Enigma wrote:
I'm already going to read "The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations"
As it goes, I wouldn't expect that much from this book, if I were you - at least not in terms of writing help. It's more of a study of the fundamental elements that stories can be broken down into rather than advice on how to put them together - it goes in the wrong direction. From what I recall the 'meat' referred to in the title mostly consists of things like - quite literally - "hero is separated from his loved one and attempts to rejoin her" and then cites a set of examples from literature of this conflict appearing in plots.
Myself, I also use something pretty similar to the aforementioned 'Snowflake' method. One thing that I didn't get particularly strongly from that article - not to say that it wasn't there, just that it didn't seem to be the emphasis of the article - which I think
is pretty important when writing stories is that when you're putting together your premise and expanding out your synopsis and so on is that for conventional storytelling, you should pretty much always be thinking in terms of conflict. Stories are driven by conflict - they are
about conflict. Not always actual fighting, but a difference between what someone wants and what they have. Basically, this consideration should probably be the driver for any new significant element that you put into your story - the basic premise should introduce a conflict, the end of the story should resolve the main conflict of the preceeding story, each time you expand "hero travels from A to B and finds C" you should be introducing new conflicts, even if they're smaller and smaller as you go, because if you don't, it becomes harder to keep interested in the story and the characters. If there's no conflict, there's no drive for the characters to stay involved or to do anything in particular, so anything other than the status quo (which is dull) is less believeable.
(And this ties back to Polti's book, as well - from what I recall, pretty much what he describes are a variety of different kinds of overarching conflict.)
The obvious example which gets used all the time is Star Wars (because everyone's seen it, I guess): The overall story is a conflict between the Empire - which wants total domination of the galaxy - and the Rebel Alliance, which wants freedom from the Empire; this is demonstrated by a proxy conflict to destroy/protect the death star, which in turn is carried out over a series of conflicts between the Empire and Leia's corvette (attempting to prevent the escape of the plans), the Empire and the Millennium Falcon (trying to recapture the droids with the plans), the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon (trying to rescue Leia), the Death Star and the rebel base (trying to destroy the rebel base) and then finally the Death Star and the rebel fighters (trying directly to destroy the death star, using the benefits gained from the results of the previous conflicts).
On a character level, at the beginning, Luke is driven by the conflict between his desire to have an exciting life like his friends, and his adoptive guardian's desire to have a peaceful farming life. Then he's driven by the conflict between his desire to stay alive and the Empire's desire to get rid of anyone who might have seen the Death Star plans, and then by the conflict between his desire to rescue the pretty princess and be noble and the Empire, and then finally by the conflict between the rebels and the empire. Han Solo starts out being driven by the conflict between his desire to not be captured/tortured/killed by Jabba and Jabba's desire to get the money he thinks Solo owes him, then the conflict between his self-preservation and the Empire's desire to keep the Millennium Falcon and its crew silent, then the first desire again, then finally the conflict between his ego (telling him to take the money and run) and id (telling him to obey his conscience and go back and help Luke).
Individual scenes play out via conflicts as well. The outline might have read "Luke and Ben go into a bar and hire Han Solo to take them to Alderaan (which I've probably spelled wrong), but you break it down and it's built out the conflicts between Luke's farmboy naïvete and the bar's hard spacer clientele (the guys at the bar), the conflict between Solo's pennilessness and Jabba's debt, the conflict between Greedo's desire to cash in on Jabba's bounty and Solo's desire to not be dead, etc. (If I even remember exactly what happened in that scene.)
And so on.
I've rambled for too long trying to prove a point that probably doesn't need proving, but it's an important thing to remember when plotting out your story - every important decision or gripping moment in a story is generally based on a conflict between one thing and another, and often lines up with the overall conflict that the story is 'about' (again, Solo's debt to Jabba is another kind of fighting-for-freedom, similar to the overall rebels-versus-empire conflict). If minor parts of your story hinge on non-conflict-related motivations, then it's not terrible, but if major parts of your story don't hinge on conflict, then it can feel pretty inconsistent and lack resonance and meaning for the reader. If there's a spaceship battle, make sure there's a spaceship battle for a good reason driven by a conflict of interests between two parties, not just becasue spaceship battles are cool. Otherwise your reader will be sat there thinking "but the Maboki Empire was invading with a thousand starships an hour ago, and now that one cool scene is over, they've disappeared! And their ambassador is helping the protagonist despite the fact they were fighting in the previous scene! It was cool before, but now it doesn't make any sense so I'm going to stop reading".
And remember that conflicts can be put in retroactively, as well. If you want to have a spaceship battle because spaceship battles are cool, then try and work out a conflict behind it which doesn't disturb the rest of your story, and jam it in. If you want your hero to be helped by a passer-by, then come up with the conflict that passer-by is trying to win that causes him to be there and ready to help the hero.