And good stories teach new things, by violating expectations and surprising listeners or readers, and surprise and suspense generate engagement (Green et al. Watchers of movies, readers of books, or listeners of talks can connect in profound ways with characters who struggle, learn and grow, who experience both highs and lows, and finally come back home with a reward, a lesson learned, transformed, becoming a new woman, a new man.
People from every corner of the earth had been using these basic story elements to communicate with each other for thousands of years. They had the same overarching structure, containing the same types of characters. Most of myths followed the same basic story patterns. This format of stories appears in myths and stories from different cultures around the world and the human history. The Hero's Journey is a narrative format, framed by Christopher Vogler, in which an individual, the hero, starts his/her adventure, experiencing a transformational experience (resembling the 'Discovery' shape discussed by Green et al.
One of the most prolific, powerful and flexible attempts to schematise the storytelling has been made with the Hero's Journey (Campbell 1949, Vogler 1992, Figure 2). The emotional arcs of stories that have the greatest success are therefore characterized by precise shapes, which are not flat, but describe the fortune of the protagonist from despair to prosperity, and vice-versa during the narration.
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The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers is a screenwriting textbook written by Christopher Vogler, presenting the theory that most stories are based on a series of narrative structures and character archetypes. They also found that 'Icarus', 'Oedipus', and two sequential 'Man in a hole' arcs were the three most successful emotional arcs, as measured by book downloads.įigure 2.
(2016) have proved that Vonnegut theory was correct, demonstrating the existence of six core emotional arcs, which can combine to shape stories: 'Rags to riches' (rise) 'Tragedy', or 'Riches to rags' (fall) 'Man in a hole' (fall-rise) 'Icarus' (rise-fall) 'Cinderella' (rise-fall-rise) 'Oedipus' (fall-rise-fall). Applying principal component analysis, hierarchical clustering, and self-organizing map techniques to 1327 books, Reagan et al. Finally, different from the first two plots, we step into the 'Mystery' story at a low point, where an event of unknown origin or cause happened, creating an ill fortune for the main character the main character's fortune will increase, attempting to resolve the mystery, among successes and failures. The key to 'Rescue' shape progression is that the audience steps into the story at a high point in the character's fortunes they then experience a traumatic loss, followed by a recovery. With 'Discovery' they refer to a journey through the successes and failures of the main character of the story. (2018) have discussed three different shapes for stories, which depend on the fortune of the character, all of the three finishing with his/her success: 'Discovery', 'Rescue' and 'Mystery'. The "BE" axis, the x-axis, represents the beginning and end of the story. The "GI" axis, the y-axis, places Ill Fortune, at the bottom, and Good Fortune at the top. Kurt Vonnegut has defined the emotional arc of a story as a line on the Cartesian system made by the 'Beginning-End' (BE) and 'Ill Fortune-Great Fortune' (GI) axes (see Figure 1). Credits: Maya Eilam.ĭifferent authors have demonstrated that most successful stories are narrated following specific formats and structures. A story is made of ups and downs and can be graphed revealing the story's shape.
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