Story structure: Kishotenketsu
Stories are all unique because you are an individual and your experiences are your own. They will be akin to others but never truly the same.
I like to tell myself that there’s nothing new under the sun, but everyone squints differently seeing the world in a different view.
Today we have access to everything, everything is at our fingertips and because of that noticed trends are easiest, more inspiration can be drawn which is a good and bad thing. But things can start to feel similar, stories can start to seem copied and pasted because they have a death grip on the structures they’re using, especially in the Western world. So I wanted to dive into a different kind of story structure. This structure is used in Chinese, Korean and Japanese cultures. There is so much out there as I’ve said, so you don’t have to stick to structures like the three acts, or save the cat, or whatever other structure is popular.
The structure is described as a 4 act structure without conflict. At first I was like, no, all stories have conflict and my research said that the outline of the structure did not rely on conflict. Then I realized that my definition of conflict was internal and external elements that influence one another, and most view conflict as just the obstacles that characters face. The type of story this structure produces is what people are calling…
