Quite happy with this latest article: Uncovering the Major Plot Points of a Complete Story, the first in a series of articles on Plot Points.
Star Wars is not the be-all, end-all when it comes to functioning narratives–but everyone knows it. And the major Plot Points do connect meaningfully with the actual sources of conflict in the story (which I was actually surprised about).
This article focuses on Action Story Drivers. Next week’s article on The Shawshank Redemption covers Decision Story Drivers.
The Story Driver is one of the more compelling discoveries of the Dramatica theory of story: the major Plot Points of a narrative–the Act turns–are all of the same type, Action or Decision, in a complete and functioning story.
Mix and match the and you get a broken story, like Dreamworks’ Bee Movie. Keep them consistent, like they do in _ Star Wars_ or _ The Shawshank Redemption_, and the story works.
