This is slightly off point, but related enough to be interesting so I thought I''d post it here.

There''s a psychological/sociological "map" called the Hero''s Journey that outlines a person''s path through life - but can also be used for the prototypical heroic adventure tale, and in fact has been used in tales ranging from the Odyssey to the Lord of the Rings.

A graphical representation can be found at: http://traubman.igc.org/hero.htm and Gamasutra has an article on the same subject in game design at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20001127/dunniway_pfv.htm, but the short and sweet of it is:

"In his book The Writer''s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters, Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood story analyst, identifies the stages of the Hero''s Journey as follows. Ordinary World; Call to Adventure; Refusal of the Call; Meeting with the Mentor; Crossing the First Threshold, Tests, Allies, Enemies; Approach to the Inmost Cave; Supreme Ordeal (the Story Crisis --- the Midterm); Reward, The Road Back; Resurrection (the Story Climax --- The Final Exam); and finally, Return with Elixir. "

The Hero''s Journey is explained in great detail by Joseph Campbell in many of his books on mythology. In fact, I might be mistaken, but I believe he is the one to first really clarify those concepts for us, and they''ve been pounced upon by all kinds of artists as being the prototypical elements for the hero archetype.

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The Idea Foundry

quote: The Unities comes from classical theory (Maybe Aristotle''s Poetics? I forget) and is intended to apply more to plays than stories. The idea is basically that plays should display unity of time (the story should take plae within 24 hours), place (the story should take place in one city or castle and the surrounding countryside), characters (characters should not appear oce and then vanish, they should appear throughout the play), emotion (it should not be a mix of genres like tragedy, comedy, action, myster, romance, etc.) and... er.. I forget what the fifth one was.

I think it''s unity of purpose. IIRC, it basically means no subplots.

Sean