As noted, I’m reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan at the moment. One of the things he talks about early on is the narrative fallacy, which involves our need to create narratives and see patterns to explain the world around us. This seems a good chance to talk about the meaning and purpose of … Continue reading On Narrative
Story telling
How to End a World and Save a Franchise
I'm not a Final Fantasy player myself (this is by happenstance, not by choice; the games passed me by as a kid and I haven't had time to go back and explore them yet), but I would like to share an interesting story regarding the franchise; a story that took place in our own world. In 2010, … Continue reading How to End a World and Save a Franchise
Making a Character Prodigiously Powerful Will Not Make Them Interesting
So, I was watching the trailer for 'The Last Jedi,' where Luke is telling Rey that he's only seen her kind of power once before, that she's amazingly in tune with the Force and so on and so forth and I thought "Man, I am tired of the heroes in these kinds of stories being … Continue reading Making a Character Prodigiously Powerful Will Not Make Them Interesting
Great Humor, Great Morals, and Why Having Your Heroine Be a Music Box for an Episode Makes for Good Writing
So, this week's episode of My Little Pony was pretty fantastic (full disclosure: I actually saw it a week or so ago. You see, since FiM is produced in Vancouver, Canadian audiences get to see episodes up to two or even three weeks before the rest of us. The magic of the internet, however, allows some leeway … Continue reading Great Humor, Great Morals, and Why Having Your Heroine Be a Music Box for an Episode Makes for Good Writing
Reviews: Pete’s Dragon
Pete’s Dragon, like Cinderella or The Jungle Book, is a remake of a classic Disney film that not only improves on the original, but also manages to be a refreshingly individual film in its own right. Here’s a movie that doesn’t so much defy formula as simply ignores it; it’s content to simply tell its … Continue reading Reviews: Pete’s Dragon
Another Illustration
Another way of demonstrating my idea from the last post: the ‘Princess and the Dragon’ motif (Chesterton used this to describe melodrama in Charles Dickens). Phase One: meet the princess. The hero encounters the princess and falls in love with her. But he cannot court her because there is some kind of threat over hanging … Continue reading Another Illustration
Three Phases of a Good Story
Great stories, or at least a certain kind of story, work by proceeding along the following path: from false order through disorder to true order. Before I go any further, I’m by no means an expert; this is just my personal observations and ideas, for whatever those are worth, presented for consideration. As I said, … Continue reading Three Phases of a Good Story
Serpent's Den 