Story Structure: Arc-based or mission based?

[Forager]

When you call your arc a story focused mission arc, what is the story?

 

Is each mission a complete story, like episodes of a television show with an overarching plot?

 

Is the entire arc a story and the missions are just parts of that story? Example: Mission 1 is Act I?

 

Does it depend on how much ground you're trying to cover with the story?

 

[Darmian]

3 minutes ago, Forager said:

When you call your arc a story focused mission arc, what is the story?

For me the story is told over five (or fewer, depending) episodes in an arc.

 

4 minutes ago, Forager said:

Is each mission a complete story, like episodes of a television show with an overarching plot?

See above.  I mean you COULD do it like that.  Like say five tip missions or bank missions, but those missions are either going to be very tightly written (possible but tricky) or very slight.

 

6 minutes ago, Forager said:

Does it depend on how much ground you're trying to cover with the story?

It does.  Sometimes you have a story that needs more than one arc.  Or more than three arcs!  It happens.  I've done that and so have a few others.  Check @TerroirNoir2's epic attempt to play through all of my arcs as well as @Ankylosaur's and @cranebump's.

 

 

[sponazgul]

37 minutes ago, Forager said:

When you call your arc a story focused mission arc, what is the story?

 

Is each mission a complete story, like episodes of a television show with an overarching plot?

 

Is the entire arc a story and the missions are just parts of that story? Example: Mission 1 is Act I?

 

Does it depend on how much ground you're trying to cover with the story?

 

 

When I do an AE story, there's an overall story, and each mission is a part - a mission *might* be its own story too but that's not the norm. I mean, Save Three Champions I guess is it's own story - you save three captured champions, but it's part of a bigger story - maybe getting the villain who captured them in the first place, etc.

 

Some of my missions might be low impact but are there to introduce some larger element. (This has a drawback though, some people play a mission that's rather light and bail.)

 

I think people who do multi-arc stories are more representative of the television show that's episodic with a season-wide arc.

[cranebump]

I consider mishes in SFMAs to be parts of a greater story, analogous to, say, movie script structure. So you have intro to/of a problem (intro mish) investigation/complication/some sort of twist (middle mishes), finale (tying up the arc (setting up segue into next arc, if the story is multi-arc). With multiple arcs telling a larger story, the structure is the same, but spread out over more missions (middle arcs working like middle mishes, structurally, for example). I haven’t done a collection of, say, radio mishes, but each mish could follow the same structure, in microcosm. 
 

Such a structure is maintained, even if you put things in different order (like starting at the end in M1, then telling the rest in flashback). Pulp Fiction is an example of telling a structured story, then chopping it up and presenting it in non-linear fashion (which made the movie gimmicky to me—you tell it in order, it’s pretty simple). 
 

However the plot’s presented, it just needs to be easy to connect, and, to me, follow Todorov’s model of status quo-disruption (rinse, repeat, till status quo has been reestablished or a new status quo has emerged). 
 

However anyone does it, you just need a solid basic plot, and characters to care about. All other considerations are secondary.

Edited 6 hours ago by cranebump

[Frozen Burn]

5 hours ago, Forager said:

When you call your arc a story focused mission arc, what is the story?

 

Is each mission a complete story, like episodes of a television show with an overarching plot?

 

Is the entire arc a story and the missions are just parts of that story? Example: Mission 1 is Act I?

 

Does it depend on how much ground you're trying to cover with the story?

 

 

 

All stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  That is the arc.  A TV series has this overall, but also each episode as a beginning, middle, and end too.  So, not only should each mission give some sort of arc, so should the series of missions  - if you are creating a "Story" with your AE missions, then yes, you'd need at least 3 missions as Act 1, 2, and 3.  

 

If you need more ground to tell your story... then use 4 or 5 missions.  Or even use multiple arcs with 3+ missions each.    

[JKCarrier]

In the one arc I've published so far (see below), the first few missions are meant to feel like stand-alone stories. There's a bit of a time-jump between each of them, and no obvious connection tying them together. But I also tried to create a sense of escalating stakes -- things are getting stranger and more unhinged the farther you go along. Then the final mission explains what's really going on, and (hopefully) puts the previous episodes into a context that makes sense. One of my inspirations was the Marvel show "WandaVision", which starts out as a classic episodic sitcom, but slowly pulls back the curtain to reveal a larger story.