I find writing structures depressing. Why do they exist? Why do they matter?

This past weekend, my mother had her bible book club. She was telling me about the prophet Deborah, and a heroine, Jael.
She says that Deborah prophesized that the death of this warlord would not be at the hands of man.
.... then, after a period of time, the warlord ends up in Jael's tent, and she kills him, thus fulfilling Deborah's prophesy.

Me being me says "Hey! thats like what happened in The Lord of the Rings! Eowyn kills the Witch King and he's like "no man can kill me!" and she's like "I'm a woman!" "
My mom, not having a clue what i was talking about says, "yeeeeeeeah.... like that, I guess."

Tolkien is known for weaving Christianity into his stories, so this parallel makes sense.

If you'd like a fun but informative read, i recommend How To Read Literature Like A Professor by Thomas Foster. He talks about WHY it is that themes, tropes, and structures repeat and WHY nothing is unique anymore.
For example, Foster summarizes the Hero's Quest as "the real reason for a quest is always self knowledge"... no matter the structure or the plot, the main character is always fulfill in this way.
Chapter 5, "Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?" talks about repeat patterns and structures. On the second page of that chapter he states in bold "there's no such thing as a wholly original work of literature" (29). Why? "stories grow out of other stories, poems out of other poems. And they dont have to stick to genre. Poems can lean from plays, songs from novels. Sometimes influence is direct and obvious... Other times, it's less direct and more subtle" (pg 33).
Basically, what I said in my fist post about being inspired by other things.
His following chapters then talk about where certain structures and tropes come from (Chapter 6: "When in Doubt, It's from Shakespeare..." Chapter 7: "...Or the Bible"). There are a ton of examples across many genres and many writers.
Apparently, I have a "jesus" character in my novel. Not because i actively based this character off of Jesus and not because i'm religious (i'm not...). But certain things are so integrated into our culture and society, that it just so happened that, unconsciously, i gave this character similar traits.

This is the same in religion. Parallel Myths by Bierlein touches on this and even breaks down why there are the same religious tellings in various cultures across the continents. It is also a great read!

 

its not whether you HAVE to write like this... its that, somethinsg this is just how it happens. There are those who will seek a structure out and follow it. there are those who just write with out a guide and let the pieces fall where they may (i am one of those people). But, sitting back and rereading my manuscript, i unconsciously fell into the structure without intending to.

Another interesting thing: try alligning a random book you've read to the structure you shared.
I did this just now with a satirical thriller novel that i both enjoyed and hated (hated because it actually didnt follow the structure i was expecting.... but it wasnt a bad things and I still enjoyed it!)

Spoiler: Book Plot Spoilers

My Sister the Serial Killer

• The Ordinary World
  • Korede is a nurse. she does nurse things in her ordinary world
• The Call of Adventure
  • Korede's sister calls her because she's killed someone
• Refusal of the Call
  • This isnt the first time her sister has killed someone and Korede feels guilty every time she cleans up the murder. she contemplates refusing to help this time.
• Meeting the Mentor
  • she frequently visits a coma patient and vents her moral dilemmas (talking things out to him causes her comfort and gives her clarity, and, even though he cant respond, she gives him a voice)
• Crossing the First Threshold
  • Korede recounts a time when she is actvely involved in her sister's killings
• Tests, Allies, and Enemies
  • Korede's sister starts dating one of Korede's coworkers and weedles her way into her work-life
• Approach to the Inmost Cave
  • Korede starts to resent her sister
• The Ordeal
  • Korede's sister tries to kill Korede's coworker, whom she likes.
• Reward (Seizing the Sword)
  • Takes a stand against her sister and saves him
• The Road Back
  • (this is where it subverts the structure) Korede gaslights the guy to protect her sister, and goes back to her normal life
• Resurrection
  • Korede has grown from the experience.... but in the OPPOSITE direction (sisters over mister... even if said sister is a serial killer)
• Return with the Elixir
  • returns to work at the end of the ordeal with the knowledge that her sister's happiness means more to her in life than her own.

