Use this narrative formula to tell your video story
Kurt Vonnegut has argued (in this video and elsewhere) that a few simple shapes can describe the plots of all stories. Depicted here are "man in hole," "boy meets girl" (up-down-up), and, under construction, Cinderella. But what make stories compelling isn't the shape of the plot, its the narrative drive. Vonnegut Case Western Reserve lecture, 2004 (excerpt)
Kurt Vonnegut famously diagrammed the “shapes” of the what he identified as the mere handful of plots that underlie all stories. But the plot of a story — boy-meets-girl, man-gets-out-of-hole, whatever — is not what holds your attention. What keeps you going is the narrative, the tense, interesting moments come at you one-by-one. So, how […]
