Two Kinds Of Story

There are many different ways, methods and axes along which you can categorize stories:

• by medium: literature, movies, games, theater, visual novels, etc.
• by length: novel, novella, novelette, short, etc.
• by form: prose or poetry
• by type: fiction or non-fiction
• by genre and subgenre: too many to list…
• by era/movement/period it was created in
• by cultural or national origin
• by theme or topic
• by target audience: childrens literature, young adult, adult fiction, educational, etc.
• by narrative perspective: first person, unreliable narrator, third person omniscient, stream of consciousness, etc.
• by mode or tone: tragic vs. comic, satirical or ironic or pastoral or gothic, allegorical or didactic or parodic
• by function or purpose: didactic, aesthetic, propaganda or political, religious or spiritual, entertainment
• by format: single novels vs. serialized fiction, etc.
• by production/distribution context: self-published vs. traditionally publishes, commercial vs. small press vs. academic, fan-finction/zines/grey literature, etc.
• by acknowledgement: canonical vs. non-canonical
• by reception or status: popular vs. literary fiction, cult classics, bestsellers, critically acclaimed, award-winning, niche, underground, etc.
• by the quality/price of paper used in printing: pulp
• and so on, and so forth

As you can see, there are many different ways to look at stories, and many different reasons to classify them in various different ways. All of these methods of classificiation serve their own purposes and can tell us something about the work in question.

In this post, I’d like to introduce to another, different method of classification that I discovered years ago. It will of course not be something as big and well-established as those mentioned above - but I found it very meaningful and helpful to not only better understand some of my very own personal tastes, but looking at literature through this specific lens also taught me things about worldbuilding and led to a better understanding of why some stories feel more grounded and plausible to me than others. Require less “suspension of disbelief” than others might - despite absolutely not being less weird or fantastical or inexplicable.

Maybe it can help you too in a similar fashion - and even if not, it might still be worthwhile to have one more lens in your toolbelt, which you can use to look through, to maybe discover things you couldn’t see before. Or you might at least enjoy the thought experiment.

Using Fantasy Literature As A Baseline

I’ve found that this classification can be successfully applied to most fiction - but Fantasy is where I first got the idea, and is also the best place to explain it. It’s just very visible here - but once you understand the principles, you’ll start to see them everywhere, and in many other places as well.

High Fantasy (Epic Fantasy)

As a starting point for this thought experiment, I’d like to take a close look at all the elements you might find in a typical High Fantasy novel:

• good vs. evil (binary morality)
• the world is “good” by default, innocent and peaceful (utopian world)
• evil is just being evil for evil’s sake
• evil wants to destroy/conquer/subjugate the world, mostly for no other reason than “because evil”
• this is the source of all problems in the world. and destroying evil would solve all problems
• large scale conflict: the world needs saving, is doomed otherwise
• but only the protagonist (the chosen one, the prophecy, etc.) can defeat evil, because they are special
• but the protagonist has to first be transformed through the hero’s journey (as defined by Campbell) - only then are they capable of defeating evil
• “the protagonist” can also be a group of companions - not necessarily just a single person
• the world is built “top-down”: you have a worldmap, continents, regions, lands, peoples, cultures, languages… etc. - there’s less focus on the very fine, very localized details - but the big outline is very well worked out
• there are many different species/races, with their own cultures, languages, history, etc.
• species/races come with inherent, strongly character-defining traits (orcs are inherently evil, elves inherently magical, dwarves are hard-working and hard-drinking, gnomes are inventive, only humans are ever diverse [and often ambitious and opportunistic] - basically: race equals archetype - with the danger of becoming stereotype)
• magic is pretty common, normal, can be everyday even, mostly accepted/tolerated by society
• magic is nerdy. it’s learned from books, it can be controlled, it’s a matter of talent and/or training, it can be understood if you have the knowledge, it follows it’s own predictable and learnable rules of magic. Wizards are like a different type of physics professor, basically.

