His Master's Toys

“All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of” --- William Shakespeare

Formal Story Structure

Some definitions, and formalization of the story structure. These are explained in further detail in McKee’s book – Story. Most Narrative Intelligence research use a particular structure. Some follow Propp’s methodology. Some follow the Hero’s Journey. However, I have found the following structure to be the most general.

Structure: A selection of events from the characters’ life stories that is composed into strategic sequence to arouse specific emotions and to express specific view of life.

Story Values: Universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative, or negative to positive from one moment to the next.

Story Events: Meaningful changes in life situations of a character expressed and experienced in terms of value and achieved through conflict.

Beat: Beats are the smallest elements of a story. It’s the exchange of behavior through action-reaction. Beats are the atomic elements of a story structure.

Scene: A scene is an action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turn the value-charged condition of a character’s life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance.

Sequence: A series of scenes that culminate with greater impact than any previous scene.

Act: A series of sequences that peaks in a climactic scene which causes a major reversal of values, more powerful in its impact than any previous sequence or scene.

Story (Climax): A series of acts that build to a last act climax or story climax which brings about absolute and irreversible change.

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