Weaving a Complex Narrative: How to Write Like J.R.R. Tolkien in Three Easy Steps

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STORY THEORY

TOLKIEN'S

FRACTALS

COMPLEXITY

PUTTING IT ALL

Unless, of course, it should look like this.

EXAMPLE

TOGETHER

Complexity isn't your goal ...

WHAT IS COMPLEXITY?

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If it should look like this.

Weaving a Complex Narrative

SELF-SIMILARITY

ITERATIVE PROCESSES

Hero’s Fractal Journey

STORY ITERATION

Take a Basic Shape, Move it, Rotate it, Scale it, and Repeat it

STORY SELF-SIMILARITY

Three is a Magic Number

Lord of the Rings

Natural Story Structure

It looks complex, but it's a nested series of beginnings, middles, and ends.

Three Acts

The Fractal Key to Narrative Complexity

Lord of the Rings

Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

Many Things Appear in Threes:

You may assume order is simple and chaos is complex, but to a mathematician they're both equally simple: each can be produced with a simple function.

How to Write Like J.R.R. Tolkien in Three Easy Steps

STRUCTURE

Think about how people tell about a non-trivial home-improvement project:

A Pattern, Not a Formalism

Hegelian Dialectic:

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

Offset Character Arcs

Home Improvement Guide to Story Structure

Stories have a beginning, middle, and end.

Pop Songs:

Verse/Chorus, Verse/Chorus, Bridge/Chorus

The Relationships Implicit in Something

Real complexity lies in the middle of the spectrum and involves elements of both order and chaos.

1. Go to get what you need.

Like the legs of a stool, each act contributes something essential to the story.

Joke Pattern:

Straight line, Straight line, Punch line

So do acts.

To be a story, though, we need to see a try/fail, another try/fail, and finally a try/succeed.

By Deren Hansen

2. Go to get what you didn’t know you need.

Volleyball:

And sections.

The three-act pattern isn't only about plots and subplots. Characters have arcs with beginnings, middles, and ends.

3. Go to get what you really need.

And then repeat the process.

Why?

Characters progress through the beginning, middle, and end of their individual story arcs at different times in the narrative.

And chapters.

But each of those attempts is a story in its own right, with its own set of try/fail cycles.

1. The Ordinary World

2. The Call to Adventure

3. Refusal of the Call

4. Meeting with the Mentor

5. Crossing the Threshold

6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies

7. Approach to the In-most Cave

8. The Ordeal

9. The Reward

10. The Road Back

11. The Resurrection

12. Return with the Elixir

Keep it up and you can create a figure with a finite area and an infinite perimeter.

Why three?

Middle

And scenes.

Prior to the advent of GPS and laser designators, you had to find the range to your target by trial and error.

And so on.

And paragraphs.

One Act/Action = Procedure: "I was hungry so I made a sandwich."

That means, you can zoom in forever.

And sentences.

But it will be part of the picture if you want your story to reflect the world in which we live.

Notice how complex, with just three iterations, the protagonist's problem-solving trajectory has become?

Two Acts/Actions = Rule: "I was traveling, so I had to find a familiar restaurant and then I was able to get a sandwich."

WHY WEAVE A COMPLEX NARRATIVE?

It's kind of like real life, isn't it.

Three Acts/Actions = Story

This seemingly random image contains a teapot pouring tea into a cup in front of a window through which the sun shines.

You don't want your story to look like this ...

UNDERLYING PATTERNS

The structure of a complex thing is encoded in the underlying pattern. When you understand the pattern, what was complex becomes simple.

Mathematician Friedrich Gauss and the Number Line

COMPLEX NARRATIVES

It Comes Down to Three Simple Steps:

LATHER

RINSE

How Did Gauss Know the Answer?

Then he wrote, 5050, and handed his slate to the teacher.

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REPEAT

It could mean anything.

It feels like writing by numbers.

What does it mean?

Climax and Solution

Last Quarter

Other versions assert 188 or 510 steps in the Hero’s Journey.

Trying to Solve the Problem

Middle Half

The first half is about questions.

The second half is about answers.

Problem and Stakes

First Quarter

Do you know what to write for the "Belly of the Whale" and the "Ultimate Boon?

There are multiple versions of the Hollywood Formula. Which one is right?

Archetypical Cycle of Growth

“The Formula Behind Every Successful Movie”

The Hero’s Journey

Hollywood Formula

ARCHETYPES

FORMULAS

You'll find advice on story structure ranging from formulas to archetypes.

How do you Manage Narrative Complexity?