Now, this is not a complete list - there are many more tropes out there, but these are the ones most important to establishing the baseline for my classification. This is not a lift of must-haves either. Any High Fantasy story can defy any of those tropes as it wants to - and I would argue, that a High Fantasy story actually should defy at least some of these points, just to keep things interesting. Following every single point by the letter would lead to a fantasy world that feels very “by the numbers”, and that’s just boring, right? But there is no denying that all of these tropes go very well with each other - they just mesh together and complement each other perfectly. They create a seamless, homogenous whole with strong internal consistency. Therefore by breaking with any of those tropes, you do introduce potential tensions. In the worst case, you’ll even end up with contradictions in your world’s internal logic. In any case, there’ll be a need of explanation for why and how that one broken trope does fit in with all the rest.

Like for example, many stories like to introduce characters or even companions that defy their species/racial stereotype. But then being an “unusual Dwarf” or “unusual Elf” becomes one of their defining features, and the stereotype still remains intact. Another thing many stories like to do, is to give the villain some motivation beyond just being evil for the sake of evil - like having had some traumatic experience in their childhood. But that then becomes merely an explanation for why they turned evil, without ever contradicting the absolute evilness of evil. It’s great to break with some of these tropes - but break with too many, and you end up with something that can no longer be considered High Fantasy at all - but feels more like something else in stead.

There are many, many other kinds of fantasy out there. Dark fantasy, Historical fantasy, Animal fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Science Fantasy, Paranormal Fantasy, Folklore Fantasy, Low Fantasy, etc. But most of these other subgrenes have never become as formulaic and narrowly defined as High Fantasy has - also because they never reached the same level of popularity. In fact, High Fantasy has become so dominant - especially in video games - that “Fantasy” is often used synonymously with “High Fantasy”, and many fans are not even aware that those other subgenres exist as well.

But that is a relatively new development (as far as literature goes) - as High Fantasy only became so dominant after the release of “The Lord of the Rings” in 1954. Before that, High Fantasy was not much popular, and an entirely different subgenre of Fantasy dominated instead: Sword & Sorcery.

Sword & Sorcery

In many ways - and especially those important to this classification attempt - Sword & Sorcery can be seen as the polar opposite of High Fantasy. Or maybe it’s rather the other way round: High Fantasy - as an reaction to Sword & Sorcery - made a point of breaking with most of their tropes, and/or inverting/subverting those.

Sword & Sorcery is not quite as clearly and narrowly defined as High Fantasy is, but we can use that little bit of wiggle-room to turn in more clearly into the “diametrical opposite” to High Fantasy. This means that as far as Sword & Sorcery is concerned, the following list is even less must-have and less complete than the one for High Fantasy above. But the goal here is not to define Sword & Sorcery - but rather to work out exactly that diametrically opposed duality.

Here we go, taking the list for High Fantasy above as our baseline:

• moral ambiguity - there is no cleary defined good or evil
• the world is by default complicated, unequal and unfair (can be dystopian even)
• people do evil things because of greed, power-hunger or for revenge
• the world is under no single external threat, it doesn’t need immediate saving
• the many problems of the world are mostly self-caused, and there’s no easy silver-bullet way to solve them all at once
• many like to depict “the others” as “evil”, and see themselves as “good” - but in the end this is mostly about serving once own interests
• there’s no consensus or agreement on the source of the problems, or how to solve them
• the protagonist is often not special, definitely no chosen one, no prophecy fulfilled, and has no unique ability to achieve something others have not
• the protagonist isn’t in it for just “the greater good”, but typically has their own motivations and reasons (selfish or not)
• anti-hero protagonists are common (but not strictly necessary)
• “the protagonist” can be a group of companions - but then every companion follows their own individual motivations and reasons, and their teaming-up might be more temporary, and less “fated”
• the protagonist can have a character arc and transformation even, but it typically does not follow the Hero’s Journey
• the world is built “bottom-up”: it centers on only the locales (and peoples, and beliefs, etc.) that are important for the story right now, most everything else remains undefined.
• there either aren’t different species/races at all, or if there are, they aren’t character-defining. someone being of a species/race tells you nothing about who they are as a person
• magic is rare, unpredictable, otherworldly, dangerous, often feared and shunned by society
• magic is mostly incomprehensible, there’s no schools, books, teachers. humanoid species might not be able to wield it at all, or if they can discover it, it might be dangerous or corrupting to them.

