The industry-standard storytelling program Save the Cat!, developed by late screenwriter Blake Snyder, provides two chief implements for writers of fiction.
The first is the “beat sheet,” which is just Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey by another (more user-friendly, less academically dense) set of names: “Crossing the First Threshold” is renamed “Break into Two”; “Tests, Allies, Enemies” becomes “Fun and Games”; “Approach to the Inmost Cave” is simplified as “Midpoint”; and so forth. The beat sheet offers an easy-to-use mythic blueprint for outlining a narrative.
Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey,” or monomyth
The second tool, which is really Snyder’s principal innovation, are his genre classifications—the ten different narrative variations on the hero’s journey, each with its own central dramatic question and particular set of story conventions: Monster in the House is about a killer in a confined setting (Jaws, Halloween, Fatal Attraction); Dude with a Problem depicts an innocent hero thrust suddenly into a life-or-death battle (Die Hard, The Martian, Home Alone); Golden Fleece stories are about a quest undertaken for a defined and/or tangible prize (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ocean’s Eleven, Stand by Me), etc.
The beat sheet offers the writer a universal macrostructural narrative foundation; the genre categories prescribe the requirements/expectations germane to each of the ten subtypes of story models. The most successful narratives are recognizable as a single genre only, whereas some of the biggest bombs and/or creative failures of recent memory (47 Ronin, Winter’s Tale, The Mountain Between Us) mixed and matched tropes from multiple genres, leaving the audience bewildered and disoriented.
Of course, the hero’s journey/beat sheet doesn’t apply to fiction in the new “postnarrative” mode of our hyperlinked Digital Age, which “is not about creating satisfying resolutions, but rather about keeping the adventure alive and as many threads going as possible” (Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, [New York: Penguin Group, 2013], 34). So, given that, do Snyder’s genre types, then, have any relevance for nonlinear, open-ended “rabbit-hole” fiction—like Lost, Mr. Robot, This Is Us, and Westworld—for which “an ending tying everything up seems inconceivable, even beside the point” (ibid.)?
In a previous post titled “Saving the Cat from Itself,” I argued that postnarrativity, as a form, hadn’t yet been codified—merely identified—and therefore it would be a mistake to impose Snyder’s templates on series like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. Beyond that, I haven’t much explored the matter, let alone settled it.
In today’s guest post, longtime friend of the blog Dave Lerner, a.k.a. dellstories, takes on the issue of whether the genre classifications of Save the Cat! have any applicability to postnarrativity. Feel free to post follow-up questions for Dave in the comments section below, and kindly pay a visit to his Patreon page. Take it away, Dave!
The hero’s journey forms the foundation for the basic stories we all know, the stories that have existed as long as people have existed. In his three Save the Cat! (STC!) books, writing mentor and consultant Blake Snyder divided these narratives into ten genres; not by way of general designations such as horror or mystery or romance, but rather Monster in the House and Whydunit and Buddy Love—plus seven others—each based on a different central dramatic question. These genres help set up and outline a story’s fundamental plot, and, used properly, guide it to a satisfying conclusion. But they seemingly apply only to traditional narratives.
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff discovered that certain modern storytelling patterns—what he termed “postnarrativity”—do not follow traditional story structure, but instead present a scenario “in which there are either no stakes or consequences (he cites The Simpsons as an example), the viewing experience itself supplants linear plot progression as the entire point of the program (Beavis and Butt-head, Mystery Science Theater 3000), or, the movement’s current permutation: sprawling ensemble shows like Lost, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead, which ‘are less about what will happen next, or how the story will end, than about figuring out what is actually going on right now—and enjoying the world of the fiction, itself’” (Sean Carlin, “Journey’s End: Rushkoff and the Collapse of Narrative,” Sean P Carlin [blog], June 22, 2015).
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff and “Present Shock”
Traditional narrativity concerns itself with resolution and catharsis and what happens next, whereas postnarrativity emphasizes interconnectivity and pattern recognition and what is happening now. So one might think Blake’s genres have no place in postnarrative fiction, in which “[t]here is plot—there are many plots—but there is no overarching story, no end” (Rushkoff, Present Shock, 34; emphasis added). Yet despite the differing structures and agendas of the two forms, within any individual postnarrative saga there will be numerous subplots—which each, more or less, observe one of Snyder’s ten genres.
EXPANDING TO FILL THE SPACE AVAILABLE
Two facets of postnarrativity can muddy the identification of a specific genre.
The first is that, as noted above, there is no “main plot” whereby we know the story is over. But we do know when the various arcs or plots within are over. It’s just that when one plot ends—or sometimes before it ends—another begins. Look at how many shows have failed to bring a particular plotline to a satisfying conclusion, and how poorly that particular plot is received.
The second is that multiple characters may have different plotlines that adhere to the requirements of completely different genres. Sean has noted that mixing two or more story models in a single narrative only results in confusion. But in postnarrativity, the numerous plotlines are separate—often only tangentially connected or entirely disconnected from one another—thus several genres can arguably coexist within the same overall narrative. (Of course, a specific character’s plotline should not change genres in the middle.)
