A story structure, narrative structure, or dramatic structure (also known as a dramaturgical structure) is the structure of a narrative work such as a book, play, or film. There are different kinds of narrative structures worldwide, which have been hypothesized by critics, writers, and scholars over time. This article covers the range of dramatic structures from around the world: how the acts are structured and what the center of the story is supposed to be about widely varies by region and time period.
Africa and African diaspora Caribbean Kwik Kwak The Kwik Kwak (also called as crick crack) structure involves three elements: the narrator, the protagonist, and the audience. The story itself is considered a performance so there is a synergy among the aforementioned elements. In the story, the narrator may draw attention to the narrative or to himself as storyteller. The structure often includes the following: Tell riddles to test the audience. Audience becomes a chorus and comments on the story.
Usually there is a ritual ending.
West Africa Griot A story structure commonly found in West Africa told by Griot storytellers, who tell their stories orally. Famous stories from this tradition include Anansi folktales. This storytelling type had influence on later African American, Creole, and Caribbean African diaspora stories.
The story structure is as follows:
Opening formula – includes jokes and riddles to engage audience participation. Then a solemn beginning. The body/expository section – narration of the tale, setting up the characters and the events, defining the conflict, with storyteller singing, dancing, shouting and inviting the audience to join. The storyteller uses a language full of images and symbolism. The conclusive formula – closure of the story and the moral.
The central driver of the story is memory. The griot or the storyteller relies on collective knowledge and can perform several functions such as educator, counselor, negotiator, entertainer, and custodian of the collective memory.
Indigenous peoples of North America and Latin America Central America Robleto Robleto is a story form that originates from Nicaragua. It is named after Robert Robleto, though the structure is much older than him and discovered by Cheryl Diermyer, an outsider, in 2010. It is made of: Line of Repetition Introduction Climax Journeys Close
South America Harawi
Harawi is an ancient traditional genre of Andean music and also indigenous lyric poetry. Harawi was widespread in the Inca Empire and now is especially common in countries that were part of it, mainly: Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Typically, harawi is a moody, soulful, slow and melodic song or tune played on the quena (flute). The words of harawi speak of love (often unrequited), the plight of ordinary peasants, privations of orphans, etc. Melodies are mainly in minor pentatonic scale.
Asia East Asia
Dream diary (Japan) Dream diaries (夢記 ゆめのき) is separate from the Dream record and was started by Buddhist monks in 13th-century Japan, who recorded their dreams in diaries. These dreams were often recorded, shared and viewed.
Dream record This is a story type that starts with a dream. It was invented in the Ming Dynasty and exported to Korea. The structure deals mainly with a character either reflecting on their life or telling another dead character about their life. It often reflects regret from the characters about their life choices and helps them to either move on or accept their reality. It was never imported into Japan because Japan had an anti-Chinese sentiment in the Tokugawa era starting in the 1600s and the collapse of the Ming empire was in 1618.
East Asian 4-act
This dramatic structure started out as a Chinese poetry style called qǐ chéng zhuǎn hé (起承转合) and then was exported to Korea as gi seung jeon gyeol (Hangul: 기승전결; Hanja: 起承轉結) and Japan as kishōtenketsu (起承転結). Each country has adapted their own take on the original structure.
Eight-legged essay
The eight-legged essay () was a style of essay in imperial examinations during the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. The eight-legged essay was needed for those test takers in these civil service tests to show their merits for government service, often focusing on Confucian thought and knowledge of the Four Books and Five Classics, in relation to governmental ideals. Test takers could not write in innovative or creative ways, but needed to conform to the standards of the eight-legged essay. Various skills were examined, including the ability to write coherently and to display basic logic. In certain times, the candidates were expected to spontaneously compose poetry upon a set theme, whose value was also sometimes questioned, or eliminated as part of the test material. This was a major argument in favor of the eight-legged essay, arguing that it were better to eliminate creative art in favor of prosaic literacy. In the history of Chinese literature, the eight-legged essay is often said to have caused China's "cultural stagnation and economic backwardness" in the 19th century.
Jo-ha-kyū
is a concept of modulation and movement applied in a wide variety of traditional Japanese arts. Roughly translated to "beginning, break, rapid", it essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly. This concept is applied to elements of the Japanese tea ceremony, to kendō and other martial arts, to dramatic structure in the traditional theatre, and to the traditional collaborative linked verse forms renga and renku (haikai no renga).
The concept originated in gagaku court music, specifically in the ways in which elements of the music could be distinguished and described. Though eventually incorporated into a number of disciplines, it was most famously adapted, and thoroughly analysed and discussed by the great Noh playwright Zeami,Zeami. "Teachings on Style and the Flower (Fūshikaden)." from Rimer & Yamazaki. On the Art of the Nō Drama. p20. who viewed it as a universal concept applying to the patterns of movement of all things.