I think at this point you should be able to see what I’m going for. If you hadn’t figured it out way above already. We got these two opposing lists of tropes, each of which meshes well, forming a coherent whole. Mixing these two lists, and creating some sort of crossover isn’t impossible - but does get more complicated and needs more explanation than just sticking with one list. You have to be careful to not create contradictions. You simply can’t have a good hero saving the world from evil, in a world where there is no clear good and evil. (You totally can have a hero who honestly believes to be doing that, while ignoring the fact, that things actually are more complicated in reality.)

This isn’t a strict black or white kind of thing, where each story has to be either A or B. It’s a bit more of a spectrum, a continuum.

But What About Sci-Fi?

Sci-Fi always seemed to be more diverse and less formulaic than that, with more different subgenres co-existing at any given time, without a single one becoming that dominant. And also more stories just refusing or intentionally subverting genre norms and established tropes alltogether - or simply being more experimental or having higher literary ambitions (both things starting with the New Wave movement of the 60ies and 70ies).

Despite being overall more diffuse like that, most Sci-Fi still can easily be assigned to either list A or list B. With Space Opera - which basically is the Sci-Fi equivalent of High Fantasy - being a very clear case of list A. And subgenres like Cyberpunk belonging most obviously to List B. I feel the two lists work equally well, for the most part.

The only adapatation you have to make, is to put an asterisk on “magic”. In a Sci-Fi story this could be advanced technology, some found artifact from a lost civilisation, or some anomaly in space, or some newly discovered alien species, or some AGI that suddenly achieved self-awareness, etc. - basically replacing “magic” with whatever matches it best, in the story at hand.

Hooby’s Continuum

For lack of a better term, I’m calling this “hooby’s continuum”. It ranges from idealist/mythic/epic on the one side, to realist/gritty/grounded on the other.

Aspect	A) idealist/mythic/epic	B) realist/gritty/grounded
Moral Framing	good vs. evil (binary)	moral ambiguity, shades of gray
World & Setting	utopian & idealized	realistic, uncaring, complex
Cause of Conflict	external evil threat	internal flaws, systemic issues
Type of Threat	doom, destruction	multifaceted, personal, own ambitions, antagonist
Protagonist Role	chosen one, destined hero	flawed individual, personal motives, no other choice
Narrative Goal	save the world	anything, from survival to fame and riches and beyond
Narrative Structure	hero’s journey	individualistic arcs
Worldbuilding Style	top-down, encyclopedic	bottom-up, local, emergent
Species & Identity	racial archetypes	no essentialism, identity is personal & individual
Magic / Adv. Technology	learnable, rule-based, common	mysterious, rare, dangerous

While most stories (within fiction, and especially within fantasy and scifi) clearly fall into one camp or the other, many don’t check all the boxes, and crossovers/mixtures can exist as well.

Examples From Literature, Film and Games

Lord of the Rings (book, 1954)

The posterchild of idealist/mythic/epic.

• Moral Framing: good vs. evil
• World & Setting: beautiful, mostly peaceful middle-earth gets threated by Sauron (personified evil) and his evil armies
• Cause of Conflict: Sauron amassing evil armies for a one-sided attack
• Type of Threat: all good peoples going extinct or being enslaved by evil
• Protagonist Role: the ring-bearer, the one who can withstand the lure of the ring. not really chosen one, but seemingly destined
• Narrative Goal: save the world from evil
• Worldbuilding Style: top-down. We got maps, atlasses, history, languages, cultures, everything.
• Species & Identity: defined the now typical elves-dwarfs-orcs trope
• Magic: actually kinda rare, because it’s reserved to super-human beings only. but still scholarly wizards in pointy hats learning from books - and are societially accepted.

It’s funny how the Lord of the Rings, which established the formula, feels less formulaic itself then those who later copied it. Many of the tropes and conventions of idealist/mythic/epic weren’t that well-defined yet, and so you might still find some light Sword & Sorcery influence in many smaller details.

Conan The Barbarian (print magazine serials, 1932, later in book format as well)

The posterchild of realist/gritty/grounded.