Notice that in the “no stakes” iteration of postnarrativity, each individual episode of The Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-head, and Mystery Science Theater 3000, as opposed to the series in aggregate, follows the beat sheet and conforms to the dramatic requirements of an STC! genre.
As for sprawling ensemble series, consider the following: Sean has identified the Marvel Cinematic Universe as postnarrative. Each movie builds on the ones before it and leaves unresolved threads for the ones to come. The movies and TV shows feed off each other (unlike DC, where the movies and TV shows exist in two completely different continuities—and the TV shows are better).
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, action unfolds simultaneously, not sequentially
However, if you put aside the build-ups and the threads, the interconnections, each movie adheres to one of Blake’s STC! genres (and again, follows the beat sheet)—usually Superhero, naturally enough, though Ant-Man is Golden Fleece (“Caper Fleece”). As for the TV shows, in an episode the characters will face a defined problem, and even if that problem is not solved in the same episode, it does eventually get solved one way or another. It may leave loose ends that get picked up later, but the immediate problem is resolved. And the immediate problem is usually Golden Fleece or Whydunit, occasionally Superhero. Of course, the characters may have more than one problem at a time, but each dramatic problem will honor the requirements of its own genre. And if you examine each plot individually, yes, it usually follows the beat sheet.
The Walking Dead. Various plots abound. Shane becomes increasingly erratic, forcing Rick to kill him. The Governor threatens the main characters, and gets killed. Negan threatens the heroes, and is stopped. All different plotlines within the arc of the series. And within these plots there are various adventures, such as getting supplies, that definitely qualify as genres, mostly Golden Fleece.
Like the MCU, this “Walking Dead” key art exemplifies the show’s postnarrative worldview
As for Game of Thrones, in a comment I made on “Monster Mash: When It’s Too Long at the Party,” I wondered if, in the first season, Daenerys’ plotline could be Fool Triumphant, Anya Stark’s Rites of Passage, and Ned Stark’s investigation of Joffrey’s true parentage Whydunit, with other characters each having their own traditional STC! genre plot within the nontraditional tapestry of Game of Thrones.
Comic books and soap operas, as previously noted on this blog, took a postnarrative approach to their storytelling before postnarrativity was cool. “The Death of Jean DeWolff,” a four-part story arc featured in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #107–110 (October 1985–January 1986), could in many ways be considered postnarrative. Spider-Man and Daredevil, the main characters, had long been established beforehand, with Spider-Man starring in three separate monthly books at the same time, and Daredevil headlining his own comic; Jean DeWolff herself was a minor recurring character. During the story there is a quick scene where a thief dressed as Santa Claus fools a child and steals a TV; this scene, irrelevant to the main arc, isn’t resolved until Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #112 (March 1986).
“The Death of Jean DeWolff” story arc from “Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man” #107–110
And later storylines built on key events from “The Death of Jean DeWolff”: The Spectacular Spider-Man #134–136 (January–March 1988) is about the origin of the main villain, the Sin-Eater, and his attempted rehabilitation. In The Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988), Daily Globe journalist Eddie Brock’s exposé of the man who claimed to be the Sin-Eater, Emil Gregg, led to Brock being fired, losing his wife, and ultimately becoming the super-villain Venom. Although much of the continuing storylines during and after the arc are not dissimilar to traditional stories with sequels, the overall setup is, I think, postnarrative, particularly the Santa Claus scene. However, the four issues of “The Death of Jean DeWolff” comprise a single straightforward Whydunit.
Some genres—particularly Superhero, Golden Fleece, and Whydunit—most readily allow a single character or a group of characters to have one adventure after another. (The Star Trek movies, for instance, have employed all three of those genres, among others.) The characters can always face a new mystery, quest, or nemesis. For other genres, though, once the central question has been answered, asking the same question again strains credibility or loses impact: The monster has become familiar (Monster in the House); the magical spell has taught its life-altering lesson (Out of the Bottle); the fool has triumphed (Fool Triumphant). How many Die Hard movies, after all, did it take before the series’ Dude with a Problem scenario strained credibility to the point of creative collapse?
WORLDS WITHOUT END
You already know that for many now-concluded postnarrative shows, the ending is usually disappointing. That’s because, whereas the ending is an important—perhaps the most important—aspect of a traditional narrative, postnarrativity is about the “now”; it isn’t supposed to end. But I would argue that the various traditional plotlines within each need a traditional ending.
Typically, a postnarrative saga can end in one of four ways, although, in true postnarrative fashion, some shows seem to fit more than one category:
- All plots get wrapped up at the same time, leaving nothing of significance left. This is unrealistic, and anti-postnarrative to boot. The X-Files has been accused of this.
- The series simply ceases, leaving unresolved plots unfinished. This is not at all satisfying, though it can lead to fan-fiction. It can also lead to a movie, though the fan-fiction is usually better thought-out, more carefully written, closer to the original story and characters, and just superior in general. Farscape, which started off traditional but later on became postnarrative, had this type of ending.
