For this week’s Why It Works, I pulled together an old-fashioned “philosophy of storytelling” essay, centered on the relationship between worldbuilding and dramatic structure. As usual, this was initially prompted by my perpetual annoyance at people Doing Stories Wrong, but I think it ended up in a fairly approachable place. Exploring the give-and-take of drama and narrative structure is just absolutely fascinating to me, and I’ll be happy if I can spark that fascination for anyone else out there. Here’s the piece!
Worldbuilding, Storytelling, and Weaving a Song
Like the article, but the comparison to music isn’t particularly apt (imo). When watching or reading a story, it’s possible for each of the creator’s decisions to be meaningful, and unpacking them enhances our understanding of the story. But when making music, no one decision has definite, interpretable meaning, so it’s not clear what it would even be for a piece to have “everything the melody needs, and nothing else”. What if we removed the bassline? Added in a piano? While in the context of a story, decisions like these carry meaning, these don’t. So a bunch of good music has complex layers for no reason other than ‘it sounds good’, or ‘this is new’. That’s why stories and music shouldn’t be compared in this way.
At least, that’s what I think. I’d be happy to be proved wrong, though!