Developing Story Ideas Page 8

  The energizing question is this: What will he do, what can he possibly do, to atone to his wife and child?

  Your handling of time, your choice of good in- and out-points for scenes, and what you include while telling your story all influence its effectiveness. You have great latitude to heighten dramatic tension, mystify your audience, and focus on the feelings and thoughts your story means to deliver. That may mean choosing whether to deal with the pressures leading to a tractor-trailer that crashes into a carload of holiday-makers, or with the consequences—the post-traumatic stress disorder of the lone survivor, say.

  How you structure a story affects its point of view and signals your purpose in telling it. Wilkie Collins,1 inventor of the mystery story, famously advised, “Make them laugh, make them cry, but make them wait.” Waiting and wondering piques the readers’ interest, and hooks them into the characters and their situation. And it makes them work to imagine what may happen next—something we story-consumers love to do.

  A subplot is a breakaway digression in the plot that, like a rivulet, eventually rejoins the mainstream. During a treatment of the Last Supper, a subplot might establish what the nefarious Judas is up to, for instance.

  Drama, Destiny, and Point of View

  Generally, screen and literary stories lead us to share the major point-of-view character’s consciousness. But there is often more than one, and writers become fascinated by the fates their characters draw down upon themselves. A Greek philosopher famously said that “character is fate,”2 meaning that our inclinations determine our actions, and our actions invite our destiny. You must have seen people—particularly your parents—creating their circumstances over time. It can be funny, admirable, or tragic. Sometimes the person knows his flaws and fights to change them, but this too is part of his character—and only makes him all the more interesting.

  In a story in the previous chapter (“The Fisherman’s Wife”), we saw events largely through the long-suffering mariner’s eyes as he tried in vain to satisfy his ambitious spouse. Did she kill her menfolk by being so demanding, or was he also at fault for uncritically humoring her?

  In the following tale, “Little Red Riding Hood,” we mostly experience the story from the heroine/victim’s viewpoint, but it digresses during the Wolf’s journey to the Grandmother’s cottage, letting us see his plan to make the young girl into a succulent meal.

  Stories with an omniscient point of view are told through the viewpoint of a detached storyteller whose God-like eye can go anywhere and see everything. This would serve a story about Napoleon’s campaign in Europe well, since it must deal in large patterns of conquest.

  The Three-Act Structure

  Just as there are three parts to dramatic units in a scene, so you can divide most whole narratives, long or short, into the classic three-act structure. Though this handy division does not cover all drama by any means, it often works well for analyzing a joke or for abstracting the structure of a novel or film. It is easy to understand and helpful when you want to grasp perceived distortions in a narrative’s proportions and purpose, whether your own or someone else’s. To keep things simple, the story type under discussion has only one main character.

  Act I: The Setup

  This is the exposition, which means the situation, environment, and what to expect of the world we find ourselves in.

  What is the story’s setting? A college dormitory, coal-mining community, or Chinese restaurant kitchen each represents a special world, each with its own different rules and conventions. What epoch?

  What class or kind of society are we in?

  What pressures does each environment exert on the characters?

  Who is the major character and what makes them so? Names, characteristics, and relationships

  What does each represent? (Human qualities? Different ages or stages of development? Different emotional types, etc.?)

  What major problem does each face?

  What is he or she trying to get, do, or accomplish?

  Who is most important and why?

  The main character’s conflict is between________ and __________. (Be careful: you must designate the particular forces in opposition, not something else like a fear or predicament.)

  The main character’s agenda is … For the story as a whole?

  For each scene? (Do they stack up logically?)

  Main obstacles to her agenda are …

  Act II: Complications

  Once the main character is committed to tackling her main problem, she encounters obstacles, setbacks, and unexpected difficulties that make her path more complex and testing.

  What adaptations must she make while trying to solve each problem?

  How do her difficulties and impediments change?

  What new factors raise the stakes? (That is, what developments make the main problem harder to solve?)

  Where do all the complications and pressures reach their zenith, so that something must give?

  Act III: Confrontation, Crisis, and Resolution

  This part detonates the buildup of forces and shows the realignment that follows.

  What makes the opposing forces come into the final, decisive confrontation?

  How is the underlying, driving problem resolved, and which of the opposing forces wins?

  Who learns and grows during the tale, and how?

  Divide a story into acts, and you can assess how effectively each group of scenes supports the overall purpose of its particular act. By grouping and functional analysis, you find out what may be missing, misplaced, or redundant. Those who can do this well earn everyone’s respect.

