This image be our episode 2732 entitled Storytelling Form Yola Compliance and in part of the series, Information Underground.
It is posted by Klaatu and in about 28 minutes long and Kariman-exquisite flag.
The summary is, telling a story, one to reaction, use the form Yola.
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Hi everyone, this is Klaatu, you're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
Boston Bronx is doing a series right now on Storytelling and writing and that sort of thing.
And it's a great series. I've really been enjoying it and it made me think of some things about
a story telling that I used to talk about a lot back in my old job where I was part of the
time teaching people how to make films. That was part of my film instructor, really.
And so one of the topics that we had to cover or that I chose to cover was what makes a good story
and generally speaking in a really small amount of time.
And that's a really tough thing to get to the bottom of because obviously everyone has their own
interpretation of what a good story is. And everyone has their own interpretation of what a short
film versus a normal length film is. A 90-minute film that you would go see at a theater.
Students, films, students often have to make these two-minute, three-minute, five-minute films.
And even if you accept that, okay, this is just a little snippet of a movie,
you want it to be a movie in itself. You want it to be a self-contained story.
Kind of like a good joke, right? I mean, there are long jokes, there are very short jokes,
but they all have a very definite opening and what we call a punchline, a part where people
sit up and notice that the thing has ended. That's really important, I think, for if what you want
to get from a story that you're telling is an impact or a reaction. If you want people to have
to have enjoyed something and to know that they have enjoyed it, then you kind of need to signal
people. We're kind of dumb sometimes, the audiences. And we need really clear and loud signals
that hey, the story has started. Hey, there's a conflict now. Okay, the story is over now,
everything's wrapped up. You just got to tell people that. So there's certainly a school of
story telling out there that does not involve any of that. And that is perfectly happy to me
ander through a story and then to kind of trail off until everyone leaves. And that's the end.
And then maybe if you're a fan of that sort of thing, then maybe you ponder that for days and days
on end. Frankly, personally, I'm a fan of that. That's kind of my thing. I'm much more interested
in stories that are less bombastic in their structure. That said, structure is comforting. People
really, really like structure, especially when they don't know what they're getting into
otherwise. For instance, if you establish something early, for instance, the Marvel universe,
right, everyone pretty much knows when they're going to a Marvel movie that they're going to
see some Marvel superheroes doing super, fantastic things. And so if one of the movies is about
the whole world about to end and the heroes have to fight the big bad guy, then everyone's okay
with that. But because you've built up this this this reputation and this universe that people are
perfectly happy to just kind of hang out in, that has afforded the Marvel universe to play around
a little bit more with structure and some of the movies are a little looser, some of them are a
little bit funnier than others and so on. So if your goal is to write a story and for people to
notice that you have just told them a story and for people to care about the story that you have
told them there is this trick that people use in Hollywood and on the New York bestseller,
booklist or whatever and and that is this thing that people generally just sort of call the formula
and not a whole lot of people know what the formula is and other people do know what the formula is
but they have a different formula than someone else. So very generically the formula is the idea
that a character begins going one direction and ends the movie, a 180 degrees in a different
direction. That's the formula. What does that look like realistically? Well it means that you need
to have a character who starts out definitively being one certain way and then you need to have a
movie through which this character journeys and has some experiences happen to them such that by the
end of that journey they are no longer that way and in fact for best possible impact you want
to have them be the polar opposite of the way they were at the beginning. Here's a super easy example
that pretty much everyone can identify with if you've seen some of the really I guess classic films.
I'm not a fan of this film. I don't know why I'm using it as an example except that I know a lot of
people really really do like it and it is in fact one of those movies that gets kind of hammered into
you in film school. So I know it fairly well. It's called The Godfather. It's by Francis Lucas Spielberg
and in the movie there is a character and I don't actually know which character it is because I don't
remember but he's played by Al Pacino and he is the second in or he's the air apparent to
being the next godfather should the first one die off. Now the problem is that this character hates
the the family business, the mafia. He doesn't want to be any he doesn't want to have any
part in it. He can't stand it and at the beginning of the movie that's his position. He does not
want to be in line for power. He doesn't want to become a godfather. He doesn't want to have anything
to do with the family business. It's just not what he does not have any interest in it. He wants
to get away from it. In fact some stuff happens and then by the end of the movie what do you know
there he is standing in the doorway looking pensive and and as if though he has come to peace with the
fact that he is now the godfather. So that's a super simple and obvious example that lots of people
have seen. There are lots of other examples. Like I say there are also degrees of how much these
characters turn. You don't necessarily have to have them turn 180 degrees. You can usually
fudge it with like 120, maybe 190 doesn't usually work. It needs to be a little bit more drastic
than that but people if you do 180 people really really love it. You can also think of a dozen
examples if you name any romantic comedy. Generally speaking the formula in as applied to a romantic
comedy is that you've got a woman and she is very much in love with the wrong man. Everyone knows
it's the wrong man except this woman. She'll go through most of the film believing insisting in
fact to herself and spite of all evidence to the contrary that she is in love with the wrong man.
