Fabula Advanced

EXERCISE BOOK

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ONLINE ANALYSES

To better understand the course and the overall usage of Fabula,

you can find premade analyses at this link >>
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Syllabus

LESSON 1 – Introduction to Fabula

− Introduction to the tool
− What is it and what is it for

LESSON 2 – How and why to use Fabula

− How was Fabula born?
− How best to use it

LESSON 3 – Blue cards: Heroes, enemies, allies

− Heroes: build the main character
Build more than one Hero
Well-rounded characters
− Enemies: the character as an enemy and conflicts
The enemy’s journey as the hero’s journey
− Allies
− Subplot

LESSON 4 – Blue cards: building the World

− Magical Objects
Symbolic objects
Object to build the world
MacGuffin
Agnition
− Space: how important is it?
How to build it
− Moodboard

LESSON 5 – Form and narrator

− Form
− Ideas and themes
− Narrator and focus

LESSON 6 – The Hero’s Journey – Part 1

− History of The Hero’s Journey
− How to use the orange cards
− Ordinary World
− Call to Action
− The Anxiety of the Call
− The intervention of a Mentor
− Crossing the Threshold

Fabula Advanced – Exercise Book 2

LESSON 7 – The Hero’s Journey – Part 2
− The New World
− Trials
− Fulfillment
− Nightfall
− Central Trial
− The Outcome
− The Relapse
− Resurrection
− Conclusion

LESSON 8 – Black cards: how to tell the story

− Multiple characters stories
− Stories with fabula and plot
− The three-act structure
− Prologue
− The set-up
− The Catalyst
− The development
− Mid-point
− Climax
− Solution
− Epilogue

LESSON 9 – Frequently Asked Questions

− Will the stories all be the same?
− Add or remove cards
− The use of the Hero’s card for the antagonist
− The most important cards for some genres
− Use of Fabula for short stories or short films

LESSON 10 – Analysis of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

LESSON 11 – Analysis of The Catcher in the Rye

LESSON 12 – Analysis of Pulp Fiction

Fabula Advanced – Exercise Book 3

Cited works, in order of appearance

Books
Little Red Riding Hood - Charles Perrault
The Odyssey – Homer
the Epic of Gilgamesh
The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J. K. Rowling
The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Othello – William Shakespeare
Hunger games – Suzanne Collins
Less than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Slaughterhouse n 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman – Laurence Sterne
The Magic Mountain– Thomas Mann
The Man without Qualities– Robert Musil
The Indifferents – Moravia
Hopscotch (Rayuela) – Julio Cortázar
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
The Master and Margarita – Michail Bulgakov
The Great Gatsby – Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Trilogy of the city of K – Ágota Kristóf
Barney’s Version – Mordecai Richler
The killing of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
The Neverending Story – Michael Ende
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carrol
Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

Film and TV series

Breaking Bad
Batman
The Matrix
Frozen
John Wick
How to train your Dragon
Star wars
Deadpool
Tremors
Avatar
Reign of Fire
Jurassic park 3
Pulp fiction
The departed

Fabula Advanced – Exercise Book 4

Memento
Better call Saul
Loki (the series)
Inception

Fabula Advanced – Exercise Book 5

Exercises

The following exercises are useful for better understanding the use of Fabula,
and to further think of your work or project and making use of what you have
just heard and the ideas that have come from listening to the lessons. In the
following pages you will find 2 types of exercises: Analysis and Creation.
The Analysis exercises lead to the study of famous works, or of your own work
and are useful to improve knowledge of theory and to train you to better handle
the characters, the fabula and the plot.
The Creating exercises are typical of creative writing courses: they invite you to
change something that has already been written (or a famous story) or to imagine
new stories or new episodes starting from the ideas discussed in the course. They
could be the seed for a complete work or good training to learn techniques that
you can employ in the future.

Answer the questions asked after each lesson and do the exercises. You can
start from the story you are writing, from a story you have in mind or from a
famous work, whatever you prefer!

LESSON 1
Empty a wall (or a table) for the cards, and browse through them!

LESSON 2
Analysis exercises:
1. Think about how you usually work. What kind of write are you? Do
you take notes or do you write straight away?
2. Call to action, trial, outcome. Look for those steps in your story!

LESSON 3
Get the blue cards ready!

Analysis exercises:
1. Heroes: Create a card for each of your heroes. Imagine your heroes.
Ask yourself what they want and what their strengths and weaknesses
are.
2. Analyze the hero from your favorite book.
3. Enemies: are enemies characters? What do they want and how are they
similar to the hero? Or are those enemies an emotion or fears etc.?
4. Analyze the enemy from your favorite book.
5. Think of a work in which the enemy is not a character.

Creating exercises:
1. Allies: If it was a TV series, which side character would you develop?
Imagine its story.
2. Subplot: A year ago, what was your hero doing? And the enemy? How
about the ally you want to develop? What happened in the world
before the story started?

Fabula Advanced – Exercise Book 6

LESSON 4
Analysis exercises:
1. Is there a twist?
2. Have you thought of an object that allows recognition?
3. Identify the main spaces of your narrative.
4. Is space important in your narrative? Is it definite or archetypal?
5. Find 3 images that make you think about your story.

Creating exercises:
1. Imagine an object that symbolizes a conflict in your story.
2. Create objects that complete the world.
3. Draw the world map you imagined.

LESSON 5
Analysis exercises:
1. Define the genre of your novel. What are the common characteristics?
2. Find 3 books of the same genre.
3. Define the language you used (modern, ancient, formal, informal, etc.)
4. Did you use any techniques like digression or flashback?
5. Do you have an idea or a theme you want to talk about?
6. Analyze the narrator:
− In which person did you write: first or third?
− Do you follow a character or characters?
− Is the narrator one of the characters?
− How many characters do you see the thoughts of?
− What does the narrator know more about the characters?
− Are you speaking in the past or in the present?

Creating exercises:
1. Turn to the present or the past.
2. Try changing the narrator for a piece of text, what effect do you get?
3. Go from first to third person.
4. Try writing a story in the first person singular, or with other less
traditional narrators.

LESSON 6
Get your orange cards ready!

Analysis exercises:
1. Is there a call to action for each protagonist?
2. Is there the anxiety of the call? Triggered by?
3. Is there a mentor?

Fabula Advanced – Exercise Book 7

Creating exercises:
1. Could the call to action be different? Can you add one?
2. Imagine what the prequel to the story could look like, or what
happened to the protagonists a month the beginning of the story.

LESSON 7
Analysis exercises:
1. Analyze The Catcher in the Rye o Harry Potter and the Philosophers’ Stone.
2. Fill in the journey of the characters in your story.

LESSON 8
Get your black cards ready!

Creating exercises:
1. Tell the story in a different order.
2. Which event did you choose to start with? Could you choose another
one?

LESSON 9
Creating exercises:
1. Turn your novel into a short story / your film into a short film.
2. Watch a short / short story and imagine the rest of the story.

Fabula Advanced – Exercise Book 8