Oddbean

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is non-traditional story structures. (Spoilers for The Matrix, Sicario, and John Wick if you haven’t seen them by now…) A good example of a traditional story structure is The Matrix. It’s a typical three-act structure with an underdog protagonist who explores a whole new world, powers up via his mentor, and then takes down the stronger villain and gets the girl. But it’s more creative and better executed than most. Top shelf stuff. In contrast, a movie like Sicario is less traditional. We mostly follow the story from the protagonist’s perspective. But then toward the end, she basically gets defeated and her worldview is invalidated. And then a supporting character, like a dark anti-hero type, kind of takes over as the main character for the final 20 minutes of the film. It’s quite highly rated and very good, but that kind of structure can be risky because the protagonist that we've come to care for goes through an anti-climactic and unhappy ending, with the dark/cynical side winning over the light/optimistic side. And it’s not even as simple as “villains win”, but rather, the anti-hero kind of takes over as the main character and defeats villains in the original protagonist's place, so we have partial "protagonist rotation", where a supporting character kind of ends as the main character. It’s a higher difficulty level to land that type of ending because the viewer is like, “Damn. I mean amazing too, but damn.” A less complex example of a non-traditional structure is John Wick. It’s an action movie, one of the better ones for its genre, but the non-traditional element is that we know from the start that the protagonist John Wick is the biggest badass around. None of the villains are as strong as him individually, or even close really. The villains are the underdogs. And so to make that non-boring (“John Wick just kills everyone and wins easily”), it requires things like greater numbers of villains, and/or various schemes to surprise or outsmart the protagonist. It’s also a little harder to stick the landing because the climax can be less satisfying if you know from the start that the protagonist is stronger than the antagonist, and so it either needs emotional depth, complex situations, or other ways to make that ending satisfying. I’ve been exploring some of these and thinking about it a lot because my novel has a number of these types of non-traditional elements, which elevates the difficulty in terms of making them satisfying despite going against the basic structure that people expect as a baseline. Are there books, shows, or movies you like that go through rather non-traditional story structures?

This plot fits a lot of your questions. The protagonist is not the fiercest, strongest, smartest, or most flawless. As soon as we meet him, we see that he makes mistakes in action and in judgement. He violates his own oft-repeated rules. He struggles. Spoiler alert, the story arc ends with him admitting that he’s NOT special. He’s actually just one of us.

No Country for Old Men. I was gripped the whole time. I loved the main theme. You can be the most badass commando, but one stray bullet is still enough to take you. The villian winning and getting the last laugh was kinda lame though.

My favorite story arc is having two seperate worlds collide and merge. The story follows two characters that have all the pieces of the puzzle, but they don't really know each other. Its even better when one charactor is astonished by the other character. These are the most dramatic moments I have encounterred. Extra tasty when one character arrogantly underestimates the other for the whole story beforehand. Breaking Bad, where Hank finally discovers that Walter is Heisenberg. Arsenic and Old Lace, the psycho murderer dude discovers that his sweet old aunts are not so innocent and helpless. The Expanse, Detective Miller and Holden finally meet 2/3 of the way through the book.

That is why humans need to transcend their moral paradigm of good and evil. The Karmic outcome will repeat cycles of good and evil irrespective of the paths you choose. It is who life appears in 3-D reality. You can experience it happily and playfully only when you transcend 3D mindset.

I tried my hand at filmmaking & screen writing. Had a 5 year business plan to succeed. Year 1: learn story telling. Year 2: write 3 screenplays one in each genre (comedy, western, sci-fi). Year 3: put scripts in screen writing compition. Make 3 short films based on feature scripts. Year 4: Put short films in film festival circuits. Year 5 promote scripts with award winning short films. That was a journey I think I could write a book about. At the end, 2008 hit. The economic decline reduced my ambitions to living in a motorhome any place I could park it. Now I'm on the CryptoTruth journey... Life is short! Don't waste it! https://m.primal.net/LxNV.jpg

Graveyard of the Fireflies. Two children escape American bombing on rural Japan, Only to end up Isolated. Their parents are killed in the invasion and in a short lived effort to care for each other, One of the children dies. One of the saddest movies ever, But a glaring look at humanity and the injustice created by power.

The GoT saga, tenderly shifting the villain/hero axis as we progress in understanding the ever-developing characters. Needless to say there is no climax in GoT just the agony of an unfinished business.

Short fiction is great for breaking out of the typical 3 act structure. Reading Sci fi mags and anthologies will show you the possibilities. Also, anthology shows like Love Death and Robots are fantastic for this.

Knights of the Old Republic is the most interesting I ever saw where you discover in the middle you are the greatest villain whose memory has been erased and this make you face a very interesting change in perspective about the character you have been building since the beginning of the game and how to act next.

The Last of Us I personally don’t like the story but this probably is the most effective of all corruption args. The vast majority of players still believe that Joel is the good guy. Druckmann is a true master of manipulation.

Thinking of non-traditional story structures the first thing that comes to mind is “MEMENTO” (coincidentally also featuring Carrie-Anne Moss) In that sense Christopher Nolan usually bends traditional structures in his movies. On the other hand some different examples that come to mind are : - THE GUILTY (remake directed by Antoine Fuqua from a really cool danish original with the same title) - EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE (directed by The Daniels) - TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (directed by Ruben Östlund) Anyhow, very different examples that address different ways to break/play with revisiting traditional structures. Hope some are useful.🤙✨ #film