Storytelling II: Structure & Pacing
Three-act structure at every duration. Hooks, payoffs, open loops, tension curves.
- Lectures
- 8
- Total runtime
- 4h 52m
- Attendance minimum
- 2h 26m
- Prerequisites
- NAR-101 Storytelling I: Foundations of Narrative
Lecture Playlist
Ordered as a teaching progression, not by popularity. Attendance is recorded once half of a lecture has been watched.
- Robert A. Caro: Master of the Craft (Nieman Foundation) How a working writer actually builds a long narrative: research, outline, and structure chosen before the first sentence 64 min Attended
- 7. Russian Formalism (ENGL 300) The core distinction: story (what happened) vs. plot (how it is arranged), and structure as a set of devices 49 min Attended
- Three Act Structure Explained — The Secret to Telling a Great Story The canonical template made concrete: acts, plot points, pinch points, midpoint 27 min Attended
- 4. Configurative Reading (ENGL 300) Why open loops work: reading as anticipation, gaps, and the violation of expectation 52 min Attended
- 9. Alfred Hitchcock (21L.011 The Film Experience) Tension engineering: controlling what the audience knows and when they know it 49 min Attended
- TEDxEast - Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators Structure compressed: the tension curve of an 18-minute talk 18 min Attended
- The clues to a great story | Andrew Stanton | TED The hook as a promise, and endings that pay the promise off 19 min Attended
- Practicum · working creator How to Build Your Story Structure Lecture 3's three-act template put to work: a working short-film director shows the six-act breakdown he actually outlines with, and why the canonical model gets subdivided before it is usable 14 min Attended
Every course reserves one practicum seat, listed last and marked P. It is filled by someone who has shipped the work — here, Film Riot — because the university lectures establish why something works and the practicum shows it being done under real constraints.