Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of Structuralism — he has an important place in the intellectual history of the modern era, and I borrow some terminology from the structuralists, but I’m certainly not one of them.

When talking about narrative art on this website, there are a number of terms that I tend to use and reuse. Many of them come from Structuralism, and I’m generally using them in a fashion related to the structuralist meaning, but which is somewhat distinct.

The three big ones that I want to talk about today are Syntax, Paradigm, and Myth. These three ideas form the cornerstone of how I think about narrative art in general, whether we’re talking about written fiction or memoir, television, video games, comic books, or film (the first two, as that link shows, can apply outside of narrative.)

I think that narratives are important to understand for the same reason that I write about postmodernism so much: as chaotic and unpredictable as the world-at-large can be, we have to remember that the human brain is the most advanced pattern-recognition organ on the planet. We look at the world and we find stories and then we share those stories. If you look at how we talk about memory, then that’s a story to, and in a very real sense, it means that each and every one of us is made out of narrative in a very real way.

So, in contrast with the chaotic, unpredictable world-at-large, we have the more contained, structured (but still chaotic and unpredictable) world-for-us, which is built out of stories. We make these stories and share them, and so understanding how narratives work give us a greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

In my construction, every story has two main levels: the Syntax, which is what you see on the page, stage, or screen, and the Paradigm, which is the “DNA” of the story, the basic blueprint that determines its constitution. These two things are related – generally speaking, when things work properly, the Paradigm is what comes first.

Some people might protest, claiming that they have a really cool character, or an idea for a set-piece, and say that they’re going to write or make said story at some point, but I would point out that, if you don’t have two connected but chronologically subsequent events, you don’t have a story (I’m certain someone will come along and prove me wrong on that front, and I’m comfortable with that. I welcome being disproven on this sort of thing.) As soon as you have two related, subsequent events, the relationship between those events can take on a meaning, and that’s the beginning of a Paradigm.

Okay, so let me back up and discuss what I mean when I talk about Paradigm. It’s easiest when discussed in relationship with Syntax, but it can be a bit of a struggle on its own. Syntax is the text of the narrative – the readily apparent portion that shows up when you look directly at the thing in question. The Paradigm is the part of it that defines the possible syntaxes that might be deployed. Consider: some books are categorized as “unfilmable” because translating it from one medium to another would require such a change in the visible syntax as to render it unrecognizable. Certain forms of art are more flexible – the written word can host more things than the moving image, because the written word can encode everything (if at a lower fidelity) than the moving image and it can encode more.

Let’s look at an example: the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” would be incredibly difficult to turn into a Hollywood film, because so much of what the poem discusses is internal to the titular speaker. Attempting to film the depths of despair that are discussed in the poem and placing them on the screen might not be impossible, but it would result in a film that was nearly unwatchable for the number of languishing shots of an old man sprawled on the deck of a ship. I would wager that any director attempting to make such an adaptation would have to mutate the source text to fit the syntax of film until it’s not recognizable, because not making these changes would result in a bad film adaptation of a reasonably good poem.

(I understand there was a film version in the 1970s that was quite well-received; I didn’t know this, but it still strikes me that it would be difficult to make something other than what amounts to a spoken-word music video.)

Adaptation and translation (though I’m sure Edgar has some thoughts on that second one) are acts by which a creator attempts to re-express a paradigm through a new or altered syntax.

This brings me to what I call “myth” – when I discuss myths, I’m using it in a sense that draws almost as much from Roland Barthes (referenced here) as C.G. Jung: I don’t necessarily believe that any of the myths we’re familiar with are inscribed indelibly on human nature (that would be a form of essentialism, and I’ve made my thoughts on that quite clear, I believe.) No, if anything, a myth is a ready-made paradigm than tends to force certain syntagmatic elements because they’ve been worn into it via repetition.

The best example of mythic storytelling, I feel, is found in the Mad Max series (I have a well-documented love of the fourth movie, especially, see here and here and here). There is a temptation to think of these movies as telling a chronological meta-story, where one man progresses through each of the films one after the other. This is precisely the wrong way to watch the movies, and the fact that it is so at odds with the dominant way that stories are told is part of why I love them so much.

