- [Instructor] Hello readers,
I'm going to draw you
a map right now, and it's gonna look like
I've drawn a mountain.
But it's not a map of a mountain.
It's a map of a story.
What, your saying, how do you map a story?
What makes a story pointy?
These are great questions,
and to answer them,
I'll say this, today
we're going to talk about
the elements of a story,
or the parts that make it up,
like ingredients in a recipe.
Many stories follow a similar pattern.
Good readers know what these patterns are,
and can talk about them
using the right terms.
And this helps everyone
be on the same page,
so to speak, when you discuss or write
about the stories you read.
I'm about to drop a lot
of vocabulary on you,
so brace yourselves.
The story begins with exposition,
where we learn about the
characters and the setting.
Then, we introduce a
conflict, or a big problem.
As the characters begin to
interact with the conflict
or try to solve the problem,
we enter rising action.
This upward slope of the story mountain.
When the conflict comes to a head,
we hit the most exciting part
of the story, the climax.
Here, the conflict can't go any further.
We're at the top of the mountain.
There's nowhere else to go, except down.
After the climax, after this most exciting
part of the story, we
enter falling action.
The climax will happen much
closer to the end of the story
than to the middle.
It's not a symmetrical mountain.
The action slows down.
The problem has been solved,
or maybe the problem has changed,
and the characters
prepare for the last phase
of story, the resolution.
This is where we tie up loose ends,
characters reflect on what they learned,
maybe you set up a sequel.
Now, look, that was a lot
of information all at once.
In order to make sense of it,
let's apply all of those terms
to a story.
Now, our go-to has been
the Three Little Pigs,
and while that's a story everyone knows,
I'm starting to think
it needs to be freshened up a little bit,
really working its franchise
potential, you know?
So let's go through the elements of story
by looking at my new project,
a reboot of Three Little Pigs
that I'm calling TLP: Starbound.
See, it's Three Little
Pigs, but it's in space.
That's a space helmet.
So I'm gonna put a little
story map here in the corner.
Okay, so the exposition.
It's the future.
Pigs have expanded to
every corner of the galaxy.
Three brave little pigs decide
to strike out on their own,
exploring a new, exciting region of space.
One builds a spaceship out of straw.
Go with me here.
One builds a spaceship out of twigs.
And one builds a spaceship
out of flexible hyper alloy
they developed in a laboratory.
She's the brainy pig.
So, we've got the setting.
It's the future, they're in space.
We've got our characters, the pigs.
Now, the conflict.
Along comes the notorious
space pirate, Captain Wolf.
He's big, he's bad, he wants
to blow up the spaceships
and eat the pigs.
He begins hunting down the
pig ships, one at a time.
Think Captain Wolf has an eye patch?
No, he has a cyber eye; he's part robot.
And now we enter our rising action phase.
Captain Wolf engages the straw ship.
They have an exciting space battle.
(instructor making shooting noises)
And straw pig escapes
in the little escape pod
to the twig ship!
But Captain Wolf follows.
He is undaunted.
The tension continues to rise.
He destroys the twig ship!
(instructor making shooting noises)
The two pigs escape again,
this time to the brick house.
I mean, the flexible
hyper alloy spaceship,
piloted by the science pig.
And now, we come to the climax.
Captain Wolf comes to the advanced ship.
He tries to blow it up, but he can't!
It's too powerful.
He decides to board the ship,
because that's the only way
he'll get to eat the pigs.
But the pigs trap him in a space barrel
while he's still in the airlock.
They did it!
They solved the problem.
Captain Wolf is trapped in a space barrel,
and he can't eat them now.
The climax is passed, and now
we enter the falling action
phase of the story.
In the version of the story that I know,
the three little pigs roll
the barrel in to the river.
So I think maybe in this version
they punt the space barrel out the airlock
in to the cold void of space!
Or maybe they strand him
on a deserted planet,
but in any case, they never have to deal
with the wolf again.
The threat is now gone.
And that means that the
conflict has been resolved.
We're in the resolution
part of the story now.
The first two little pigs,
the straw ship pig and the twig ship pig,
learned that they need to put more work
in to their spaceships if
they wanna survive in space.
And they build fancy spaceships
just like the science pig.
And that's an introduction
to story elements.
Now that you're familiar with the ideas,
start applying them to
your favorite stories.
You can do this with any form of media:
books, comics, TV shows, movies, games.
What's the conflict?
How is it resolved?
Once you start looking for story
structure in entertainment,
you will find it everywhere.
Let us now what you see.
You can learn anything; David, out.
