/lit/ - Literature

>>5257963
Here is the forum a nice anon put together, needs some work and the data transferred onto it though. http://narrameme.freeforums.org/ucp.php?mode=login

>>5257976
Why. Wikia is a perfectly able platform. It already has a link in the sticky, and we've been looking for a way to revive it. A project like this would be perfect. Why would we use that forum?

Wait is this a real thing? I just skipped the first thread all day because I assumed it was made by an autist and consisted of people making fun of said autist

>>5258001
We can use the wikia if it's better suited, I don't know much about the platform though.

>>5258004
Unfortunately it works. At the end of our last thread a clever anon tried his hand at analyzing some fables.

Fables are a great place to begin. I really do think getting a lit subreddit in on this would be beneficial, though. 4chan is full of assholes; reddit is white knights with free time. Just putting it out there.

>>5258012
I thought you were analyzing anime.

>>5258028
No, some posters just used anime characters instead of trips. Yah, idk either.

>>5258004
It's easy – make a wiki page for the story being analyzed, do the discussion in the comments on the page, and edit contributions into the article itself. And it's really loose with logins; you don't even need an account. I highly recommend it.

>>5258001
The /lit/ wiki is better suited, yes.

>>5258015
I don't care who works on it to be honest. Enlist those you wish. I'm going to continue to pursue this academically in ways I can get away with it. But if people desire to do this as a group in a serious manner we will need an organized place to store glossaries, somewhere we can discuss terms and application, somewhere for data, somewhere for conclusions, and an index.

>>5258028
And what do they say about assuming anon? I don't know because I'm not an assuming bastard.

>>5258037
I'll likely use the forum personally then to store all of my work that isn't clean and for the wiki. Scraps of story or strange glossaries.

I guess I need to ask: does anyone not understand how the colour wheel worked to apply a visual element to the end presentations? Should I explain it just to be sure?

Thread was shit, m8.

>>5258051
>color wheel
Nah, I think it's basic enough. We're representing story elements with numbers and colors. It's nothing revolutionary.

>>5258052
I think it had its moments.

>>5258052
I liked it

Mods sticky pleas.

If one were to apply this method to a larger sort of work like a novel, would you go about annotating it phrase by phrase like the anon did with the fables? Or would you only focus on the larger picture?

>>5258059
Thank god. Just make sure to use the average hex color code for the section.

>>5258074
Phrase by phrase. I'm probably going to do Name of the Wind first. Update it chapter by chapter to the wiki. It's gonna be slowass work though.

Someone should do a really complex novel like Infinite Jest, GR, or Ulysses. At least portions of it.

>>5258114
I wouldn't bother until there's larger and better glossaries to use. It's a thing to shoot for. But by all means you're welcome to waste some time and do one with what's present.

>>5258087
One I could do faster than NotW and still be useful would be Timequake.

OP, you have more pictures of lain than I even imagined existed.

>>5258137
A russian anon gifted me over a gig of them a couple months ago. He was a swell dude.

This reminds me, I should really get around watching Lain someday.

OP your samefagging has become transparent so chill out for a few mins.

So, OP you are basically establishing a more abstract catalogue of tropes?
If so, what are the diferences between a trope and a narrameme you use.
I love these kinds of analisis you can do on literature.
I wonder why many people had told me writing is just something magical that can't be estructure into a rulebook, like drawing and music has.
By example you can learn to draw well if you study proportions and perspective and anatomy. Or music with scales and chords.
But so far I haven't get any book that teach me the secrets of writing.
The only ones I have found are robert mckee the story and lajos egri dramatic writing, but they're more towards writing a quality plot, not a good prose.
So, thanks OP by your work.
Maybe you should use a general here instead of going to a forum with just 4 users.

>>5258188
Man, fuck off fagve. Let OP do his thing.

>>5258190
Narramemes are defined as discrete units of world change. They serve to define as one anon put it: "How the narrative creates the world."

Tropes are ploys of character and plot.

Does that help at all?

>>5258188
I'm literally posting a repeated meme as an identifier, do you really think I'm hiding my activity in this thread?

>>5258190
>So, OP you are basically establishing a more abstract catalogue of tropes?
We really need an FAQ. I'll start writing one later tonight.
>I wonder why many people had told me writing is just something magical that can't be estructure into a rulebook, like drawing and music has.
>By example you can learn to draw well if you study proportions and perspective and anatomy. Or music with scales and chords.
Yeah, we had a thread just last week about how writing has no universal pedagogy or theory. Except for Strunk & White, but that's Elements of Style, not Elements of Narration.

Maybe this could evolve into that.

the fuck is happening here.

>>5258240
why are narramemes called like that?
do you mean narrative memes?

Also, what semester are you in?
Do you got your degree?
I was looking to get into Licenciature of Literature which is the only literature related degree my local university has.

>>5258251
>we had a thread like that.
yeah, I was the same OP as that.
It always stuck me as shock literature is the only art that seems to be based on magical dust of talent.

OP, I think you should analyze some greentext stories.

Firstly, they should be quick and easy to do, owing to the simplistic structure

secondly, it should help you build a catalogue of some new narramemes you may have missed

Thirdly, it may reveal some interesting things about 4chan culture. I would bet money that the narrameme structure of popular greentext stories is fairly consistent, as if conforming to the shared culture here makes people synchronize their styles. These stories so often begin like,

>Be me
>Be 16
>Be at school

etc.

Here's one of my favorite greentext stories to start us off.

And by the way -- you should add a narrameme family for deliberate intertextual allusion. Like when Humbert starts quoting French poetry and shit in Lolita, etc. A semiotician ought to have included a category like that from the get-go. It seems distinct from the strictly narrative categories you currently have.

>>5258268
>OP, I think you should analyze some greentext stories.
>you
Dude OP literally taught us how to do it. Nothing's stopping you.

>>5258264
>yeah, I was the same OP as that.
Oh, well you have excellent taste in Kula Diamond.

>>5258190
>I wonder why many people had told me writing is just something magical that can't be estructure into a rulebook, like drawing and music has.

You can construct a story with the same exact narrameme structure as Moby-Dick (say), but that won't mean it will be "good" or even readable. Great literature may be narrativistically consistent but it's also stylistically consistent too, and what separates merely good prose style from great is not only somewhat of an intangible quality in a lot of respects, but opinions on what is aesthetically pleasing in style will vary from person to person.

>>5258268
You didn't read the superhero origin story for this did you. They were oral histories.

I love your condescending tone however. Did you get it at Nordstoms?

>>5258294
This anon speaks truth. But I'd argue that quality can be defined by a personal preference for the content with accurate and cohesive execution of artistic intent.

>>5258301
But cohesion and patterns can occur without intent.

>>5258305
Yes, but if you meant to make A and you instead made B, but everyone liked B, you still didn't make A which is what you set out to do. It doesn't make B bad, but it does make you shitty at making A.

>>5258301
>I love your condescending tone however. Did you get it at Nordstoms?

Depends. Did you pick up your snotty defensiveness at the Gap?

>>5258287
I love KOF.
But my waifu is leona.
Also I'm south american.

>>5258294
>aesthetics are opinions.
yeah, I agree in some part, but there are still some biological constants in good drawing (proportions, perspective, anatomy, values) that separates it from bad and amateur drawings.
The same happens in music.
I don't think how literature is shielded from any structural analisis.
I think Mckee/Egri guide is the best to understand why plots fail (static conflict, return to previous levels of conflict, bad pacing, no plot twist).
I would love to start writing, but I lack such guide when It comes to writing the prose.
So far, poetry yields better results.
I still need to watch the TTC course on creative writing and some poetry course.

But I understand why the meme:
>huh duh you learn writing by reading.
reading is great because it showcase more tropes/stylistic choices.
But again, that advice is as solid as learning to draw by watching paintings.

>>5258321
Baby I was born this way.

FUCK LAIN, I WATCH KAMEN RIDER!

are EVA and SEL the most patrician anime? I don't even care I prefer jojo and Berserk

>>5258313
>>5258305
I always hated people who says that it depends on some magical stuff called talent.
So far I see writing can be analized but I lack such tools to do it by myself.

>>5258329

I wasn't being condescending. I was joshing around lightheartedly.

Learn to take a little nipple-tweaking if you intend to be a serious academic, honey.

>>5258338
>take a little nipple-tweaking
>pictures of Lain
Anon pls.

>>5258326
>But again, that advice is as solid as learning to draw by watching paintings.

Obviously not, since humankind has been producing great and aesthetically pleasing literature for centuries with no solid pedagogy in place.

>>5258340
>>5258338
Let's keep this professional, ladies.

>>5258337
Sounds like you probably haven't written much that you're proud of and that most people you show it to enjoy as well. My comment isn't to suggest that talent or something unexplainable is going on when someone writes something successful. However I do think that some of the really complex works over the years certainly escaped their authors' grasps and that's part of how and why they're successful. But you're correct that trying to emphasize things and trying to frame ideas in a certain way so they're understood in the desired way (intent) is the first step to reaching the aforementioned point. I just think this is all more complicated than OP, etc.

>>5258087
Holy fuck that's tedious. Good luck, mate.

Assuming I did one, where could I post the results so they could be of use?

>>5258360
Anons here have agreed that individual pages on the /lit/ wikia will suffice. We should probably mock up an example template, maybe of the fables we've already done.

>>5258353
yeah, but actually I have several ideas of stories that are structurally complex.
Here's one:
There's a main character A.
There's three minor characters BCD.
BCD are the main characters of their own story.
Each minor story has 4 characters.

Or this one:
There's six stories, each story is framed inside the others, sort of circle.

You have three stories that you change of focus as if they were commercials, and while the stories are separated, they still tell a metastory.

These ideas wouldn't be possible if I didn't learned about plots structures.

I'm sure that any writer with some foundations on prose techniques, would improve leagues ahead of a writer that rellies on instict.

>>5258357
My point is that there should be some guide on cataloging and explaining styles, like some guide explaining color theory.
Or a guide that teaches how to convey certain effects on the reader by certain configuration of grammar tricks / figures of speech.
Or how to use literarian rythm in the writing.

Now that I think of it, such guide, if possible should come from a cataloging of prose styles and their desire effects on the reader (aesthetics effects/ emotions) based on writing patterns, rethoric tricks, use of figures of speech, etc.

So far I imagined it like that book that catalogues plots into 36 cathegories.

I think is a big endeavour.

This sounds like a lot of hokum to me. The current categories are so broad as to be useless -- and can be refined endlessly until you are left with a quote "TV Tropes approach."

I see nothing particularly novel here.

>>5258410
Thanks for sharing.

>>5258395
Morphology of the Folktale by Vladimir Propp, you'll likely enjoy yourself. It's in response to Aarne-Thompson which you would probably also find interesting.

>>5258423
Thanks.

Are u studying a Bachelors or are you in more advance degrees?

>>5258423
>Thanks for sharing.

No problem, why don't you share a response to this complaint. How is your approach different from an even lazier TV Tropes? You could just as easily categorize fiction the way you do by numbered tropes. You categories are just broader, and therefore reveal even less about what actually goes into composing a good story.

>>5258428
Bachelor's. Grad school's been brought up by a couple folks but I'm poor as fuck so unless someone else is paying I'm trying my hand at novels and living like a normal person while I do that. One semester to go.

>>5258435
I hope you're studying in some comunity college then.
You should move to study to yurop or latinoamerica if you're poor.

>>5258435
I wonder if there's some scholar interest into animu/manga/comics.

>>5258434
It's literally the opposite, we're getting more specific. Cataloging the changes in world state in a manner that allows for simple pattern recognition we can see how an author manipulates the content to achieve particular responses. I couldn't care less during this analysis what the content or moral of a story actually is which is the point of analyzing tropes.

Does this answer your question or have I misinterpreted you?

>>5258440
A little bit but not much.

>>5258438
Public uni NA

>See anon post this thread, hes very hesitant and apologetic.
>Tell him it would be cool to get some friends together with some books and food and work out a nice big glossary
>People starting working together and having fun with OP

Feels good man.

>>5258434
>>5258410

Okay, you guys are fukkin' killing me.

The blocks he's identifying =/= tropes.

He's identifying specific phrases and their use in context, and labeling the patterns of what blow-by-blow changes are made to the 'world state' (character/location/action) minute-by-minute, and then using those to more broadly identify the intentional or unintentional mechanics of the writer's voice.

It's much more technical and specific than broad-scale items like 'tropes.'

>>5258450
why not a general here?
I'm afraid leaving 4ching would make the endeavour stale and lost interest, while the banter here maybe bring newblood.

>>5258444
that's dissapointing to hear.
to be honest I hope to enter college and study japanese and get contacts to be able to fly to japan to work there as writer.
At least that's my dream.
:(

>>5258470
Good luck, it probably won't happen but those jobs do exist which means people have to fill them. The only thing that's stopping you is the precise details of how to make it happen but by the sound of it you've got years to put pieces in place.

Unlikely, but don't let that stop you from trying.

>>5258458
It would be nice if this had steam to exist without me for extended periods of time. My ideal conditions would be a general thread continuing to exist while we update the wiki as necessary, using the wiki as our collective database for reference in conversation. But at the minimum I will continue making threads when appropriate as I independently continue my personal research.

>>5258470
If you have a BA you can teach ESL there and get by pretty well.

>>5257963
how are you not banned for being an avatar-fag yet

>>5258451
So OP works on a literarian level as text analisis tool rather than tropes narrative level?

>>5258497
Maybe I can teach spanish then.

>>5258458
>>5258494
Its a niche topic and this is 4chan. Hosting what has been done as a post for OP's, and the actual OP making the threads is what will keep this thing going.

That and progress, however slow.

Either way, im just glad to see 4chan having a decent time together while helping out another anon who just wanted to talk about something he likes.

>>5258500
Your native language is spanish?

I dont know about that, but best of luck. English however is a pretty solid shot at getting a teaching job in countries that dont speak English as their first language, especially in Asia

>>5258505
my goal is simply to get published some light novels in japan.
the main problem will be the language, but that's something a good editor can't solve.
I don't even need to leave my country, since today is possible to send an editorial a work using an email and pdf.
also, there are literarian contest, like the one that made SAO a sucess.

>>5258444

But you're not getting more specific, you even directly say that when you say that you're looking for 'simple pattern recognition' and don't care about the 'content or moral of a story.'

If you took a trope based approach you could do the same thing but more detailed, e.g. you look at 3 narramemes from some gay animu LN:

1) Meta-narrative family -> personal evaluation -> positive personal -> reverential personal -> kin-reverential -> onee-sama

2) Functional family -> confirmable -> interpersonal relationships -> romantic -> taboo -> incest -> sibling incest -> older sister/younger brother incest

3) Expository family -> positive -> sensual -> sensual overtly sexual -> pornographic -> heterosexual pornographic -> taboo -> incest -> sibling incest -> older sister/younger brother incest

Ah--! But then there's overlap. Well, there's overlap in your current schema too, which you've noted. And here's where your analysis really starts to fall apart. Because you can force the discovery of "simple patterns" in anything, you could make your schema even more general than it is -- uselessly general -- you could take this to its logical extreme and simply have one narrameme family called "narrative" and say, "aha! This author consistently uses the 'narrative' narrameme!" But does this tell us anything useful about what the author is really "doing," narratively, to structure and direct his story? Do your current categorizations do that?

Why does Cloud Atlas suck? You never answered your own question in your paper. You didn't answer it because you can't answer it with this approach, because it says nothing, not really, about how an author manipulates tropes or quote "narramemes." You close with "sometimes you're just telling a boring story" -- and if that's your conclusion, what has been accomplished? Backwards-engineering a made-up hierarchy of patterns onto a narrative doesn't account for much.

>>5258522
Last post before bed.

reverential person -> kin personal, here you conflate the manipulative into a trope in an understandable fashion

Confirmable -> interpersonal relationships, here you do it again but I'm not sure where the logic came from at all

sensual -> sensual overtly sexual -> pornographic
Here you do a degree increase which is taken care of in the schema already and then follow it with a conflation of tropes and the form of manipulation

In all cases after you do that the rest of the line doesn't matter.

And yeah, cloud atlas sucked mostly because the dialect, while amusing for a while stops being fun since he really only displays two types of protagonists during the six parts and they're all static.
And it /was/ a boring story because it was a forced overarching narrative between six stories that were initially completely unrelated and then crammed together with some heavy-handed cross-narrative symbols.

Go to the last thread and see how we walked through a couple fables. It might help make my point.

Believe what I've demonstrated or don't, it doesn't change my willingness to apply more rigor and improve the usefulness of the system.

Good night everyone. I'll check back in the morning to answer questions if the thread's still here. If not, I'll get going on some texts and make a thread when I've got something to share.

>>5258574
Take it easy, OP. Thanks for sharing.

>>5258574
>reverential person -> kin personal, here you conflate the manipulative into a trope in an understandable fashion

What? You're awful at explaining yourself.

>Confirmable -> interpersonal relationships, here you do it again but I'm not sure where the logic came from at all

Because you're awful at explaining yourself (see above), it's impossible to decipher your distinctions amongst categories, nearly all of which share overlap. (I'd like to see a hundred people all learn your system and try to analyze the same story, and see how much agreement there is). How is something like, "I am fucking my sister" not a confirmable claim in the functional family of your schema?

>sensual -> sensual overtly sexual -> pornographic
>Here you do a degree increase which is taken care of in the schema already and then follow it with a conflation of tropes and the form of manipulation

My entire point is that the degree of categorization can be refined endlessly (or simplified to a single "narrameme"). "I fucked my cock into my onee-sama's warm pussy" is a "positive exposition" but it is also sensual, and overtly sexual, and pornographic. You can do this all day, with any sentence from any story -- you have done absolutely nothing to distinguish "narramemes" from tropes.

>Believe what I've demonstrated or don't

What, precisely, have you "demonstrated" about narrative, beyond your ability to number things?

>>5258522
>But does this tell us anything useful about what the author is really "doing," narratively, to structure and direct his story?
My impression was that this method of analysis would be helpful when comparing the structure of two, three, or (with the aid of computational analysis) hundreds of works, rather than within a single narrative itself.

The information harvested could be used in any number of fields. Digital humanities, creative writing, generative storytelling, emergent storytelling and (theoretically) hypermedia such as hypertext fiction, visual novels (gasp) and beyond. The possible applications are boundless.

We really need an FAQ. I'll try to have it done by morning for OP's approval.

>>5258333
>Not finding a healthy balance of low brow and high brow media

>>5258440
There have been some interesting historical studies popping up on /m/ in the past 6 months. Mainly on the evolution of mecha and tokusatsu. A toku documentary just aired this week too on NHK I think.

>>5258410
>How is your approach different from an even lazier TV Tropes?
He's treating the categories as a function to the whole authorial intent. In TV Tropes approach the categories (the tropes) can be dis-attached from the particular author, while in this approach you can't really do it without doing heavy comparative analysis between author A and author B, which you assume to have similar narrameme. Furthermore, a narrameme has to be relational to the process of uncovering the authorial intent. This, of course, can really beg for definitive criteria, but I'm not OP.

In TV Tropes the whole encyclopedia of tropes overviews author A and author B as one hierarchy. The same can't be said of OP's cataloging, as far as I know.

Then again, I do think your point of endless refinement ala hermeneutics stands. If I were OP, I'd leave this as the open possibility for analyzers to come up with their own cataloging (or should I say, bracketing). An open site where interpretive skills of the operators are tested.

>>5257963
Someone brought up the Russian formalists in the old thread but have you looked into structuralist theories of narrative? Thinking especially of Gerard Genette and Mieke Bal's works.

I read the original thread.

OP the definition doesn't make sense. Explain to me, simply, what a narameme is.

What's all those numbers on the excel

>>5257963
This stuff is golden, OP.

>>5259623
>Explain to me, simply, what a narameme is.
a narrative meme
>What's all those numbers on the excel
naramemes

>>5258141
Any chance of sharing the link or reuploading somewhere? I might have an FTP server that would make a good home for them.

Not OP. I’ve tried my hand at analysing a passage from a shitty LN with the aim of refining OP’s glossary and identifying flaws in the analytical process. Anons in the previous thread have done the same, notably the tripfag The Fox and the Grapes. Where he compared his analysis with OP’s, however, I will not. It wouldn’t be much of a system for analysis if only OP’s analysis is considered correct, after all.

>>5258642
If you’re still here, would you mind running your tropes analysis on my passage to compare it to what I’ve done? If you want to trope-analyse a different passage, I’m more than happy to analyse that too, provided it’s not too long.

>>5259792
>Asuna plopped down naked on the sofa9.Subject/10.Location and glared defiantly at me.5.Negative Personal/37.Conflict Indicator

"...Kirito, hurry up and take your clothes off," she said in an authoritative tone.5.Negative Personal/37.Conflict Indicator

"What...w-we're continuing?"9.Subject/11.Subject Modifier/Contrast Personal/33.Conflict

"It would be stupid if we stopped here!" 33.Conflict

I hurriedly complied.Contrast Personal Opening the window indicated by Asuna11.Subject Modifier, I toggled off the option buried deep within the menu.32.Exposition/24.Confirmable/34.World-Building

Because of the hurried start, there was no romantic mood to speak of.36.Negative Exposition Sitting on the bed10.Location which was slightly too small for the two of us36.Negative Exposition, we slowly did as much as the system would allow.32.Exposition/24.Confirmable/Contrast Personal

The dim blue moonlight13.Temporal Location filtered through the window, casting complex shadows on the bed.8.Setting/Contrast Exposition

Notes in next post.

>>5259795
Let's try that again.

>Asuna plopped down naked on the sofa
9.Subject/10.Location
>and glared defiantly at me.
5.Negative Personal/37.Conflict Indicator

>"...Kirito, hurry up and take your clothes off," she said in an authoritative tone.
5.Negative Personal/37.Conflict Indicator

>"What...w-we're continuing?"
9.Subject/11.Subject Modifier/Contrast Personal/33.Conflict

>"It would be stupid if we stopped here!"
33.Conflict

>I hurriedly complied.
Contrast Personal
>Opening the window indicated by Asuna,
11.Subject Modifier
>I toggled off the option buried deep within the menu.
32.Exposition/24.Confirmable/34.World-Building

>Because of the hurried start, there was no romantic mood to speak of.
36.Negative Exposition
>Sitting on the bed
10.Location
>which was slightly too small for the two of us,
36.Negative Exposition
>we slowly did as much as the system would allow.
32.Exposition/24.Confirmable/Contrast Personal

>The dim blue moonlight
13.Temporal Location
>filtered through the window, casting complex shadows on the bed.
8.Setting/Contrast Exposition

>>5259812
>Asuna plopped down naked on the sofa9.Subject
I’ll use 9.Subject to mean subject introductions and omit it when the same subject is referred to again in the text.

>"...Kirito, hurry up and take your clothes off," she said in an authoritative tone.5.Negative Personal/37.Conflict Indicator
I’m assuming here that 11.Subject Modifier is “alterations of the subject” as in attaching adjectives to a noun, not “alterations of the subject” as in changing subjects from one noun to another.

>"What...w-we're continuing?"9.Subject/11.Subject Modifier/Contrast Personal/33.Conflict
Contrast Personal will be dealt with at bottom of post.

>Opening the window indicated by Asuna11.Subject Modifier
Modifies Asuna as it displays her dominant nature in this scene.

OP I've read the entire old thread and part of me is still a little confused.

Please do a short story example like the fox and the grapes one in the old thread and explain the numbers, why each glossary term refers to a certain event/world state, etc.

Teach us the idea of what you're trying to get at/the way to think about it. If multiple people can reproduce what you're trying to do we have learned.

>>5259812
>>5259814
>Asuna plopped down naked on the sofa[9.Subject]
I’ll use 9.Subject to mean subject introductions and omit it when the same subject is referred to again in the text.

>"What...w-we're continuing?"[9.Subject/11.Subject Modifier/Contrast Personal/33.Conflict]
Contrast Personal will be dealt with at bottom of post.

>Opening the window indicated by Asuna[11.Subject Modifier]
Modifies Asuna as it displays her dominant nature in this scene.

Won't translated works fuck with this analysis technique completely?

>>5259821
Contrast Personal and Contrast Exposition are terms I’ve coined to make up for inadequacies in OP’s glossary. Notice how Kawahara portrays his characters, especially Kirito, as initially uncertain and shy.
>w-we’re continuing?
>I hurriedly complied
>we slowly did as much as the system would allow
Considering this is a sex scene, this is contrasted with their later abandon.

We also see general imagery conveying “slowness” to create mood in
>The dim blue moonlight filtered through the window, casting complex shadows on the bed.
Again, this slowness is contrasted with their sexual ferocity in
>Two whole years of semen made a glopping noise as it flowed endlessly into Asuna.

I’ve named these Contrast Personal and Contrast Exposition as they’re descriptions which don’t fit into a black-and-white value scale of Positive and Negative. Why give them a special name instead of just plain “Subject Modifier” or “Exposition”? As OP mentioned, narrameme parsing should include authorial intent, and here the contrasts are probablyintentional. Of course, contrasts have to come in pairs; I’d propose “Contrast Exposition A” for
>The dim blue moonlight filtered through the window, casting complex shadows on the bed.
and call its matching pair
>Two whole years of semen made a glopping noise as it flowed endlessly into Asuna.
“Contrast Exposition B”

>>5259826
I’m a little uneasy about the dichotomy of Positive and Negative, as it excludes more neutral forms of exposition. Take
> The dim blue moonlight filtered through the window, casting complex shadows on the bed.
If there wasn’t a matching contrast pair, this would have been listed as just 32.Exposition or 8.Setting despite its purpose in creating mood or developing anticipation for the action to come. OP’s glossary is incomplete, not that he’s ever intimated it wasn’t.

A flaw with narrameme parsing is that literally everything falls under exposition. I hate using the same example again, but in
> The dim blue moonlight13.Temporal Location filtered through the window, casting complex shadows on the bed.8.Setting/Contrast Exposition
we get temporal location and setting even though the purpose of the paragraph is just what I’ve termed Contrast Exposition. At the same time, you can’t just ignore temporal location and setting, because others might consider them important. Besides working out full glossary, OP, a set of standards as to which narramemes to identify and which to ignore should be established.

>>5259828
I’ve deliberately picked a passage with more description and character interaction than action because I don’t think the narrameme glossary, in its current state, can handle extended bits of action without just lumping them all under “Exposition.” For instance:
> Asuna continued to scream as she continued to vigorously shake her head while her body shook.(1) Although I briefly wondered if it hurt(2), I was no longer able to stop my hips from moving(3) as my penis continued to plunge into Asuna's deepest parts with a wet slapping noise.(4)
Three of the four narramemes in the above passage fall under Exposition. That might seem obvious considering that it is an action scene, but an over-abundance of Exposition tags prevents differentiation between different types of action. I propose 3 more additions to the working glossary, them being
>low-intensity action
>middling-intensity action
>high-intensity action

The use of “Action” as opposed to “Exposition” will also prevent misunderstandings between exposition as “characters doing stuff” and exposition as “author describing static objects/history/a scene”.

Also, OP should rename “Positive/Negative Personal” to “Positive/Negative Subject” for consistency.

>>5259623
Not OP. A narrameme is a unit of meaning in a narrative. A description of setting could be one narrameme. A description of character could be another. An action of a character might be a third. The numbers on the excel spreadsheet represent narramemes; you'll find a full listing and definitions for each narrameme in the the presentations in the first post.

this thread has to be all OP samefagging

>>5259788
OP is asleep.

>>5259823
In what way? This form of analysis focuses on content, not on style, so differences in translation shouldn't matter. Unless you're referring to the differences in syntactical patterns between languages, the way sentences in Japanese and English are reversed, and how that will lead to differences in the sequence of narramemes when listed? I can't answer for OP, but that's a good point. You'd end up with 2 different narrameme sequences for 2 versions of the same text, the original and the translation. I guess that means you'd need a separate narrameme-sequence library for each language.

>>5259858
I'm not Lain, but if I remember correctly from the last thread, the analysis may focus on the content - and - the style. Differences in translation indeed matters, and given the choice it is sensible to choose the original language.

The question of 'world state' will definitely be important, as was brought by some anons ITT. From what I've lurked so far, this 'world state' Lain expressed seems similar to the 'phenomenal state' in phenomenology, but her whole approach is definitely semiotics. Keep in mind that this is yet to be proved as inconsistency. As far as I can see, it's just one missing link within her model's foundation.

>>5258642
At those places in the text you go from being manipulations of content to content itself.

It's a claim, but you're applying context to the claim in order to continue your progression.

Narramemes are narrammes. I'm glad we agree on tautologies. They're not very useful though.

>>5258643
Boundless is a pretty big value to throw around. For the most part you're just reducing a document to fundamental units and examining people's reactions to these often unconscious patterened units.

>>5259401
I can only emphasize the use of the working glossary system so much. This is acceptable and already mitigated issue. But your explanation is pretty good.

>>5259446
The definition of a narrameme was brought up by a couple NC guys and their data reflects this image. I've never read Genette though, I'll do some personal reading though.

>>5259788
This is his website. http://fauux.neocities.org/
I think he's also building a Cyberia simulator, I've got a copy of what's done it's crazy.

>>5259792
Oh, was he a tripfag? I have everyone anonymous by force.

>>5259812
You get your own post. I like you.

>>5259828
Though neutral I just use the general family term. That way in the data postive/negative are brighter colours (lower/more specific) and neutral is a darker one (higher/less specific) to group the first two and contrast their differences to the last.

>>5259823
>>5259858
>>5259949
You'd need a massively literal and a massively metaphorical translation and then you'd get it to a large degree. Unless you're just analyzing the translator, then you just tell him to do what feels right. Or even better have the translator mark the narramemes himself and then give you the two versions. Or even better just teach the translator how this works and let them spend the time doing it.

OP you have autism.

and I say this as a compliment to your dedication. This is really good.

The reason it will never work is because one field, say ' light sadness' can also, depending on the context, the reader's subjectivity, etc, be 'humorous' or 'tragic' or a myriad of other fields, in fact, its own unique field.

You will never quantify anything with this, or come to any definitive conclusions. Give up.

>>5260201
>Though neutral I just use the general family term.
Why not nest Positive and Negative Exposition within the family Mood-Affecting Exposition? That'll help us separate fluff description like
>the curtain was blue
from neutral but atmospherically significant description like
>curtains of clear cerulean

>>5259812
Point out any of the changes that don't make sense to you.

>"What...w-we're continuing?"
11.Subject Modifier/ 26.Accent /33.Conflict
(things can be reduced to at most triple narramemes are as far as I've seen, but I'm guessing postmodern writers are gonna increase that softcap the moment I start looking)

>I hurriedly complied, Opening the window indicated by Asuna,
11. (possibly something for conflict resolution?) for now I'd just label it exposition 32.

>The dim blue moonlight
13.Temporal Location (GOOD catch, just wanted to highlight this one)

> I’ll use 9.Subject...
That's how I do it.

>I’m assuming here that 11.Subject Modifier...
You assume correctly.

>Modifies Asuna as it displays her dominant nature in this scene.
I'm still unsure of how to address explicit vs implicit meaning. They both need marking to ensure we're getting full use of the system, but I'm unsure in what manner it would be best to do so.

>>5259826
Okay, well, without having the additional text you refer to it's hard to make a call but this sounds like something that would show up in the pattern analysis as it stands. The function the linkings would serve is to note that these points of the story are connected which is something a proper analysis would pull the data for and already be comparing.

Did that make any sense? You've essentially spotted a pattern during normal investigation and are highlighting it for later inquiry once the raw data is complete.

>>5260399
Fuck, no picture again.

>>5260390
Because the difference is already highlighted by the use of the tiered family system?

>>5259835
Exposition is 100% the place we should be ironing out first. It's got a couple super broad definitions that, while embarrassing and inadequate for extensive use, were good enough for demonstration at the time. Time, effort and the necessity for ongoing results are the only thing keeping this glossary from being hundreds of terms.

http://pandyland.net/random/

>>5260390
Hmm, I do see what you mean about expressiveness but I have a hard time reconciling it since you could just mark it General and with an Accent.

>>5260477
You'll have to explain accent. I thought it was just the difference between "I don't have a gf" and "I dun' got no gf".

This is pretty much my reaction to all this

Get to work my autismos, turn stories into punchcards

>>5260482
Noooo, that's a dialect. We don't care about those. Accents aren't just in dialogue but within the narration itself.
>Blue curtain
>curtains of clear cerulean = this particular blue curtain used for invoking image
The accent would be something that invokes the mental baggage that makes that not just a blue curtain, usually image intensifiers.

At least that's how I've been using it within classification. There'd be some worth I imagine in subdividing accents to a degree or two.

>>5260399
>I hurriedly complied, Opening the window indicated by Asuna,
>11. (possibly something for conflict resolution?) for now I'd just label it exposition 32.
See, what I was talking about with Contrast Personal is that "Subject Modifier" is too general a term for what's going on here. We're getting characterisation with an intent to contrast later on. Even if it's just me
>spotting a pattern during normal investigation and are highlighting it for later inquiry once the raw data is complete.
when the time comes for me to compare the two sections in pattern analysis I'm just going to get two blocks of Subject Modifier. That doesn't tell me anything. Unless by
>this is something a proper analysis would pull the data for and already be comparing.
you mean that a full narrameme analysis would cover not just the narrameme sequence but the content of each narrameme? As in, not just "Subject Modifier" but also "the man was old"?

>without having the additional text you refer to
I'd assumed that since you knew your anime you'd have read it, but I guess not. That's probably a good thing, though. The whole text is a joke.

>>5260539
The length of the narrameme chains involved is what would show contrast.
>>5260539
Not even a clue where this text comes from. That's part of why this is fun though, you don't HAVE to know what it's from to just break it down to it's composite parts and then look at the patterns that emerge.
Remember, what we're discussing is how the raw data is compiled. The data itself only shows true usefulness when used in comparative analysis. This is why Cloud Atlas was chosen for my first analysis, it was inherently a small comparative databank.

The other half of the game is interpreting the data itself.

Hey anon, did you think to post this here having read a comparison of Kubrick and Tarantino on here?

>>5260524
Doesn't "accent" by definition suggest something which is ornamental but not necessarily useful? You say yourself it's "mainly used for personality quirks". I'm assuming you've grouped my cerulean curtains example into function because, in covering "mental baggage" and tone, it's more than just exposition. Why not create the subgroup Image, which would cover all 'significant' exposition, and put my example in that? I'd imagine accent could be reserved for images or sentences of narration which display flair but no substance.

>>5260432
Because the difference is already highlighted by the use of the tiered family system
Explain. Are you saying that, in their being a tier above the General Exposition tier, they're Mood-Affecting by default? Then Conflict and Reveal would have to be Mood-Affecting too. If that's the case, you might want to put a note about it on your image. All the tiers tell us right now are increasing levels of specificity, not levels of reader-involvement due to mood being affected.

>>5260677
>Because the difference is already highlighted by the use of the tiered family system
Forgot to greentext that line.

>>5260676
Nope. I just didn't think /b/ would be a good place to post it. I've been on /lit/ like twice before I made the first thread.

>>5260677
>Doesn't "accent" by definition suggest...
I'll think on this for a while and bring it up again when I've got something coherent to say but I like the sound of it. At the very lease I agree it's too broad for extended use. These are the issues that led me to post initially, it's hard to spot and rectify these problems when the only person I can talk to about them is me.

>Explain. Are you saying that...
More specific narramemes invoke more complex mental associations. When we use simple general narramemes (when text lines are mostly dark) and use them in singles (no stripey bits) the stories tend to feel base or fundamental. This trend is something demonstrated in the fables from yesterday.

>>5260713
Weird. Anyway, I like you, anon. In my head, we're friends.

>>5260201
>At those places in the text you go from being manipulations of content to content itself.

A manipulation of content is content. And that's all a trope describes, too. You still haven't explained why you can't take the list of tropes from TVTropes, number them, and then use those to look at how an author moves from idea to idea.

>It's a claim, but you're applying context to the claim in order to continue your progression.

You have to be stupid if you think your analysis can divorce itself of the context of the work.

Consider this. The character claims: "God lives inside me." Is this unconfirmable or confirmable? That depends on the story universe. Is the story taking place in a world like our own, where that kind of hokey claim is unverifiable, or is this some kind of fantasy novel, and the character is literally a vessel for God?

Then there's the way language itself can be ambiguous: "I am fucking my sister" can be either a claim ("I am in an ongoing sexual relationship with my sister") or exposition (describing an action currently happening) and the distinction relies by necessity on knowing what came before. You cannot "isolate" that sentence and classify it on its own.

So as much as you insist that isolating the "narrameme" is the first step of the process, it isn't -- not really. Because you are, without even realizing, leaning on knowledge of past content to continue your categorizations. Even if the context you're relying on is something as simple as, "the narrator is currently describing what he's doing, not expositing about his life-situation" -- you still rely on context.

And since this is your key distinction between narramemes and tropes, as far as I have seen, you've failed utterly.

>>5260811

Continuing -- this isn't even touching on the fact that different narramemes can be classified in different ways. If "I am fucking my sister" is taken as exposition -- is it positive or negative? You have to rely on context to really decipher that, too (is the narrator portraying the relationship as a good thing or a bad thing? Is the relationship consensual?). And if you abandon that context to categorize it, the categorization is subject the whims and biases of the reader, which reveals nothing of "authorial intent." Does the phrase "fucking my sister" strike the reader as a positive or negative phrase?

>>5257963
i'm uneducated, but i think i grasp this

alright, so, what makes a story is change, things need to change

x changing into y provides a structure for a story, and all changes in the story are able to be identified. they are the smallest possible changes, called narramemes

you have identified all kinds of ways that changes occur, and grouped the narramemes into groups

to apply the narramemes to a story, you must break the story into every change that occurs, and identify the appropriate narrameme

from this, the narramemes somewhat elucidate the authors intent, by clearly showing things how they are, and patterns emerge, and a structure is formed

am i following correctly? i need to learn the narramemes next

>>5260811
You're not grasping the difference between the canon plot and discrete changes in conveyed narrative.
It's been explained multiple times in multiple ways. I am unsure how to further explain it to you.

>>5260811
>You still haven't explained why...
You could do that but that's not what we're doing here. And yes, yes we have. When you're reading you are consuming individual units of thought as projected by the author.

What we're doing here is analyzing the chunks in the lowest useful manner- the discrete changes in world state. Going further than this is a word study, going more general would be a trope study. We want neither, we are looking at the core elements of a narrative: the individual ways an author presents and colours every alteration to the in canon universe. These are not tropes but instead, very often, unconscious patterns in narrative delivery.

The discussion you see around you is how to best translate the narrative once the discrete elements are identified. The discrete elements are changes in world state. It's a definition that works and one other people here have demonstrated coherence. In as many or as little words as it takes an author to form said unit, we're charting the different ways the data can be presented.

If you want a comparison of two narramemes, I hear Mark Twain's got a story that makes light of the difference between context jumps and tangent loss. I've not read much of his work though, so maybe another anon will be able to tell you which it was.

>>5261169
>You're not grasping the difference between the canon plot and discrete changes in conveyed narrative.

You're not grasping that you cannot find "changes in conveyed narrative" divorced from the context of the "canon plot."

You're pretty fucking stupid, dude.

>>5261275
Order of operations for charting narramemes as stated and applied live in thread days ago:

"Remove the context, isolate the narrameme, apply the context, determine the function, chart."

I even rephrased it for an anon later:

"Rephrased: 1) Ignore what the words are conveying, focus instead on noticing the beginning and ending of a single change in world state.
2) Determine (using the glossary or devise a term if necessary) what the isolated narrameme's function within the context is.
3) Chart the narrameme and move on to the next one."

Either keep up with the rest of the class or stop shouting at people, it's rude.

>>5261290

Okay, now address my examples: "God lives inside me" and "I am fucking my sister."

Can you classify these 'narramemes' in a way that is universal to all instances of the same exact wording in all stories? If not, then either a) classifying a narrameme is subject to the reader's own biases, in which case we learn nothing of authorial intent, or b) classifying a narrameme relies on knowledge of what has preceded in the narrative, in which case we are not discretizing narrative units at all, and your schema is useless.

>>5261304
It would be a claim, it's validity subject to canon and how the words were employed. And you're implying that words can only mean one thing in any case, or at least you're claiming that I'm claiming that or that the schema demands it for it to function and that's not true.

The particular way the author employs a phrase in conjunction with the rest of the story till this point is what this is aiming to chart. This is why I say the words themselves are meaningless to us here because it's not what is being said but how those words are intended to shape the reader response. The very function of the unit is what we categorize.

"God lives inside of me" could be employed in various fashions and thus can exist as multiple narramemes, confirmable or non-confirmable statement, metaphor and I'm sure others. Our job here is to understand which one/ones is/are employed.

The functions of the employed words that a narrameme consists of are what dictates it's classification.

>>5261340

I don't think you're getting at the heart of the problem that anon is pointing out, what one person sees as positive one might see as negative, in a complex story we might differ one what claims are truly 'verifiable,' or whether there has been tangent loss, and on and on. And if this is meant to gauge authorial intent then the fact that it cannot be objectively implied defeats its purpose.

>>5261385

*objectively applied, rather

i'm drunk

>>5261385
Yes, but what we care about is how the author intends to get somethings across. We understand intent through our understanding of charged words, declaratives and how the was manipulated. Very rarely is authorial intent obscure enough that you can't identify the given use of any narrameme as it's presented. I've yet to find a usage so textually obtuse that it defies categorization.

Even when an author argues with himself, says directly contradicting ideas in the same context, the fact that he is doing so is indicative of his style. But for the record most of what's out there reeks of its authorial intent.

This is the point of the working glossaries, while none may ever be perfect, having one to work from at all allows us to see patterns that would otherwise be obscured. Since the narramemes do exist, by applying definitions to them, even shit definitions, we are able to see patterns emerge.

This is still lit criticism, not science. Don't ask me for objective truths, I'll just keep pointing out emergent patterns and asking "why?

>>5261439
>We understand intent through our understanding of charged words, declaratives and how the was manipulated.

You understand how you see those things, not how the author "intended" them. You do not identify the narrameme as it is presented to you, you identify it as you understand it. The schema is already so refined that no two analyses will agree with one another.

>I've yet to find a usage so textually obtuse that it defies categorization.

You did. There was an entire chapter of Cloud Atlas you couldn't categorize. Or are we pretending that doesn't matter.

>Since the narramemes do exist

Your circular reasoning proves nothing.

>by applying definitions to them, even shit definitions, we are able to see patterns emerge.

No. Garbage in, garbage out.

>>5261439

You talk about authorial intent like the author always has complete knowledge of what he intends. And as if each narrameme has one single "intent value" you can apply to it. Like the author can't imply two things at the very same time, or like a narrameme belong to varying categories based on who reads and when they read it.

Analyzing fables is one thing. Try Finnegans Wake and then get back to me.

From your paper:

>To do this I selected the first paragraph of each section, the last, and a random section from the middle for comparison.

Why just the first and last? Simply time/work restrictions, or an actual analytic reason?

>>5261461
> You understand what you see not...
Not to a 100%, but it's a lit criticism with a very good display process and one that allows for an examination at a level we aren't currently doing. And it's one that can be discussed in a manner that consensus can either be reached or differences of opinion are precise enough that rational people can choose sides on an issue when it arises.

> You did... chapter of cloud atlas...
It wasn't a chapter, it was a section that existed within parameters that the others didn't have. And you'll note I did do the other 2/3rds of that chapter's analysis. And I made a judgement call on not including it because I literally couldn't say anything constructive about it. It was unique in the document. That's good for the book, annoying for the presentation, but not bad for the schema. That sounds defensive but I swear I'm just trying to explain why it exists.

>Your circular reasoning...
I'm sorry that I can point to something, define its boundaries, incite discussion about it among several people, postulate its uses, and utilize it. I don't know what else you need a thing to do before we can accept it's existence as a worthwhile unit of analysis.

> GIGO
Okay. Good luck coming up with a complex social method for analyzing structured creation without refinement.

>>5261481
Multiuse narramemes are already implemented in the data. Why would you not say they are? That's wrong.

And go /read/ Finnegans Wake and then get back to me.

>>5261482

>>5261481

That's something that I think OP expects. As he mentioned above, this is still going to be lit criticism at its heart, not objective. Different analysts on the same text will argue different interpretations. In fact, arguments like that are what keeps academia alive.

I think the main goal right now is for people to try to use this foundational research and apply it to basic texts in order to point out:

1. Gaps in the glossary of types
2. Potential conflicts or inconsistencies when one of these types may need to be split, expanded, or condensed to more flexibly fit more narratives
3. How different analysts will interpret similar or identical texts.

I think 3 is pretty important; interested parties here might want to consider coordinating by choosing a particular text, analyzing separately, and comparing notes.

>>5261482
Woops, got cut off.

Entire time constraint. It takes a bit of time. I took /those/ parts for specific reasons. They're places where by the nature of how stories work I could best hope to find some patterns, the beginning and the end. I did a swath from the middle just too see what came up. I would have loved to just do the whole book but, well, it's school work and even this took a while to do, and school was only part of my life not the whole thing.

>>5261491
You're on the mark, and we did a pair last thread. And a clever anon did some smut up top. I was kicking myself over some of the stuff he noticed that I didn't on my first tries.

>>5261490
>I don't know what else you need a thing to do before we can accept it's existence as a worthwhile unit of analysis.

Have some application beyond justifying its own existence, for one.

You keep talking about using narramemes to find patterns in a text, but to what end? I can look at how many times an author uses the letter J, or inserts dialogue, or has a female character, or any other criteria I want to use to see how the "world-state" of the narrative changes from line to line, and there will be patterns, but what do the patterns tell us? "Style"? That's a hand-wave at best, because you yourself admit narramemes cannot account for the quality of a story, its prose style and how its engages a reader, and THAT is where style truly lies.

>>5261509

It's like asking why applied linguistics exists. Or analysis of painters' tendency to use such-and-such brush strokes and paint for such-and-such a subject in such-and-such a style.

It exists because it's interesting and people find it interesting. They like to think about things like this, find out patterns, share them, argue them, write papers about them. Welcome to a good 75% of the academic sphere.

Alright so I'm interested, where is a complete narrameme analysis, and what does it say about a particular writer's authorial intent/

>>5261522

It's not so much about what it says about intent so much as it identifies patterns in their style.

And AFAIK there IS no complete narratological analysis. Nobody's really done this kind of thing before.

>>5261523

Maybe OP should be performing and posting some analyses instead of spending his time defending the concept.

>>5261509
We already have. At length. Repeatedly. That's what half of last thread was about. And it's FOR literary criticism but other people have speculated other uses. It can tell us how complex an idea is in a way we can discuss it. Or how an author approaches certain creative choices. We can see patterns that develop because these are documents created by living people who operate under conditions.

Hi, guys.

What discoveries have y'all made so far?

>>5261527
We've done a couple. And I'm trying to coax real questions I can't answer out of people to better define the process. Also I have a life, running this thread has taken most of my effort for the past couple of days and I like things that aren't this too. I'm isolating in Timequake off to the side.

>>5261529
>It can tell us how complex an idea is

So? It says nothing of the idea itself or its quality or its validity. It's masturbation.

>Or how an author approaches certain creative choices.

*What* choices? *What* does this scheme tell us about the author, what he accomplishes, how he communicates, how effective he is, *beyond* the schema of the narramemes themselves. Can you talk about that without taking the existence of narramemes for granted?

>>5261551
You don't think that during the construction of a work of writing the author recognizes that they have options available to them in how to best convey their concepts to a reader? The very act of speaking or writing is translating the ideas in your head, things which are not often well defined, into a form that other people can receive in a meaningful fashion. Documents exist as content and a delivery system, we're focused on that delivery system.

And complexity would be one aspect of style.

>>5261573
>You don't think that during the construction of a work of writing the author recognizes that they have options available to them in how to best convey their concepts to a reader?

Who would dispute that? You're not getting it. Why should we believe your made-up schema says anything useful or fundamental about the choices an author makes? What is *your* schema actually saying about those choices?

>>5261586
That a person is making them in this order.

>>5261598
Wait, I'm wrong. That /this/ person is making them in this order.

>>5261598

Yeah, we've been over this ground before. Any analysis can find patterns. The question is do those patterns say anything useful. And since you won't -- can't -- tell us what this analysis actually shows us, it's clear that you have nothing to tell us about what authors are doing when they write.

>>5261606
Except that the folklore analysis found several repeating patterns with solid explanations that fit given the speakers and performers interviewed. The Cloud Atlas presentation showed two distinct character types employed by Mitchell alongside a small number of other patterns that were expected and thus boring. Even the fable fit with projections which were that they'd be simple and generic. It's a method designed to describe style. You don't get to be mad when all it does is describe style.
If you believe that style is a learned thing or that under certain conditions writer's seem to default to a style that was learned, then now you have a clear method to show that.

This isn't magic, it's lit crit.

I'm out for a while. Have fun or see you next thread depending on what happens while I'm gone.

>>5261628
>>5261606
Samefag

>>5262628
He's drunk and I'm not, well, he /was/ drunk. Truth be told, I don't know what anon's current level of intoxication is. Either way, I think this makes us different people.

Would you like to talk about the presented form of narrative style analysis?

Hey OP, I decided to do this for a relatively complex story, so I picked up an anthology off my bookshelf and selected on at random. I'm gonna try William Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'

I'm still not understanding some of your definitions, so feel free to correct me. I'll do just a paragraph or two.

H-here I go...

>>5262871

OH WAIT, before I do that, I wanted to suggest a better way of indicating these things instead of by numbers, which have to be memorized or constantly referenced. Instead, you use letter abbreviations: me.p.pp for meta-evaluative, personal, positive personal; f.cj for functional, context jump; and so on.

I'm gonna use this notation in my breakdown.

>>5262890
That's a good idea. Make sure your abbreviations are readily recognisable, though. I'd suggest using the full names and spoilering them, but, as seen above, that doesn't work too well.

As I recall, some anons mentioned making a Wikia page for us to dump our analyses. Is that still on? Someone got a link?

>When Miss Emily Grierson died,[s.s / s.tl] our whole town [s.gl] went to her funeral: [e.neue]* the men [s.sm] through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument,[f.c.tpc / me.se.ps] the women [s.sm] mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house,[f.c.tpc / me.se.ns] which no one save an old man-servant—a combined gardener and cook [s.sm]—had seen in at least ten years.[f.tpc]

>It was a big, squarish frame house [s.gl] that had once been white,[me.pe.ns.] decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies,[me.pe.ps] set on what had once been our most select street.[f.c.tpc / me.se.ns]** But garages and cotton gins [s.sm] had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood;[e.ci / e.n] only Miss Emily's house was left,[s.sm / e.r] lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps [f.ci]—an eyesore among eyesores.[me.se.ns] And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names [e.pe] where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.[f.tl]

*I think we need a neutral signifier for any categories that have positive/negative binaries. "Went to her funeral" is both negative and positive -- negative because it's a damn funeral, but positive because it implies someone cared for the deceased.

**This initially seems like a positive meta-evaluation but the phrase "had been" makes it negative (it is no longer the most select street)

nvm that post, let me try again.

>When Miss Emily Grierson died,[s.s / s.l.tl / e.n] our whole town [s.gl] went to her funeral: [e.neue]* the men [f.cj] through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument,[f.c.tpc / me.se.ps] the women [f.cj] mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house,[f.c.tpc / me.se.ns] which no one save an old man-servant—a combined gardener and cook [s.s.sm]—had seen in at least ten years.[f.c.tpc]

>It was a big, squarish frame house [s.l.gl] that had once been white,[me.pe.ns] decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies,[me.pe.ps] set on what had once been our most select street.[f.c.tpc / me.se.ns]** But garages and cotton gins [s.s.sm] had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood;[e.ci / e.n] only Miss Emily's house was left,[s.s.sm / e.r] lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps [e.ci]—an eyesore among eyesores.[me.se.ns] And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names [e.pe] where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.[f.tl]

*I think we need a neutral signifier for any categories that have positive/negative binaries. "Went to her funeral" is both negative and positive -- negative because it's a damn funeral, but positive because it implies someone cared for the deceased.

**This initially seems like a positive meta-evaluation but the phrase "had been" makes it negative (it is no longer the most select street)

Yeah, this is really tough. Either your definitions are too vague to be workable right now, or I'm just not getting it. It seems for almost every phrase I could apply four or five narrameme tags.

No

>>5263042

[me.se.ns]

>>5263036
Please attach a list explain which abbreviations refer to which narramemes, complete with number codes for the narramemes for easy reference.

>It seems for almost every phrase I could apply four or five narrameme tags.
I was the SAO anon before, and I agree. OP probably needs to come up with a system for which tags you can ignore and which tags you can keep.

>I think we need a neutral signifier for any categories that have positive/negative binaries.
I agree, but OP says you can group them under the general family. With your funeral example, you can just group that under General Exposition and it would be valid. However, considering how this isn't "not positive and not negative" but both, it might be possible to call that both positive and negative, and have it show up as contradictory stripes on the chart - contradiction would show the complexity of the narrameme.

>>5263083

1. meta evaluative family [me]
--2. personal evaluation [me.pe]
----4. potisitve personal [me.pe.pp]
----5. negative personal [me.pe.np]
--3. story evaluation [me.se]
----6. positive story [me.se.ps]
----7. negative story [me.se.ns]

8. setting family [s]
--9. subject [s.s]
----11. subject modifier [s.s.sm]
--10. location [s.l]
----12. geographic location [s.l.gl]
----13. temporal location [s.l.tl]

14. conclusion family [c]
--15. the point [c.p]
----17. pointed stinger [c.p.s]
----18. pointed prestige [c.p.p]
----19. pointed claim [c.p.c]
--16. traditional ending [c.te]
----20. traditional stinger [c.te.s]
----21. traditional prestige [c.te.p]
----22. traditional claim [c.te.c]

23. functional family [f]
--24. confirmable [f.c]
----28. validating [f.c.v]
----29. self-confirm [f.c.sc]
----30. third part confirm [f.c.tpc]
----31. unconfirmable [f.c.u]
--25. context jump [f.cj]
--26. accent [f.a]
--27. tangent loss [f.tl]

32. expository family [e]
--33. conflict [e.c]
----37. conflict indicator [e.c.i]
--34. reveal [e.r]
--35. positive [e.p]
--36. negative [e.n]

New to this, read most of the last thread and this thread along with the Cloud Atlas paper.

Is there a list of clear canonical/model examples of each narrameme?

>>5263204

I think that second point is one of the key efforts we, and OP, should work on and focus on. Setting a good foundation will be key to continuing work on this stuff.

>>5257963
How would your method analyze the following sentence?
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

>>5263676
Not him but couldn't it be

"In the beginning
>temporal location

was the Word,
>subject

and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
>subject modifier

>>5264692
>>5263676

Also Non-Confirmable or Third-Party Confirmation, depending on the analyst's views or text interpretation.

>>5264887
>depending on the analyst's views or text interpretation
That's what we need to avoid. There needs to be less subjectivity in the classifications used, or the analyst needs to know to abstract beyond content and look at directly what is being changed in the "world state", as Baker calls it.

What an epic narrameme.

Hey Op, you did a lot of work on this obviously, and I don't want to marginalize that at all, but I'd suggest changing the name of your little system, it's hard to take it seriously with a name like narrameme.

Also you need to ensure your system is an effective way of analyzing texts that present some take away other methods of analysis couldn't provide. Essentially, you don't want it to simply be a system of categorization that categorizes a little more than other systems.

>>5264964
ebin :')

>>5264989

I would suggest simply "narrative units" for a name.

Or if you want a catchy name, "narratoms"

>>5264989
>Also you need to ensure your system is an effective way of analyzing texts that present some take away other methods of analysis couldn't provide. Essentially, you don't want it to simply be a system of categorization that categorizes a little more than other systems.

Don't bother telling him this, he won't listen.

>>5263036
>>5263154

I'm back. You can shorthand them during the actual working of the texts all you want, but they'll need to be numbered for ease of plotting and translation to colour if you decide to do that for presentation.
After coffee I'll go indepth into this more, but the "netural" units are what I use the generic family term for. This way they show up higher in the family and have an implied generic level to them as opposed to the specific positive/negative.

>It seems for almost every phrase I could apply four or five narrameme tags.
I don't think 4 or 5 uses often comes out of a unit but that's entirely likely in well composed modern literature. As it stands, I would have to know what all these uses are: it sounds like you're blending what it /could/ be doing with what it /is/ doing.

>>5264952
Could you just call me Lain? It's awkward to have a bunch of anons call me by my real name especially when I only get to call everyone collectively anon.

>>5264887
Within the canon the logic is circular, so I'd call it Non-Confirmable unless you specifically state that Faith is an implied value taken into effect.

>>5264989
I call it narrative style analysis. Everyone and their grandmother just calls it narramemes which is like teaching someone how measure the height of a mountain and watching them call it "the foots things"
As for the word itself, the definition was put forth by others. It'd be kinda rude not to include their term just because it sounds a bit silly.

>>5265286
>>5264989

>... categorization that categorizes a little more than other systems.
It provides a clearer understanding of how an author implements narramemes to achieve specific creative ends, thus defining a creator's "style". There have been multiple uses offered by anons, irl a couple of middle rank army officers declared such a thing to be useful to them since a lot of transmission in the world is anonymous and, given a bunch of money and time, a database of known speakers and performers would help them narrow down a given anonymous author.

But second anon is right, even if it didn't do that I'd keep working because it's fun and hard and gives me a better understanding of how other people interact with the world. I understand that it's applicable uses are what would make other people care so once I have more data to work with I'll make sure to add into any work a section on "how this is useful to all the not-me's in the world."

I went out to pick up Dataclysm and found out it's not out for another month. Sad days. Instead I bought Metaphors We Live By and it's a really neat read. I'm only half way through and already 100% believe in a need for the metaphor family now that I have a better sense of how they're used and how to spot them.

I've got a good chapter chunk of Timequake isolated but in light of my reading I'll do some new glossary work before sitting down to chart. I'll try and have it presentable by monday to those interested here. And I'll nest them so anon's will get off my dick about it.

I just wanted to say I really like everything you've done so far OP, which as managed to keep me engaged and entertained with analysis for the first time in a while.

Cheers, can't wait to see how it develops.

>>5265898

I just think you haven't done enough to explain yourself. It's obvious people are still struggling with your definitions but you just keep pointing them to the rather poorly-done presentation in the OP, as if that explains it all (it doesn't).

If you want this to really catch on you need to be very precise and thorough in defining your glossary terms (with examples preferrably), otherwise you get everyone doing something completely different from one another, and from what you intended

>>5266091
This is probably true except that the presentations and threads here HAVE explained it to several people that have even been able to begin analysis on their own. Not everyone, but some, which is cool.

To be honest, 4chan isn't the best medium for transmitting this stuff but I can't really rally up the interested and sit down with them in a room. Remember, before posting it here there was one person in the world who did it (me) and like five people who cared otherwise. Didn't really expect anyone here to be truly interested.

As for the second point I agree. What you see so far is mostly the stuff I've made to help me teach other people on a face to face basis (presentation) or present the very basic concepts and results (papers.)

None of this was intended to give people a thorough education on the matter by itself. The entire multi-thread conversation was a midnight whim when I couldn't sleep. Since people have found it worth examining, I'll try to create something more comprehensive for future use but it's gotta be balanced with me producing data and making money to live and also not failing my last semester of college and other shenanigans.

>>5266131
>This is probably true except that the presentations and threads here HAVE explained it to several people that have even been able to begin analysis on their own.

I did the Rose for Emily analysis and I was the one you're quoting. The presentations explain some, but not nearly enough.

I think the idea you have in your head is solid, inside your mind, but it's coming to us a bit garbled and piecemeal.

Like, where do narramemes even begin and end? In most cases that alone is hazy. What separates a subject modifier from a simple context jump? What constitutes tangent loss? Can a conclusion narrameme be in the middle of the text, before the end of the work or the chapter?

This and a hundred other questions confuse and stymie progress. Plus, I think there are some flaws with the large-scale structure of the schema itself (grouping conclusions on their own family, grouping setting- and character-subjects together under the heading of "settings," to name only two issues).

>>5266151

By the way, it would only take a little Excel witchery to make some macros that treat the abbreviations and/or numbers properly, for instantaneous color coding.

>>5266151
>>5266158

It must be gauche to keep quoting myself and adding to what I say, but I think your hierarchy would benefit from a little house-cleaning, like I said. There's no shame in going back to basics. I'm thinking four main categories:

Story
Character
Setting
Supra-Text

The top three are obvious, the last one fills any meta-narrative uses: meta-evaluations, presentations of "conclusion," intertextual allusion, metaphor, and anything else mentioned in this thread, not covered by the standard set of storytelling tools, and which comprise "theme"

Minimizing the number of families to the most basic possible sets of storytelling choices is important, because there you really see how the author conducts himself in the big picture way. How descriptive he is of time and place, how much character interaction there is, whether the author spends long stretches navel-gazing.

>>5266151
>it's coming garbled and piecemeal...
Because they weren't meant to be teaching tools. I've been trying to use them as such because there are no teaching tools.

>where do narramemes even begin and end
They begin at the end of the last unit and end when you've achieved a change in world state.

>What separates a subject modifier from a simple context jump?
Subject modifiers are units that modify the subject and context jumps are temporal narrative functions that transport the reader to a different narrative for the sake of clarification on the primary. They're not related at all.

>tangent loss?
Context jumps that serve no purpose. Mostly found in orally presented stories but some writers do them for colour.

>Can a conclusion narrameme ... work or the chapter?
This is something I've wanted to talk to someone about because I've got good arguments for making a parallel family for non closers or just using them as is and changing the name.

>families
Families are fluid based on my current understanding of them. They're as permanent currently as any single unit would be. But experience has taught me we really do want to use the family system as opposed to other available options.

>excel witchery
Since the colour of a unit is dependent on the working glossary, I feel we'd need a program beyond excel to take care of that. But I have no doubt that an excel wizard could help, I'm just using it to make number lines like a pleb.

>>5266182
>Subject modifiers are units that modify the subject

Okay, when do they occur? In A Rose for Emily, the opening paragraph talks about Emily's funeral. It goes on to mention "our whole town," and then why the men and women of the town were attending. How many times has the subject changed?

I guess what I'm saying is you should take one of these analyses and do it yourself, to point out where people are making errors, in your view.

I think you're onto something really interesting.

I've thought about reducing narrative to measurable meaning blocks to build a novel from the bottom up, but never went as far as going though with it.

Keep up the search.

>>5266180

Refinement is why I'm here. I'm not married to any of the Families. They're just what made sense at the time and then adjusted for units I couldn't classify.

Your four classes here would be a good place to begin. I'll put some thought onto a family restructure in this manner adjusted as necessary since I'm talking about doing glossary work tomorrow anyways. No reason to push for more detail in a form I might be tossing soon. I'll post early next week what I've come up with in light of this thread and last.

Thank you very much for the input thus far. It's been quite useful.


tl;dr I believe everything I've presented as far as unit organization is, ultimately, wrong. Some things are missing, others are not sufficient and others are far too vague. Not useless, but not as useful as it could be.

>>5266211
I plan on doing your rose for emily bit, but the activity of the thread and the irl world around me makes it hard. I probs won't get to it until tonight. Anons have asked for a LOT of new work and already are asking for more of a time commitment than I really have done for this before.

>>5266222
Blueprints are boring and by the time you can use them you're probably better off not using them.

Stop avatarfagging.

>>5266726

Hurr lookit this fucking original post

>inb4 autism comment
>inb4 accusations of samefagging

Okay, if anyone has time let's analyze the following paragraph with what we have so far. Try to use the terms currently in the glossary and note when you're confused or feel awkward about the usage of the current terms as-is.

"The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent. Roberta Carter sighed, and stared out the window. From the clinic, she could hardly see the beach or the ocean beyond, cloaked in low fog. This wasn't what she had expected when she had come to the fishing village of Bahia Anasco, on the west coast of Costa Rica, to spend two months as a visiting physician. Bobbie Carter had expected sun and relaxation, after two grueling years of residency in emergency medicine at Michael Reese in Chicago."