Each of them is, in fact, the same story, mutated repeatedly, zooming in on one particular element until it is captured in crystalline clarity. You have:

A destroyed world.
A wanderer who was part of an old, formerly established order, who has lost everything.
This man’s victimization at the hands of a new, cancerous order, which is an intensification of the old order.
Him forming a tentative alliance with those preyed upon by that new order.
A battle that turns to a flight to safety.
The death of the patriarchal head of the cancerous order.
The wanderer leaves, to avoid re-entrenching the foundations of the cancerous order.

Along the way there are a set of symbols that reoccur to symbolize the beats. There’s Max’s car, the one-sleeved jacket, the beard, and the broken shotgun. It’s the broken shotgun symbol that cracked it open for me: in every movie, the broken shotgun is used as part of a bluff and revealed to be inoperative – a tool of violence that can’t be used for its intended purpose and thus a symbol of Max, who is the exact same thing.

As far as I’m concerned, this constitutes a mythic structure that George Miller repeats over and over in this series of films. It isn’t the Jungian or Campbellian monomyth by any stretch (though an argument could be made that one or more of the movies follows that structure in addition to the structure that I’ve outlined above.)

R.I.P. Carrie Fisher — the death from 2016 that messed me up the most.

The Star Wars movies, likewise, had a mythic structure – much closer to the Campbellian original – that Rian Johnson broke in the most recent main-sequence movie The Last Jedi. There were definitely praise-worthy things within this film: after eight movies and countless spin-offs, imitations, and side-stories (consider this list, then consider that it’s only books listed), it was a must. This movie also shows the dangers with breaking a myth, though: you need to have a satisfying paradigm lined up to take over from the broken myth, and a new paradigm isn’t going to be as universally satisfying as a mythic structure. Personally, I thought that Johnson’s handling of the central villain and attempted shelving of the previous film’s hero was a poorly-conceived approach. I had no patience for a few portions of the narrative he constructed – but I respect what he tried to do. I like that he broke it; I dislike how he broke it.

Each of the mythic structures here – as well as the “-Punk” and “Millennial” mythic structures – encodes a particular set of ideas and thoughts about the world without becoming a totalizing narrative, with the exception of Star Wars: those movies had become a totalizing narrative in that they could only possibly play out one way, and threatened to exert a pull on society in general (closeness to the Campbellian Monomyth, which is hardly “mono-” in my opinion, but which is an old and established story, helps.) Think about it, the Hero’s Journey mythic structure, which Star Wars typified, was also the mythic paradigm behind The Matrix and Harry Potter – far from being the only game in town, it had the best PR, and threatened to strangle out other stories for a long time, forcing them into a mold that constrained possibilities.

Illustration from “The Smith and the Devil” as recounted in Russian Folk Tales translated by Leonard A. Magnus and E. P. Dutton. Illustrator unknown. — Illustration from “The Smith and the Devil” as recounted in *Russian Folk Tales* translated by Leonard A. Magnus and E. P. Dutton. Illustrator unknown.

It is also transparently not the only story structure, and given my use of the term “myth” here I feel it necessary to take a potshot at Joseph Campbell. The oldest story we know about is “The Smith and The Devil”, with evidence that it stretches back almost 7,000 years. In this story, a blacksmith or metalworker of some kind makes a deal with the devil (or death, or a genie, or a malevolent god,) selling his soul for the power to weld any two things together (or similar) and then uses this power to renege on his bargain: he welds the devil to an immovable rock, trapping the demon there and making it impossible for the bargain’s terms to be enforced.

This story was told in Hindi, Greek, Irish, Russian, Spanish, and Norse. It is an old story, and the basic structure remains unchanged. It also doesn’t fit at all into the Hero’s Journey model. Ergo, for the very reason that Campbell and Jung argued that there had to be one root story, now that we have more information, there can’t possibly be one root story.

What we have instead is a full pantheon of myths to draw from, and because there are so many there is the opportunity to create more. It is my belief that there are certain paradigmatic patterns that people are attracted to, and tend to repeat, like the varied melodies of a canon, and eventually they become unmoored from their roots, repeated like the memories of a traumatic loop, their original lost completely.

Perhaps it’s the case that each creator of a narrative has one myth in them, and they’re just trying to get it out there and repeated, practicing their skill on other myths cobbled together by diverse hands until they can get the paradigm of their story straight, and find the right syntax to communicate it.

It’s possibly the case. But I doubt it. After all, I’ve made my thoughts on essences pretty clear, and this is just essence by another name.

