I’ve done them, and this frankly hasn’t been my experience. I’ve found every way to incorrectly use a term. I mean, Gists help a lot, but if you can’t write your own gist for the element correctly then how is that better than being overly prescriptive in the defining?
I tend mostly to stare at my storyform paralyzed by uncertainty about how to use the elements, what they impact, how they’re related, what the terms mean in their context. I go back and forth and debate with myself… “Well if I use it this way am I really exploring a different element entirely? If I use it this way it will be cliche but will technically work… I think? If I use it this way does it serve my argument?” and I write and rewrite the gist, then sometimes and illustration, then I scrap the illustration and the gist and go back to the base term.
This reliance on faith that if you just have the right storyform you can’t do it wrong doesn’t feel helpful. I have done it wrong. A lot. I feel most questions I ask result only in defeating my current understanding without offering an obvious path to forming a better one. It seems as if people keep pushing me to think more like an artist and less like a rationalist, and that isn’t going to work for me at this step. It’s WHY I’m embracing a theory that’s so heavily structural. I’m building a machine of narrative elements. I need to understand the way the parts function together to have faith in it.
How does going in order from top to bottom help? This isn’t a challenge veiled as a question but a genuine question. I jump around a lot.