West Asia Chiastic structure
A kind of structure found in the Torah, Bible and Quran using a form of repetition.
Hakawati
A Palestinian form of literature which includes 1001 Arabian Nights. This structure also includes are many religious works, including the Torah, Bible, and Quran.
Karagöz
Karagöz (literally Blackeye in Turkish) and Hacivat (shortened in time from "Hacı İvaz" meaning "İvaz the Pilgrim", and also sometimes written as Hacivad) are the lead characters of the traditional Turkish shadow play, popularized during the Ottoman period and then spread to most nation states of the Ottoman Empire. It is most prominent in Turkey, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Adjara (autonomous republic of Georgia). In Greece, Karagöz is known by his local name Karagiozis; in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he is known by his local name Karađoz.
Karagöz plays are structured in four parts: Mukaddime: Introduction. Hacivat sings a semai (different at each performance), recites a prayer, and indicates that he is looking for his friend Karagöz, whom he beckons to the scene with a speech that always ends "Yar bana bir eğlence" ("Oh, for some amusement"). Karagöz enters from the opposite side. Muhavere: dialogue between Karagöz and Hacivat Fasil: main plot Bitiş: Conclusion, always a short argument between Karagöz and Hacivat, always ending with Hacivat yelling at Karagöz that he has "ruined" whatever matter was at hand and has "brought the curtain down," and Karagöz replying "May my transgressions be forgiven." Sources:Ersin Alok, "Karagöz-Hacivat: The Turkish Shadow Play", Skylife - Şubat (Turkish Airlines inflight magazine), February 1996, pp. 66–69.
Ta'ziyeh
Ta'ziyeh is an Iranian Shi'ite Muslim ritual that reenacts the death of Husayn ibn Ali (the Islamic prophet Muhammad's grandson) and his male children and companions in a brutal massacre on the plains of Karbala, Iraq in the year 680 AD. His death was the result of a power struggle in the decision of control of the Muslim community after the death of Muhammad.
Europe and the European diaspora Aristotle's analysis Many scholars have analyzed dramatic structure, beginning with Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 335 BCE).
In his Poetics, a theory about tragedies, the Greek philosopher Aristotle put forth the idea the play should imitate a single whole action and does not skip around (such as flashbacks). "A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end. A beginning is that which is not a necessary consequent of anything else but after which something else exists or happens as a natural result. An end on the contrary is that which is inevitably or, as a rule, the natural result of something else but from which nothing else follows; a middle follows something else and something follows from it. Well constructed plots must not therefore begin and end at random, but must embody the formulae we have stated." (1450b27). He split the play into two acts: δέσις (desis) and λύσις (lysis) which roughly translates to binding and unbinding, though contemporary translation is "complication" and "dénouement". He mainly used Sophocles to make his argument about the proper dramatic structure of a play.
He argues that for a proper tragedy the plot should be simple: a man moving from prosperity to tragedy and not the reverse. It should excite pity or fear, to shock the viewer. He also states that the man needs to be well-known to the audience. The tragedy should come about because of a flaw in the character.
Aristotle ranks the elements of a tragedy, in order of importance, as follows: Plot, Character, Events (or "Reason": the rationale for the actions that occur), Diction, Music, and Spectacle. And that all plays should be able to be performed from memory, long and easy to understand. He was against character-centric plots stating "The Unity of a Plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having one man as its subject." He was against episodic plots. He held that discovery should be the high point of the play and that the action should teach a moral that is reinforced by pity, fear and suffering. The spectacle, not the characters themselves would give rise to the emotions. The stage should also be split into "Prologue, Episode, Exode, and a choral portion, distinguished into Parode and Stasimon..."
Unlike later, he held that the morality was the center of the play and what made it great. Unlike popular belief, he did not come up with the three act structure popularly known.
One-act play
Said to be innovated by Euripides for his play Cyclops, it wasn't wildly popular until the late 19th century with the rise of film. Alice Guy-Blaché made a comment about it in the documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, where she commented that many of the films of the time required a quick punchline at the end.
It is still used today, but fell out of popular favor for films around the late 1930s to 1940s, when the runtime for an average film became longer. (See Kenneth Rowe and Lajos Egri.)
Horace's analysis The Roman drama critic Horace advocated a 5-act structure in his Ars Poetica: "Neue minor neu sit quinto productior actu fabula" (lines 189–190) ("A play should not be shorter or longer than five acts"). He also argued for a Chorus, "The Chorus should play an actor's part, energetically," and the center of the play should be morality as Aristotle did.
"It should favour the good, and give friendly advice, Guide those who are angered, encourage those fearful Of sinning: praise the humble table's food, sound laws And justice, and peace with her wide-open gates: It should hide secrets, and pray and entreat the gods That the proud lose their luck, and the wretched regain it."
He did not specify the contents of the acts.
Aelius Donatus