- All the characters get killed (one interpretation of The Sopranos), tossed in prison (Seinfeld), or otherwise have their stories ended for them—a good way to anger fans who’ve watched these characters, felt their pain, laughed and cried with them, for years.
- Everything is rebooted. The previous continuity is dropped. Start again. There may be a few exceptions, a few nods to the previous continuity, but mostly everything you knew and loved about the earlier story is gone. This presents the same problem as #3. Although the original Star Wars movies were not postnarrative, the Extended Universe was. But then Disney declared almost the entire EU noncanonical.
In each case, postnarrativity seems resistant to resolution. Any writer who comes up with a fifth way, a way that solves this problem, will be hailed as a genius and rightfully so. Perhaps that writer is reading this article right now.
Of course, I must agree with Sean that one should not mindlessly apply old techniques to new paradigms. When iron was first used in building bridges, the bridges were overbuilt; the designs were based on wooden bridges and did not take advantage of iron’s special properties. The earliest movies were little more than filmed stage plays. So, I must admit that I may be completely off the mark here. Compared to literally millennia of analysis of traditional narrativity, analysis of postnarrativity is so new that it will still be in its infancy many, many years from now. But I hope, in some small way, I’ve given writers interested in the postnarrative form, as the saying goes, food for thought.
And lastly, I want to thank Sean P. Carlin, Writer of Things That Go Bump in the Night, for giving me this opportunity to share a few thoughts.
Thanks, Dave and Sean! I remember, Sean, the very first post of yours that I read and thinking, “Interesting but … huh?” Funny: reading it all now, I feel like I’m just having coffee with old friends. I drop “postnarrative” like it’s hot now. 😀
I’m not sure what more I can say or add beyond the fact that “things change.”
I watch the show “So You Think You Can Dance,” and every season I think, “Where can dance go from here?” And then the next season, someone does something else that I’ve never seen or imagined could even be done.
I remember watching the winter Olympics in the 70s. Stuff that those skaters did back then as a “WOW!” moment—or things they were even banned from doing as “unsafe”—are not only now done routinely but are required, and then “you’d better show us something crazy if you want to win.”
Personally, while I enjoy some elements of the postnarrative form, I find it exhausting for the most part. But I think it’s likely here to stay.
You’re welcome, Erik
I know what you mean about Sean’s blog being an “old friend”. I occasionally reread, and comment on, his older stuff
Yeah, in almost every field of entertainment there’s a drive to go bigger and more amazing than the previous installment. Understandable, but too many sequels become so much about the “big” that they lose sight of character, plot, everything that made the original cool in the first place. Even if what made the original cool was great special effects, that still give diminishing returns
I too enjoy and get exhausted by postnarrativity, but I’m over 50. Possibly the newer generation, growing up w/ this form, will have an easier time of it
Thank you for reading my post
Thanks for reading and adding your two cents, Erik!
A few years ago, a lot of posts on this blog were dedicated to studying and discussing Save the Cat! and Joseph Campbell and postnarrativity, but, as you’ve probably observed, I’ve somewhat moved away from the analytical stuff in the last year or so in favor of more anecdotal pieces. There’s more than one reason for that.
For one thing, there’s the issue of sustainability: I’ve witnessed a lot of craft-centric blogs burn out after a few years because — let’s face it — there are only so many points to make about this stuff before there’s nothing left to say. And I’ve never been one to offer random “writing tips,” which I think are absolutely worthless; I’ve always advocated for studying a codified methodology.
Additionally, I started to get a little bored with the purely academic pieces. The more I blogged, the more comfortable I became inserting myself — my own feelings and experiences — into my essays, and I’ve grown to prefer the intellectual challenge and emotional insight that comes with writing those kinds of essays. (And, unlike the craft, my own life is more of a “renewable resource” for blog material!) Moving forward, the blog’s identity will be defined by personal dissertations like “State of Grace” and “Counter Culture” or quasi-polemics like “Changing the Narrative,” and less by esoteric examinations of narratology.
That said, however, I am aware — through private e-mails I receive and public comments posted on this blog — that there’s still an avid interest in discussing screenwriting programs like Beyond Structure and Save the Cat!, especially since Dave Freeman seems to have put the former on moratorium, and Blake Snyder’s successors have badly bastardized the latter. So when dellstories proposed this guest post, I knew there was an audience for it — and that he was just the person to write it!
On the subject of postnarrativity: To echo your closing comment, I too find the current open-ended televisional exercises in puzzle-solving (like Westworld) to be absolutely fatiguing, something I addressed in my recent interview with Bookshelf Battle. But the thing to understand about postnarrativity is this: It isn’t so much a storytelling form, a formal system to be codified, as it is a worldview — a nonlinear way of understanding reality that isn’t limited to a single, closed-ended path. That worldview is reflected in our popular entertainments; reality TV like So You Think You Can Dance is as much a consequence of a postnarrative (meaning nonlinear, hyperlinked) world as The Simpsons and Game of Thrones: It’s a new way of telling stories that no longer plays by the conventional rules as we’ve understood them for the past 2,000 years. So You Think You Can Dance, for instance, invests us in the contestant’s backstory — their reality — before it launches them into the earn-your-vote competition, right? It’s reality, but it’s storytelling, too.
