Story ARC, Story Conventions

 

How-to writing books and literary analysis courses have distilled storytelling conventions this way:

Inciting incident > Main Character accepts the challenge >Three attempts in increasing intensity at resolution > Climax/crisis> Resolution.

The most amusing pithy presentation on story ARCs is this mini joyride of a presentation by Kurt Vonnegut here, well worth the seventeen minutes it takes.

There are posts online that show simple graphs of story ARCs, such as this:

This is the tried and true. No argument there.

But then, ever so rarely, someone challenges these conventions and (even rarer) succeeds in making something new and wonderful. I was intrigued to read a post on this here.

 

When I began writing, I knew less about writing conventions and I did in fact write less conventionally. By now the story-ARC  rules are so ingrained in me that I wonder if I even could, or dare, to set them aside.

 

But it’s food for writerly thought.

The Special Demands of Picture Book Writing

 

The other day, I watched an old panel discussion of famous novelists whose books have been turned into successful films. YouTube is full of old treasures like these. Between writing, revising, and laundry— hanging out with these writers (all of them now gone) is my favorite sort of break.

 

Not one of the writers on this panel wrote their novels’ film adaptations. One, Kurt Vonnegut, said he simply couldn’t because writing a novel is what he does best and writing a screenplay is too different.

 

It occurred to me that while many think they could write picture books, few who try actually write true picture books. Vignettes, shorter short stories, a scene--- all pass for  picture book texts in the eyes of beginning writers. True picture books are something different.

 

True picture book texts are poetry, rhyming or not. In addition, they are screenplays, where the main action is told in images. They also require the skill of flash-fiction writing, as the word count tops up at 600-800 words. Unlike this blog post, it shouldn’t use passive construction. The story must be layered and complete.

 

I’m almost certain Kurt Vonnegut would have said he couldn’t write a picture book.