See a photo of John, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.
Q&A with John Randall, Question 4
Q: Your forthcoming book is about your studies of narremes and narratology. Can you give readers a bit of a preview of the book? In a nutshell, what can readers look forward to, and what will they learn?
A: The Seven Narremes that I discuss are story-analysis and construction tools that
- Go back at least 40,000 years ago to the very dawn of modern humans, and, in the case of certain activities, back further to even more primitive species, such as the Neanderthals, whose much simpler but still clearly story-based paintings have just recently been discovered in a cave in Nerja, Spain.
- Can’t be reduced to anything more basic;
- Can be combined to create even more sophisticated stories while still maintaining the unique characteristics of each individual tool.
My storytelling friend and colleague, Gregg Morris, gracefully summed it up for me:
In his Narremic Analysis and Construction Technique (NACT), John Randall has rolled Aristotle’s Poetics, Freytag’s Dramatic Pyramid, Polti’s Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, and a hefty dash of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell into a neat package of 7 variations on story structure that promise to add critical depth for those interested in analyzing stories, and enhanced structural flexibility for those who want to create more effective stories, regardless of the medium they choose to work in.