So what’s the upshot, you may ask, what’s the takeaway?

First, I’d suggest that a creator, seriously, rethink any effort to work on a piece of narrative art (or, really, any art) syntax-first. Say one has a cool image, a great line, an interesting character, something from TV Tropes (distraction warning.) that they want to play with: awesome! They should write it down in a tiny notebook and reference back to it when the paradigm has been figured out. That is, until a creator come up with a subject and a plot and a tone, i.e., a particular pattern they can begin to slot things into.

Second, a creator needs to be careful to pick the right syntax (medium, format, genre) for the story they want to tell. A screenplay that really hinges on the character’s internal life is going to have a difficult time coming to fruition, because the medium thrives on sight and sound – psychodrama needs to be made visible. If this can’t be done, the story might sit better in prose or poetry.

Third, if a creator wanted to adapt a story, consider it as a myth as I have above – boil it down to the things that cannot possibly be changed (and really stress-test it) and then use that as your outline. Let’s say we want to make an adaptation of Shakespeare’s MacBeth. I contend that the first step would be to identify as the essential components:

The first step is to acknowledge that it was written by Shakespeare and has an Orson Welles version. Tall order.

A hero is seduced by a prediction of yet greater future honors, made by an agency from outside the context he lives in.
This agency makes another prediction, claiming still other honors for another person, and the hero is aware of this.
This hero is driven to attempt to materialize these future honors by sharing the prediction with an intimate by committing a horrible act.
Former associates of the hero flee, giving them a vacuum to fill, assuming the honors they sought.
Out of jealousy, the hero attempts to reach past the prediction, attempting to seize the honors earmarked by another prediction for another person. This goes poorly, but not necessarily completely unsuccessfully.
The hero seeks out the predictive agency, which gives a gnomic prediction which sounds positive, but which accurately predicts the hero’s ultimate failure.
The second violation sets off a domino-effect that leads to the hero’s former associates destroying him, exactly in line with the prediction.

Oh, and Akira Kurosawa did it, too. Perhaps a lesser-known Shakespeare play might be suitable for adaptation. Maybe Coriolanus? (It was a play, not just a rap song.)

This is a fairly long and elaborate myth, but I’ve taken pains to file off all of the “medieval Scotland” from it – this myth can be plugged into almost any other context: replace MacBeth’s witches with a Nate Silver-type and this could be the story about an unscrupulous Vice-Presidential candidate maneuvering his way into the presidency. Replace the hero with the second-best anything – figure skater, mob enforcer, restaurateur, school newspaper reporter – and a new version of the MacBeth myth emerges into existence.

To summarize, every piece of narrative art (and potentially every piece of art – I’m inclined to think that it’s every one of them) has two “sides” to it. There’s the public-facing “syntax” that is what the audience experiences, and there’s the artist-facing “paradigm” that defines what syntaxes are possible. The syntax is the visual vocabulary, the dialogue, some parts of the characters, the setting, and the pieces that the audience can get at quickly; the paradigm is the tone, the theme, the events, and the parts of the character that aren’t part of the syntax. In our culture – in all cultures – there are ready-made myths that can be picked up and used as a paradigm by a creator.

Woodcut from Pierio Valeriano’s ‘Hieroglyphica‘ (Lyon, 1586), depicting Prometheus, the Greek Fire-Thief. — Woodcut from Pierio Valeriano’s ‘*Hieroglyphica*‘ (Lyon, 1586), depicting Prometheus, the Greek Fire-Thief.

A myth is simpler than we give it credit for. Consider a story known to be a myth – anything that can be changed without making it unrecognizable as a variant of the myth is syntax: but if Prometheus doesn’t deliver fire to humankind, if Eve doesn’t bite the apple, if Balder’s breast isn’t pierced by the dart, then the myth is lost. This constellation of compulsory events and elements makes up the myth, and a myth is just a recurring paradigm.

And that’s really the upshot: that the identity of a narrative lies in what differences can enrich the story, instead of muddy the waters. Being aware of these two “sides” can enhance your writing, can open up new possibilities.

As you write, ask yourself: what is lost if I do this differently? Why am I picking this detail, this person, this event? If a different solution would lead to a better end result, you have no reason not to take that course.

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Which Grain Will Grow, and Which Will Not: On Syntax, Paradigm, and Myth