Science says works of fiction follow one of six plot types
Researchers from the University of Vermont data-mined over 1,700 works of fiction and found that they all followed one of six emotional arcs.
You'll never be able to read every story out there, but there's a good chance you've already read every story type.
Researchers at the Computational Story Lab at Burlington's University of Vermont data-mined through 1,700 popular fiction stories and determined that they all follow one of six emotional arc types. They are as follows:
- A rags-to-riches, steadily rising emotional arc, as in the case of "Alice's Adventures Underground" by Lewis Carroll.
- A steadily declining emotional arc, often seen in tragedies, like in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
- A fall and then a rise.
- A rise and fall.
- Rise-fall-rise, like in the "Cinderella" fairly tale by Charles Perrault.
- Fall-rise-fall.
The researchers' computers scanned the novels for words that convey either positive or negative emotion and used that information to determine the arc's trajectory throughout a story.
You can find it explained in greater detail by MIT Technology Review here.
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