  Drawing a Dramatic Arc for a Whole Work

  Now you can analyze and graph the flow of an entire work. Simply use the same concepts you used to analyze a single scene—setup, complications, crisis, and resolution. Whether you have in hand a film, play, or novel with many characters and dozens of scenes, you can draw an overall arc rating the relative importance of all its scenes. Start by designating the work’s major crisis, then examine the rising action leading to it and the falling action that follows. You are not doing different work; only work that is greater in scale and complexity.

  Graphing drama reveals flaws like nothing else, and during any analytic discussion it commands great respect. Perhaps you show a friend she has clumped two similar scenes together or put a powerful scene too early, making consequent material anticlimactic. A subplot may have proliferated and got out of hand, or it is misplaced and impedes the momentum of the action. Point this out and people will value your insight.

  Development

  We always hope the central character will survive and learn something important, so the final question about any dramatic work is, “Does anyone grow by the end of the tale?” This growth represents the story’s development, and the character who does so is almost certainly the central character. It can be “positive” and life-affirming growth, or it can be a dark hereafter, as in Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing short story “Good Country People.” Joy, who is in her thirties and has renamed herself Hulga to annoy her mother, goes for a romantic picnic with a young bible salesman. When he sets out to seduce her, she is daft enough, despite her degree in philosophy, to entrust him with her glasses and artificial leg. In an act of surreal evil, he runs off with the leg, delighted he can add to his collection of prostheses. Hulga’s development is left to the reader’s imagination, but you can be sure she has learned a bitter lesson about human nature.

  Assignment 10–1: Dividing a Story into Three Acts

  Below is another traditional story from which I have again eliminated paragraph breaks so you have an open field.

  Step 1: Copy the story or download it from the website.

  Step 2: Divide it into scenes. Each should be at one location or occupy one stretch of time. Give each a functional tag-title describing place and action.

  Step 3: Now group the scenes into acts, using the language of dramaturgy to justify your divisions. />
  Little Red Riding Hood

  Once upon a time there was a pretty little village girl whose mother doted on her. Her Grandmother loved her so much that she made her a little red hood, one so becoming that people called her Little Red Riding Hood. One day her mother, who had just baked a cake, said, “Go and see how your Grandmother is, for I have been told that she is ill. Take her this nice cake.” Little Red Riding Hood set off at once. On her way through the wood to the next village, she met the wily old Wolf. He very much wanted to eat her, but dared not do so because some woodcutters were nearby in the forest. When he asked where she was going, she replied, not knowing it was dangerous to stop and listen to a wolf, “I am taking this cake my mother made to my Grandmother.” The Wolf asked if her Grandmother lived far away, and Little Red Riding Hood pointed out the house in the distance. The Wolf said he would go to see her too, and suggested she take one path and he another, to see who got there first. He set off running with all his might along the shorter road, the little girl continuing on her way by the longer road, amusing herself as she went. The Wolf soon reached the Grandmother’s house. When he knocked, the old lady, who was ill in bed, asked who was there. Pretending he was Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf said he had a cake from her mother. The Grandmother gave instructions how to get in, and the Wolf sprang on the poor old lady and ate her up in no time, for he hadn’t eaten in three days. Then he lay down in the Grandmother’s bed and waited for Little Red Riding Hood. When she knocked, the Wolf disguised his voice and called out, “Who is it?” But his gruff voice frightened Little Red Riding Hood, until she thought, maybe Grandmother has a bad cold and is hoarse. So she called out, “Little Red Riding Hood,” and said she had brought a cake from her mother. Softening his voice, the Wolf told her how to enter. Little Red Riding Hood did as she was told, and, seeing her enter, the Wolf hid beneath the counterpane. He told her to put the cake down and get up on the bed with him. Little Red Riding Hood undressed, but when she climbed up on the bed she was astonished to see how her Grandmother looked in her nightgown.

  “Grandmother dear!” she exclaimed, What big arms you have!”

  “The better to embrace you with, my child!”

  “Grandmother dear, what big legs you have!”

  “The better to run with, my child!”

  “Grandmother dear, what big ears you have!”

  “The better to hear with, my child!”

  “Grandmother dear, what big eyes you have!”

  “The better to see with, my child!”

  “Grandmother dear, what big teeth you have!”

  “The better to eat you with!” And with these words the wicked Wolf leaped upon Little Red Riding Hood and gobbled her up.

