Season 3 is continues! We’re combining Nora’s passion for history with Sue’s passion for story structure — giving you a historical story and pointing out the structural elements that make it compelling.
You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.
Show Notes:
Season 3, Episode 3: The Affair of the Diamond Necklace
The plot of this story kind of sounds like a Billy Wilder movie, except that it took place just four years before the French Revolution. And it involved Marie Antoinette, but she knew nothing about it until it was way too late. Some even say that this event was one of the biggest factors in causing the French Revolution. Nora and I will tell you the story of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace and I’ll point out story structure elements along the way.
To look at the story structure, I’m using what Shawn Coyne calls the “Five Commandments of Storytelling.”
Here are the five commandments:
- Inciting incident – An exciting thing that kicks off a story
- Progressive complications – a series of events that make the story more, well, complicated –these can be either negative or positive
- Crisis – a question that must be answered by a choice being made
- Climax – what happens when the choice is made
- Resolution – the ultimate results of that choice
Things we mention that you should check out:
- Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material and artwork, including an advance copy of my forthcoming novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.
- Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid. There’s a whole story grid universe: website, book and two podcasts: The Story Grid and the Story Grid Editors Roundtable.
- If you want the super detailed version of this story, check out this wikipedia entry.
- Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald — go see it! And then buy the script to help you figure out what you just saw.
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