On February 24, 2024, Kasie and Rex took on the named story types: Fichtean, Freytag, and Harmon. Here are the show notes:

Theme for the day

Name Your Plot Type

Agenda

• Quick Catch Up
• Named plot arcs
• When and how to use them

Listen to the podcast

Segment 1

So two weeks ago, we talked about basic outlines and discussed the turning point method versus the beats method for figuring out the structure of the story. Then last week we went into the 3 Act Structure and basically whined about Aristotle.

In searching for 3 Act Structure resources, I found this link gives us 11 basic structures:

1. The Fichtean Curve
2. The Three Act Structure
3. The Hero’s Journey
4. Freytag’s Pyramid
5. The Five Act Structure
6. Save the Cat Beats
7. The Snowflake Method
8. Dan Harmon’s Story Circle
9. The Seven Point Story Structure
10. The Story Spine
11.  In Media Res

and OMG there’s some NAMED types here. So we’re doing that today.

I guess if you make the shit up, you get to name it. So let’s unpack Fichtean, Freytag, and San Harmon this week.

Segment 2

I’m going to try to NOT duplicate this entire blog on our blog, so here’s the basics:

• Rising action: this is the primary part of your story, and will take up most of your time. Rising action is punctuated by several crises, each of which heighten the stakes, progress your plot, and increased attention. This is why it is called rising action.
• The climax: at the top of your rising action, everything cumulates into a single climax, where every threat of your novel converges. This is near the End of your novel, at the height of tension.
• Falling action: after your climax, you need some time to let the reader relax, and we do this with falling action. This section allows you to tie up any loose ends of your story, and show your characters returning to a state of normalcy.

So who is Fichtean? Funny story, it’s not actually a name. Here’s the full breakdown. Turns out, it was a dude named John Gardner who was NOT vain enough to name it after himself. This breakdown even has The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars as examples, some of our go-tos on this show. But it doesn’t explain the name.

Well, this link calls it a “dorsal fin of catastrophe” which honestly, sounds awesome. But it doesn’t say where the name came from.

Then this link calls it a story in crisis. Also sounds awesome. But still doesn’t explain why it’s not the Gardner curve. 

Google, that great scholar of algorithms, suggested this dude, and maybe, just maybe, this is where the name comes from. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher who theorized the thesis—antithesis—synthesis idea which might be said, what you think you know, what you find out, what you actually know. And that model, sort of, matches the journey of crisis and every-rising action in the Fichtean curve.

This link says the Fichtean curve places the protagonist in a series of crises and jumps right in – a favorite strategy of Rex!

Segment 3

Freytag’s Pyramid is not new to the program, we did it in this episode. It’s all about the early climax for Freytag. So here’s what our original trusty resource has to say about Freytag’s Pyramid: The 5 Steps of Freytag’s Pyramid

1. Exposition: at this point, we establish the status quo, and explain the starting situation. The step ends with the inciting incident.
2. Rising action: just like in the Fichtean Curve, rising action features the main character pursuing their goal while the stakes heighten.
3. Climax: this is a moment in the center of your story that acts as the point of no return.
4. Falling action: we see the consequences of the climax and the decisions that the protagonist has faced so far. In a tragedy, falling action is when we see things start to spiral out of control.
5. Resolution or catastrophe: in the final step, everything is tied up, and the character reaches their lowest point (if you are writing a tragedy).

And go even deeper with trusty original resource’s add-on link here.

So who was Freytag? Another German, Gustav Freyatg was a novelist and philosopher working in the 19th century. He was known for “realistic” novels and he was right about the same time for Henry James and that crowd of American Realists, so they might have all be working in the same omniscient narrator, slice-of-life style. This encyclopedia link says Freytag was influenced by Charles Dickens. It’s possible Freytag didn’t name the thing after himself, but that later scholars assigned it to him. 

This link talks about Freytag theorizing that the plot can be broken into two halves, the play and the counterplay with the climax in the middle.

Segment 4

Okay, but Dan Harmon absolutely named the Story Circle after himself. Here’s what our trusty resource explains about it:

1. You: Where the character is in a zone of comfort
2. Need: And they want something
3. Go: So they enter an unfamiliar situation
4. Search: Adapt to it
5. Find: They find what they wanted
6. Take: Pay the price of taking it
7. Return;  They go back to where they started
8. Change: And are now changed.

Here’s the deeper dive for the story circle. 

So the question is, what makes the story circle different? Well, it’s kind of a simplification of the hero’s journey, without being the oversimplification of the Fichtean curve. The story circle also focuses on the character’s motivations, actions, and consequences. This may be where we get our obsession with agency in stories. If the character isn’t making things happen then why are we following him? Why not follow someone else?