I have a lot of interest in story structure. Understanding what it is, how it works, and using it to write better stories. Stories that will keep people more interested, and deliver a satisfying experience…that's what we try to do when we're making comics and writing stories, right? Or at least, we're trying to keep ourselves interested and satisfied.
There's a story structure that's completely new to me - although it's very old and well established for many, many people.
It's KISHOTENKETSU.
This is an Eastern story structure that began in China and has deep roots there, and in South Korea and Japan.
Japanese art and poetry uses this structure, and it's been adapted by Manga and Anime writers on a massive scale (one video I watched described kishotenketsu as the Eastern version of the Three Act Structure - so, it's BIG.
I've looked into it only a little bit so far, but I'm getting the sense that it will help me understand manga and anime on a more fundamental level. And I think it's helping me see why it takes an adjustment for me to really feel some of these manga/anime stories.
Because I really like them - but the appeal has been the artwork, and cel-shading, and less predictable stories. I like it a lot, but watching or reading longer-form stories from Japan almost always leaves me confused about what the story is trying to do.
There are plenty of good discussions about this structure on Youtube, so I won't go too deep into it.
Kishotenketsu is a four-part story structure. Four words make up the word ‘Kishotenketsu’.
It breaks down like this:
KI: Introduction to the world and the main character
SHO: Development of the world. A deeper look at the environment and character.
TEN: Twist. This might not be a massive twist like we see in certain movies, but it's something unexpected that changes things, or a look at hidden biases or secrets in a character's personality.
KETSU: Resolution. Things resolve.
What's interesting here is that this basic plot has no mention of conflict, or Antagonist, or a character changing. All of these things can be in a story that uses this structure, but it's not built in to the structure the way it is in the Hero's Journey, for example.
I found this interesting, anyway - not sure how well known this is for you all reading this, but I'd never heard of it! I think even non-Eastern stories of certain kinds could be understood better by understanding Kishotenketsu. Maybe. That's muh hunch, anyway…
Have a good one, and Happy New Year!
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A Different Kind of Story Structure
Banes at 12:00AM, Dec. 28, 2023
3 likes!
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PaulEberhardt at 6:06AM, Dec. 29, 2023
Very interesting! I haven't heard of Kishotenketsu (Gesundheit!) before, but I like how glimpses into storytelling traditions other than familiar Western ones offer new, fresh perspectives. It doesn't feel all that unfamiliar, actually. I think Western readers/viewers may still want to try and read some internal or external conflict into such a story, just out of habit, and kind of succeed, because in all matters of interpretation we'll always see what we want or expect to see, even if the result is a head scratcher. I can imagine it may be really inspirational to do it the other way round, as in try and reread a Western story in this way and see what happens. I'll try it some time, anyway.
JohnCelestri at 8:28AM, Dec. 28, 2023
It's very interesting to see how similar many story-writing formulas are. I'll add a link to Lester Dent's formula for writing his Doc Savage pulp novels (1933 to 1949). He delivered them on a monthly basis and the magazine was one of the best selling publications right from its first issue. https://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html
marcorossi at 2:47AM, Dec. 28, 2023
That said, if you look at the story structure in Save the Cat and other western manuals for movie writers, you'll see that it looks a lot like a ki-sho-ten-ketsu, even if they call it a three act structure: the second act is twice longer than the other two, and it is split in the middle, so when you look at the four blocks you see: Act 1 introduction to the lead, the world and the main themes/goals of the story (ki), act 2A the protagonist explores the world, clashes with the sidekick (to highlight the lead's inner doubts), does fun things (sho); act 2B but then there is a twist at midpoint and the protagonist is in deep shit, almost dead, but this thriggers his/her growth (ten); act 3 final showdown/resolution.
marcorossi at 2:37AM, Dec. 28, 2023
I did read about the ki-sho-ten-ketsu, apparently kids in east Asia learn at school to use that as a basic scheme to write narrative stories. The author of JoJo, Araki, wrote a manual on how he writes mangas, and he explains the structure of his stories as ki-sho-ten-ketsu, however for him "ten" means that the protagonist gets in deeper shit, so his stories are more like ki-sho-ten-ten-ten...ketsu, or so he says.