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Kishōtenketsu: Exploring The Four Act Story Structure - The Art of Narrative

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Let’s talk about Kishōtenketsu, or how Asian story structure subverts our Western concepts of how stories work. In Western culture, if you want to write a story you have about a dozen different story structures to choose from. You can use the Three Act Structure, or the Hero’s Journey, which I wrote a thorough guide to here, or maybe the Seven Point Structure. So many choices, but they all have one thing in common. They all revolve around conflict. The protagonist is introduced, they run face-first into some sort of obstacle, and they spend most of the rest of the story overcoming that obstacle. This is a fine way to write a story, but it’s not your only option. Kishōtenketsu is a Japanese story structure that doesn’t need conflict to work. It’s the guiding structure behind popular urban legends, jokes, comic strips, and even video game design. And, there’s a reason for the rising popularity of Kishōtenketsu. It’s something that most readers have never seen. It’s a unique twist on how

Let’s talk about Kishōtenketsu, or how Asian story structure subverts our Western concepts of how stories work. In Western culture, if you want to write a story you have about a dozen different story structures to choose from. You can use the Three Act Structure, or the Hero’s Journey, which I wrote a thorough guide to here , or maybe the Seven Point Structure. So many choices, but they all have one thing in common. They all revolve around conflict. The protagonist is introduced, they run face-first into some sort of obstacle, and they spend most of the rest of the story overcoming that obstac

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