Only 36 possible dramatic situations.

[Len911]

I have included the free link to the book "The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations" by Georges Polti. It might provide inspiration when gathering ideas for the themes and plots of songs. Wikipedia also has a condensed version.

http://books.google.com/books?id=PF5ZAA ... &q&f=false

[marcblack30]

Interesting, thanks!

[mojobone]

Anthropologists say there are only 55 stories in all of human history; presumably, there are a couple of variations/resolutions for each of those situations...

[cardell]

Thanks Len.

Stuart

[Len911]

After looking through the list there are probably only a half a dozen or less actually used in pop songs, so I'm not sure how useful the list would actually be.

[Burt Crow]

This would be a great list as a starting point to build songs, but I think Robin Fredrick’s 3 energy levels (High/Medium/Low) of scene with BPM/chord structure breakdown is much more aligned with contemporary film/TV production. This is an old book and is refering more to theatre and literature of the time then cinema. Syd Field’s http://www.amazon.co.uk/Screenplay-Foun ... 896&sr=8-1 screen writing process is well aligned with this sort of break down.

Lots of theorist from the mid-1800s attempted to catalogue stories. People like the Brothers Grimm were more collectors of old folk tales than writers. From the 1920/30s onwards thing took a much more physiological/sociological – the most noted was Campbell and his work ‘The Hero has a 1000 faces’http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hero-Thousand-F ... 958&sr=8-2, more noted for its supposed influence on Lucas and the Star Wars epic. Campbell claims that all stories are derived from or in part from the stages of what he called the Hero’s epic
The current lowest number of ‘stories’ stands at about 5 -7, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Basic-Pl ... 106&sr=8-1 claiming that more complex narratives are just combinations of the basic stories.

I think all knowledge is good, but as a theatre, film and media teacher who has known this for years IMHO Robin Frederick’s books and the good folks on the forum have taught me more about song writing, then worrying greatly about ‘narrative theory’.
But if you feel inclined to enrich yourself I am happy to recommend further reading or searches

BTW there is a great Theatre Sports/Whose Line is it anyway impro game using this list where the players have to rapidly jump from one situation to the next in 4 minutes.