Narrative reversals and story success-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Narrative reversals and story success

Published:2024-08-23 Issue:34 Volume:10 Page:
ISSN:2375-2548
Container-title:Science Advances
language:en
Short-container-title:Sci. Adv.

Author:

Knight Samsun¹²^ORCID,Rocklage Matthew D.³,Bart Yakov³^ORCID

Affiliation:

1. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.

2. DATA Initiative at Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

3. Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Abstract

Storytelling is a powerful tool that connects us and shapes our understanding of the world. Theories of effective storytelling boast an intellectual history dating back millennia, highlighting the significance of narratives across civilizations. Yet, despite all this theorizing, empirically predicting what makes a story successful has remained elusive. We propose narrative reversals, key turning points in a story, as pivotal facets that predict story success. Drawing on narrative theory, we conceptualize reversals as plot: essential moments that push narratives forward and shape audience reception. Across 30,000 movies, TV shows, novels, and fundraising pitches, we use computational linguistics and trend detection analysis to develop a quantitative method for measuring narrative reversals via shifts in valence. We find that stories with more‚ and more dramatic, turning points are more successful. Our findings shed light on this age-old art form and provide a practical approach to understanding and predicting the impact of storytelling.

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Link

https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.adl2013

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