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Storytellers, Was the Debate the “Negation of the Negation” of President Biden’s Narrative?
Campaigns have much to teach—and learn—about plot and character
As I watched the Biden-Trump debate debacle the other night, a critical phrase from my study of story structure kept zinging through my mind. Could it be, I wondered, that we were witnessing Biden’s Negation of the Negation? And if so, did that mean we Americans were doomed to a real-life tragedy?
“Negation of the Negation” is a term used by Hegel, Marx, and mathematicians, but the Negation of the Negation that should interest writers—and President Biden’s campaign staff—is the narrative concept proposed by storytelling guru Robert McKee.
Yes, it’s true that McKee was deliciously lampooned in the film Adaptation, but his actual seminar taught me what I needed to save my first novel, Face, from the scrap heap when I was just learning to write fiction. (Face became a B&N Discover Great New Writers pick, btw.) And even though most of his narrative insight is drawn directly from Aristotle’s Poetics, McKee is easier to understand than Aristotle and uses far more familiar texts to illustrate his core principles.
I’ve relied on these principles as a novelist and creative writing teacher for over thirty years. So, as…
