WARNING: Spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club below the fold.
Kishoutenketsu (起承転結) is a four-act storytelling structure common in China and Japan. Unlike the Western three-act structure, it does not require conflict to function, though it can nonetheless have it.
The phases are as follows.
KI (起): The setup. This step establishes the characters and setting, showing the viewer what the baseline normal is.
SHOU (承): Further development. This step goes into geater detail about the situation presented in the Ki phase.
TEN (転): The swerve. This step goes off on a tangent that has no obvious connection to the previous two steps. It introduces an element of disharmony into the story.
KETSU (結): The conclusion. This step reveals the connection between the Ki-Shou phases and the Ten phase. It resolves the disharmony and brings the story to a close.
As an example, let’s use Doki Doki Literature Club. Though a Western work, it is patterned off of Japanese visual novels and thus uses the Kishoutenketsu plotting style.
KI (起): Act I. The player is introduced to Sayori, Yuri, Natsuki, and Monika. As we get to know the girls, the first bit of strangeness occurs when Sayori kills herself after revealing her depression to the player.
SHOU (承): Act II. Sayori is deleted from existence, and bizarre glitches occur throughout the day, further developing both the strangeness of Sayori’s suicide and revealing more information about the remaining girls. Yuri kills herself in a fit of madness at the end of this act, and Natsuki is deleted by Monika.
TEN (転): Act III. Monika corners the player in a now empty classroom and declares her love. Though there is some connections to Acts I and II, it’s suggested that there’s more going on. Furthermore, this act doesn’t play like the others, requiring an unorthodox solution. Monika restores the other three girls at the end of this act.
KETSU (結): Act IV. Sayori is now the president of the literature club — and she reveals that being president of the club makes one aware of the world’s fictional nature, reconciling both Acts I and II with III; keep in mind that Monika dropped hints of her self-awareness in her Act I poems. The act ends with the game’s total deletion.
Here’s a website explaining Kishoutenketsu in more detail.
Very interesting.
I notice a lot of similarities in the Japanese horror style to weird tales. Not every style of weird tales, of course, but there are some that follow this mode. Mostly because the WT style story only needs a few steps to be Weird Tales:
Normal situation > disruption of normality leading to conflict > disruption disappears/is conquered/is resolved > ending
I noticed the similarity the most here:
“The typical plot would be as follows: the main character is an honest and kind person who happens to help a trapped animal, helpless jizo [statue], or hungry god.
“Note, that this wasn’t the character’s goal, it just “happens” to occur. This is the initial action that sets the story in motion.”
In a weird tale, the main character is assumed to a normal, thereby moral, person in relation to the world they inhabit. Then an event outside their control disrupts things, and the story begins there.
They’re not 1:1, but there is quite a bit of overlap. Western horror lost all its appeal when it dumped the Gothic weird tales vibe that had been so prevalent until the ’40s, and I think a lot of it has to do with missing this moral component. So much of it is just nihilistic nastiness without any point.
Good info. I’m not big into horror or any sort, so I don’t have much to add here.
Miyazaki’s films “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service” fit this really well. I’ve actually seen Kiki’s used as an example story before, but I think Totoro fits even better, because it really does feel almost serene without ever actually feeling boring.
Ki: We meet the main cast of characters and see their home for the first time. This is our baseline world. We learn that spirits exist, which is important – we actually see the soot spirits.
Shou: We explore a little beyond the home and learn about the existence of Totoro, a large bunny…monster…ish forest spirit that lives near the home. We see Satsuki go to school, learn more about their mother’s illness, and see the two girls go on adventures with Totoro
Ten: After a fight where they learn their mom won’t be coming home from the hospital, Mei runs off and goes missing. Satsuki gets the whole neighborhood involved and becomes frantic trying to find her
Ketsu: Totoro and the Catbus return to help find Mei, and together they learn their mother is going to be fine after all. Totoro, Catbus, and the plot with their mother connect the first two sections to the third
It matches the structure almost perfectly.
I figured as much. I heard about that too — excellent example.