 

You can have all the freedom you want in your writing. You're free to write what you want, however you want.

The others here have done a wonderful job at explaining that these structures aren't absolute, so I won't be repeating much. I'll only advise you to treat them like tools. If you can do the job without the tool, then do it. But it might be harder. Maybe much harder.

I've certainly come across authors on the Internet who claim to be successful without adhering to structures. I can't verify their claims but it must be that at least one is telling the truth.

 

I think this is very true. You can write whatever you want, but if you want to sell it to people, it needs to be something that they'll want.

This doesn't mean that story structures are necessary to do that. They're just a "route" to that destination. You can do it without them, but it might be a lot harder, and if I've learned anything about writing without structure (because I've been there), it's that you just might end up using one unconsciously anyway.

I've asked this before but what exactly is your goal as a writer? What do you want to do with the book you're writing?

 

If that's true then why did I see this Youtube video about Harmon's Circle, titled "Every story is the same?" One that quoted Harmon saying "All life, including the human mind, and the communities we create, marches to this same specific beat."

Why are book like the Writer's Journey, which treats the hero's journey with almost religious reverence, held up as the best book for teaching writing?

Every Story is the Same - YouTube

 

Actually this class I was talking about was about 12 years ago. And he wasn't a professor, he was a tutor at "continuing education." One night a week classes organized by a university.

My take away from his classes was that we absolutely are beholden to these structures.
I remember an exercise where he told us to pick any movie we could think of, he'd describe the hero's journey and we'd write down the moments in the film that fit it.
He said writers use the same structure for the same reason all makes of cars look alike these days, because that's the design that works.
I don't recall him specifically saying we have to write that way, but I don't recall at all him saying that it was ok not to. In fact he specifically said that writing for yourself is not the same as writing to be read.

 

Well people have told me, or at least implied, that I absolutely do need to strictly adhere to a structure. That a liking of a specific structure goes right down to our DNA and evolution.

Honestly I'm not writing a book at all. I was a decade ago but (and this next part is going to get deep, dark and personal) I suffered a traumatic event that left me unwilling to do it.
Back then I wanted to write a great book, a book series that would entertain and enthral people the world over. But not one written on popular trends and fads to sell copies. One written from the heart based on the kind of stories and elements I love.

 

Thank you but I remember how upset I got when I was first told that there were only 7 stories.

 

I'm sorry that this happened. If I were in your shoes, I'd focus on recovery to get myself writing once again. Story structures are pretty useless if you can't write with them.

This is interesting to me because you acknowledge that a book "written from the heart" and "not one written on popular trends" is possible. So, you do seem to believe that writing without structure is possible.

I highly advise you to look into literary fiction. In case you don't know, a quick Google search says this:

Generally, genre fiction tends to place value on entertainment and, as a result, it tends to be more popular with mass audiences. Literary fiction, on the other hand, is a bit trickier to define. In general, it emphasizes meaning over entertainment. Literary fiction also aspires toward art.
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This captures what you're saying pretty well. You seem to dislike stories with tropes and well-tested structures. There is nothing wrong with them TBH but you're of course free to dislike them.

I've written literary fiction so I have a feeling for it. It's certainly more artistic and allows you to dive into topics deeper, which is why so many character-driven stories are under that category. We can explore characters much more freely than in genre fiction, where the movement of the plot is more important.

Here is where it gets even trickier though—they are not mutually exclusive categories. You can have a book that exists in both categories. Not that you need to. You can stay far away from genre fiction if you like.

If you aren't writing, what books do you like to read?

 

This is the problem.

A professor (specifically one well learned in Literature) would know better and would not say such difinitive things as 'you HAVE to write this way.'