Because we no longer distinguish, for good and ill, between those two entities — fiction and reality — anymore; we don’t want to be told there’s this and there’s that, or that there’s only the one path forward. Postnarrativity is about trying to broaden our range of options; it’s experimental, even iconoclastic. As storytelling “form,” it resists codification. It’s a way of saying, I’m not going to play by the old rules anymore. Trump, for example, broke the presidential narrative by embracing that worldview. Does that make sense? We live in a world now where narrative — the conventional Aristotelian arc of beginnings, middles, ends, and consequences — no longer really applies. We’re feeling our way through the weeds of a bold new world, where, as Rushkoff says, the objective is no longer to win, but merely to keep the game going.
As for how that’s impacted the institution of storytelling itself, that’s a complicated matter. It has certainly allowed us, after 2,000 years of doing it the same old way, to experiment with new forms and ideas to great creative prosperity, not unlike the way jazz reconceptualized our notion of what music could achieve. (Look at the way a show like This Is Us has made the “family drama” new and exciting again?) But it’s also somewhat undermined the discipline, too, because the “free-for-all” nature of postnarrativity has allowed a lot of writers to bypass, even dismiss, the classical three-act structure — to assume that “anything goes.” (Jazz may not have been bound by “rules,” but there was a reason for the arrangement of every note and beat, hard as it was to detect and unorthodox though it may have been.) That’s a topic I plan to discuss at greater length in (most likely) the next post…
Thanks for being such an engaged reader of this blog, Erik, and for indulging some of my more huh? type of posts! The time you take out of your day to participate in the conversation here is always greatly appreciated, my friend.
I always enjoy reading, Sean, because you are postnarrative: there does not need to be any one thing I find here that wraps anything up. (Nice try at least?)
I get what you’re saying entirely. I’m not decrying postnarrative storytelling. I simply can’t sustain watching it. Even if the story arcs aren’t clear or defined by a clear beginning, middle or end, I want the show to end eventually, if for no other reason than that I hate devoting time to something with no end in sight. I suppose it helps that there are seasons at least; breaks from it all.
As much as I hate to “say goodbye” to characters at the end of a book or movie, I do eventually need to say goodbye.
Yes, though I try not to pit traditional narrativity against postnarrativity — try not to turn it into an instance of You’re either on this team or you’re on that one — in the interest of illustrating that they are simply two equally legitimate worldviews, when it comes to television (and movies and books, too), my personal preference is for closed-ended stories (even if the story runs over the course of a full season, like the way 24 and Justified and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were structured). That’s why in my recent interview with Bookshelf Battle I sang the praises of The Orville for having the courage to go old-school; it feels much more like a classic Star Trek series than Star Trek: Discovery, which is — quite predictably — just another postnarrative BSG wannabe.
Nothing makes me happier than stumbling upon a Golden Girls rerun on Lifetime: It’s as sharp and well-acted and funny as it was thirty years ago, and in return for a half hour of my time, I get a self-contained narrative with a point. Contrast that experience with, say, when my friends are bouncing off the walls in anticipation of the new season of Game of Thrones, or the latest episode of Westworld, and all I can think to myself is, “How many more years of this shit am I obligated to endure…?”
That’s why, fifteen years ago, I quit The Sopranos halfway through the series. The show was at the height of its popularity — it was really one of the first mega-successful postnarrative epics of the new millennium — and it was must-see, watercooler TV, as I’m sure you recall. And I at one point said, “I think I’ve had enough.” And literally everyone I know responded: Why…? How can you stop watching what’s objectively the best show on TV?!
Because I needed to be released from that world, and Sopranos wasn’t letting me go, so I made the decision to extricate myself. When I’d watch GoodFellas and The Godfather, those movies would invite me into their world… but then they’d let me out. And Sopranos wouldn’t let me out. I didn’t have the vocabulary to properly diagnose what I was feeling at that moment, but I can see now it was postnarrativity fatigue.
I published a post a few years ago titled “The Exodus Is Here” which is all about how our generation is traumatized by finality, because we witnessed the cessation of the analog age, and what these postnarrative shows offer us are worlds without end. “Exodus” isn’t one of my favorite posts — there’s a good idea at the heart of it, but the piece itself is unfocused — but it talks about exactly what you addressed in your closing statement, Erik: that finality is something to be embraced, because it’s part of the truth of our existence.
In the post above, I linked to a New York Times article called “On That ‘Barry’ Finale and Why Some Shows Are So Good, They Need to End.” Toward the end of the essay, the author writes:
I mean, that kinda says it all, no?
