Yeah, problems is partially it, but necessary not sufficient. It’s problems where you *care* about the solution and don’t value all outcomes equally as a result of caring. That’s why you have anticipation — you care about living in one future timeline over another.
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In my story 2 tweets above, the problem is that there’s a bomb under the chair of the character, but the problem is a story event that creates time (between now and it being defused or going off) only if you care about the character’s fate.
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Replying to @vgr
Hurdles, if it has to be one word.
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In a way the fact that I’m a decent writer is seriously getting in the way of learning story 😖
I feel I should short-circuit that arrested development trap by practicing storytelling with wordless silent storyboard comics.
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I like this. Puzzle games evoke powerful story momentum for me. Like the Z and N pieces are obviously the villains of Tetris and the I is the hero. L and J are supporting characters. [] and T are B plot. Each row is a chapter. The story has no end.
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I like this. The strongest possible story-as-moral-argument must show the character’s solution to the problem as being the only valid or clearly best solution or people fail to suspend disbelief
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I’m not sure moral is the word you want? Surely you don’t mean morality tales that most of us consider bad, preachy examples of didactic pseudo-fiction?
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I do, actually! The Good Place = “Everyone has the ability to get better if they try”, Guardians of the Galaxy = “If you don’t have a family for free you should go make one”, etc etc. The Art of Dramatic Writing claims that a story is just a formal logic argument with narrative.
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Hmm this may be a gaming bias with its more closed-moral-universe aspect. I’d be curious to see your reaction to David Maker’s Three Uses of the Knife where he rants against morality plays as bad non-stories. He’s an important enough thinker on this that I can’t dismiss that.
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Lajos Egri would probably describe a David Mamet “bad non-story” as a story where the author didn’t contain the protagonist’s choices enough to successfully make the point that they were trying to make, and I lean that way. But I will grab 3xKnife and give it a read!






