Writing for Story - Jon Franklin

Writing for Story is not only a wonderfully concise book about crafting a compelling story but a book about human nature and expression.  The structure of a story Franklin writes on in terms of complication/tension and resolution is the story of well, everything.  Maybe with out an analogy this seems like a sweeping generalization.  This idea that human nature runs on tension and resolution did not strike me as true until today in my guitar class.  Today was the first day I had ever talked about music theory.  The way I understood song writing theory after a 40 minute lesson on it today is exactly the way I look at writing a story. There are six strings on a guitar, all of which are strummed in the playing of a chord.  If a guitar play is to play a G-chord, she plays the g, a minor, b minor, c, d7, and f#, together.  To write a song in the note of G, each of these notes are assigned a number, g being one, a minor two. and so on.  To use these notes in a progression, some of them create tension that can only be resolved by returning to g.  Some notes are more dominate and some of them are less powerful.  All of the sounds evoke a different feeling for the listener.  All have a place in the chord.  It is much easier to explain this while playing the guitar because it really is about a feeling you get when listening to music.  I guess I am arguing self expression is always about creating and resolving tensions to bring a viewer/listener through a set of real emotions.  It's interesting that we have these innate senses of emotions already (more clear when listening to music) yet we still need Jon Franklin to lay it out for us.  Lesson: trust your instincts.