Welcome to I❤TT, a discussion thread for sharing stuff you love because we need more of that in life.
My share for this month is a tweet thread from Pamela Punzalan/The Dovetailor in which she asks:
We tend to be so informed by white/American standards of storytelling and design that we run the risk of applying that lens to everything. I’m curious: in your local context, what are the elements of a good story? What should a game, or movie, or story have for it to work?
Genres are also a thing and mediums of storytelling are all different, and trans cultural exchange plus the melding of influence due to things like colonization are too, so if you want to speak with confidence only for a specific thing feel free!
P.S. you can legit talk about anything! Aesthetics, colour palettes, tropes and archetypes, dramaturgical choices, elements of fiction… there’s so much to discuss, honestly, and I think it would be beneficial to highlight them more!
The thread is from October of last year, but you can still respond to it. Or you can put your answers here in the comments. I would LOVE to know more about what makes a story work for you given the stories you imbibed via your culture.
In the comments you’re also invited to talk about or post a link, or two links, or even 5 links to things that bring you joy. Can be something cute your kid or pet did, a piece of art, a song, a book, a short story, an article, a video, posts from social media, anything.
And if these discussions are a source of joy for you, please do share this link with others who might need a space for talking about what we love.
I have been thinking about genre and storytelling design a lot lately. I was raised on the old Campbell Hero’s Journey for genre fiction, and it’s tied pretty closely to the three act / four act / five act structure. I still want to take in stories in which protagonist(s) make decisions and are changed, or have decided they can’t change. But I’m finding the old narrative that only a singular protagonist can solve the “problem” of a story is more and more unsatisfying.
The idea that’s coming up in discussions of the “heroine’s journey,” that building community and (deciding to) lean on it appropriately to solve problems seems more like what I naturally want to write. It seems to me that the lone wolf who lacks the ability to trust or find community is ultimately overwhelmed, or ultimately ages out, and then what do they have.
I’m also trying to seek out more stories in which people’s parallel or tangential life journeys are told to illuminate a theme.
So my I <3 Thursday comment is just that I'm enjoying seeing folks really discussing and starting to value alternate story models.
One thing I do dislike in the discussion of the two current models of "Western" literary journeys is that they are gendered in their names, as if men should not build and seek community, and women should not try to be skilled individuals who can make good decisions under stress.
As the meme says, "Why not both?"