Original Plots. Bryan O'Neill
how great a story is. From here I will tell you what I think makes a great story, but ultimately it will be an audience outside your work that determines if it is great.
I believe a great story is a story that touches someone in a personal intrinsic way. A great story begins with being able to research what stories are already out there. That is why freedom of speech is so important to storytellers. People would spend their whole lives recreating the wheel if they did not know it was already there; the same can be said for storytelling. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. The term cliché means something becoming overly familiar or commonplace. Investing in stories that have already been done before is a waste of time and money.
If an audience can not buy into a story in an empathic way, then the story is not going to work, no matter how much money is spent, no matter how good the special effects, no matter who is acting, directing, or producing. It is the direct responsibility of the writers of the story plot to make sure they do whatever they can so their story can connect with the audience.
My goal with this book is twofold: to offer advice on how to build a great story/plot from scratch and to educate storytellers on how to make the best work they can by putting plot at the forefront of everything else. Take this book’s cover for example. My name is not listed at the top for a reason. As a storyteller myself, I do not want to put myself above the work. The focus is not on me, it is on storytelling and how to improve it for the better.
In addition, I plan to show how there are ways to predict how well a story can do critically and financially keeping in mind the relativity of it all of course. Many have said that is impossible. I could write a book on how many things people said could not be achieved, but later were. Impossible is just a word; do not let it hold you down. Having a positive attitude about what can be achieved is critical to success.
Critics claim there is no way to predict a story’s critical or profitable success. What do audiences really want? Audiences want something new to explore, and not a rehash of the same story over and over again. I believe through the evaluation of character relationship study applied to a new story structure, an unlimited base of formulas can be created to form original plots, allowing predictions based on those plots to effectively be made.
Nobody likes to talk about formulas, but in the end every story becomes a type of formula that goes on to inspire something else. Instead of creating a story from some set of formulas someone tries to create, we must focus on character relationships to create an infinite amount of formulas.
If you plan to write a story, you have to know how all the parts are going to work together. You have to know what kinds of basic formulas exist to build a credible story. There must be a base structure, and then you can populate that structure with your own style, flavor, and originality. You have to do research, and you have to not be afraid to pick apart a story already out there into its components.
Spoiler Alert: If you are someone who does not like to know how stories end take note that endings to stories I use as examples may be revealed. There will be several story autopsies in the persuit of knowledge.
I believe anyone who learns how to build quality original plots using this book can create great stories. If anyone changes the face of storytelling forever, it is going to be you. If the seed of any story is plot we need to learn how to plant it, give it nourishment, and the right conditions to grow and flourish. An acute focus on plot is where great stories begin.
Plot should always be the intrinsic motivating soul of the narrative. A great story spends more time on why things are happening than what is happening. Plot devices in a story cause actions which drive characters, but there has to be well described reasons and motivations for these actions. The best twists in stories come from the reveals, and most often those result from the why questions being answered. What happens is the result of a plot device. Why it happened is what keeps a story moving forward.
Is storytelling an art or craft? Storytelling starts as a craft because you must learn how to speak, write, and communicate with others through storytelling. Storytelling only becomes art when you use it to express yourself in your own unique way, from your point of view. Since art is in the eye of the beholder then a story could be viewed as art.
In Greek times, the stage play was a popular form of entertainment. Groups involved in sharing the storytelling created the key players: the writer (the story’s originator), the producer (the one who pays for its creation and distribution), the actors (the people who explain the story to an audience for the writer), the director (the person who leads the actors), and the audience (the end listener/viewers to the story).
Poetry was one of the first expressive forms to come in Greek times. Over 2,000 years ago, Greek poets began to form rules governing the art of storytelling when it came to the stage play. Many great poets emerged during the millennia. Here are some of those Greek poets and storytellers, along with some of the main subject matter they wrote about.
Homer - (Hero tales, wrote The Iliad, 750-700 BC)
Sappho - (Love, 612-570 BC)
Aeschylus - (Tragedy, 525-456 BC)
Sophocles - (Tragedy, wrote Oedipus the King, 495-406 BC)
Euripides - (Tragedy, inventor of the prologue, 480-406 BC)
Socrates - (Greek philosopher, 470-399 BC)
Xenophon - (Tragedy, wrote Ephesian Tale, 427-355 BC)
Plato - (Greek philosopher, 427-347 BC)
Aristotle - (Greek Philosopher, developed Three Act Structure, wrote Poetics 384-322 BC)
Mencius - (Chinese Philosopher, 371-289 BC)
Aristophanes - (Comedy, wrote Lysistrata, 448-385 BC)
Menander - (Comedy, 342-291 BC)
Terence - (Comedy, 190-158 BC)
Lucretius - (Superstition, 94-49 BC)
Catullus - (Wrote about friends and lovers, 84-54 BC)
Virgilius - (Wrote Aeneid, 70-19 BC)
Horace - (Odes and satire, developed Five Act Structure, 65-8 BC)
Ovid - (Heroine tales and Love, 43BC-17 AD)
The philosopher Socrates was deeply interested in how to build a better society. He believed the path to a just government was the noble training and coordination of the society’s leaders and governing bodies. Start at the top, in other words, and work your way down to the people.
His pupil during these times was Plato, who shared many of his teacher’s beliefs. Plato created a work entitled The Republic (380 BC), which used a story to convey dialogues between Socrates and other characters about how to form a better government.
While Socrates and Plato tried to form a theory on the way government acted upon its individuals, there was one man who was looking at the problem from the other end. His thoughts were not on how a society affects its people, but how people affected society.
This young student of Plato’s was named Aristotle. Aristotle wrote about many subjects as a philosopher. Politicians ran the government, Aristotle thought, so that would mean that the government is only as good as the politicians who were just like everyone else. When it came to the idea of a utopia he realized that it was not just a government that needed to rule justly, but people who were virtuous and not led easily into corruption.
Plato and Aristotle did not see eye to eye on many things. One of the big controversial debates between Plato and Aristotle was the place of poetry in society. In The Republic, Plato devoted a section to the Rejection of Mimetic Art. Plato thought that poetry by individuals was too haphazard and emotional to have a place in a governing state. Those that practiced poetry on city streets were looked down upon as having negative influence on society. Plato invited a challenge to Aristotle to deem poetry worthy if he could do so.
Aristotle answered the challenge of his