>I hate devoting time to something with no end in sight
I think one of the attractions of postnarrativity to those who like it is that there is no end in sight. It’s supposed to go on indefinitely, so you never have to “brace” yourself for an ending
Of course, everything ends one way or another, and I don’t think postnarrativity had come to terms w/ that
But as Sean has said, there is still a place for the traditional narrative. There almost certainly will always be a place for traditional narrative
Some people like SF; some like Rom-Coms; some like Westerns. Some people like frothy comedy; some like serious gritty drama. You do not have to like everything. You don’t even need a reason why you don’t like something. Your taste is your taste. Unless you disagree w/ me, that is. Then you’re wrong 😉
Indeed. I know plenty of people who love getting lost down the “rabbit hole” of postnarrative fiction; they love that it leads everywhere and nowhere with no conclusive agenda. Sometimes I even love it, too: I’m completely taken with This Is Us, which has reenergized the family drama and made everything old about it fresh again. (But, then, unlike Lost and Westworld, This Is Us doesn’t promise some deeper meaning or payoff it has no intention of fulfilling.)
What I don’t like is that there are 500 television shows in production at present, and the lion’s share of them are these open-ended, ongoing series that require an indefinite commitment of one’s time and attention. I’m actually starting to resent it a bit. Additionally, I think the immense popularity of postnarrativity has played a part in eroding the influence of craft on the institution if storytelling — it’s affirmed an “anything goes” approach to structuring fiction — that I will discuss at greater length in an upcoming post.
So-called post-narrative storytelling was borne of cynicism: late-stage capitalism demands that a property be exploited until it can no longer generate profit, after which time it is abandoned only to be regurgitated later on, further stripped of whatever it was that caused it to be popular in the first place.
It is therefore not surprising that popular stories such as Star Trek, Star Wars, and so many other cultural phenomena have been given the Bay treatment, the corporations that own them neither understanding or caring to understand what it was about them that resonated with audiences. Focus groups seek ways to broaden the appeal of these properties beyond their original fan bases, seeking new demographic markets to exploit in the never-ending search for higher profits. After all, billions of dollars are spent every year making and marketing product, and in order to make a healthy return on investment, new audiences have to be found. And if that means alienating the older audiences, who cares, right? We’re dying off sooner than later, and anyway, the kind of enlightening storytelling we liked puts ideas in our heads, ideas that more often than not threaten corporate dominance.
Open-ended stories are fine for comic books, but eventually even those must end because readers sooner or later lose interest. Stories with a definite beginning, middle, and end provide much-needed catharsis for audiences. We need it in order to enjoy them. If there is none, we grow tired and seek alternatives that fulfill our need. As a result, the corporations, learning nothing from their financial losses because they are incapable of self-reflection or admitting error; they move on and refuse to provide what we want, choosing instead to cynically milk the next old property.
We must fight hard (and smart) to reverse the trend of never-ending narratives. How? By buying only those “products”, those stories, that provide catharsis, that have their journeys with planned endings. Of course, storytellers may tell new stories about what happened to characters after the end of the previous journey(s), creating new narratives with their own endings that give catharsis. That’s been done for centuries. But if we continue to throw our money away on content that doesn’t satisfy, Hollywood will not learn the right lessons and we will continue to suffer bad storytelling that insults our intelligence.
Of course I admit that the primary purpose of TV shows and Hollywood movies is (and always has been) financial. And yes, Star Wars, Star Trek, and other properties have suffered because, as you say, “the corporations that own them neither understanding or caring to understand what it was about them that resonated with audiences”
However, I find I cannot agree w/ your contention that all postnarrative stories are not worth our attention and do not satisfy, although as I say above, we still have not worked out how to end them
This disagreement is, itself, healthy. We’ll never learn and grow if we all agree on everything all the time. As I said in an earlier comment: If we had to be in perfect agreement about everything, then this wouldn’t be a series of techniques. It would be a cult. And I don’t want to join a cult. Black robes make me look fat
Hey, Michael! Thanks, as always, for engaging!
No one is more disgusted than me by the endless rebooting/sequelizing of IPs from a previous century, which is indicative of both the creative bankruptcy and rapacious avarice of Hollywood, and — more troublingly still — a sad testament to a generation of self-infantilized middle-aged men who’ve chosen to live in a 1980s time loop over confronting “the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence” (Pádraig Ó Méalóid AKA Slovobooks; “Last Alan Moore Interview?,” blog entry by Pádraig Ó Méalóid, January 9, 2014). I’ve written at exhaustive (exhausting?) length on this blog about how deeply disturbed I am about our culture’s crippling nostalgia addiction. I think it’s safe to say there is no disagreement on that!
But… moving forward, I need to do a better job of making sure we don’t conflate franchising and postnarrativity. Franchising is a business strategy designed to extract the maximum amount of dollars out of the same product by branding it — by tweaking and repackaging it to sell us the same thing over and over and over again. (And, to be fair for a moment to the corporations/studios — which, for the record, I loathe — we are buying the endless stream of Star Wars and superhero movies Hollywood is selling.)
Postnarrativity, on the other hand, is a collective worldview that has emerged from the seismic changes wrought by our Digital Age. Telecommunications technologies have fractured our sense of linear narrativity; our constantly pinging smartphones have reshaped the course of our day from a linear experience in which events unfold sequentially (we get dressed, we eat breakfast, we report to work, we come home for dinner, we unwind with a Scotch, we go to bed) into a “hyperlinked” reality in which events occur simultaneously: E-mails and voicemails and text messages and status updates are constantly pulling our attention in umpteen directions at once, turning personal time and office hours into an amorphous continuum with no beginning or end, and refusing to ever let us keep our attention fixed on the road ahead, on one thing at a time.
