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A Simple Rule of Storytelling
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amyraine's comment, and as a reminder to myself:
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone in this video mentioned a simple rule that I find really useful. Basically, if the words "and then" belong between the beats in your outline, it doesn't work. The connections should be "therefore" or "but." If the summary is basically "this happened, and then this happened," that's a list of events and not storytelling. And because alliteration is fun, here's my take on it:
The driving force of story comes from causation and complication, not cataloging.
It's the only way to write a story that makes any sense, or rather it's the only way to write a story, full stop. I fully expect to use this rule as long as I am writing anything.
amyraine's comment, and as a reminder to myself:South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone in this video mentioned a simple rule that I find really useful. Basically, if the words "and then" belong between the beats in your outline, it doesn't work. The connections should be "therefore" or "but." If the summary is basically "this happened, and then this happened," that's a list of events and not storytelling. And because alliteration is fun, here's my take on it:
The driving force of story comes from causation and complication, not cataloging.
It's the only way to write a story that makes any sense, or rather it's the only way to write a story, full stop. I fully expect to use this rule as long as I am writing anything.