Lately I’ve been asked a few question about writing in general and writing for (web-)comics in particular, and while I happily chat about stuff like that, we prolly should get the basic terminology as it is used on this blog first.
Just to keep down confusion, you know?
Chances are you already know most of the following, provided you’ve ever cracked open a single book1 about creative writing. You might not know the words or have seen it put together in such a “snazzy” diagram, but the concepts themselves are nigh inescapable.
The Story
Characters: Who’s acting in the story?
Plot: What’s happening?
Setting: Where & When is it happening?
I think most aspiring writers are familiar with character-plot-setting – it’s the holy trifecta of the writing business. But all in all, the story itself is just an idea, a pure thought construct. You cannot share a story without the aid of the narrative Structure and the Implementation.
Narrative Structure
Like a decent piece of music, a story needs a rythm, a tact, a beat. The Narrative Structure is a framework to make sure that certain things happen at certain points of the story to keep the audience engaged. The ideal here is that the reader/listener/observer is carried away by the story’s rythmn – without ever realizing that it exists.
The most intuitive narrative structure is the beginning-middle-end2 one, but in our Western World the three-act and the five-act structure are the most common.
In general goes the more space you to work in with the implementation, the more complicated the narritive structure can be.
Implementation
If the Narrative structure is rythmn and tact, the implementation is the music as whole.
Implementation here means the actual words and lines on paper or screen. This is the story “made real”, this is how your audience interacts with your ideas. Until we invent telepathy, they can’t look in your head experience the story – your audience can only see what you commit to paper or electrons.
All your characters, your setting, the structure, your whole story, that’s carried by the implementation. This is the world of the details and their bigger meaning – your word choice, the way you structure your paragraphs, the very form you choose (short story, doorstopper novel, tv series, graphic novel, etc.), cuts, scenes, chapters and (in case of comics) panel and page breaks – all this matters, all this is the implementation.
Great characters, perfect narrative structure or a good plot – if you have a bad implementation, all of those barely matter. On the other hand, a good implementation can carry a bad story. “The plot sucks so much and the characters have the depths of a sheet of paper – but oh man, it’s fun to read!” That’s great implementation at work.
No implementation, no audience, no story. Basta.
The Disclaimer:
I’m self-taught artist/writer and still in the midst of learning the ropes of my craft. These posts are part of my learning process and a way for me to sort my thoughts, so don’t take this post as a recipe for Absolute Truth, Justice and American Pie. (Success is not guaranteed, either.)
Take what you’ve just read with a healthy dose of skepticismn and make sure to use other sources, too.
Footnotes:
- alternative sources: wikipedia, the google results or one the thousands blogs about creative writing ↩
- Don’t laugh. There ARE stories without a beginning or end. They can work too, but they’re different. Certain short storys, for example, often just start somewhere without having a setup, a proper beginning. ↩
