Story theory seminar
Dramatic Structure & Screen Story Theory
A graduate seminar on how stories hold weight — and why yours collapses in act two
Six weeks of structural theory taught the way a graduate seminar teaches it: define the term, test the term against real pages, then defend a position under pressure. You will map causality, distinguish plot from structure, diagnose the act-two collapse mathematically, and finish with a defended structural argument for your own project.
Alander Pulliam · 4 modules · 170 minutes · Screenwriters, novelists, playwrights and showrunners who can already finish a draft and want to know why it works or doesn't.
- Define structure, plot, story and premise without using any of them to define the others
- Map a sequence by value change rather than by event
- Diagnose an act-two collapse from the page, not from vibes
- Argue a structural choice against a hostile note
- Deliver a defended structural map of your own project
Week 1
2 assigned readingsTerms of Art: Story, Plot, Structure, Premise
Most structural arguments are vocabulary arguments in disguise. Week one fixes the vocabulary so the rest of the seminar can be about pages rather than definitions.
- Define four terms without circularity
- Separate causal chain from arrangement in a text you know well
- State a premise as a promise the ending must keep
Before the deck
- Your own first ten pages · Your draft
Read them as a stranger and mark every join that needs 'and then'.
- One film you know by heart · Any
You cannot audit causality in something you are still emotionally defending.
Definition
Four words, four jobs
- Story: the causal chain of events, in the order they happened.
- Plot: the arrangement of those events for an audience.
- Structure: the load-bearing pattern of value change under the arrangement.
- Premise: the argument the whole thing is making, stated as a promise.
If you can swap two of these words in a sentence and it still parses, you are not using them precisely yet.