Contextual Subgenres

theory
#107

I’m a little wary of using the variations as inspiration since they can mislead. Two examples:

  1. you could easily write a story about recovering the jewel and saving the planet (Obtaining/Rebalance) that sits in any of the four variations under the Obtaining quad.
  2. some of the stories listed may share the same variations or issues, but live in different subgenres.

Re: Confidence and Worth. Confidence may make sense in that quad if you think of a child with a stutter – they might not have any worries or anxieties, but a lack of confidence in themselves that creates an impulse problem. And Worth, likewise, could be a snob that gags at the idea of spending time with someone of a lower class (this might not be the best example).

I love The Twilight Zone so might take your suggestion and revisit them in the New Year.

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#108

I don’t know if any episodes have story forms for sure, but ones that I’m thinking of that impart some kind of point (and hopefully I’m not just mistaking cruel ironic twist endings some have as a point. Was there a message to “Time Enough at Last”?) are:

  • I Shot an Arrow into the Air (greed will destroy you)
  • The Shelter (greed destroys community)
  • The Obsolete Man (ideologies that devalue human worth = bad)
  • The Little People (don’t be a sadistic bully. Does it matter that the astronaut’s fate is an accident?)
  • It’s a Good Life (cowardice in the face of tyranny perpetuates it)
  • The Monsters are Due on Maple Street (paranoia divides and weakens people… but they were right to be afraid)
  • To Serve Man (blind trust = bad)
  • Terror at 20,000 Feet (just because you didn’t see something, doesn’t make it untrue)
  • Living Doll (just because you didn’t see something, doesn’t make it untrue)
  • Eye of the Beholder (Don’t mistake values, be they inherited from culture or a fascist government, for objective truth.)
  • The Rip Van Winkle Caper (all that glitters is not gold)
  • Number 12 Looks Just Like You (Not sure about this. Seems like it wants to play “conformity = bad” straight, but the ending subverts it since she’s happy and accepted now? “Rick & Morty” has an interesting subversion in an episode in which an alien mind-controlling a planet’s residents is likely the lesser of evils since within minutes of being freed by Morty and Summer (who, until the end, take freedom for granted as morally correct), the aliens continue their violent war.
  • Once Upon a Time (appreciate what you have) – personal favorite, <3 Buster Keaton
  • The Last Night of a Jockey (appreciate what you have)
  • The Man in the Bottle (appreciate what you have)
  • I Dream of Genie (changing your situation won’t make your life better but changing yourself will)
  • Nick of Time (it’s better to make your future than let perceived fate dictate it)

I can’t think of many other anthology shows aside from “The Night Gallery,” “Tales from the Crypt,” and “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”

I think Rick & Morty is worth watching to see if it has any storyforms. I don’t know if there are storyforms, but the episodes like to raise questions about morals.

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#109

Seems like the way you create a sub genre is using storytelling to filter your structure through KTAD or MEST, or some other version of that.

This is going to be a quick and dirty attempt to explain, but take Becoming as an example. Let’s say the source of conflict within the story is John becoming a monster. As John slowly becomes more of a monster, he drives more people away, destroys relationships, murders those he knows and loves, whatever. That’s the source of conflict.

You can tell that story by focusing on the knowledge of what John is becoming and what will come of it. People know or do not know what is happening with John or why. Their knowledge isn’t the source of conflict, though. It’s just how that conflict is being told.

Or you could tell the story by focusing on considerations of what to do about John to stop him, or by looking at what he’s capable of doing once he fully transforms, or by focusing on Johns desires regarding becoming or not becoming a monster, etc.

And if that makes sense, I’m not sure why your KTAD/MEST couldn’t look like any version of those processes on the Dramatica Table of Story Elements, meaning you’re story about the conflict that stems from John becoming a monster could have storytelling that looks like John becoming a monster as a Universe story, a Doing story, a Denial story, an Induction story, or any other kind of story.

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#110

Correct. It’s basically the type level, as seen through the lens of KTAD. The conflict isn’t in the subgenre, it’s in the structure/type. The subgenre is just the overall storytelling ‘framework’ of your story. Much like how domain is genre, and type is plot, the subgenre is kind of a more specific ‘plot’.

You lost me a little there. Correct me if I’ve misinterpreted, you’re asking if there’s a potential that the stories could end up blending together? As in, you want to write a Makeover story, but would that also include elements of (for example) Denial because of the subgenre’s storytelling?