• Moral Framing: morally ambiguous
• World & Setting: dark and brutal world, slavery, inequality, brutal oppression, etc.
• Cause of Conflict: various - sometimes Conan is the cause himself
• Type of Threat: various
• Protagonist Role: former slave, wanting a good live, fame and riches
• Narrative Goal: varies. survive. steal gold and jewels. save your crush.
• Worldbuilding Style: mixed. top-down insofar as Howard’s Hyborian Age mythology did already partly exist before the Conan stories. bottom-up insofar as within that existing mythology, only the locales relevant to the story are ever brought up/explained.
• Species & Identity: humans only
• Magic: supernatural, feared and dangerous

This is the most famous and most typically named prime example for Sword & Sorcery. But I personally think, that the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books by Fritz Leiber might be an even better example, that matches the definition even more. If you don’t know these - I heartily recommend reading those books, they are great fun. And I think they show especially well, that even though it’s called realist/gritty/grounded, it doesn’t have to be bleak or grimdark. It still can be lighthearted and even somewhat whimsical. In fact a lot of Sword & Sorcery literature of the day wasn’t all that overly serious.

Alien (movie, 1979)

Clearly realist/gritty/grounded.

• Moral Framing: bunch of employees, mostly money-driven, working for a ruthless company, extremely profit-driven
• World & Setting: we see the crew bicker about supposedly unfair/uneven payment practices right at the start. We also learn later that the employing company is quite exploitative and doesn’t care about it’s workers at all.
• Cause of Conflict: actually an external, “evil” threat (the xenomorph) - BUT heavily amplified by the greed of the company and how it sees it’s workers as expendable
• Type of Threat: the crew getting killed one by one, just so the company can collect more data on the specimen
• Protagonist Role: no other choice
• Narrative Goal: bare survival
• Worldbuilding Style: bottom-up. We learn about the ship and it’s crew, but only the bare minimum about the world they come from, the company, and society there.
• Species & Identity: humans only - no species/races
• Magic: both the found alien artifacts as well as the advanced cyborg technology are rare, feared and dangerous (and mysterious)

Hard Sci-Fi generally tends towards realist/gritty/grounded.

Star Wars (movie, 1977)

Clearly idealist/mythic/epic.

• Moral Framing: good (Jedi) vs. evil (Sith)
• World & Setting: a formerly/usually peaceful federation, oppressed by an evil empire
• Cause of Conflict: the empire wants to crush the rebellion to gain total, unchallenged control
• Type of Threat: subjugation by totalitarian, evil regime
• Protagonist Role: the chosen one, prophecied to bring balance to the force
• Narrative Goal: save the galaxy from the evil empire
• Worldbuilding Style: mostly top-down. we have the empire, the senate, all the different planets and species, large galactic maps, history, languages, cultures and everything
• Species & Identity: strong archetypes: all Bith are musically talented, Bothans are super-spies, Wookies are tribal Warriors (and slaves), Gamorreans are stupid pigs, Gungangs are clumsy clowns, all Hutts are slimy criminals, all Jawas weasly traders, the now extinct species of Sith (purebloods) were inherently evil,
• Magic: the force is well scientifically understood (inherited genetics, midichlorian counts) and is trained, taught and practiced - and more or less societally accepted

Star Wars keeps very strictly to the Hero’s Journey, and also reads very much like a fairy tale in certain regards. But interestingly enough, it does take a lot of inspiration from the Dune books - which fall into realist/gritty/grounded.

Dune (book, 1965)

Mostly realist/gritty/grounded - but not purely.

• Moral Framing: morally ambiguous-ish. while the Harkonnen are depicted as evil - the Atreides are not clearly good. Although somewhat “good-ish” they are manipulative and cultivate that “good” image to their own advantage
• World & Setting: feudal society in space, nepotism, class-based society, slavery, corruption, political intrigue and backstabbing, etc.
• Cause of Conflict: political intrigue, differnt factions trying to play each other
• Type of Threat: military, betrayal, internal infighting, knowingly playing a dangerous game and loosing
• Protagonist role: mixed. Almost the Kwisatz Haderach of the Bene Gesserit breeding programme. Also trained as Mentat. But definitely not the chosen one - more like the cursed one.
• Narrative Goal: first survival, then becoming the new emperor of the universe
• Worldbuilding: top-down: The landsraat, the empire, the houses, their various planets, the peoples living there, the various factions, their history, cultures and religions and typical behavior
• Species & Identity: humans only, but belonging to one of the human factions strongly implies certain character traits

The interesting thing about Dune is, that the 1984 movie does present Paul Atreides as “the chosen one” - combined with the top-down worldbuilding and the fact that you could see different factions as analogues to species and racial archetypes, one totally could make the point, that this movie might just as well be considered idealist/mythic/epic. This is probably also why many (including David Lynch) consider the movie to be bad. I personally still like it as a movie - it’s just a bad adaptation of the source material. It really misses the point.

