Short forms: ABT, the Pixar spine and kishōtenketsu

ABT is the short story form “and… but… therefore”. The Pixar spine runs from “Once upon a time” to “Ever since then”; kishōtenketsu needs no conflict.

When space is short

Not every story can be unrolled across a page. Sometimes you need a subtitle under a name, a paragraph in an email, a post, a description in search results. For those there are short forms: frames you pour facts into. Three of them are the most useful for a site: ABT, the Pixar spine and kishōtenketsu.

First play with the diagram: type your own facts (or keep the invented café) and see how the same material looks in three forms.

Facts (replace them with your own)

WhoWhat they do every day (past tense)What gets in the wayWhat followed from that (past tense)How it endedWhat has been true sinceA surprising fact (for kishōtenketsu)

ABT Pixar spine Kishōtenketsu

The Quay café baked bread and brewed coffee for the neighbors, but the bakery got cramped, so it moved into a bigger basement.

When it fits: One sentence: a subtitle under the name, a search description, a line in an email. It needs a clear trouble and a clear way out.

ABT: and, but, therefore

ABT stands for And, But, Therefore. The idea is that a weak story is held together by the words “and then… and then…”, and a strong one by “but” and “therefore”. The first only lists events, and the second explains why one follows from another. The American marine biologist turned filmmaker Randy Olson made a method for scientists out of this idea in his book Houston, We Have a Narrative, and before him the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, put it to a class of students: between the beats of a story, the words should be “but” or “therefore”, never “and then”.

The formula, in one sentence:

We do A (what is), but here is the difficulty, therefore here is what we offer.

An example from the diagram: “The Quay café baked bread and brewed coffee for the neighbors, but the bakery got cramped, so it moved into a bigger basement.” The sentence has a situation, an obstacle and an answer.

Two rules. First, the “but” must be a real problem of the person you’re writing for, not yours: “but competitors” and “but we’re expensive” are weak buttons. Second, the “therefore” must lead to your main action, or at least to your offer. An ABT fits perfectly under the name on a first screen: that is the subtitle.

Check yourself: what do you check first in an ABT?

That the “but” names a real difficulty of the reader, and that the “therefore” leads to what you offer.

The Pixar spine

This is six lines that continue one another:

1. Once upon a time…
2. Every day…
3. One day…
4. Because of that…
5. Until finally…
6. Ever since then…

In the classic version the line “Because of that” is repeated, so the chain can run longer. The frame goes back to the improv teacher Kenn Adams, who devised it as an exercise for improvisers. It reached a wide audience through the Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats, who in 2011 shared “22 rules of storytelling” she had learned at Pixar; rule four is this frame (links below).

The spine is good wherever you need a short story with a real chain of events: an “About” page, a case study caption, a post. It also shows at once what a story lacks: if line three has no “One day…”, there is no turn; if there is no line five, there is no ending.

Check yourself: which line of the spine brings in the turn?

“One day…”: the event that breaks the usual order.

Kishōtenketsu: a story without conflict

East Asian tradition has a four-part form called kishōtenketsu (in Chinese, qǐ chéng zhuǎn hé). It comes from classical poetry, and today you know it from four-panel comics, the Japanese yonkoma.

1. Ki. Introduction: the people, the place, the setting.
2. Shō. Development: we learn more, and break nothing.
3. Ten. The twist: an unexpected element appears, at first sight unrelated to what came before.
4. Ketsu. Reconciliation: the parts come together, and the twist changes the meaning of everything read so far.

The main feature is that conflict isn’t required. Tension comes not from a struggle but from surprise, and from the way the parts finally fit. For sites this is a find: many quiet trades (a craft, consulting, a family business) have no fight between a hero and an enemy, and still have something to tell.

An example: “The morning in the workshop starts with tea and sorting the mail (ki). Then comes the work: every job has a card of its own (shō). And only on the cards can you see that half of the jobs arrive in spring and wait until autumn (ten). So in spring the workshop sees people first (ketsu).”

A note of caution: kishōtenketsu is sometimes presented in English-language writing as “the East Asian answer to Western conflict structure”, and that is too tidy. It is one form among many in the cultures that use it, and scholars still argue about how widely it applies to narrative as opposed to poetry and essay. Treat it as a useful tool, not as a national character.

Check yourself: what takes the place of conflict in kishōtenketsu?

The surprising twist (“ten”), which changes the meaning of what was read and is “reconciled” in the last part.

What to choose

• One sentence (a subtitle, a description, an email): ABT.
• Six lines and a chain of events (“About”, a case study, a post): the Pixar spine.
• A calm story with a twist, with no struggle: kishōtenketsu.

The tone of the story should match the tone of your project from the brief. A calm project suits kishōtenketsu better, and a bold, quick one suits ABT.

Practice

Describe your project three ways.

• ABT. One sentence for the subtitle of the first screen. This is real text for your page.
• The spine. Six draft lines about the person you work for.
• Kishōtenketsu. Four short paragraphs. The third needs a twist: a new fact, a surprising detail, but not a quarrel.

The drafts stay off to the side, and on the page they’re marked as working notes. Later, in the lessons on the brand story and on testing versions, you’ll put them to use.