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strogonoffyesterday at 11:44 AM0 repliesview on HN

A fun thing about story frameworks is that with a bit of creativity you can usually make any story conform to any framework you wish, both when writing or when analyzing someone’s work (maybe the actual protagonist is the city of Omelas or all of its residents, collectively).

The corollary is that the framework that we tend to over-focus on is not necessarily what makes or breaks the story.

Lately I am thinking that a good and accessible story is a challenge in map-making and map-breaking. First, you speak the language the audience understands, employ some baseline map of reality that everyone gets. Then, you take them on a journey showing how it is faulty, and maybe end up with a better map.

(A good story does not have to be universally accessible, of course. It can self-select a narrower audience. I suspect a lot of Ursula Le Guin’s work is like that.)