: Re: What is an arena-driven story? There is an answer here from FraEnrico which is the cause for my question: What is the difference between character-driven stories and plot-driven stories?. Here

Arena driven story: A man crashes his airplane in the desert, breaking his leg. His radio doesn't work. If he stays there he will die. He splints his leg, takes all the water he can carry, and tries to walk out. Or make it a man and woman, in the arctic. Make it Tom Hanks in Castaway; he is stranded alone on an island and wants to return to civilization.

Or make it a crew that is the first to visit an alien space station that seems to be abandoned, but its automatic defenses will try to kill them.

Or make it some guys struggling to make their business idea work and all the failures that go with it: They have no antagonist but they do need to make payroll, fix broken equipment, find customers and so on. Don't even worry about competition, there is nobody striving to make them fail, but they tried to start with too little capital and by inexperience chose a bad location and now they may lose their homes. Their spouses want them to succeed, but are very worried and unhappy that they are failing.

The key to an arena-story is that there is no intelligent or conscious villain, nobody is out in the world that the hero is working against, no villain is trying to make them fail. CIRCUMSTANCES and reality are what they struggle against (as most of us must do from time to time).

Often this requires the MC to find clever solutions, or take brave risks, in order to prevail over the circumstances. They don't fight anybody, they have to think their way out of their dilemma.

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: How to know the reason for rejection? Just out of curiousity, how do people figure out the reason their work is not accepted? I tried submitting my work to a newspaper but the editor rejected

@Gonzalez219

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: The short of it, I think not. In my experience a cohesive powerful group process like you experienced is a rare thing indeed. The better, the rarer in fact. Why so rare? It requires a lot

@Gonzalez219

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: What would happen to the reader if the main character dies in the story? Can anyone tell me what would happen if the main character dies in the story?

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: Re: What is an arena-driven story? There is an answer here from FraEnrico which is the cause for my question: What is the difference between character-driven stories and plot-driven stories?. Here

More posts by @Gonzalez219

: How to know the reason for rejection? Just out of curiousity, how do people figure out the reason their work is not accepted? I tried submitting my work to a newspaper but the editor rejected

: The short of it, I think not. In my experience a cohesive powerful group process like you experienced is a rare thing indeed. The better, the rarer in fact. Why so rare? It requires a lot

: What would happen to the reader if the main character dies in the story? Can anyone tell me what would happen if the main character dies in the story?

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