![]() However, the frame still illustrates the completed story about an old man trying to instill the virtues of love and goodness into his grandson through the power of story, and facing the antagonistic force of his grandson's somewhat pessimistic worldview-a complete story even apart from Wesley and Buttercup. In the Princess Bride, the more structured plot is clearly that of Buttercup and Wesley. However, these smaller stories within the overarching story must also have their own completed plots-a beginning, a middle, an end, a protagonist, a purpose, and an antagonistic force. Obviously, there will be a particular overarching plot that will gain more attention, structure and detail than the Frame or the Meta Narratives themselves. Tip 4: Each Meta Narrative and both sides of the Frame Narrative must have a complete plot. To avoid this, make the Frame and Meta Narratives appropriate to your story, and allow the overarching plot to speak its own scale. These tactics only result in audience annoyance and the feeling that they've been deceived. Similarly, Meta Narratives are often used for the purpose of making better commercials for the movie by making the audience think they are watching something that they are not. Authors will use a Frame, such as a Narrator introducing the story about some great hero of legend that “saved us all,” in order to make the story artificially grow to a greater scale. What has made Meta Narratives and Frames so pretentious and annoying in popular stories, is that they are often used to pass the story off as something that it is not. Tip 3: Don't use Meta Narratives or Frames to make your story into something that it is not. “Big Fish” illustrates this with its own Inciting Incident, where the witch tells our young hero how he is going to die, instilling in him the bravery to face life with his head held high and the confidence that he will not die before his time. If your overarching plot-for example-has reached the Inciting Incident, then your short-story should emphasize a protagonist whose world is being shattered so that his story begins. Whether your plot is chronological or topical, the Meta Narratives should comprise the exact plot-points that are supposed to be in that part of the story. The single most common mistake that I've seen in Meta Narratives is that the writer did not have a purpose for the miniature stories being where they were the writer only knew that they wanted to add the little stories and so just threw them in to the story at random. Tip 2: Link your Meta Narratives into a structured topical or chronological plot. In “The Princess Bride,” for example, the writers use the Frame of a grandfather reading the main story to his grandson in order to frame the movie as a storybook fantasy-complimenting and properly framing the type of story that the audience can expect to see, and putting them in the correct mindset to properly appreciate it. You select a frame-Narrative or physical-based on what style and design will create the most appropriate and fitting boarders so that the viewer can best appreciate the art, even if that means going without a frame at all. When choosing a frame for a piece of art or photograph, you don't look for a frame that will overshadow the piece, tell the viewer how they are supposed to see the piece, or make the piece seem more grandiose than what it is. To understand how to correctly use a Frame Narrative, we must consider what a frame is. Tip 1: Use a Frame to hang the Narrative picture. Today, I'm going to talk about how to use both. Similarly, Frame Narratives-used in such stories as The Princess Bride, How I Met Your Mother, and (somewhat) the NeverEnding Story-are prolonged Meta Narratives that become the main plot of a story, usually used when a character from the future is telling the story of something that happened in the past. Meta Narratives are stories within a story-illustrated in its best form in movies such as Sucker Punch and Big Fish (though you could also succesfully argue that it is a Frame Narrative)-where short stories that take place outside the actual physical space and time of the main plot, are used to support the overarching plot. However, it seems like enough time has passed that it has been revived with a greater amount of skill, so that we can begin to talk about how to use it effectively, including in the form of Meta Narratives. it seems like only yesterday that we were in the year 2010, with Meta being the newest and most pretentious of plot devices. ![]() 5 Tips for Using Frame and Meta NarrativesĬhapter 7 “From Story to Art” – Section 6 “Frame and Meta Narratives”
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