Furthermore, politicians and advertisers who abused the traditional narrative arc to sell us products and propaganda made us wary of that arc; we’re not willing to submit so readily to it anymore. That’s one of the reasons Trump appealed to so many voters: He in effect said, “You’ve been lied to by all the presidents who came before you, but I’m not going to play by that old, tired script; I’m going to write a new narrative that disregards all the old norms and refuses to acknowledge the consequences.”
You see what I’m saying? It’s a worldview. (I very much encourage you to watch this fifteen-minute lecture from Rushkoff himself for a more cogent and comprehensive overview of postnarrativity/presentism.) And that worldview is reflected in our fictions that break from the Aristotelian arc — itself a worldview — like the open-ended rabbit holes of Lost, Game of Thrones, Westworld, and This Is Us, among many, many others. Personally, I don’t believe anyone ever will solve the “problem” of concluding a postnarrative saga, because postnarrativity isn’t about zero-sum conclusion — it’s about non-zero-sum sustainability. It’s about keeping the game going as long as possible. To land on the “formula” for a satisfying resolution to a postnarrative work would be to violate the very ethos of postnarrativity, if that makes any sense!
Some postnarrative fiction will be good and some will be crap, same as traditional storytelling, but the reason it unspools interminably, adding more and more and more plotlines as it goes along, is because it reflects a nonlinear, open-ended view of the world. And regardless of Hollywood franchising — which, yes, sometimes now even abuses postnarrativity to justify an endless succession of sequels — the two forms can and will coexist for the foreseeable future. Says Rushkoff:
Given all of this, Michael, I will submit that if both studio execs and filmmakers had a better grasp on the mechanics of storytelling — both the classic and Digital Age modes — they’d be better able to manage their franchises. The incompatible demands of the two forms is certainly one thing (though by no means the only culprit) that bedeviled The Last Jedi, something I discussed in this comment. But that goes to a point I’ve been making since I started this blog: Craft is something that can and must be consciously learned, studied, practiced, and applied, so I’m grateful to Dave Lerner for opening up the forum to this subject today — and grateful to you, Michael, for engaging.
Sean
Makes me wish I was still in the classroom! I wonder, can this be applied to other types of literature aside from comic books. Makes me think of Stephen King and the way that a character or a place from one novel is present in another in a peripheral or sometimes relevant way, a type of meta fiction where there’s a world outside the novel that continues to exist even after the novel finishes. Am I on the right track here or am I missing the point?
One thing I believe, though I barely touch on it above, is that postnarrativity is a spectrum, not an either/or. A story can start out traditional, and become, in stages, postnarrative. Or be mostly traditional w/ a few postnarrative aspects
>a type of meta fiction where there’s a world outside the novel that continues to exist even after the novel finishes
I think that that is the very spirit of the “sprawl” type of postnarrativity. I think that you are definitely on the right track. I’m interested to hear about the scenery you see along the way
Hey, mydangblog!
As I mentioned to you recently in the comments section of a different post, when I first read Rushkoff’s Present Shock, it was truly eye-opening, because he landed on something that had been unconsciously nagging at me for a while: that there was a new style of storytelling — mostly televisional — that simply did not conform to the traditional monomythic patterns that every screenwriting instructional assures you forms the basis for all stories. Our collective sense of linear narrativity had been disrupted by the ever-on technologies of the Digital Age (as I explained in my response to Michael above), and out of this emerged (quite unconsciously) a “postnarrative” approach to fiction — nonlinear, open-ended, multiplot in nature — which emphasizes pattern recognition (how all the interconnected threads correlate) over value extraction (a “moral of the story”). Christ, I hope that makes sense!
The difference between monomythic and postnarrative fiction is one of both form and function. For instance, Gilligan’s Island and Lost are both about castaways on an uncharted desert isle; the former tells a closed-ended story each week with a little moral, or cathartic takeaway, whereas the latter presents a scenario that only grows more open and complex as it goes along, and exists for the sole purpose of trying to puzzle out what is happening and how it all connects, versus reaching a conclusion with a universal lesson, or an insight into human nature, or an emotional catharsis. If Gilligan raised a problem that wasn’t solved by the closing credits, you’d have been like, What the hell, man? Whereas did anyone really expect a satisfying resolution to the eight million plotlines initiated on Lost, or was the whole point to simply enjoy the ever-expanding world of the fiction for as long as it could sustain itself? I submit that anyone disappointed by the last episode of Lost didn’t really understand the point of the series (which may very well include its creator, Damon Lindelof).
Same could be said for The Lord of the Rings, which is a closed-ended Golden Fleece adventure, and Game of Thrones, which is a dramatized role-playing game writ large, designed to keep expanding for as long as the narrative can maintain continued outward growth. (The TV show is ending, yes, though that’s out of practical consideration for the production — the writers and actors understandably want to move on to other things — but notice that the novel series upon which it is based shows absolutely no sign of ending within the author’s lifetime.)
