Re:Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit (By Dan Harmon)
by camoufleur on Monday January 30, 2023 @04:19PM
(#34586523)
Your comment makes a lot of sense to me. But I think that "Today there were many crows, hundreds of them flying through the air" is your definition of data, not a story. Mentioning having to duck is either a detail (more data) or an event in an incomplete story e.g. if you go on to explain how you made a truce with the crows. There's information in the crow statement only if it communicates more than a proclamation that you went on a walk. People often hate when people tell them their dreams because it's (nonsensical) data mistaken for a story. There's no information.
What does tend to happen as story elements get added and more tightly bound together is something resembling traditional story structures. But that's like observing that natural systems tend to look like scale-free networks: it's an "end-up", not a "fate". Most of the industrial products made to fit story templates are providing entertainment, but only a facade of information: the story is actually built on wish-fulfillment or appeal to preexisting beliefs(nothing sells like a story you want to hear because it validates you), and the formula suggests a way to fill up runtime reiterating that.