![]() The way the words fall out on the page creates a visual texture. Concepts like texture, color, and symmetry have obvious meaning in fashion or furniture, but it’s not a big leap to writing. She takes a cue from the world of design, the way furniture designers, architects, fashion designers can find inspiration in the patterns and textures of nature and our lives. If Freytag’s Triangle has a masculo-sexual metaphor, or more banally, a triangle or pyramid, are there other useful metaphors? Texture, Color, Symmetry: Writing as DesignĪt the heart of Alison’s study is a search for alternative metaphors for plot structures. ![]() It’s not clear if that was a motivating reason for seeking alternatives the mere assumption that there’s only one way would be enough for me. Actually, she argues that the conventional form relies too much on a metaphor of male sexual response. In Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, Jane Alison argues that we already have alternative plot structures to Aristotle and Freytag. Also, Freytag is really a modification of Aristotle.) Incidentally, we call Aristotle’s model the Classical Story Structure. Plenty of stories struggle to accomplish something meaningful within this structure. (BTW, do not underestimate the power of that seemingly obvious model. Before that, we were mostly still talking about Aristotle’s Poetics, in which he breaks up narrative into beginning, middle, and end. That framework, called Freytag’s Pyramid or just The Dramatic Arc, has been the presumptive way to speak about plot structure for over 100 years. ![]() If you’ve taken an English lit course, you’ve probably learned to analyze narratives in terms of exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution. Have you ever wondered if there were alternative plot structures to the “dramatic arc”? ![]()
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