# Specific information about fiction stories

## Driving force

Fiction can be event-driven, but should dominantly be character-driven, and it shows through the creative process:

- Event-driven
  1. The creator wants to see an climax event the audience will remember through the complexity or grandiosity of events.
  2. They conform the characters to make the event happen in the most dramatic way.
  3. Everything serves the climax event's presentation.
- Character-driven
  1. The creator wants to see an climax event the audience will remember through the complexity or grandiosity of the character's changes.
  2. They build a character, then get inside their mind to make them emotionally respond to the events.
  3. Everything serves the character's experience in the climax event.
- Character-driven is more difficult, and therefore harder to scale.
  - Sequels and spinoffs become increasingly difficult with character-driven, since the climax will have to serve an increasingly complex personality.
- The audience's interaction diminishes character-driven development, which is why video games either require removing audience involvement (e.g., A/B choices) or making event-driven stories.

## Story types

Blake Snyder observed that every story effectively works through at least one of ten possible [primal](mind-feelings.md) associations:

1. Whydunit:
   - The story may be about the protagonist asking *who* performed a [sin](morality-sins.md), but the audience will want to know *why* it happened.
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. A detective
     2. A secret
     3. A dark turn
2. Rite of passage:
   - The protagonist must [change](people-changes.md) to conform to life's daily challenges.
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. A life problem
     2. A wrong way to attack the problem
     3. Acceptance of the hard truth
3. Institutionalized:
   - The protagonist is forced to [choose](people-decisions.md) to do something with [a social group](groups-small.md)
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. A group
     2. A choice
     3. A sacrifice
4. Superhero:
   - The protagonist is an extraordinary person in a mundane world, and is destined for greatness.
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. A power
     2. A nemesis
     3. A curse
5. Dude with a problem:
   - Opposite of Superhero
   - The protagonist is an ordinary person with extraordinary challenges and must rise to the occasion.
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. An innocent hero
     2. A sudden event
     3. A life-or-death battle
6. Fool triumphant:
   - Everyone underestimates the protagonist, who rises up and proves their worth.
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. A fool
     2. An establishment
     3. The fool's transmutation
7. Buddy love:
   - The protagonist meets someone, who transforms them.
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. An incomplete hero
     2. A counterpart
     3. A complication
8. Out of the bottle:
   - The protagonist experiences a magic change, but then realizes reality isn't that bad.
   - It doesn't have to be "magic", but does need to be temporary [power](power.md) (e.g., one-use [technology](technology.md)).
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. A hero who deserves the magic
     2. A spell or touch of magic
     3. A lesson
9. Golden fleece:
   - The protagonist goes on a trip to find something and learns about themselves along the way.
   - 3 mandatory elements:
     1. A pathway
     2. A team or friend
     3. A prize
10. Monster in the house:
    - The protagonist/group is stuck in a confined space with a monster who wants to kill them.
    - Typically, the protagonist is why the monster exists.
    - 3 mandatory elements:
      1. A monster
      2. A house
      3. A [sin](morality-sins.md) that brought the monster

The [genre](art-genres.md) will heavily constrain which narrative forms are permissible.

## Narration

Fictional stories are also known as "narrative".

- Narrative comes from its root "narrate", which means giving an account of events.
- This goes back to the historical concept of a person sharing a story, often in the evening with a fire burning.
- While information is presented in text is higher-quality, it doesn't change the exploration into [the unknown](unknown.md) that captured the attention of people thousands of years ago.

Every fictional account has to [feel](mind-feelings.md) like it is associated with [reality](reality.md).

- Any clear breaks in reality must either be implicitly explainable as [humor](humor.md) or speculative (i.e., science fiction, fantasy, or horror).
- Without that speculative explanation or humor, the entire story can only represent as an unreliable narrator.

Using an unreliable narrator is very convenient.

- It allows a degree of separation to cover any plot holes.
- The story can represent with more fluidity, since it's bound by the [personality](personality.md) of the fictional character instead of reality itself.

There are multiple forms of unreliable narrator:

1. Missing information
   - This is the easiest to create, and simply requires imagining the character to be inexperienced.
     - This is most easily done by referencing and permuting [an earlier personal life stage](maturity.md).
   - Watson (Sherlock Holmes): present for the event, but not as perceptive as the protagonist
   - Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games): present for the event and is the protagonist, but they don't fully understand what's happening
   - Jonathan Harker (Dracula): absolutely clueless about logical consequences of their experience and doesn't know which details are significant
   - Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries): describes details, but without feelings of any sort.
2. Attempting truth, but adding incorrect information
   - This requires a delicate touch of distortion, since you have to step a few paces away from the truth.
     - It also requires enough comfort with [uncertainty](understanding-certainty.md) that you can project the discomfort through the narrator's inadequacy to know.
     - Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events): not present for the event, reconstructs the facts on later research that may be wrong or incomplete
3. Subconsciously misbelieving the truth
   - The distortion has to be present, but always toward the narrator's singular [purpose](purpose.md) of coping with the facts.
   - Ted Moseby (How I Met Your Mother): present for the event, but misremembers or forgets details and nostalgia has embellisted parts of the story to make it unbelievable
   - Goob (Meet the Robinsons): emotional [bias](mind-bias.md) distorts their judgment over actual events
   - Rose Quartz (Steven Universe): present for the event, but depicts a [narcissistic](mind-neurodivergence-clusterb-narcissist.md) view where events made them appear better than the truth
   - Tyler Durden (Fight Club): suffering from hallucinations, but doesn't know it
   - Pi (Life of Pi): has suffered a [traumatic experience](hardship-ptsd.md) and turns it into a wonderful tale to cope with it
4. Consciously distorting the truth
   - This requires understanding the truth, then also clearly understanding the narrator's direct agenda for concealing it.
   - Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four): revises history to portray raw propaganda

In mixed media (e.g., movies, video games), there are multiple avenues to provide degrees of unreliable narration.

- Stream a mainline story, then add a secondary narrator later with a revision (e.g., the propaganda, then the resistance)
- In the flow of the story, give an alternative take on events (e.g., the game's journey, then adding bits of recorded/printed media throughout the game)
- As a second story altogether (e.g., the sequel with a second version of events)

In the case of a mature [genre](art-genres.md), it's almost necessary to provide unreliable narration.

- The genre-savviness of the audience makes a conventional story boring to them.
- However, an unreliable narrator allows for a conventional story to become interesting.

## Inspiration

To make a story, focus on what you love and hate.

- If you can combine multiple things you love with multiple things you hate in an unexpected way, you'll be praised for your [creativity](mind-creativity-how.md).

## Role-playing and games

Since the audience is a participant in games and role-playing, the story must conform to their [decisions](people-decisions.md).

- The most controlling approach is to create mandatory decision-making (e.g., this/that choices). However, this is not easy to accomplish without some form of constraint (e.g., time limits).
- The other option involves the players having the freedom to do whatever they feel like, then triggering events as they encounter them.
  - This can also be reinforced with a logical environmental consequence to a decision (e.g., "death walls", very powerful monsters that can't be defeated until much later in the story).

To enhance a story with a bodysnatcher/"The Thing"/doppleganger-style circumstance:

1. After the characters discover about the creature impersonating humanoids and they take a long rest, have everyone roll a perception check, pretend to make a note of it, but don't say anything else.
2. Hand each player a note the next morning that is exclusively for them.
3. Each player receives the same note that reads "you awake well-rested and rejuvenated, you feel ready to face whatever challenges the day may bring, continue playing your character as normal".
4. Watch them respond over time.