Moving on to the fourth leaf of our Five Leaf Genre Clover, let’s begin with Archplot, the classic Story structure, sometimes referred to as the “quest” narrative. In summary, it has the following qualities: In a consistent and cause/effect reality like the one we all inhabit in our everyday lives, Archplots feature a single active... Read more »
While the Archplot is the stuff of tent pole action movies and master detective murder mysteries, Miniplot is most often associated with the literary Story culture. See The Autodidact’s Dilemma for more about the literary and commercial cultures in book publishing. The content genres most associated with Miniplot are the Internal ones—Status, Worldview, and Morality.... Read more »
If Archplot is the structural backbone of the External Content Genres and Miniplot serves the Internal Content Genres (see Genre’s Five Leaf Clover), what’s the deal with the third structural genre, Antiplot? This is the kind of question a Story nerd like myself loves to noodle. It’s like asking a Pittsburgh Steeler fan to compare... Read more »
Welcome to the rich world where self-esteem meets external validation, where characters rise gloriously on their own merits or fall ignominiously by their own weaknesses. A world of admiration, joy, catharsis, and pity that you can harness and deliver to your readers. This is the Status Genre. We write better Status stories when we have a... Read more »
Are you a bad-ass writer ready to start a revolution? Or are you harboring an ideal worth pursuing while preferring more subtle change? Take a journey with me into the Society Genre and unlock the code that will improve your writing, help you shift power from the oppressors to the oppressed, and embolden others to... Read more »
What if I told you that Worldview stories are crucial to human evolution, vital to our basic survival, part of what makes us human? What if I said there is an invisible mesh-like structure holding almost every story together? And what if I could help you decipher that mesh and unlock your readers’ understanding of... Read more »
