When Christopher Nolan explains the plot of Momento, he draws a hairpin. It’s an idea I keep coming back to: Stories as shapes. In Momento, half of the movie moves forward in time while the other half moves backward. Then, toward the end, the two sides meet near the... tip of the hairpin. Point 1: Nolan says to “approach structure mathematically with diagrams.” In storytelling, the idea of structure is everywhere: • 3 Act • StoryGrid • Hero’s Journey But Nolan claims those restrict his creativity. He prefers to think in ‘shapes’ rather than in hard rules. “What I do is draw many diagrams,” Nolan says, “Particularly if there’s a type of structural complexity.” Point 2: I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut, who taught about the “shapes of stories” at Harvard and Case Western. He broke down stories into ~8 unique shapes. Each runs on 2 axes: • X – Time • Y – Good vs ill fortune For example, Nolan’s plot map of Inception looks like Vonnegut’s “Man In Hole” shape. But Momento is non-linear so it doesn’t follow any of the 8. And yet Nolan still describes it as a shape. *** “Breaking rules isn’t interesting. It’s making up new ones that keeps things exciting.” – Christopher Nolan Follow Nathan Baugh for more ideas like this!show more

When you misspell the movie name and don’t realize until two hours later 🫠

To learn more about Nolan, I can't recommend The Nolan Variations enough: Here's the full Memento interview: I also found this answer Nolan gave fascinating when asked about The Hero's Journey:

I put together a list of the 25 best tactics and resources to help you become a better storyteller. You can grab that here:

I was obsessed with this for a while; thankful I was reading Robert Greene’s Mastery at the time. Robert talks about thinking inside an idea by visualizing it. Einstein used analogies & diagrams Nolan’s doing the same; outlines are great, but you can’t picture 100 words at once

Damn, I love that

This was the page that comes to mind. While Einstein was a bit extreme with his quote, I think there’s something to be said about thinking of words as the vehicle even though we’re writers. The stories and feelings are what we want. The words are(up to a point) incidental

So Tenet was a Memento remake, apparently

With a few more hairpins layered on top haha

I like this shapes of storytelling. Wrote my origin story like that. But my shape is weird af

@marcelwrites haha me too man

How Nolan writes a movie vs me

If I can't draw it, then I don't understand it!

I'm always amazed at how visual simplifications are retained more by the brain. Here is a link to the Kurt talk mentioned.

great post. thank you!

Amazing job compiling that moments about narratives, thanks!

@nathanbaugh27 how do I master story telling skills? Any resources you recommend?

@systemdesign42 Three: 1. Read and write, a lot 2. Brandon Sanderson’s YT lectures 3. Copywork (my practice is I don’t think anyone, other than say Nolan, truly master storytelling

thank you.

The first time I saw Memento I was blown away! I love that film.

@rapoza_j Same, so good. What’d you think of Tenet?

I need to re-watch Tenet before I can answer this. 😃

It makes sense now. 💡💡💡

I love Nolan's work. As a songwriter, I'm excited about the possibility of adapting this way of thinking about the plot of a story in the context of writing music.

This is why I can’t understand any of his stuff 🤣🤣🤣

Is Nolan the goat?

Is he dyslexic?

That’s brilliant! I’m gonna try this with my next book!

@TroyDaniel32

99.99% of ppl reading this who have to submit a project report update to their boss,,,, shape 😐🥹 what shape? Life is excel and PowerPoint!! Shapes are for Nolan or kids below 9 !!!

That's nifty! Gotta try this with some of my own tales.

Story Tellers are Linguistic Architects Shaping Sequences of Events 🪄