Ep. 1. Introduction to Ceremony & Story

In this episode, I cover: 

🧪 My hypothesis of storytelling and the nature of this public experiment. 

❄️ What the fractal nature of the universe has to do with story. 

🍁 How the seasons can help to symbolically represent the acts or sections of a story. 

🌀 What the cycle of initiation – immersion – transition can tell us about story. 

Transcript:

Ceremony & Story is the result of a hypothesis that I formed during my time as a creative writing professor, developmental editor, and generally unhinged devourer of books. I found that some of the more popular models of story structure (Story Grid, Save the Cat, Freytag's Pyramid, Hero's Journey, the Snowflake Method etc.) offered helpful guidance, but there was something a little too angular and Saturnian about them. The balance between flexibility and containment wasn't quite right for me. 

I have been experimenting with different models, drawn from my experience of working on hundreds of novels – and of reading and distilling story theory – that feel more human and iterative. I want to share my hypothesis with you, and to test it as I go. I hope that this process will be as valuable to you as it is to me. 

I don't offer this as an alternative to existing story models, as a ten-point plan, or as the only way to think about storytelling. My hope is that it will help to make the process of developing a complex narrative project feel pleasurable and satisfying without adding another checklist or chore. 

What is my hypothesis? That we understand story the same way we understand our own lives. That is, we understand each story as a cyclical, iterative process. Just as our lives have seasons, so do the stories we tell. 

Each season has its own internal shape, a movement from initiation, to immersion, to transition. The whole of our lives follow this shape too, and the seasons can be considered as fractal versions of the whole. 

Just a brief note here to say that I am referring to winter in the northern hemisphere. I live in a place that still has four distinct seasons. This is a symbolic structure, so I hope you might still find this system valuable whether you recognise this climate in your own environment or not.

We see this shape everywhere in nature. In the life cycle of an insect, in the shape of a mountain, in the movement from winter to spring to summer to autumn. Even though climate change has transformed seasonal structures, even in more temperate climates, it is still possible to understand story, analogously, through the symbolic seasonal shifts. 

It is easy to feel this shape because it is the shape of the world around us, it is the shape of our own experience. We follow these iterations from birth until death, becoming initiated into something new, immersing in that experience, and transitioning to something else, or to a more rarefied version of that thing, or to our own final transition. 

What could be more peaceful and natural than following the fractal shape of the universe in our storytelling? What could give more insight and ease than what we know deep in our bones?

This series will follow the movement from season to season, showing how we can read stories through the lens of these cycles. 

What do I mean by this? 

The first act, or quarter, or season, of the story unfolds in the metaphorical wintertime. It is a time when what appears to be fallow is shot through with new life waiting to unfurl. What fruit will be borne by these seeds is unclear, and it will be a long time before those flavours and textures and effects will be known to the characters and their readers. The earth is chilly but there is movement below.

The second season is spring. A time of bursting through, of sensory delight, of freshness and new perspectives driven by the renewal of plant life. This is the quarter of the story that is given over to immersion in sensual pleasures, childlike wonder, and pure instinct. Winter is fading and autumn is far in the distance, so this is a time when even the wisest heads throw caution to the wind and indulge themselves in hedonistic abandon, which can often have consequences later on. The end of this section usually brings with it some kind of reversal, a sense that the time of immersion is over, and an expansion of knowledge is the gift given in exchange.

Summer is a time of both abundance and melancholy. The fruits are deliciously ripe and bursting with colour, the perfume of the night flowers is breathtaking. But this is also a time of planning for the harvest, ensuring stores against the winter. Lammas is an unsettled time, and often associated with floods. This is a period when the easy pleasures of spring give way to the limits of autumn, and it is a time to check resources carefully. Characters who have been immersed in their world will have to use their new, and sometimes challenging, gift of knowledge to negotiate the reckoning that marks the end of this season.

Finally, autumn arrives and with it a series of deeper encounters with the underworld. This is the season of Samhain. This is where the seeds from winter, the experience of spring, and the knowledge of summer come together to give the character their best hope at negotiating their transition to the next part of their life. They can call on their ancestors, their spirit guides, and their own inner knowledge to help them through.

The cycle is iterative, and there is no end to the story, like there is no end to our stories, only transitions. Instead of forcing an act of redemption, or tying a ribbon on the events of the story, it is more satisfying, and more recognisable to readers, to acknowledge that you are simply showing a cycle of initiation-immersion-transition in your characters’ lives. And this takes the pressure off the story, off the characters, off the ending, and, hopefully, off the writer.

I will expand this process and share it with you as I do. I hope to apply this seasonal model to a number of literary and visual artworks including multiple narrators, single narrators, experimental works, memoir, genre works, literary works, etc. I think this model is flexible and capacious enough to hold these different kinds of stories.

I have no idea if this is true; this is a hypothesis I am testing. I may be immersed in my own Taurean season of sensory pleasures, about to hit a hard limit. If so, I hope this is still a useful experiment to share.

One final note. I don’t suggest that there is a mathematical equation to be made about chapters or scenes or acts. Only you know how long each section needs to be for the work you are creating. It will be different for a short story, a novel, a memoir, a play etc. These twelve seasons aren’t necessarily equivalent in word count or length but they are each as long as they need to be.