In 2016, researchers at the University of Adelaide tested Kurt Vonnegut's theory that, "There’s no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers." They took the emotional arcs of 1300+ novels from Project Gutenberg, turned that into data, used modern tech
Here's the entire study. It's quite technical which is nice and gets into methodologies, stats, and more: https://epjdatascience.springe...
I share the most interesting ideas I come across on storytelling here: https://www.worldbuilders.ai/s...
@nathanbaugh27 The constant here seems to be a shift from a baseline, whether it is a rise or fall with or without subsequent rises or falls. This maps with the Value Shift model from the @StoryGrid method. https://storygrid.com/value-sh... Thanks for sharing this knowledge @nathanbaugh27
@ronhekier @StoryGrid This is cool - I like the idea of 'value shift'
@nathanbaugh27 so....a plot line
@StickandBrains I'd argue it's quite different. Plot line is 'what happens' - action, dialogue, whatever - what this gets at is the emotional arc of a specific character
@nathanbaugh27 This is brilliant. I wonder if it can be used also to understand why specific public figures are more popular than others, or even why specific employees are more appreciated than others
@avyleg I’d be surprised if not. Pretty easy to see in media manipulation of current events
@nathanbaugh27 ‘Rags to riches’ (rise). ‘Tragedy’, or ‘Riches to rags’ (fall). ‘Man in a hole’ (fall-rise). ‘Icarus’ (rise-fall). ‘Cinderella’ (rise-fall-rise). ‘Oedipus’ (fall-rise-fall) Seems tautologous - these are the ONLY logical options of the pair and triplets?
@nathanbaugh27 I think this methodology just finds a set of basis functions, a low frequency Fourier basis. It might be that people often write a simple oscillating mood, and that this is then easily mapped onto the basis functions. Nothing deep, just different choice of frequency and phase.
@nathanbaugh27 @garrytan @jposhaughnessy this seems in your area of interest
@nathanbaugh27 .@tarakmenon does similar research about direct speech in novels. She analyzes everything from frequency to social webs between characters. It’s really fascinating stuff.
@nathanbaugh27 Your thread is going viral! #TopUnroll https://threadreaderapp.com/th... 🙏🏼@R0martos for 🥇unroll
@nathanbaugh27 Amazing breakdown 🙌
@nathanbaugh27 Now you can stick most of these books into a single prompt each, making analysis like this much much easier.
@nathanbaugh27 We’ve built something similar to power a narrative marketing tool called Anubis. Launching soon. Built at @OsirisProtocol1.
@nathanbaugh27 How many times are you going to repeat this same story. The article came out in 2016. Disingenuous clickbait.
@nathanbaugh27 The Russian scholar you're referring to is likely **Vladimir Propp**. He was a folklorist and literary critic who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales and identified a set of common structures and character archetypes. His work, "Morphology of the Folktale,"
@nathanbaugh27 Human nature exists in waves - not just literary, but in real life too! Which is why we resonate so deeply with these variations of storytelling. In a sense, they’re a mirror of our own lives.
@nathanbaugh27 This is just an accidental Fourier transform of noise (which can happen when you use PCA on data); to keep it simple, any random continuous data can be expressed as a sum of sine waves. The patters you are seeing are meaningless.
@nathanbaugh27 interestingly, all 3 methods: SVD, Ward Clustering and SOM (Self-Organizing Map or Kohonen Map) result in the six basic shapes of stories
@nathanbaugh27 Does 'Death of a Salesman' really belong in the Icarus category? At what stage in the story are we shown Willy Loman's meteoric rise? Isn't he a deadbeat loser (a "low man")from the start?
@nathanbaugh27 Soon we will be able to watch AI generated HD movies from every story, script or playwright written since the beginning of recorded history. You will be able to apply your style references too! 🎬🍿😀
@nathanbaugh27 The marketing departments for publishing houses and the librarians concur.
@nathanbaugh27 Was looking for a Breaking Bad Reference and found it! 😂
@nathanbaugh27 And yet the real masterpiece is Hamlet, because the story shape is a straight line
@nathanbaugh27 Conflict analysis if traditional five act play structure is similar in some ways. In general, act 3 closes (intermission) with a false resolution; act 4 presents a deeper conflict, and act 5 resolves it. This was known and published by Vonnegut's time.
@nathanbaugh27 @readwise save thread. Vonnegut an absolute genius, this is what really mastery looks like.
@nathanbaugh27 I thought it was Seven Basic Plots? https://www.amazon.com/Seven-B...
@nathanbaugh27 full talk here: https://youtu.be/4_RUgnC1lm8?s...
@nathanbaugh27 when art meet science