How to Structure A Story: The Eight-Point Arc. By Ali Hale - 3 minute read One of my favourite “how to write” books is Nigel Watts’ Writing A Novel and Getting Published. My battered, torn and heavily-pencil-marked copy is a testament to how useful I’ve found it over the years. Although the cover appears to be on the verge of falling off altogether, I’ve risked opening the book once more to bring you Watts’ very useful “Eight-Point Story Arc” – a fool-proof, fail-safe and time-honoured way to structure a story.
(Even if you’re a short story writer or flash fiction writer rather than a novelist, this structure still applies, so don’t be put off by the title of Watts’ book.) The eight points which Watts lists are, in order: StasisTriggerThe questSurpriseCritical choiceClimaxReversalResolution He explains that every classic plot passes through these stages and that he doesn’t tend to use them to plan a story, but instead uses the points during the writing process: So, what do the eight points mean? Stasis Trigger The quest Surprise Climax Reversal. Barry Conway's Blog - How is player immersion affected by breaking the fourth wall? The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Below is a research paper which I constructed last year while studying the Professional Masters in games development (Mprof) at the University of Abertay Dundee.
This is a subject of particular interest to me and so I thought I would share my research with gamasutra to gauge others interest in the subject matter. "Immersion”, whereby an audience willingly suspends their sense of disbelief, is a widely used term within video game design yet its definition and how it is achieved remains highly ambiguous. It is thought achieving and sustaining immersion in games is made harder by players’ active involvement in the narrative, compared to passive experiences in media such as film and literature. The fourth wall refers to the fourth invisible wall separating an audience from a media piece. 1. 2. www.uky.edu/~aubel2/eng270/campbell270. HULK EXPLAINS WHY WE SHOULD STOP IT WITH THE HERO JOURNEY SHIT | FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! SERIOUSLY, HERE IS EXACTLY HOW BIOWARE WRITER RESPONDED [VIA MESSAGE BOARD AT THAT]: “So I’m supposed to believe someone is smart enough to do a big Excel spreadsheet with color coding and stuff but not smart enough to know about Campbellian archetypes?
Yeah, guys, every BioWare game has the same plot! See, things are kind of normal, and then things change and you have to go out and do stuff, and you go to crazy weird places! Aaaaaand so yeah, totally the same story. That’s asinine.” Weekes said the “intro, four planets, finale” structure familiar to BioWare games is picked for a number of good reasons. Firstly, it’s “easy” in the sense of QA, as areas can be culled if they’re not ready in time for launch with minimal impact on the final product. Secondly, “players understand it”.
Thirdly, “There’s nothing wrong with it.” “It’s a structure, like any other,” he wrote. “People who create fiction in any form use a structure appropriate to that form. The Hero's Journey - Mythic Structure of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth. To Structure Or Not To Structure? That Is The Question... Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. In the beginning you setup your hero (or heroine) and his story, then you throw something at him that is a great source of conflict and takes him into a whole heap of trouble. After facing many foes and overcoming various obstacles the hero saves the day and wins the girl. If only writing a movie was that easy... The thing is, there are many forms of structure and some writers subscribe to one formula, while others subscribe to another. In the end, a story should dictate the kind of structure it follows or whether it shouldn't follow a structure at all.
The 12 Stages of The Hero's Journey A popular form of structure derived from Joseph Campbell's Monomyth from his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces and adapted by Christopher Vogler is the Twelve Stage Hero's Journey. 1. This is where the Hero's exists before his present story begins, oblivious of the adventures to come. 2. 3. 4. 5.