 

This is what the vast majority of us do.
Which is how we end up following similar trends, thus continuing/normalizing those trends as was the point of the end of my first response:

 

What you said here got me thinking.
I've come across things that everyone seems to accept and believe in. When people talk about the multiverse, everyone only thinks of the parallel universes like in Marvel or DC comics.
They don't seem to know that there are other kinds of definition to the multiverse theory, like ones that are physically separate from ours or made from other kinds of particles.
And I could name other theories in science that everyone talks about like they're proven and scoffs at anyone who thinks differently.

Is that just because the ideas have been popularised and "overprescribed?"

 

Disclaimer: I did not read the entire thread, so I'm not sure if I'm really adding anything to the conversation.

But I think the OP got the wrong take-away from the conversation concerning story structures. It's not about people being robots or making everyone write the same way. As a hater to lover of story structures, I think that they provide proven guide posts to how to build an interesting story. If I find myself meandering and saying, "Okay, what do I do next?" I can go back to the basic question of, "Well, what kind of story am I trying to tell?" If its a hero story, then I can draw back to my list of ingredients that made hero stories successful in the past to find information.

 

Okay, I've been meaning to read this thread for a while. I had no idea it was going to be like this!

Now that I've read it, all I can say is that generally, the "it's human psychology" answer is the perfect way to put it. In the simplest way possible, at least.

However, it's evidently clear that this statement alone is not sufficient in satiating Ashley's curiosity. I can see how it can come off alot like what his tutor said about cars, answering his question of why it works with a simple "It just is". Now, this is not incorrect. But what Ashley is asking about here is essentially "Why do cars have to be built like that?" or "Why do cars go?", if we're sticking by the same analogy. Anyone who was daring enough to question these fundamentals was at the beginnings of becoming a brilliant mechanic, or engineer! Whereas, the rest of us never gave it a second thought. It is by questioning these fundamentals that we have the potential to make something which is truly groundbreaking, and I'm sorry that your tutor couldn't realize that.

Many will ask the question, but few will be outright unhappy with so simple of an explanation. So, the best we can do is point them in the right direction, in hopes that they will chart their own path of discovery. We've all been there.

But bringing it back to writing stories, the conventions were something established a very, very long time ago. Therefore, alot of that history is missing. We don't have the privilege of watching the Natural Selection of narratives, so to speak. That is, which ones survived over which ones died. We only have the ancient surviving myths, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Tower of Babel, or the Iliad, or what have you. There is no doubt that thousands of other stories were created around their time, and many of them were probably at least good. Yet, they are now lost to time. Somehow, they didn't have the mysterious It-Factor the other tales did that caused them to remembered. To be propagated, retold, or rewritten, or reprinted, etc. They couldn't have been horrible, but for some reason, they did not resonate enough to last in the minds of the audience.

The classic stories we still tell today have something which allowed them to survive within the hostile environment that is the human mind. Not just in the time they were written, but still to this very day. If you want to know why they survived against those selective pressures, then I suggest you learn about what forces they were (and still are) up against. Other people (like Campbell) have asked this question, and along the way, they recognized a pattern. This pattern tends to click with us, and is helpful to use as a guideline, rather than a strict set of rules.

To throw my own analogy into the mix, the way I see it, it's sort of like the development of flying machines. In the beginning, people were sort of just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Making random variations of the same formulas, based on what they knew at the time. They were lucky if any of them even slightly managed to get off the ground. But it was only once the Wright Brothers came along and made their design that everything changed. And almost every single aviation machine that's been created ever since follows the same design principles, whether that be fighter-jets, supersonic jets, commercial airplanes, you name it.

But what did they get right? What made their plane so special? Why did their invention work, while the others did not? It is because they understood the basic laws of aerodynamics, and the forces of nature, and used that knowledge to create a design which was most effective in harnessing them. If a new airplane design has nothing else in common with the Wright Flyer, it must at least do this. The evolution of flying birds is the same. Eventually, through genetic mutations, a pattern of two-wings that generate lift was the one which won out in achieving the goal of heavier-than-air flight, just like an airplane. Nothing is stopping them from being a design that completely abandons that pattern. But the question is, are they still going to fly? Or will they be a flightless bird?

