How Stories Work

by bam

Six decisions survive translation into any medium: the change, the owner, want and obstacle, withholding, scene and summary, and the turn. This is the core of the Storytelling series and it was written last on purpose, after the specialized courses had already put those six terms under pressure in a solo play, a ten-minute drama and a set of public meeting notes. It teaches each decision in depth, shows the same one operating in forms that look nothing alike, and is honest about what does NOT transfer: the things that are genuinely properties of a medium rather than of story. It covers structure as a promise to an audience, why most drafts fail at the change rather than the sentence, the ethics of telling stories about real people, and the discipline of knowing when not to make a story at all. Ends with a diagnostic you can run on any draft in any form.