I believe that insofar as a theory (or even just a term) is useful, it needs to be specific.

One manner of building a theory is by establishing a dichotomy, such as Baldwin does between “story” and “plot.” But he doesn’t really develop this. Plot “must prove a point” and “the aim of story is revelation.”

This is poetic and evocative—but ultimately mumbo jumbo. 

I don’t think it does anybody any good to make “story” a mystical, transcendent property of a pile of words or reel of images—some sort of greater spiritual whole hovering on the far side of the meager, merely functional parts.

A story is simply a sequence of events which pertain to a subject. This series of events is “plot” and plot makes no sense (to people) without a subject who (say) gets the crap beat out of them but ends up kissing the sheriff in the end. “Good” stories are measured not by how they conform to a tradition, or how firmly they resolve their issues—but by how powerfully they effect us, how they defy our expectations, elicit our passions, expand our ability to sympathize with the experience of others.

Now—there’s the story, and then there’s how the story is conveyed. This we can call “discourse” or the performance of the story. Here’s where we get into the poetics of telling and showing, the artful unveiling of events and intentions, the wide array of f-stops and backdrops and the clever use of corporate props.

These two things—story, and discourse—are the two major units of the storyteller’s craft. Both branch out into a huge-ass milieu of styles and tropes and genres (which are just recognizable constellations of said styles and tropes). 

I’m not saying that narrative (in the form of a .doc or a .mov) does not address the wide gamut of human experience, from the social to the personal. Narrative I believe is the most efficient means of conveying human experience.

I’m proposing that we can explain how it does this without resorting to ambiguous terms.

Being clear with our terms in no way limits our ability to study how exactly a story or movie effects us. In fact, I think ambiguous and poetic theory just muddies the waters; though I admit it can feel inspiring—but that’s a storyteller’s trick.

Baldwin, in the end, is telling us a story—more or less about story.

Here’s the first part of the story I’m working on this quarter.