Similarly, if you want to make a story that truly soars, then asking why humans even connect with a specific pattern of story-telling in the first place is a wonderful start. It's been incredibly interesting to watch this level of persistent curiosity in action. And honestly, I'm all for it, so long as that question-asking is paired with answer-seeking and theory-testing. As Einstein once said, "Curiosity has its own reason for existing", right?

Now to end off...

1,000% AGREE. This is EXACTLY what I was going to say, or would've been getting at. Especially with that amazing question, "Why is it similar elements are found in a culture's stories even when they developed completely separate from each other?" That subject continues to fascinate me. I strongly encourage you to check out Jung, if you haven't already. Especially since Joseph Campbell himself was heavily influenced by Jung and his analysis of myth, which went on to inspire the Hero's Journey.

When I was extremely curious about this subject, that was where I ended up. And when I get curious again, that's still where I end up! lol. Though I will say, Jungian psychology exists in a niche blend between actual fiction/story-writing and subjects that are a bit beyond the scope of this site. So if you're interested, I suggest you do your own independent research. But be warned, if you're like me, you will often find yourself wondering, "Wait, but what does this have to do with storytelling?", which is also a good question.

From what I've gathered so far, I believe it comes down to the fact that we as a species tend to remember events in a particular pattern, and we omit details which don't fit that. Therefore, the stories we remember tend to follow that pattern, be they fact or fiction. Even famous historical events, or the experiences we talk about with our friends! However, because of the fact that it is so ubiquitous, there is no one true form of the pattern. It is many perspectives of the same thing, but there is no one correct viewpoint.

The best you can do is be aware of the many forms it comes in, pick a favorite, and run with it. Mine is Kishotenketsu. However, something like "Save the Cat" I've never even heard of until now! I will be looking into that...

Anyway, I wish you luck on your journey, Ashley. Remember, the most important thing is to never stop questioning!

 

Also, as a footnote...

See, there actually is a market for stories which break narrative conventions.

As I was reading the thread, I was reminded of a visual novel game that a friend recommended to me called "Echo" on Steam. Apparently it's very good, but what stuck out to me most about it was that, from the way my friend described it, it seems like the game very intentionally goes out of its way to subvert conventional story-telling structures and character tropes, in what sounded like a well-done and thoughtful way. I got the impression that the dialogue was very realistic, natural, or human-like, and not like how we tend to write stories. He told me it was very refreshing, because according to him, he is very familiar with the way fiction tends to be written, after having consumed so much media. He said it was very "messy" or "not-neat". Because of this, he said he would understand if other people would absolutely hate it, including me!

In that case, yes, the kind of people whom subversive stories appeal to are those that are very immersed in the world of fiction, and get tired of "the same thing" over and over. But not in the same sense that they'd like to create a story of their own. To them, they've read all the 9/10 books, they've seen all the 9/10 movies, played all the 9/10 games, et cetera, et cetera. Or at least, they've experienced enough of the good stuff to where it feels like they've seen everything that could be done before. In our heavily media-saturated world, it's understandable to feel that way. It's a very audience-member mentality, in my opinion.

They're familiar with the patterns, and to them, the patterns have grown stale. They're bored. They want an "escape" that is more similar to real life, ironically enough.

Anyway, if you'd like to see a subversive story (especially one about anthropomorphic animal characters...?) then I recommend you play Echo for yourself. I plan on getting around to it at some point, but I've been busy. Though, you seem like you could get alot out of a story like that, to compare and contrast it with more conventional stories.

And, the game seems to have a pretty decent following! At least, as far as I know. To answer your question of, "Does a story have to follow structures in order for people to like it?", the simple answer is no. Echo seems to be a prime example. However, I haven't played it for myself, so do take that with a grain of salt.