The fiction of someone like Stephen King for the most part takes a traditional (meaning linear and closed-ended) view of the world: He tells self-contained stories with resolution and catharsis. Sure, the version of Colorado he depicts in otherwise unrelated stories like Misery and The Shining and American Vampire might all be “linked” by way of a little self-referential crosspollination, but those are, I would think, just Easter eggs for his diehard fans versus some grander metafictional commentary on the nature of the worlds he’s created.
Wes Craven‘s postmodern masterpiece Scream is metafictional but not really postnarrative, whereas Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is arguably both of those things: It’s a commentary on moviemaking but also scrambles the linear familiarity of monomythic storytelling (to, at the time, rather controversial discomfort). But… do you see what’s happening now? We find ourselves wading into the murky morass of literary theory (a fun but ultimately pointless diversion I addressed in my recent interview with Bookshelf Battle). So let me stop us here before we sink any deeper!
What I’ve always advocated for is a command of craft: structure, genre (as Dave defines it in this post), and characterization. Thusly, I think it is very important for writers of fiction to be consciously aware of postnarrativity — that it plays by a different (and thus far uncodified) set of rules than the Aristotelian narrative — so one doesn’t start applying the principles of one mode on the other (as the so-called Master Cats often do).
So, mydangblog, I guess it comes down to this: If you find yourself reading/watching something that doesn’t seem to have a point other than outward expansion (Game of Thrones), pattern recognition (CSI), uroboric puzzling (Westworld), or pure self-reference (MST3K), safe bet that can be classified as “postnarrative.” If, however, it’s a closed-ended narrative (regardless of whether it’s a sequel or part of a larger series like Star Trek) that reaches a conclusive resolution and offers a moral or a measure of emotional catharsis at the end, then it’s in the Aristotelian mode. I don’t know — does that clear things up… or only confuse the matter?!
These discussions are so interesting. The line that most struck me was, “How many Die Hard movies, after all, did it take before the series’ Dude with a Problem scenario strained credibility to the point of creative collapse?” I enjoy post narrative series and the multiple plots when they’re done well, but I think it’s absolutely key to know when to end them, hopefully before:
1) the audience becomes fatigued. Right now, I’m starting to tire of the Walking Dead – something I never thought would happen. At the end of last season everything is resolved, and then Maggie and Jesus start another plot/conflict. Really? Why?
2) the plot gets so convoluted that it becomes absurd. Westworld has become a lot of work to keep straight and the plausibility is so out the window that I no longer care.
Or 3) the story becomes stale. Darth Vader vs Batman vs Hellboy. Good Lord. I just roll my eyes.
I don’t think of Games of Thrones as post narrative in the same way, particularly because it has an end. I feel the momentum moving in that direction and there is one more season to wrap it up. I feel that Lost did a good job of ending on time, even with the loose ends and questions at the end. Long television serials – such as The Office and The Sopranos also did a good job with the wrap up. Seinfeld felt a little lame, but maybe that’s just me. This who thing is just my viewer’s opinion, of course.
So, wrapping it up…. I say cheers to post narrative story telling, multiple plots, ambiguity, and loose ends, but know when to put the cap on it. 🙂
Thanks Dave and Sean for a stimulating post!
>How many Die Hard movies, after all, did it take before the series’ Dude with a Problem scenario strained credibility to the point of creative collapse?
Actually, that was Sean’s suggestion. I just ran w/ it because it was such a good point
>absolutely key to know when to end them
Like I said, that part hasn’t quite been cracked yet, although, as you point out, sometimes the endings work for different people
>Darth Vader vs Batman vs Hellboy
Which can’t possibly ever be as cool as it sounds. Though it would make a great fanfic
You’re welcome. Glad you liked it, and thanks for reading
What a wonderful comment, Diana! Thanks so much for giving Dave’s guest post the kind of careful consideration you’ve always shown mine!
Let me see if I can offer some brief point-by-point reactions:
– A lot of series that started out as DWAP wound up thriving creatively because they switched story models for the sequels. Examples of this would include Rambo, The Hunger Games, The Bourne Identity, and Mission: Impossible. (Even Weekend at Bernie’s went “Caper Fleece” for its sequel!) If the producers of Die Hard had been equipped with Blake’s tools, perhaps they would’ve avoided the creative burnout that resulted in the franchise’s slow, painful death.
– I, too, finally lost patience with The Walking Dead last season (long after most of my friends and colleagues reached their breaking point), and I think there’s a lot of reasons it’s stalling out — far too many to cover here. Certainly a major cause of the flameout is that the producers lost sight of what made the show so appealing — survivors that we cared about (who also deeply cared about each other) versus really cool zombies — and instead let the show devolve into a dystopian cliché whereby different factions are constantly at (violent) odds with each other for ill-defined reasons, and the zombies have become, quite curiously, almost incidental. There’s much more I could say about the matter, but it basically comes down to bad writing, something to which all fiction — Aristotelian and postnarrative — is susceptible.