Even though Mr. Wright comes along about a quarter of the way into the movie and she can't stand
him. She rejects him. He's not good enough for her or whatever. He's screwed. He's crass. He's
foppish. Whatever it might be. And then of course by the end of the movie she's turned around
180 degrees and realized that the wrong man is indeed the wrong man and that the right
man is about to write off into the sunset without her unless she catches up with him in time.
I don't really know how many more examples I could possibly do there. They're all over the place.
Think about return to the Jedi. Darth Vader has spent two movies being really, really bad and
despicable. But by the end of the third movie he has turned 180 degrees and kills the Emperor
in order to save his son and now he's a good guy. For possibly a more elegant version of some of
these examples, you may want to go watch the Ridley Scott movie The Dualists. It's an early late
maybe 70s movie about some some dual fighters in France in Napoleonic France and it is just a fascinating
movie and it's got a really beautiful example of how this 180 degree effect can really, really hit home.
But enough of the examples, how do you leverage this formula for yourself? Well first of all,
like I say, you don't necessarily have to. A lot of times part of knowing the rules or part of
knowing the formula is you know it, so now you don't have to follow it, you can break it. But I'm just
telling you nine times out of ten if it is something that you're seeking, if you're going to
people and you want them to react to a story that you have told them. If you use this formula,
you will be satisfied. If you do not, then you will have to find satisfaction in some, in some other
aspect of that experience. You may have to pat yourself on the back for being really, really weird
in an edgy storyteller who doesn't conform to conventions or whatever, whatever it is out of that
that you want to find pleasure in is up to you, but don't expect people to give it back to you.
Unless you use the formula because that's what people are expecting. For better or for worse,
and that's a different conversation, but I'm just saying generally speaking, that's what people are
expecting. So let's do some practice work here. So let's invent a formulaic story together.
And now if we were going to program this, if we were going to script it out in code,
the general pattern that we would have to leverage is AA, Z, A, some stuff, so B, B through Y,
essentially, and then Z again. So that's AA, Z, A, B through Y, and then Z. What that means is that your
character needs to start out one way in condition A, right? You need to emphasize,
you need to demonstrate that the character is in condition A. It's not enough to just tell the audience
that that person's a mean person. That's not enough. You have to demonstrate it, right? So that's
AA. Then you have to dip into Z a little bit. Maybe someone comes into their life unexpectedly and turns
their routine upside down. So now they're in state Z. Whether they like it or not, they've gotten
there, or maybe the character has sat down and thought about their life, reassessed things and
said, you know what? I shouldn't be in state A anymore. I should be in state Z. Well that's fine,
but we can't let the character spin the rest of the movie in state Z. That's where they want to
end up. So we need to get them back to state A and then have the movie happen, have the bulk of the
movie happen, and then finally in the end they make that last minute turn around, back to Z,
and the audience leaves the theater feeling very sure that the character has changed the error
of their ways. So here's an example. Let's say that we've got, let's do the romantic comedy type
example because that's kind of that's low hanging fruit. So if there's a person, there's there's a guy
right and he's single and he's fancy free and he's super happy being single and he's fancy free
and he loves them and leaves them and we can show that. We'll show him being careless and free
and all the wonderful things he does as a single guy. We get to follow along for the first couple
of minutes of the movie which believed me as longer than you think and or a shorter than you think.
It'll feel longer than it actually is. It'll be like only five maybe ten minutes. And then
at some point he's going to realize that maybe this isn't as much fun as he thought he thought
it would be. He's decided he needs to find someone else, right? So he's flirting as it were
with state Z. He wants to become a married man, not a single man. He's a single man now
and then momentarily for whatever reason maybe he meets a really cool girl maybe and for a moment
he's seeing the girl for who she is rather than just as someone to kind of play around with
for an evening and then forget about. So he meets a girl and he starts thinking yeah I could do this.