Chrono Trigger (video game, 1995)

Clearly idealist/mythic/epic, with just a tiny twist.

• Moral Framing: the everlasting conflict of good vs. evil
• World & Setting: a beautiful, peaceful world, all problems ultimately originating from Lavos
• Cause of Conflict: everything bad is caused by the influence of Lavos
• Type of Threat: end of the world. Lavos is going to consume all life.
• Protagonist role: interestingly, it’s actually Marle (a companion) who is special because of her lineage and who represents “the chosen one”, while the main protagonist Crono is just a regular boy.
• Narrative Goal: save the world from destruction by absolute evil
• Worldbuilding: top-down. You have a world-map, a few contintents, a few cities and other points of interest, and all of that through various time periods
• Species & Identity: humans only. There are mythics (mythical creatures) as well, but the game makes a point of showing that humans and mythics can live in peace and are not inherently much different, except for their appearance.

It’s interesting how closely Chrono Trigger follows the idealist/mythic/epic path (as a lot of JRPGs tend to do) - only to then so completely and totally defy the Species & Identity aspect.

Blade Runner (movie, 1982)

Clearly realist/gritty/grounded.

And this extends not only to most cyberpunk, but I think also to most film noir.

Most of the MCU and DCU

Clearly idealist/mythic/epic - as many superhero comics mostly tend to be. With one (but not the only) exception being Watchmen which intentionally breaks with the tropes in order to deconstruct the superhero concept.

Star Trek (multiple TV series, 1966 and later)

Complicated.

Mostly idealist/mythic/epic, in it’s core setting. The federation is pretty utopian and good, and often fighting some evil-ish adversary, be it Klingons, Romulans, Borg or Q.

But it can vary from episode to episode, with some episodes being clearly realist/gritty/grounded rather.

Mass Effect (video game, 2007)

Clearly idealist/mythic/epic - as most space opera typically is.

Planescape: Torment (video game, 1997)

Clearly realist/gritty/grounded.

This is a fascinating one, as both D&D and the Planescape setting fall strictly into idealist/mythic/epic - but in trying to deconstruct and subvert the genrese tropes, Planescape: Torment actually ends up in the opposite camp.

Diablo (video game, 1997)

While Diablo 2 and beyond are mostly or increasingly idealist/mythic/epic - the first entry in the series is actually a diffictult case to decide. It’s much more dark fantasy/horror fantasy, and far less high fantasy than later entries.

In the first game, there only seem to be humans (none of the other species/creature found in D2). And while Diablo is evil incarnate - it was actually a power-hungry Archbishop that started it all by sacrificing the kings’ son which drove the king mad. And the protagonist (the player), is kind of an Anti-Hero, who completely fails to save the world or actually destroy Diablo. In the end, they only slightly delayed things, but may have made Diablo even stronger than before.

In later games, the good vs evil dichotomy becomes a lot clearer and more focussed, and new native species (cat-people, snake-people, etc.) are introduced besides humans. We get a large world-map, multiple contintents, different cultures and religions, and more - while D1 was pretty much confined to just a single rural village and the vast dungeons and caves below.

The world is still a kinda dark place, showing some of the original horror-influences, but it increasingly becomes a place that could be nice to live in, if only evil was destroyed.

As a series, Diablo kinda transitions from being nearer to (but not fully inside of) the realist/gritty/grounded over to the other side of idealist/mythic/epic, but never goes quite all the way either, keeping just a little bit of it’s original horror influences.

The Witcher (video game, 2007)

You tell me!

Is this more idealist/mythic/epic, or more realist/gritty/grounded? Maybe a rare crossover even? What about the books? I haven’t read the books, barely played any of the games, and I really am not well versed enough in the lore to actually be able to categorize it…

But after all these examples, you should now be able to figure this out on your own. And apply the same method to any other game or movie or book you’re interested in looking at closer.

Shadowrun Returns (video game, 2013)

A true crossover. Rare, but they do exist!

