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Revealed: The building blocks of a good story

Researchers deployed state of the art computer technology to analyse tens of thousands of texts
Researchers deployed state of the art computer technology to analyse tens of thousands of texts

From Aristotle onwards, literary theorists have identified a number of basic plot devices, central to any narrative, without which it would simply fail to engage the reader.

So familiar are they that we often recognise them on an unconscious level – overcoming evil, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy and rebirth.

But now scientists claim to have identified something far more basic – the short words used repeatedly by authors as the building blocks of the successful story.

Researchers deployed state of the art computer technology to analyse tens of thousands of texts, including the works of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, alongside blockbuster scripts for the films of Stephen Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick.

HG Wells, Virginia Woolf and PG Wodehouse were among the other authors analysed.

Researchers found that, no matter the length or format, short and apparently basic words – such as "the", "it" and "a" – are employed in a similar pattern across most storylines.

Academics from Lancaster University and the University of Texas concluded that these words, so little noticed by readers as to be regarded as "invisible", not only shape literary classics but also guide audiences through more visual cinematic experiences.

Researchers recorded the use of such words across more than 39,000 fiction and non-fiction texts, including novels and screenplays.

Professor of psychology Jamie Pennebaker, one of the study's authors, said: "We all have an intuitive sense of what defines a story. Until now, no one has been able to objectively see or measure a story's components."

The linguistic stages of a successful story
The linguistic stages of a successful story

The researchers tracked authors' use of pronouns such as "she" and "they", and articles including "a" and "the" and other short words, through which is revealed a consistent "narrative curve".

First they identified "staging", where stories begin with a lot of prepositions and articles such as "a" and "the". For example: "The house was next to the lake, below a cliff."

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, concluded that these words help authors set the scene and convey the most basic information the audience needs to understand concepts and relationships throughout the story.

This is followed by "plot progression" where, once the stage is set, authors incorporate more and more "interactional" language, including auxiliary verbs, adverbs and pronouns. For example, "the house" becomes "her home" or "it".

The team then identified "cognitive tension" in which, as a story progresses toward its climax, there is an increase in "cognitive processing" or action words that reflect a person's thought process while working through a conflict, such as "think", "believe", "understand" and "cause".

The researchers said the combined linguistic pattern in stories may reflect how humans "optimally process" information. Previous studies have shown that, while young children can assign names to people and things with relative ease, ascribing action proves more difficult.

Dr Ryan Boyd, the study lead author and assistant professor of behavioural analytics at Lancaster University, said: "If we want to connect with an audience, we have to appreciate what information they need but don't yet have.

"At the most fundamental level, humans need a flood of 'logic language' at the beginning of a story to make sense of it, followed by a rising stream of 'action' information to convey the actual plot of the story."

The research team compared the established fictional story structure of more than 30,000 factual texts, including 28,664 New York Times articles, 2,226 TED Talks videos and 1,580 Supreme Court opinions.

Although they shared "striking" similarities, the researchers found that each genre had "unique" structures that reflected the different relationships between the authors and their audiences.

Dr Kate Blackburn, of the University of Texas, said: "In this sense, we seem to be able to tap into the structure of other forms of storytelling, as if we can identify that story's fingerprint."