Breakfast Soup · 11:03am Mar 30th, 2020

I wanted to write this exhaustive academic analysis after revisiting Butterfly Soup, a short visual novel by Brianna Lei, creator of Pom Gets Wi-Fi. She literally writes the best character dialogue since William Shakespeare, so you should buy this game immediately.

(also it's free)

I won't spoil anything at all here, just wanted to describe how the VN makes such a smart choice about story structure.

Report hazeyhooves · 224 views · #Butterfly Soup #story structure

Aug

2nd

2017

How to Twist (and Shout) - Kishotenketsu · 6:31pm Aug 2nd, 2017

Did you know there's only one story in the world? It's called the Hero's Journey, or Hero With A Thousand Faces. Literally every story you write is a repackaged form of this traditional myth. Right?

Nahh, of course that's ridiculous. People want to believe it's that easy, so they'll squeeze every story into that model, even when it doesn't really fit. It's an effective set of themes, but hardly the only option.

Report hazeyhooves · 2,633 views · #kishotenketsu #plot twists #story structure

Jul

8th

2015

3. Deconstruction of Pixar's Inside Out · 12:44pm Jul 8th, 2015

Hello dear followers and anyone who might chance upon this.

It’s been some time since I actually wrote down one of these deconstructive exercises, but I decided to do it now because of a blog post from Bad Horse about the same movie. I’m grateful for his post, for without it I probably wouldn’t have given this one a chance, and I ended up quite liking it.

Report wYvern · 1,127 views · #pixar #review #inside out #deconstruction #story structure

Oct

28th

2015

Why Crossovers are Bad · 1:17am Oct 28th, 2015

Generalizations are a dangerous thing. They often have exceptions, and require subjective judgements to make. The subject of today’s opinion piece, however, is a generalization that I believe in.

Report cleverpun · 857 views · #Musings #story structure #writing #crossovers #plot #story construction #polite debate #cleverpun

Feb

25th

2016

Examining Flaws in Human in Equestria Stories: The Lack of Aliens · 4:01am Feb 25th, 2016

I’ve ranted in the past about how FiM breeds wish fulfillment, and how crossovers fundamentally violate the Law of Conservation of Detail. I mentioned in the latter that Human in Equestria has similar problems. Oddly, despite having similar problems, HiE also has other problems that are all its own (despite crossovers often involving humans anyway).

Report cleverpun · 655 views · #Musings #story structure #writing #human in equestria #HiE #plot #story construction #aliens #science fiction #polite debate

Sep

14th

2015

Continuation versus Conclusion; The Dichotomy of Story Structure · 7:12am Sep 14th, 2015

The more fiction I consume, the more I notice patterns. Pigeonholing subjective art is never going to be perfectly accurate, but there are generalizations that have some truth. Today, I’d like to talk about a pattern that is present in all fiction, but is more noticeable and more identifiable in fanfiction.

Broadly speaking, fiction can be divided into two types; those that are designed to conclude, and those that are designed to continue for as long as possible.