Links to amazing stuff
A quick post to point you in the direction of some wonderful blogs about storytelling:
Crowning Moments of Awesome
One day last week a friend sent me the link to this site. That was it. I wasn’t getting any sleep that night, or for many nights afterwards. Seriously, follow the link at your peril. TV Tropes is an amazing website that was originally created to explore the tropes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It [...]
Child’s Play
Has anyone else been watching the second season of Joss Whedon’s ill-fated Dollhouse? It’s an interesting and sometimes brilliant exercise in how to wrap up an epic group of ideas in just thirteen episodes. Granted, sometimes the plot takes over, with character twists coming at you so fast that not even the biggest Whedon fans are able to suspend their disbelief, but hell, it’s dealing with BIG STUFF here. BIG. STUFF. I’m going to give Joss the benefit of the doubt.
The Vulnerable Villain
I’ve been wondering recently whether all stories could be divided into two categories: one containing stories with evil villains, and one containing stories with vulnerable villains. I think it might just be possible. There are those whose very context defines them as evil – Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, for example – few viewers could [...]
Top 10: Mentor Characters
I promised you a top 10, and when I promise, I deliver. Here are mine, in no particular order:
The Fall of Old Bearded Men
The word ‘mentor’ does not appear in the English language until 1750, but the archetypal character had been around for millennia before that. I’m going to try to whizz through a brief history of the mentor character, from his Greek origins to his present day incarnations.
Follow Friday
Every Friday I plan on posting a bibliography of sorts: links to books you might want to read, films that I’ve mentioned, and links to take a look at. So here’s my first ‘Follow Friday’:
Right, wrong and the Tales of the Faeries
What separates Vogler’s ideas about structure and the structure of fairytales? In short: nothing. In length: quite a bit. Italo Calvino said that fairytales were an example of ‘quickness’ in literature because of their economy. This is, in part, true. They whizz through Vogler’s twelve steps faster than one of Robin Hood’s arrows. But they [...]
The Inner Cave
Yesterday I mentioned ‘The Inner Cave’ and said I’d be going into more detail about this. Well, this is that more detail. Today I’ll try to dissect what the inner cave is within a story. In short: the inner cave is where the monsters are. Dragons live there, but if you’re brave enough to fight [...]
In the beginning
“Every story must have a beginning, a middle and an end”. That’s what we’re taught in English lessons. But there’s more to it than that. Every story is a quest, and every quest is a formula… click to find out more.