Veronica Berglyd Olsen
72 lines
2.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
72 lines
2.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _a_story_structure:
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Story Structure Comments
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.. _The Story Grid: https://storygrid.com
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As of version 2.7, story structure annotations using the ``%story`` style of comment is supported.
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To use the feature, make the first word of a comment ``story``, followed by a period, a structure
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term, a colon, a space and the text for that term.
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Here's an example:
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.. code-block:: md
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%story.term: text
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.. versionadded:: 2.7
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Usage
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=====
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The story term can be anything that you want to track in the manuscript. This construct is intended
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to make it easier to extract metadata from a work to perform a structural analysis of the story.
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There are probably as many ways to examine story structure as there are authors and editors
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combined. For this reason the story tag is flexible. You can use any terms you want and track any
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aspect of the story that serves your purposes.
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An example method has been advanced by Shawn Coyne in `The Story Grid`_. This method asserts that a
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story is composed of "beats", and that each beat has an inciting incident, a complication, a
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crisis, and a resolution. One might capture these elements of a beat where a character overcomes
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their fear of giving a speech as:
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.. code-block:: md
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### Scene
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%Synopsis: Carol overcomes her fear of giving a speech.
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%Story.incite: Carol is pleased to be invited to a conference to see her boss deliver a keynote.
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%Story.complication: Carol's boss calls in sick and asks her to deliver a big speech.
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%Story.crisis: Carol has a fear of appearing on stage.
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%Story.resolution: Carol engages the help of a coach who helps her overcome her fears and delivers a great speech.
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Other analytical models propose tracking a scene's pace, how it affects the mood of the story, or
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which element(s) of the story's genre are being satisfied. An author can use this mechanism to
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track any element of a scene. Some examples include time of day, how much time passes in the scene,
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or even the physical form of a shape-shifting character. If a story involves magic, one could track
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which wand a main character has in hand. It's up to tha author.
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When the story and other scene metadata is extracted into a tabular form, it is possible to get a
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comprehensive overview of the story and to identify possible issues. For example, so many
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fast-paced scenes without a break that readers might become fatigued or over-stimulated.
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Output
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======
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The story structure comments can be included in the manuscript, and are formatted similarly to
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the synopsis comments:
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.. figure:: images/fig_story_structure_manuscript.png
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A set of story structure comments as shown in the Manuscript tool.
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When you export your project data from the Outline View, all story structure terms are added as
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columns to the exported file, which can then be opened in the spread sheet software of your choice.
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