  This is the original Perrault version of the events: other variants offer a less violent ending by making the hunters, one of whom is Riding Hood’s woodman father, rush in and save her before cutting off the Wolf’s head.

  Assignment 10–2: Character Types and Story Meanings

  Decide whether the characters in “Little Red Riding Hood” are round or flat, and explain what makes them so.

  Are there archetypes in this story, and if so, who represents what?

  How many meanings can you find conveyed in this children’s tale?

  Name and briefly describe a round character in a film or prose work that you know, and say what makes this a round character rather than a flat one.

  Notes

  1Wilkie Collins (1824–1889), friend of Dickens, was best known for The Woman in White and The Moonstone.

  2Heraclitus (c. 540–c. 480 BC).

  11 The Tools of Drama

  Toolkit

  The toolkit items represent a fanciful roundup of the discussion in recent chapters. Here physical objects symbolize the concepts writers use when they set out to impose order and purpose on the unruly outpourings of the human mind. With these, you can dismantle any narrative, examine its makeup and parts, then reassemble it to function more effectively. It’s very satisfying.

  The four hats are to remind you of the writer’s different roles, and the importance of keeping them separate. Wear the Author’s Hat while you freely generate new material; put on the Presenter’s Hat to pitch a story; then don the Audience’s Hat when you absorb a story like any member of the public. Lastly, there’s the Critic’s Hat, worn during feedback and story-editing modes. Decide which to wear, and never wear more than one.

  The clipboard represents the importance of interrogating every aspect of a story, especially when establishing the background and volition of its main characters. Because a good story stimulates a stream of questions in your audience’s mind, you try to anticipate them in order to sustain the audience’s inner dialogue.

  The stopwatch measures the time taken by each part of your story. Time preoccupies the dramatist because drama is best when concise. Less is more.

  Diving goggles remind you of how often you must dive below the surface. Your audience, usually unconsciously, will be sensing and identifying subtexts—those all-important submerged meanings to which your work eventually alludes.

  A pressure meter measures the fluctuating pressures of dramatic conflict. As you might search for electrical power in a building, so you search every dramatic situation for the energizing conflict in its major characters.

  A cake slicer reminds us that drama has many components waiting to be recognized and separated. Finding and repositioning them, each with its own function and optimal placement, helps to toughen and streamline your story.

  The key unlocks the dramatic premise, the paradigm that crystallizes the story’s ruling essence and purpose. Its nature often changes as you write, so have your key at the ready for examination.

  A telescope stands for the importance of locating point of view. It may literally be what someone sees, but could also be what they inwardly feel and think—subjective experiencing that art particularly wants us to share.

  Three boxes, one for each of the major narrative divisions in the three-act structure. These you populate with the right scenes as you search for the satisfaction of overall balance.

  Surveying a Story’s Type and Purpose

  Now try subjecting your story idea to these brief, blunt proposals:

  Genre:

  The story is a … type of story.

  It stays within/subverts its genre because …

  Patterns:

  Designs or patterns that emerged were …

  Characters:

  Qualities of the main characters are …

  POV:

  POV character is mainly … (Say who)

  Sometimes POV migrates to … (Say who and why)

  Conflict and Problem:

  Major forces confronting the main characters are …

  Conflict in this story is between … and …

  Development:

  Overall change that the story shows is …

  The development in (character) … signifies …

  Plot, and laws of the universe:

  Story shows what happens when … (type of character) opposes … (which particular law of society or of the universe).

  Impact:

  Story intends to act on audience as follows: …

  Premise and theme:

  The premise in one or two sentences of this story is … and it deals with the theme of …

  Meaning:

  To me, the underlying meaning of this story is …

  Making a Working Hypothesis

  We tell stories in order to change hearts and minds, but it takes skill and experiment to evoke strong feelings in an audience. Effective drama must always stir up feelings, since it is feelings, not facts, that change the way people see.

  A working hypothesis is a simple planning statement that forces you to clarify your narrative intentions, whether the story is fiction or nonfiction.

  No matter what narrative you have in mind—fiction or nonfiction, short story or novel, film or play—you will greatly clarify y
our way ahead by developing a working hypothesis (see sidebar definition). I developed this planning device long ago to help documentarians, but it works well for all narrative forms, and will help you structure your topic, beliefs, and intentions like nothing else.

  Starting from a conviction you hold dear, it crystallizes your intentions for particular characters in a particular world, and concludes with the feelings and realizations you aim to arouse in your audience. As such, the working hypothesis is really a dramatic delivery system.1 To make yours, fill in the prompts below, nominating the following: