/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15424746]

how do you write a story that is interesting but can also make the reader walk away at the end feeling they've learned a universal truth about life

[Anonymous No.15424774]

>>15424746
Unironically include your own hardships into the story. There's a reason why people always say "write what you know". It's because it's intimately familiar to you and you're not starting from scratch

[Anonymous No.15424815]

>>15424746
Stop thinking about writing in terms of "expressing the ideas in your head" and start thinking in terms of "rearranging the ideas in someone else's head". Once you can do that, identify your audience and then mercilessly target them. Your audience can be "children" or "people like me" or "Americans" or whatever, but it's important to write for them.
Or you can write for yourself and disregard the notion of trying to impart knowledge, truth or wisdom through your writings because you almost certainly have very little of any of them.

[Anonymous No.15424825]

>>15424746
>make the reader walk away at the end feeling they've learned a universal truth about life
For what would you want to write a story like that?

[Anonymous No.15424838]

>>15424746
>make the reader walk away at the end feeling they've learned a universal truth about life
For what reason would you want to write a story like that?

[Anonymous No.15424854]

>>15424746
I will repeat this fundamental truth about story structure. It is not an ikea manual. It is not "le hero's journey". It is a ritual commemorating life, death, and the human condition itself. Thus to properly crack stories, you must understand rituals. Each notch of the story circle is a ritual. Not just a steps in a recipe. Sure, you can read along, add one egg white, and stir. Maybe it'll come out well. But to properly tell stories like a professional, you need to understand WHY you add the egg. WHY it's just an egg and WHY and WHAT the other ingredients are. What you're looking for anon is called "emotional catharsis". This is achieved by making the protagonist or "soul" go through a process of boring life, death of old life, and birth of new life. It is this resurrection that provides the "emotional catharsis", and or "universal truth about life".

story circles are like washing machine cycles. dirty clothes go in, through a ritual of water and soap and rinse and spin, and come out changed and clean, I.e. "emotional catharsis". the clothes are the SUBCONSCIOUS of your reader. A good story writer CLEANS the SUBCONSCIOUS of your reader.

[Anonymous No.15424894]

>>15424854
Well put. I hate having this conversation over and over again. I wish we could scrub the word "rule" from all discussions about creative endeavors—it does so much harm to the budding artist.

[Anonymous No.15424914]

>>15424854
Could you elaborate on emotional catharsis further? I'm dumb

[Anonymous No.15424920]

first you have to have some understanding about a universal truth in life. then, put that idea in a book

[Anonymous No.15424930]

>>15424914
start with the greeks

[Anonymous No.15424974]

>>15424914
normally >>15424930 is a meme, but Poetics is unironically still an important and relevant work regarding literary theory

[Anonymous No.15424986]

>>15424914
thesis: the story circle is life.

you experience emotional catharsis everyday. you are asleep, then you wake up, lay in bed, maybe rub one out, or go back to sleep, but it's a technically boring and restful place. then you have some reason to get out of bed, eventually. maybe you need to pee, or your mouth is dry and you need a drink, or there's notification from your smartphone charging on the desk over there. this is a call, happens every day many times over. so you get up, and this is important, you walk out your bedroom door. you've crossed the threshold into the new world. maybe it's the bathroom and you pee. or it's the kitchen and you drink. doesn't matter. now you need to do something, to get something, relief. I can go on.

but even here, in this most milquetoast normal boring moment of life, that every human ever experiences everyday, is monomythic. because the monomyth IS life. I could go on, that's like a whole paper in itself, or for professor Campbell, a pretty hefty textbook. by peeing, your getting that drink, you are experiencing "emotional catharsis", by undergoing a process of rituals to that moment to release the dopamine in your brain to enjoy that moment. those rituals are not profound or subtle, there are everywhere, everyday, and now congrats, you get to try and learn about them.

[Anonymous No.15425002]

>>15424746
Torture your heroes then make him overcome realistically.

[Anonymous No.15425028]

>>15424986
if it's so fundamental why doesn't it come naturally? Why do I have to think about it at all?

[Anonymous No.15425168]

>>15424746
Change. Tell a tale about change. Of something going from Point A to B. This is literally the minimum unity of life.

All rules and formulas and structures you can find about good plots resumes themselves in a tale about change. Change in its various forms. Life-Death. Nothing-Something. Saddness-Happiness. Out-In.

Basically, stories are about the subjective experience of a casualty of facts. That's why in everyday life we tell mini-stories, sharing experiences, even if the other person didn't get to live what we lived she can live that life through us, through empathy. There's something equally fundamental in all humans that allow this to happen. Then comes the jungian collective unconscious, the archetypes, myths, you know, that sort of thing.

[Anonymous No.15425253]

>>15425028
it does come naturally hence storytelling but in the 21st century humans have matured their arts to an extent wherein aspiring professional storytellers cannot rely solely on intuition and must undertake sincere study and curriculum on the nature of storytelling itself. hence Dan Harmon and the image you're posting under

the atom of matter was discovered in 1911. the atom of story was "discovered" in 1949. an actual atom you can prove with an electron microscope. the storytelling atom is inherently "artistic" and even talented artistic humans are stupid and we're still calling the storytelling atom "le hero's journey". but it's still the atom.

[Anonymous No.15425287]

>>15425253
Not that anon, but isn't the "monomyth" the narrative's atom? I mean, why would it be stupid?

[Anonymous No.15425355]

>>15424854
This is a nice metaphor anon, I like how you think

[Anonymous No.15425378]

>>15425287
Not that guy, but having read The Hero with a Thousand Faces the "hero's journey" as Campbell puts it is actually a severely antiquated anthropological study based on views of the world that had already fallen out of favor when he was writing it (because Campbell wasn't an anthropologist). The word "imperialist" gets thrown around a lot, but it definitely applies to Campbell and his leaning on the discredited Golden Bough and analytical psychology. Reading the book is embarrassing, like watching a casually racist 90s sitcom or reading one of CS Lewis's defenses of Christianity.

[Anonymous No.15425412]

>>15425378
>like watching a casually racist 90s sitcom or reading one of CS Lewis's defenses of Christianity
Go back.

[Anonymous No.15425448]

>>15425412
The Hero... is to modern anthropology what Mere Christianity is to theology. It's poorly informed academic overreach and it is an embarrassment to their respective fields that they still maintain a level of relevance today.

[Anonymous No.15425494]

>>15424746
By not writing fiction, but philosophy.

[Anonymous No.15425504]

>>15424746
You would start with the first sentence.

[Anonymous No.15425512]

>>15425378
I honestly don't believe you've read the book. Each chapter is just an opening thesis on the nature of the ritual, then a linear narrative of folk tales and myth from other cultures to support the thesis. There are sparse or any editorial or opinion of Campbell. Unless... Referencing Native American and or Indian myth to support an Antonement is somehow... Racist? Of all the plebs to discuss Campbell that's actually new.

[Anonymous No.15425581]

>>15424854
what if i want to subvert the reader's expectations?

[Anonymous No.15425590]

>>15424746
Figure out a universal truth

[Anonymous No.15425592]

>>15424914
Catharsis is literally making the viewer/audience/reader feel some intended emotion after something.

[Anonymous No.15425622]

>>15425581
You by itself have to know beforehand what he expects.

[Anonymous No.15425624]

>>15425581
The rituals from Boon to Return are often the most "remixed". Of these, the Rescue From Without and or Mother of the Goddess is best for "twists". Which is the now classical term for "subverting expectations". If you were going to subvert them, these rituals are ripe.

"Whatever you call it, this is a very, very special pivot point. If you look at the circle, you see I've placed the goddess at the very bottom, right in the center. Imagine your protagonist began at the top and has tumbled all the way down here. This is where the universe's natural tendency to pull your protagonist downward has done its job, and for X amount of time, we experience weightlessness. Anything goes down here. This is a time for major revelations, and total vulnerability. If you're writing a plot-twisty thriller, twist here and twist hard."

[Anonymous No.15425775]

>>15425512
Comparative mythology is retarded and was already poorly thought of when Campbell was writing his book:
>For the primitive hunting peoples of those remotest human millennia when the sabertooth tiger, the mammoth, and the lesser presences of the animal kingdom were the primary manifestations of what was alien—the source at once of danger and of sustenance—the great human problem was to become linked psychologically to the task of sharing the wilderness with these beings. An unconscious identification took place, and this was finally rendered conscious in the half-human, half-animal figures of the mythological totem-ancestors. The animals became the tutors of humanity. Through acts of literal imitation—such as today appear on the children's playground (or in the madhouse)—an effective annihilation of the human ego was accomplished and society achieved a cohesive organization. Similarly the tribes supporting themselves on plant-food became cathected to the plant; the life-rituals of planting and reaping were identified with those of human procreation, birth, and the progress of maturity. Both the plant and the animal worlds, however, were in the end brought under social control. Whereupon the great field of instructive wonder shifted—to the skies—and mankind enacted the great pantomime of the sacred moon-king, the sacred sun-king, the hieratic, the planetary state, and the symbolic festivals of world-regulating spheres.
This is nice and all when looked at through a lens of storytelling and emergent, descriptive qualities of narratives, but that's not what he's doing. He's drawing conclusions and making wide statements about anthropological processes that are simply wrong.

[Anonymous No.15425906]

>>15425775
Then you're making the argument storytelling and or fiction is an anthropological study or discipline, which it can be, but if you haven't noticed the board is /lit/ not /pol/. Also, it's weird to read the words "comparative mythology is retarded". Like, reading different stories and comparing them is... Dumb? Kay?

[Anonymous No.15425985]

>>15425906
>you're making the argument storytelling and or fiction is an anthropological study or discipline
no, I'm arguing that The Hero... is an anthropological text.
>Also, it's weird to read the words "comparative mythology is retarded". Like, reading different stories and comparing them is... Dumb? Kay?
Comparative mythology is a formal field of anthropology in which scholars tried to unify all human development into a concrete series of steps on the ladder from savagery to England by studying the elements in common with their storytelling. This resulted in what we understand today as the Monomyth, a fundamental touchstone in our understanding of storytelling and narrative, but was firmly an anthropological endeavor. Comparative mythology today is the phrenology of anthropology. Our understanding of the Monomyth's place in literature is a retrospective viewpoint from a completely different academic discipline.
Don't take The Hero... seriously. It's a bad book full of bad ideas that later people turned into good ideas. Read their works instead.

[Anonymous No.15426004]

>>15424746
If your story teaching someone a universal truth about life, it will be interesting.

[Anonymous No.15426053]

>>15425985
No, Comparative Mythology is this very thread. Readers of fiction comparing and breaking down rituals. We are comparing myths. Furthermore, if one understands the monomyth, one understands Campbell is one contributor. Neumann, Jung, Joyce, Lucas, and today Harmon. Singularly focusing on Campbell, in a thread under Harmon's structure, belies your distance from academic literature surrounding the monomyth. But that's personal and I apologize.

While I understand there are branches of anthropology in comparing mythology, there is also psychology, plain mathematics, and structural engineering, believe it or not. "Hero" is not strictly an anthropological text and I'm confused how your brain designated it as such.

"Comparative mythology is a formal field of anthropology in which scholars tried to unify all human development into a concrete series of steps on the ladder from savagery to England by studying the elements in common with their storytelling."

You may be confused by this, but Native American storytellers have been "comparing mythology" without anthropologists or England for millennia. Tribes would meet for trade and exchange stories. In fact they'd send convoys with the designed "village" or tribal storytellers, a pair with an elder and a younger person, always two there are. Their myths are as monomythic today as Harmon's.

[Anonymous No.15426363]

One would need to experience a profound event that was worthy of preserving.

[Anonymous No.15426439]

>>15424854
Reassigning vocabulary does not serve as a convincing substitute for an argument, anon.

[Anonymous No.15426449]

>>15426439
If this were a political argument I’d be inclined to care if you’re “convinced” by my “argument”. I have no argument. The monomyth is real. Accept the truth and stories become easier to tell or refuse and stubbornly find your way in the dark. Maybe you actually will, many do, but how many find the success of Harmon or Lucas? Or even the writers of Jumanji 2. I’m not here to convince you of anything, carry on your own way if you wish.

[Anonymous No.15426482]

>>15424914
Build up and resolve tension. It's also how jokes work.

[Anonymous No.15426513]

>>15426482
this is an oversimplification of how jokes work. but yeah.