Читать книгу How to write screenplays using Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp approach. PRACTICAL GUIDE - Maxim Bukhteev - Страница 3

The most ancient and widespread stories are myths and fairy tales. Although they are close relatives, nevertheless these forms should not be confused.

Let’s begin with the fact that the fairy tale scheme by itself is a lot more developed and complicated, than the mythology one. A myth is an ancient conservative form, but it lies in the basis of a fairy tale, as Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp writes. A myth tells about creation of the world, in which gods and similar heroes act. This is largely a sacred text, narrating about creation of all things existing.

This is what Campbell tells us about the difference between a fairy tale and a myth in his “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” book: “As a rule, a fairy tale hero achieves a local victory within his microcosm, whereas a myth hero achieves worldwide historical macrocosm triumph. While a fairy tale hero is the youngest or despised child, who gets extraordinary abilities and defeats his own abusers, a myth hero at the end of his adventure obtains a means of revival of all his community in whole”.

That is, in fairy tales, even with a presence of variety of magical creatures, the main characters are simple humans. Which naturally makes stories like this a lot closer to nowadays viewers. Besides, working with a fairy tale is a lot more convenient.

In his writing Propp specifies several times, that he works with a very narrow topic, which is a folklore. He keeps his distance deliberately and tries not to touch any other form of creativity, although he mentions them from time to time. It’s clear that this is the absolutely correct scientific approach. However, as the time has shown, a certain fairy tale case helps to uncover many general laws of making story.

In fact, this is exactly why the Russian scholar’s writing has become world famous, having created the basis for the modern text theory. Experienced screenwriters know how to put plane scientific facts to good practical use.

I use their approach, just like Christopher Vogler did with Campbell theories, and I will try to create a comprehensive instruction for screenwriters.

I hope it will help authors, and Propp will come to having his own George Lukas.