Shadowrun is like a crazy, inhomogenous mix of the most disparate parts imaginable. Of course it’s dwarves, elves and orcs. But you immediately run into an orcish bouncer who’s very literate and educated actually, totally subverting the “stupid brute” trope right away. Of course you actually do save the world from an evil dragon, not that you ever intended to - you were only in it for the money, more or less. Of course magic is mysterious and dangerous - but you can also learn to control it from a (socially accepted) teacher and books - and practise it through rituals and talismans. Of course the world is a dystopian, bad place, because of people’s greed and desire for power, and political machinations, full of moral ambiguity and shades of gray - probably not even worth saving, but still it does need saving because some even greater, true evil is threatening do destroy it. Of course true evil exists, but no, true good maybe does not, we don’t know.

This is just complete bonkers. I love it, just for breaking all the rules, and still making it kinda work. I also kinda hate it for how ridiculous this all gets if you ever stop to think about it. Corporate mages summoning nature spirits to sabotage a competitors scientific research project…

Being cyberpunk it should be realist/gritty/grounded, and it partially is. Featuring elves, dwarves, orcs and learned mages, as well as well as a “save the world from evil” main story, it should be idealist/mythic/epic and it partially is. It’s a chaotic, garbled mixture of it all, with complete disregard for whether anything of this actually fits together, tonally or thematically or otherwise.

Which One Is Better?

I don’t think any of the ends of the spectrum is inherently better than the other. You can already clearly see that in the examples above - those are all great stories, regeardless of which camp they belong to.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t prefer one over the other for reasons of personal taste. Totally fair. It also doesn’t mean that both are equally well-fitting for every application. Like, if you are making an MMO, having every single player be “the chosen one”, simply doesn’t make a lot sense, right? If you want to do some sort of fairy tale moral story, then going for an anti-hero that just cares about their own bottom line, might not be a good fit either. As always, it’s about using the right tool for the job.

There is no denying though, that idealist/mythic/epic is the currently vastly more popular option, the more mainstream choice with a lot more mass appeal. Good vs. evil with elves, dwarves and orcs is highly beloved by huge numbers of fans. I don’t think that makes idealist/mythic/epic “better” than realist/gritty/grounded - but it does probably give it more commercial profit potential.

I personally truly love the idealist/mythic/epic approach you find in many JRPGs. There’s just something heartwarming about it, that I thoroughly enjoy - and these games do not shy away from sometimes getting very dark and very sad either - intentionally tugging on your heart strings. Ultimate gaming comfort food to me.

But at other times I desire something a little more intellectually stimulating, something that asks difficult moral or philosophical questions, maybe is even a little critical of society and human nature. Something that reflects the more complex dynamics of our real behavior, and maybe holds up a less flattering mirror. Something that might challenge our prior beliefs or biases, or at least make us think. And that’s where realist/gritty/grounded imho can truly shine. If done well.

Conclusion

So, what is this all good for? What does it help me to know if something is more realist/gritty/grounded or more idealist/mythic/epic? What’s purpose to all this? Why would I care, if it doesn’t even allow me to brag that my favorite movie/novel/game is “better” beause it’s using the “superior” side?

There’s probably not much real tangible benefit to doing this exercise. But as already partially mentioned at the start of this post, I personally find this an fascinating lens to use to look at stories.

It helped me learn more about my personal taste. Figure out why some stories didn’t work for me (like because they mixed incompatible parts from both list, without resolving the conflict). Why some stories just feel bland and boring (too much by the numbers, following one side too strictly and narrowly). Why just having an anti-hero protagonist means the entire story has to be vastly different than it would be otherwise. Why certain tropes exist, or why some always go hand-in-hand with certain others. What makes some genres feel more similar to each other, and others feel far more different. Why some tropes are quite easy to combine, while others mix like oil and water. While some games feel so comforting to me, and while others feel so immersive and believable.

But mostly it helped me understand where certain problems in stories and worldbuilding might ultimately stem from. Why a trope (or genre convention) that works perfectly well in one scenario, might just completely break in another.

If you are a geek about stories and fictional worlds and how they are built, this might be just one more interesting way to look at them and compare them. And might help you learn something new about a story you love, or at least see it from a different angle.

And if looking at stories from this angle does not feel interesting to you… why are you even still reading this?