Tag: bottle stories

In most bottle stories, the characters are trapped. Nicole and I examined two such stories in our previous posts in this series. But there is another kind of bottle story. Rather than confining characters somewhere against their will and watching what happens, this other kind of bottle story simply tells a complete narrative with only one setting. The story could go to other places, but it doesn’t need to. This is perhaps the purest form of bottle storytelling.

These days, the word epic has become a synonym for good. We like stories with scope and amplitude, big stories. We like trilogies and series and sequels and prequels (and “equels”); we like cinematic universes; we like TV shows with serialized, interconnected seasons; we like spin-offs and crossovers. Epic is in.