Book completed

[eve_prime]

Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling, by Henry Lien. In the West, we tell stories in which there’s a problem or challenge that the protagonist resolves – a three-act structure. In the East, a four-act structure is more common: we learn about a situation and the people in it, the situation develops further, a twist comes along and disrupts the situation, then the situation is seen in a new and broader way, with implications for the future. I was already aware of these differences, but Lien adds insights about the psychological and social benefits of the Eastern way, which I appreciated. I also liked learning how various video games and even Western media have used the Eastern structure. He also spends time on nested and circular story structures, which we know from Rashomon and The Thousand and One Nights, which let readers see situations from multiple valid perspectives and explore their nuances. My only quibble, and it’s small, is that in My Neighbor Totoro, the mom clearly didn’t have “just a cold” because otherwise the family would never have moved to the rural area where the story takes place – they move there so she can live in the sanitarium while she recovers, and it takes a while.