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121 sats \ 1 reply \ @johngalt 22 Mar \ on: What Makes For a Great Story? AskSN
Man, telling a good story isn’t an exact science, and that’s what makes it so awesome. Some people try to put narrative into a formula (like the Hero's Journey, which Hollywood loves), but at the end of the day, what hooks us into a story are more subjective things.
First, characters have to be real people (even if they’re a robot or a dragon). If the character is flat, emotionless, or doesn’t have real dilemmas, no one will care about them. Second, there needs to be some kind of conflict. It could be an internal struggle, a nasty villain, or just the protagonist fighting to pay their bills at the end of the month. Without a problem or challenge, the story gets boring.
Another thing: it has to make you feel something. If it doesn’t stir up something in the audience, it’s done. It doesn’t have to be some big drama, but it has to make you feel – whether it’s laughter, anger, fear, or that urge to message a friend saying, "dude, you gotta see this."
Now, as for structure, there are a bunch of cool ones. Besides the Hero’s Journey, there are some neat frameworks like:
- Kishōtenketsu – commonly used in Asian stories, it doesn’t have an obvious villain or direct conflict, but there’s a twist in the middle that makes you go "wait, what??"
- Kurt Vonnegut and narrative arcs – he argued that all stories follow some basic patterns, like "ups and downs" or "the hero comes back from rock bottom."
- John Yorke and "Into the Woods" – a book that shows how TV shows and movies build stories in a way that’s addictive.
In the end, the best story is the one that grabs you, makes you forget about life, and leaves you thinking about it after it’s over. If it was just about following formulas, we’d just use AI to write everything (and let’s be honest, AI-written stories are still pretty meh). The magic is in the soul of the story!