Post by account_disabled on Jan 2, 2024 20:42:56 GMT -10
When I read my first fantasy novel, The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, I was fascinated by the various accidents of the protagonists. In fact, when I started planning my first fantasy, I enjoyed inserting quite a few, to justify a few dozen chapters. Now, after many readings, many of those obstacles seemed a little too unnatural to me, not only in that novel, but also in many others I have read, especially in the fantasy genre. This is why I wanted to talk about it in the blog, to seek an answer on the true meaning of obstacles within a story. Syd Field's inciting incident According to Sydney Alvin Field's 3-act model, illustrated in his book Screenplay (1979), the inciting incident , also called the catalyst , is the moment when the conflict begins and occurs approximately halfway through the first act of the story . It is at this point that the protagonist finds the first obstacle , the first problem to face and it is here that his life begins to change.
We can therefore also define the inciting incident as the starting point of the character's transformation arc . A story is an obstacle course The one who surpasses them all first wins, just like in athletics. The gist of a true story is very simple: someone has to do/achieve something and someone else and/or something else stops them Special Data from doing it. That's all, no more, no less. Try to think of detective stories : an investigator has to solve a case ( someone has to do/achieve something ) and the culprit ( someone else ) and/or the scant clues ( something else ) makes his job difficult ( prevents him from doing so ). There is no story if there are no obstacles to overcome, problems to solve, successes to achieve, lives to save, etc. Obstacles create empathy But why introduce obstacles into a story? Why, as we have seen, is there no history without obstacles? But we risk entering a vicious circle. No, the answer is different and I suggested it in the subtitle.
An obstacle generates empathy in the reader . We see it in real life, when we tell family and friends about a problem we encountered, an accident we had, that is, something that didn't make the straight line of our life go right. What we actually do, when we talk about something, is expose a problem, describe an obstacle that has interfered in our existence. Our listeners identify with us, we can perceive their closeness, not just physical. We have often heard people say "I am close to you". The essence of empathy is condensed in that simple sentence. We talked about something, a loss we suffered, a lost job, yet another bad luck that besets us, and the other person made her our obstacle to happiness. To reach the North Pole we can choose two routes: take a helicopter and get there comfortably set out and face the cold and nature Which of the two stories is more engaging? Which of the two creates more empathy than the other? Obstacles create empathy, but they also create history .
We can therefore also define the inciting incident as the starting point of the character's transformation arc . A story is an obstacle course The one who surpasses them all first wins, just like in athletics. The gist of a true story is very simple: someone has to do/achieve something and someone else and/or something else stops them Special Data from doing it. That's all, no more, no less. Try to think of detective stories : an investigator has to solve a case ( someone has to do/achieve something ) and the culprit ( someone else ) and/or the scant clues ( something else ) makes his job difficult ( prevents him from doing so ). There is no story if there are no obstacles to overcome, problems to solve, successes to achieve, lives to save, etc. Obstacles create empathy But why introduce obstacles into a story? Why, as we have seen, is there no history without obstacles? But we risk entering a vicious circle. No, the answer is different and I suggested it in the subtitle.
An obstacle generates empathy in the reader . We see it in real life, when we tell family and friends about a problem we encountered, an accident we had, that is, something that didn't make the straight line of our life go right. What we actually do, when we talk about something, is expose a problem, describe an obstacle that has interfered in our existence. Our listeners identify with us, we can perceive their closeness, not just physical. We have often heard people say "I am close to you". The essence of empathy is condensed in that simple sentence. We talked about something, a loss we suffered, a lost job, yet another bad luck that besets us, and the other person made her our obstacle to happiness. To reach the North Pole we can choose two routes: take a helicopter and get there comfortably set out and face the cold and nature Which of the two stories is more engaging? Which of the two creates more empathy than the other? Obstacles create empathy, but they also create history .