– For all its endless talk about “narrative” and how much Robert Ford “loves a good story,” when you watch Westworld, you aren’t being told a story — you’re being asked to put together a puzzle. It’s an exhausting, unrewarding mental exercise that’s asks way more of its audience than it gives in return. Brian Lowry’s review of the second-season finale is short, concise, and worth reading.
– If you’re story is titled Alien vs. Predator, or Freddy vs. Jason, or Batman v Superman, that may be a sign your IP has been irreversibly creatively depleted!
– Does Game of Thrones have an end? Depends on whose version we’re talking about — Weiss/Benioff’s or George R. R. Martin’s. I’m by no means suggesting postnarrative fiction can’t reach a conclusion — even a satisfying one! — I’m simply saying (as I indicated to mydangblog above about Lost) that a resolution to one of these shows isn’t the point. Like a game of Dungeons & Dragons, the point is just to keep it going for as long as possible, and to enjoy the world-building. And, hey — if it wraps up in a satisfying way, so much the better!
As I’ve said in previous comments above, postnarrativity isn’t a fad — it’s an equally valid worldview as the Aristotelian perspective, and it’s brought about some truly amazing, thought-provoking, culturally defining works of fiction. Sure, it’s subject to abuse (same as traditional narrative is), and some of it’s going to be crap (also just like traditional narrative), but it is an culturally enriching mode that all storytellers should be consciously familiar with. Each has its particular challenges: Writers in the monomythic vein have a stronger blueprint to work with, but audience familiarity with those mythic patterns makes surprising them a tougher trick to pull off. On the other hand, postnarrativity is exciting precisely because of its unpredictability — the nonlinear, multiplot structure of Lost and This Is Us and Game of Thrones is very compelling — but it also runs the risk of “going in circles” or wearing out the viewer’s patience: Without a time-honored roadmap like the hero’s journey, a writer can get lost in the sprawl of postnarrativity, which seems to be what’s happening to both Westworld and A Song of Ice and Fire. With the different forms come different pros, different cons, different expectations on the part of the audience. Understanding that allows the writer to make an informed choice as to the challenges he will face if he takes one road versus the other.
Thank you, Diana, for indulging us! For those that may not know, Diana recently released her new high fantasy novel Soul Swallowers, which is earning rave reviews! It’s not too late to put it on your summer reading list…
I do try to dive into your posts, Sean, and in this case, Dave’s post, even though I occasionally feel like I’m in over my head. Lol. So, my comments are the “average schmo’s viewing experience without any idea of the underlying construction” type. I like it or I don’t like it – purely as a piece of entertainment. And honestly, all that “how it’s done” should be invisible, just like with the reading experience. And I am still 100% in on Game of Thrones. Martin never finished the series so I’m hoping HBO will. 🙂
Oh, And THANKS for the mention of the new book. 😀 😀
Congratulations on the book, and on the good reviews
Hear, hear! How Diana manages to be so prolific in both her fiction writing and her blogging is an act of awe-inspiring magic unto itself!
I’ve made a recent effort — as I’m sure you’ve noticed, Diana — to do more personal/anecdotal posts (for reasons I explained to Erik above), but there is still a healthy interest amongst practitioners of both Beyond Structure and Save the Cat! to discuss/debate those programs; some of the studies I’ve published on them remain the blog’s most visited posts! I feel, for the most part, I’ve said all I have to say about those matters — at least for now — but when someone like Dave expresses a perspective on it he wants to share, I know in advance there’s going to be an interested readership. So, sometimes the blog goes personal/anecdotal, and sometimes esoteric/academic! And I so appreciate readers like you for your willingness to engage with the blog no matter its “mood” in a given month!
Martin will never write the last Song of Ice and Fire novel. Oh, he’ll keep promising it’s coming… but you read it here first: He will never conclude that series. They’ll have to get someone else to do it posthumously, à la The Wheel of Time. Certainly the most recent season of Game of Thrones gives me hope that the TV show is headed toward a satisfying resolution, but, at this point, I’ll take any resolution to it. For me, it’s become a bit like a parlor game that’s gone on and on and on, keeping me at the party long after I’ve grown drunk and tired. (As such, I’ll be sitting out the forthcoming prequel series.) But, to be fair, I don’t know a single person that shares my weariness with it, so take that for what it is.
And I’m always happy to plug the work of a friend and colleague, so no thanks necessary! Everyone in our blogging community is pulling for the commercial success of Soul Swallowers!
>“average schmo’s viewing experience without any idea of the underlying construction”
Which is really what we’re all trying for. We don’t write just for writers to study our writing. We want to entertain, to educate, to enlighten. Even a self-aware piece, e.g, one that frequently breaks the fourth wall, still tries to pull you into its world, and how well or how poorly it does so determines how good or how terrible it is
Thank you for diving
Well said, Dave. We’re all craft geeks here (to one extent or another), but the goal in any successful piece of writing (particularly fiction) is for the techniques to be invisible. As my mentor David Freeman is so fond of saying, audiences want to be manipulated — they just don’t want to see the strings of manipulation being worked. Great storytellers make storytelling look easy. As students of the discipline, we are (quite rightfully) among the few who truly appreciate how much effort goes into making compelling storytelling look so effortless.