If that is the question, I’ll try to answer with the lower left/lower left quad of each domain:
Universe - Stability - Stories where characters seek some form of stability in a volatile situation.
Physics - Benefit - stories where characters seek to acquire or gain something that will benefit themselves or others in some way.
Psychology - Makeover - stories where characters are actively seeking or experiencing change either in themselves or others.
Mind - Heart’s Desire - stories where characters pursue their inner desires or longings.

Basically, the answer is no, because the context is so different in each subgenre. It’s kind of like how Past/Understanding/Memory/Conceptualizing all relate to one another, but each have a different perspective. For example, your story about John the Monster could be told any of the above four ways, but each would require a variant on its storytelling depending on the subgenre:

Stability - the town’s struggle to unite and move on from John’s daily killing sprees.
Benefit - the town’s attempt to capture John and profit from him, King-Kong style.
Makeover - the town’s attempt to transform itself into a place where John would never want to hurt anyone.
Heart’s Desire - the town’s struggle with its well-documented love toward the pre-murderous John.

Those are rushed examples and they don’t have any conflict, but the storytelling of each – while varying a love/hate response toward John – is unique to its individual domain. You couldn’t mistake the Benefit story for the Makeover story, because the structural source of conflict in each is so different.

That’s kind of the long-winded way of getting to the core answer to your question: the subgenres are just the general framework or ‘goal’ of the story. There’s no conflict inherent in them, and the actual storytelling is the responsibility of the author. Desk Set and Edge of Tomorrow could not be more different, but they share the same framework: they’re both about learning a new set of skills to cope in this new world. One is dealing with the training required to use a new computer system, and the other is about learning how to destroy aliens. The storytelling is wildly different, but at their core, it’s the same framework.

Likewise, the subgenres have no real effect below the type level, since they’re not structural. Variations and elements don’t really affect whether it’s an Expose or an Investigation story.

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#111

I’m saying that from one perspective, you have 4 Plot sub genres (would be so much easier to say subplots if that term weren’t already taken). KTAD. But since K can be translated into Mass or Universe, or Understanding, etc, based on its placement on the Dram chart, then from another perspective, you could have something like 148 Plot subgenres, or even 340 (depending on if you use 64 character level elements or 256) Plot subgenres for each Plot type. I say this because all of the processes on the chart are some form of KTAD.

So with John the Monster, we have a story with a structural problem of Becoming. So now we need to know what kind of Plot sub genre we want to have. Based on your input, we know we can have a Makeover story, an Evolution story, a Social Change story, or a dynamic pair to a Social Change story. After looking them over, we decide to write JTM as a Makeover story. John is actively seeking to become a monster.

Now, I don’t know if a Makeover story would be a K, T, A, or D, but let’s just say it’s an A because characters are “actively seeking”. If Ability is in the top right square of the KTAD quad, then it should be able to look like any element in a top right square of another quad. So we could write about John seeking to become more monstrous (Progress) or we could write about how John is performing a monstrous ritual (Doing). Or we could talk about Johns Need to be monstrous, or his Appraisal that a monster is what this town needs, or his Comfidence that becoming a monster will solve his problems. Or we could use any other top right square on the chart and still produce a Makeover story where John is seeking to become a monster.

What I think you couldn’t do is write a Makeover story by looking at the Past or State of Being or Closure because those are all top left/K stories (again, assuming Makeovers are A’s) But you could write those stories with a structural problem of Becoming as a different sub genre

Okay, I don’t know if that made things clearer or muddier, but it took me forever to type, so I’m going to leave it. But an easier way to say it has just occurred to me, so I’m going to say that as well.

This is all I’m saying. John the Monster is a Becoming story, but it’s Storytelling can be Universe, Physics, Psych, or Mind. I’m also saying it’s Storytelling could be Past, Present, Progress, Future, or anything else on the chart. What I’m getting at is that I don’t see a reason to limit your Plot sub genre Storytelling by saying the four sub genres beneath Becoming need to correlate to Rationalization, Commitment, Obligation, and Responsibility (an idea that I think popped up earlier in the thread) because they already correlate to KTAD.

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#112

Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t @chuntley posted elsewhere on these forums that the placement within each quad on the chart doesn’t always correspond to KTAD the same? i.e. though Physics is like Ability (the Space of the mind), top-right in lower quads isn’t always the “A” in KTAD. (Maybe this only affects Element quads, due to how they are twisted?)

EDIT: here is one related post from @Hunter discussing the same thing.

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#113

I’d argue against it, honestly. Bringing issues from the Preconscious into an Obtaining story would probably muddle the meaning of your story. If you really wanted to do that, I’d just stick with the PSR, since that’s (somehow) tied to the story. Bringing in Doing and Confidence and Instinct, etc. would likely just start complicating where the real source of your conflict is.