I could become a serious I could become I could enter into a relationship but then he
something in him rejects this idea. It could be anything. It could be maybe he sabotages
that relationship somehow by by making a big deal over something really small that normally
wouldn't bug him or maybe he has a reunion with an old friend from school who sits down and
and is bemused by how this this once wild and crazy guy has been domesticated. So something
in him tells him you've got to you've got to stop this you have to be single you have to stay
single for life. So he rejects he rejects state Z the married committed man and become single again.
And so now he now stuff happens they break up he loses the girl the girl goes away. He tells
himself he's happy but ultimately we can tell and eventually he will also tell that he's not really
happy without being committed to this one girl who who meant so much to him and so that's the
B through Y right that's the the second act of the movie probably or at least the bulk of the
second act of where where we know what the man is supposed to become but we but he's rejecting it. He's
not that thing and then at the very end of the movie of course something happens he realizes that
that he was right after all he doesn't want to be single anymore that's not providing him happiness
and so he chases after his true love who was just about to get married to the wrong man in a
chapel and so on and so on. So there you go that's the formula applied to the romantic comedy formula
and it's funny that I say I'm going to make that up on the spot because I mean if you really
listen to it it's it's exactly every romantic comedy you've ever seen okay let's do one a little bit
different let's do do one about wizards so maybe there is an apprentice the wizards apprentice
and he is a well he's a good he's a good apprentice he's the best actually he's always being told
that how great he is how how obedient and and studious he is he's he's he's going to go far as
long as he just continues to be patient and and as long as he works hard and just stays stays a
good little apprentice and we see that we we see some scenes where he demonstrates and it is it is
clear at how good of an apprentice he is and maybe there's a counterpoint of how much fun other
people are who who maybe aren't as a studious they they do other things they they break the rules
they they they they dip into some blood magic or or they they cast spells that their mentors
have told them they weren't ready for whatever that whatever it might be so the our good little
apprentice starts to wonder what it might like to be what what it might be like to be a great wizard
instead of just an apprentice and so he attempts to perform some big spell and unfortunately fails
miserably so now he's flirting with state zed right now right he's he's going out of his
out of his circle out of the the place where he belongs and he is he's trying something that
is forbidden because he wants to become a big wizard so he tries something from from the opposite
into the spectrum and he fails miserably now the be through why the second act of the movie
will have to be him trying to repair the damage from what he is done maybe he cast a spell
and accidentally summoned a demon and the demon doesn't really it isn't terribly obedient
and so starts wreaking havoc across the land or maybe he sent an important artifact off to an
alternate plane on accidents and and now he he's tasked because he did it he's tasked to to go
to go find it again to go recover that thing so be through why stuff happens he he he has to go
through some hardships and in order to succeed at those hardships he must remain the beautiful
student he must be patient and he must be he must be exacting and and obedient to his his masters
and then at the very end of course when everything is looking at its most bleak he realizes
that along that way as he was being obedient he has he's learned so much that he's arrived at
Z he has arrived at the point of being a great and powerful wizard by by having the experience of
recovering from his mistake and now he's a great and powerful wizard so he succeeds and the
audience leaves with the knowledge that he has has overcome subservience and and is is the new
master now but he did he got it honestly is the important thing there so that's a little bit of a
variation as you can tell that's a that's a slightly slightly different because the motivations were
different and and the progress of the the progression from A to Z is a little bit more natural
than that second act but the the end result is again the same we we started with him pointed in the
direction of hey I'm a new and we ended up with him pointed in the direction of I'm the master
so you should try this at home if you have any interest in storytelling whether it's to write a book
or whether it is to create a fun story for your role playing group you should try this you should sit
down with the literal formula which is again a a z a b through y and in z a a just remember a
a reinforced z a reaction and then b through y all the stuff and in z again that's that's all it takes
and it will work so if I if let's do another really simple example where we're without the
embellishment we will simply say okay there is a person they're living in an oppressive empire
and they are quite happy living in the oppressive empire because to them order is comfort so that's
A that's our setup now we're going to reinforce that we can reinforce that with a quick scene
wherein this person witnesses some kind of transgression or I mean if you please it could be a major
atrocity but I would probably go less is more here that they see something they witness something
that you and I would stand up and say well that's not right but they don't do that maybe we
get a glimpse for a moment that they feel like that's not right but instead of standing up for
what's right they allow it to happen but it does make an impression on them now we have to introduce
them to the the other state of being the other side to to state z we can do that in a scene that
maybe maybe they meet somebody from the rebellion and not only do they do they turn a blind eye
but after a while they actually help with the person they aid and a bet a rebel in doing rebel
activity well that was nice for a couple of scenes but then we need to go get back to a right we
need to get back to our comfort zone we need to reject what we've just done so who knows maybe they
