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FIELD OF DREAMS
How the Story World and the Hero Develop Together
This is the orchestration so essential to great storytelling.
Slavery to Greater Slavery to Freedom World:
The Lion King,
Shawshank Redemption,
A Streetcar Named Desire,
should live if he realizes his true self.
Apparent Freedom to Greater Slavery to Freedom
Time is the fourth major
need to get beyond two fallacies that many storytellers have about time.
Fallacies of Past and Future
fallacy of the past is common in historical fiction.
As a storyteller, you are always writing fiction.
withholding judgment about people in the past
absurd;
in ...
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Negatively,
values dominant in the past that still hurt people today.
Positively,
values from the past that are still good and should be brought back.
duty, honor, and...
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fallacy of the future
stories set in the future are about the future.
to abstract the present in order to understand it better.
forces and choices that face us today and the consequences if we fail to choose wisely.
“natural”
natural time are seasons, holidays, the single day, and the time endpoint.
Seasons
Meet Me in St. Louis and Amarcord—uses
Summer:
Fall:
Winter:
Sp...
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Holidays and Rituals
All Others Pay Cash
The humorist Jean Shepherd is a master at constructing a story around a particular holiday.
ritual, the holiday, and the season
Hannah and Her Sisters.
Thanksgiving.
story of simultaneous action that crosscuts among three sisters and their husbands or boyfriends.
Allen creates community through the structure by interweaving three different love stories and by using the holiday of Thanksgiving three different times.
Then the story fractures into crosscuts among the six individuals.
now coupled with the right partner. Story and holiday become one. These characters don’t talk about Thanksgiving; they live it.
The Single Day
a twelve-hour clock,
twenty-four-hour clock,
The Perfect Day
perfect day.
too much time without conflict will kill your story.
