While I don’t fully subscribe to William Goldman’s famous quote the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that no-one knows everything but some people know something. By that I mean that while none of these classes, books or methods is a magic bullet, while you’re sitting writing they will coalesce into a cohesive set of mental reminders, jogs and notes that will prompt you; “that’s too obvious”, “twist it this way”, “that needs foreshadowing”, “too obvious” etc. and together they will improve your writing.

From my, albeit limited, experience, if you’ve never taken a screenwriting class or read a book or joined a group then your work will, without doubt, suck a big, fat, hairy pair of ‘em but at least if you know some of the ‘rules’ then you have a fighting chance of writing something half-decent and maybe even successfully break them.

Perhaps it’s simply the limitations of a short story. And perhaps I am just too hung up on argument – but it works for my voice of the audience so-what-who-cares test.

Certainly news output exhibits the ‘slew’ thing. And we still call them stories.

I’ll take a look at Campbell on your recommendation.

If you’ve not already come across it I commend this page on Native American storytelling if just for the eight categories: http://www.pbs.org/circleofstories/voices/index.html

But I would vehemently disagree that fairy tales are ‘just a slew of events followed by a conclusion’.

You might be interested in looking at The Hero’s Journey. If you can handle Dramatica, you can handle Campbell! ;)

I have looked at a number of theories of story but have found only one of them to be comprehensive enough to be satisfying. But then I am a bear of little brain.

Dramatica is not prescriptive in telling you how or what to write. However, it ensures that the underlying structure of your story is complete. It certainly does not reduce a story to a set of mechanistic algorithms.

Not only does it work for narrative/dramatic fiction but I have also found it extremely helpful with documentary projects. In fact, when a friend of mine was in a bit of a corporate battle we put the essence of it into Dramatica which gave surprisingly accurate insights into what was going on.

Dramatica Theory describes what it calls a grand argument story. And that means a story that is structurally coherent, obeys the rules of its context and makes an argument that is both logically and emotionally convincing.

It describes a grand argument story as being a mind’s solution to a problem. It is therefore rich with cognitive psychology, for that is how stories work in our heads.

Accompanying the theory is a software package that has saved me from all sorts of stupid mistakes to which my lack of competence makes me prone.

It is not an easy thing to get into but I have found it very much worth the effort invested. There is so much free teaching material on the site that there is no real excuse for not giving it a try. Read the comic book first.

Following my (not inconsiderable) gut? Yes, but I check it with Dramatica to ensure that it’s a complete story and not just a slew of events followed by a conclusion – because that’s a fairy tale; just like the news.

For such an ancient human activity it’s surprising that there is still no generally accepted definition of story. It appears to be a generic term that we all understand – or do we?