report the person maybe they try to confess to the crime themselves but no one believes them because
they're such an outstanding citizen but now they're re-doubled in their desire to walk the
straight and narrow path and be obedient to the to the evil empire and so be through why the the
big middle part of the movie or the big middle part of the story they're doing a bunch of stuff
they do stuff that because of their association with the rebel in their moment of weakness they're
getting they're getting contacted by other rebels and have to deny their affiliation but of
course in the end they realize that walking the straight and narrow path blindly following a
selfish self-serving and oppressive government or another word for that is government is not what
they really went out of life and so they at the last minute meet the rebels at the rendezvous
point in order to bring down the upper and ruling class so really that's it that that is the formula
you have it now if you are trying to write a story and you just can't figure out how to get it to
to how to turn it to be that kind of story that people have an immediate and pronounced reaction to
then follow this formula and and believe it or not if you if you spend the money and I don't
advise doing this but if you spend the money on on actual on actual formalized classes in this
kind of stuff they will tell you and and I'm not saying they're wrong I'm just telling you that they
will tell you that every chapter of your book needs to have this structure in a mini-atturized
way the state of things within a chapter need to go from from eight is that really just in a
really really shrunk down version of all of this and whether or not anyone achieves
100% formula compliance is is another story and and there are lots of variations here there's
lots of wiggle room and different ways to express it it doesn't always have to be so obvious
that it is a formula right now I think a lot of times when we see a movie or when we read a book
that we just feel it had all the elements it had all the right elements what why was it so
why didn't it just not feel right a lot of times it's because yes they have the elements and
those elements are so obvious to everyone that even if you're not looking for them you get you get
that they're there and you know that you're being fed a formula and so it just doesn't taste quite as
good now in point of order here the if you're if you're doing this if you're making a
a story for something you have to also consider your delivery medium obviously movies and books
and comics and things like that these are all audio plays whatever these are fairly passive
media so you can tell your your your story to the audience as is in a very planned out kind of way
if you are trying to apply this for instance to a role playing game then more often the
concentration if you're doing like this big long campaign that you want people to feel really
great about I think the more often the state of change is going to be within the environment
and characters should feel like they're having a role in that state of change like they came
into this demon ravage to land but by the end of several months of playing through the
the book or the story the land has changed back to its natural beauty and everything is at peace
that's something that you as the GM can control because that there's a story there you can make
you can force the the setting to turn 180 degrees and you can make it seem like your characters
were responsible for it turning 180 degrees it's a little bit more difficult to make your
characters change 180 degrees if you can swing it that's great and I think that in modern RPG
that is a little bit of an expectation where the players come to the GM with this character
with a backstory and maybe certain goals that they have and the GM attempts to incorporate
those things into into the into the game over the course of many many months or many
many gaming sessions and that always feels very good but it's not the formula because generally
speaking there are there are exceptions but generally speaking you bring a character to the GM
who is a very very low level wizard and at the end of the story they have progressively
leveled up until they are now a more powerful wizard and that's it I mean that's that's the drama
so that's not that there's no 180 degree rotation there that is a that is staying the course
and becoming the thing that you wanted to become there's nothing wrong with that I'm just saying
that in terms of applying formula to RPG a lot of times it's harder to do that with on
onto the characters that you don't control then it then it is on the setting that you do control
or maybe a very important NPC like the local clean changes her heart or her style of governance
because of this loan or this rag tag party of adventures and all of the daring deeds that they
have done for her that sort of thing but other than that the formula the idea of the formula is
pretty solid it runs through stories from long long ago up right up until you know the most
recent blockbuster because that's what we as humans react to it makes us feel really really happy
when someone overcomes problems and then becomes a better person because of those problems I
don't know why it just that happens to make most people feel pretty good about it and even
I as someone who says I don't really like the formula that much I mean I still I get happy at certain
movies you know certain movies make me feel like oh that is good that that has shown a clear progression
of this character and they really changed it through the story and that's great and by the same token
I sometimes really hate movies that fail to do that that just take a character who never changes
and who never does anything throughout the movie and they're just they kind of end up in the same
place where they were that doesn't affect me sometimes other times I really really like stories that
that forego the plot and forego the traditional constructs of of what a story is but that doesn't
mean that when I see something that does follow the formula and does follow it well that I'm not
affected because I am it it works there are lots and lots of movies that are very formulaic
that I truly truly respect and truly truly enjoy so once again just so you remember a a
reinforced z a everything else and then z go try it out whether or not you want to write stories or
not go try it out and submit your little outline in the comments of this episode thanks for listening
talk to you later
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