the Hollywood protagonist experiences a change in life caused by an inciting incident. The inciting incident is some action or event that abruptly changes the normality of the protagonist’s life, causing him or her to envision a new, better state and set a new goal.

In the minds of the audience, the inciting incident also creates the need for another scene that must be experienced before the story is over. That scene is sometimes called the obligatory scene or the crisis. As in Bill Idelson’s model, this scene happens when the protagonist, in seeking that better state, comes face to face with an obstacle. But in this crisis moment, the protagonist faces the ultimate obstacle.

As McKee and others have pointed out, when the protagonist comes face to face with this obstacle, the key issues in the story become crystal clear. The audience and the protagonist both gain full understanding of the values at stake. The protagonist faces a dilemma, must make a decision and take action. And that action becomes the climax of the story.

As the protagonist moves from the inciting incident toward the crisis moment the story moves forward through conflict. The protagonist and other characters make decisions and take action and things do not necessarily turn out the way they expect them to. This is critical because it is in the moment of conflict between expectations and reality that the audience and the characters are caught off guard. According to McKee, there is surprise, insight, discovery and excitement. The combination makes the audiences’ juices flow. The story builds through a series of these conflicts, or progressive complications, which grow more intense as the story moves along.

McKee says that the arc of the story is the broad sweep of change that carries the story from beginning to end. But this arc is built through smaller changes, which occur through progressive complications, conflict and resulting insight.

Figure 6.1 shows a simple diagram of the arc of the story, which was used to explain the structure of Hollywood stories to members of the military. It identifies the inciting incident, progressive complications, the crisis decision, and the climax. This same model was used to classify kinds of story elements for the automated story development system described in Chapter Nine.

Figure 6.2 shows how the arc structure was later employed in the interface design for an authoring tool that was never built, but which was intended to enable writers of future story-driven simulations to create their scripts. The tool suggested that there were templates for certain kinds of simulation genres that could be used and reused, and that unique interface devices such as text entry systems, video clips, text documents, and audio files, could be created using special tools that would help assure that they were developed to the specifications of the system. AI assistants were hypothesized to ensure that the proper dramatic elements were present in the story. For example, they would assure that there was indeed an inciting incident, a crisis moment, and the appropriate degree of dramatic tension in the selection of the moments that made up the story. As you will see in Chapter 10 one of the most obvious outcomes of participants exercising free will in a simulation system is that they take the story off track and in the process eliminate the crisis completely. So authors of simulations need to account for participant behavior that takes the story off track by assuring that the crisis is maintained.

Figure 6.1   Slide from Paramount Presentation to the U. S. Army explaining the classic Hollywood Story Structure.

Figure 6.2   Conceptual model of authoring tool for ALTSIM.

SUMMARY

Many theorists define story as the structuring of events so that they make sense and achieve a sense of order and meaning not experienced in the real world. The Hollywood story, as described perhaps most thoroughly by Robert McKee, has a more detailed approach. An incident causes the story’s protagonist to seek a new and better state. Forces of antagonism stand between the protagonist and the goal and reach their greatest strength at the crisis moment when the protagonist must make the ultimate decision and take an action, which becomes the climax of the story. Between the inciting incident and the climax, the protagonist faces lesser conflicts that provide insights and a rewarding rush of discovery for the audience. It is the selection, organization and building up of these events that create the story arc that is at the heart of the Hollywood Story.

The concepts of surprise, insight and learning that come at key moments of the story have special meaning for stories used in serious games, and the next two chapters will explore them.