Aristotle, the philosopher and one of the first story analyzers, recognized that every story contains a three-act structure: Beginning, Middle, and End. The structure roughly corresponds to Olson’s “And”, “But” and “Therefore”.
That doesn’t seem true to me? If I split the Wizard of Oz into three acts, your ABT covers acts 1 (Kansas) and 2 (traveling to the Emerald City) but not 3 (challenging the Wicked Witch of the West).
If I gave an ABT for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I think it would do the same. (”...But he’s actually a wizard, therefore he goes off to magic school”. Versus act 1 with the Dursleys, act 2 in Hogwarts, act 3 when they go down the corridor.)
Of course you could split them in other places. Perhaps the beginning is until Dorothy runs away, the middle is until she returns and gets sucked into a twister, and then end is all of her time in Oz. But I don’t think anyone would naturally choose to split it that way, and if you choose a split to make the correspondence work, then the correspondence says nothing at all.
Upon returning to the tribe, the savage starts relating the experience, including the location and time he met the tiger. This describes the introduction to the problem which is the “AND”. After this, he describes what he did to avoid the danger: He escaped to a secure cave. This is the stage when he is trying to find a solution to the problem: the “BUT”. Finally, he explains how he solved the problem by entering a cave to avoid danger: the “Therefore”.
It sounds like the story would be something like “I was walking through the forest AND I saw a tiger BUT I ran into a cave THEREFORE I escaped”? But here the AND introduces conflict, while earlier you said the BUT did that.
That doesn’t seem true to me? If I split the Wizard of Oz into three acts, your ABT covers acts 1 (Kansas) and 2 (traveling to the Emerald City) but not 3 (challenging the Wicked Witch of the West).
If I gave an ABT for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I think it would do the same. (”...But he’s actually a wizard, therefore he goes off to magic school”. Versus act 1 with the Dursleys, act 2 in Hogwarts, act 3 when they go down the corridor.)
Of course you could split them in other places. Perhaps the beginning is until Dorothy runs away, the middle is until she returns and gets sucked into a twister, and then end is all of her time in Oz. But I don’t think anyone would naturally choose to split it that way, and if you choose a split to make the correspondence work, then the correspondence says nothing at all.
It sounds like the story would be something like “I was walking through the forest AND I saw a tiger BUT I ran into a cave THEREFORE I escaped”? But here the AND introduces conflict, while earlier you said the BUT did that.