For sure. The correlation idea has been dismissed a few times. I think they line up with KTAD (I’ve said before – I’m not great at understanding that), but they don’t have any influence or connection with anything beneath the type level.

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#114

Absolutely. When relating it to the chart, I’m going for the over-simplified version. And I started to say the same thing myself, but didn’t want to get into the explanation at the time. I think if your Storytelling is looking at the story from Ability, any form of Ability works. You might have noticed I tried to stay away from mentioning character level elements specifically because they move around. Element X might be top right in one quad, top left in another. So that would play a part in a more advanced version, I guess.

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#115

How I use the PSR is very similar to how I’m thinking of this. As far as muddling things, I don’t know that it necessarily would, or if that would even be a problem. My only counter would be that Storytelling isn’t connected to story structure.

#116

That’s true, but if you start mixing and matching, you end up with the City Lights syndrome, where the conflict is everywhere all at once:

The characters are working on obtaining, then they’re suddenly coping with memories, then they’re pretending to be things, then they’re suddenly in the future, and now they’re learning how to do this new thing, etc. It starts as storytelling, but because the audience doesn’t know the underlying structure of your work, it starts getting all muddled up because in every scene, the problem is coming from a completely different area.

I say the PSR is a better way of doing it because it brings those other quad variations in while keeping your core story consistent. I don’t know how it links to the structure, but I would trust that more than risking it.

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#117

I send you my gratitude and encouragement!

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#118

I keep meaning to point out – @jhull did an analysis of Into the Spiderverse that puts the OS in Universe/Progress, which I think is an interesting data point.

Until I read your post, I had this vague idea that there was a subgenre of Universe/Progress stories that for lack of a better description could be called “Society-is-Going-to-Hell-in-a-Handbasket” stories – True Detective, Silence of the Lambs, Taxi Driver, Platoon, A Clockwork Orange. But I can see that doesn’t exactly fit your categories.

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#119

The Universe subgenres will be the ones that change the most, because I had a really hard time identifying them in the first place, so you’re likely right – will look into it ASAP!

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#120

I just got to read this and I’m puzzling over it.

I have a mystery WIP with an OS Goal of The Present: this couple is on their honeymoon and find a dead body. This doesn’t feel like a Survival situation - but maybe it is?? Or does my story fall into your Dynamic Pair?

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#121

Are they on a ship with the husband going to be blamed? Or is it the rich grandfather, who bought the hotel they are staying in, in order to see her to apologize for not approving their marriage? There could be a survival scramble to figure out ‘who done it’.

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#122

Building on what @Prish said, knowing whether the OS would fall under that Contextual Subgenre (or under The Present) would require more context.

At the same time, your story reminds me of an example story in @ArmandoSaldanamora’s book “Dramatica for Screenwriters.” It revolves around a haunted lodge near the new summer cottage belonging to MC Sarah Wilson and her family. Against her parents’ will (and anyone’s better judgement), Sarah goes into the woods to find a stranger boy she met earlier and after arriving at the haunted lodge, she finds a skeleton (Armando goes into more detail in the book, and the idea of providing sufficient context is actually the purpose of the example story). Funnily enough, the Story Goal is also The Present (stated in the back of the book).

Ultimately, context is everything when it comes to defining the conflict in story.

Sources:
“Dramatica for Screenwriters” by Armando Saldaña-Mora
https://narrativefirst.com/blog/2016/05/when-creating-conflict-context-is-everything

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#123

As the others have said, there would have to be more context to be sure. It may well fit into the Dynamic Pair, since the Survival story tends to deal primarily with wars (military or just social/political) or being transported to new and uncertain worlds with seemingly no escape.

Either way, it would need more context to truly narrow it down.

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#124

Ha… when I got those big student loans in 2002-3, I went into a survival situation for 10 years. Now days, the students don’t even get to buy a house without those debts being considered current, due, and being paid. Before, they were just frozen and not allowed to be part of the consideration. I can’t even imagine the survival situations the current students and graduates are experiencing. Add that to the ‘deal primarily’ list, imho.

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#125

Here in the UK, they raised the student tuition fees the year before I went, so I had to pay 3x what my brother did. Having gone through that only a few years ago, I would 100% class that as a social ‘war’/survival scenario.

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#126

Someone in the hotel is poisoning the staff. Since the honeymooning couple are both former private eyes, they offer to help. I suppose this could be a Survival story, but it’s a fairly light-hearted cozy which is why I hesitated to call it that.

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