Joseph Campbell was not, strictly speaking, a scientist. He was a mythologist, proposing a recipe for fables and deriving its ingredients. His philosophy of stories is basically deductive—top-down. But Vincent Bruzzese is a scientist, and his theory of stories is inductive—bottom-up. Bruzzese studied millions of survey answers from thousands of people watching thousands of movies. It turned out that Campbell was right. There are rules to successful storytelling in popular films. The typical audience member couldn’t tell you explicitly what those rules are, but collectively audiences have been
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