Storytelling Techniques in Fiction

Story Elements

• A big change of fortunes can break expectations and add complexity to a story
• Complication: an obstacle created by the protagonist for themselves
• Montage: a series of summarized actions, often with music

Foreshadowing and Payoff

• Foreshadowing: a hint that sets up something that will happen later in the story
• Red herring: false foreshadowing to mislead the audience
• Dead end: foreshadowing with no payoff
• Deus ex machina: a payoff with no foreshadowing, where a solution comes out of nowhere

Suspense and Ellipsis

• Suspense: a state of tension or uncertainty in the story
• Ellipsis: a break in the narrative, often leaving out information to create suspense

Characters

• Character arcs: changes in a character's inner nature, for better or worse
• Desire: what drives a character's choices, what they want (conscious and unconscious)
• Motivation: why a character wants what they want
• Dimension: a character's inner conflict, contradictions, and complexity
• Supporting characters: help to reveal the protagonist and are part of the story world
• Comedic characters: have a blind obsession, often creating humor

Dialogue

• Definition: a dramatic text to be expressed by one or several players
• Five functions of dialogue: characterize, reveal inner information, establish conflict, exposition, and humor
• Subtext: what is meant beneath what is being said

Genre

• Definition: a dramatic approach that conditions the construction of the story
• Model: a special world, a protagonist with a special talent, a weakness, and an antagonist

Creative Process

• Daniel Cassany's advice: look for ideas, organize them, develop them, put it on paper, revise constantly, adapt to constraints, and have the audience in mind
• Methods: diary, maps and diagrams, brainstorming, explore the subject, and the "star" method (what, who, when, why, how, where)

Dramatic Premises

• Universal patterns present through narration in history, helping to construct plots and characters
• Examples: Ronald Tobias' 20 Master Plots, Estrategias del guion cinematográfico, La semilla inmortal

Story Structure

• A sequence is a series of scenes that culminates with greater impact than any previous scene
• A scene is an action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turns the value-charged condition of a character's life
• Crossmedia: one story, many channels, reaching different audiences
• Transmedia: one storyworld, many stories, many forms, many channels, with every story complete in itself

The Three Act Structure

• Robert McKee's definition of ACT: a series of sequences that peaks in a climactic scene
• First act: establishes main characters, relationships, and the world of the story
• Inciting incident: event that sets the story in motion
• First turning point: event that makes the story take a new direction
• Second act: rising action, obstacles, and conflicts
• Midpoint: an important event that doesn't change the story's direction
• Second turning point: introduction to the third act, with more weight than the first turning point
• Third act: resolution of the story, climax, and denouement

Other Dramatic Tools

• Action knots: narrative units with their own set up, development, and resolution, forming a chain of cause and effect
• Anagnorisis: a dramatic recognition of a character's identity
• Peripeteia: obstacles, reversals, and strong story events