Comfort before Conflict

Christopher Vogler writes about starting your story in the "ordinary world" of the protagonist, to show where he/she starts the journey.



This can be done on a"macro-level as well as the scene level, showing the "comfort" which actually sets up for the "conflict."

Example:  In Grant Sutherland's Diplomatic Immunity, the main character Sam's daughter is shown first barging into his office at the UN (she works as a guide there) so she can eat her lunch in private (and probably so she can connect with him).  She's a bright, funny, somewhat cocky 18-year-old, snarking at her old dad and making him feel both annoyed and gratified that she's deigned to share this time with him. (That's a good description of the relations of parents with their newly adult children-- annoyance and gratification.)  While there's some tension in her sudden appearance (Sam is trying to investigate a murder, and he doesn't want her to know), their relationship is shown as comfortable, loving, and pretty easy. There! We can feel nice and safe, right?

But the point of providing the comfort is to set up the conflict. And this comfortable scene does. There's the tension of the moment (Sam trying to keep the murder from her), and also lingering past tension, right there in the middle of the tension. He focuses on her "lunch," a carton of yogurt, and can't help but make the observation that he hopes she's eating more than that. That lets the author slip in the information that Rachel (after her mother's death) became anorexic and almost died of starvation, and that though she thinks of herself as fully recovered, he never has gotten over his fear that she won't eat enough.  So in establishing the comfort, the happy healthy daughter who barges into Dad's office to have lunch, he's also indicating the fragility of that comfort. It's built on a foundation of tension.

And the reference to her past trauma sets up for the next scene featuring Rachel. She is arrested for the murder and confined in a small basement room, and that's where Sam finds her. She's unconscious or asleep, and he's filled with terror. It's not so much fear of her being framed for this murder-- he's pretty sure he can make that go away-- but the memory of her near-death from anorexia, and the anxiety that this terrible experience will plunge her back into that.

We would not be able to experience vicariously his terror, I think, if we hadn't had that "other extreme" of comfort first.




Can you suggest ways of making the reversal more effective? Like putting a trauma after a scene that affirms the alternative? That is, let's say the reversal is that the protagonist learns that his beloved mentor has been lying to him. Would that be more or less effective right after a scene of him with the mentor, with much trust and admiration?
Alicia

Question about character motivation and action

More sequence stuff.

Let's say your main character has some traits or is going to commit some actions that are likely to come across as unsympathetic to the reader.

For example, the heroine is a liar. Can't get around it. She resorts to puffing up her accomplishments whenever she feels inferior or is put on the spot.

Now assume that's essential to the plot, that one lie is going to get her in big trouble and thus pull her into the plot of political intrigue.

Also you see her deceptiveness as coming from her past, growing up with an alcoholic parent who required heroine to lie frequently in order to keep the family together ("My mother has bronchitis, Mr. Smith, and can't come to work," "Oh, don't worry, Ms. Social Worker. Daddy is still here and he's the one who gets us off to school in the morning."). That is, you have a scene with her mother planned, something that will show that in her childhood, lying was a defense mechanism.

So... anyway, you have three characterization revelators, and I'm wondering in what order you'd put them, and why, and what result different orders might create.

Here they are:
1) The backstory about the alcoholic mother and deserting father and the need to lie. (This could be revealed in a flashback or in the present, maybe a phone call or meeting with her mother or someone else in the past-- your choice.

2) The lie which drags her into the main external plot-- THE lie.

3) The pattern of lying that makes it clear that THE lie isn't just a one-time thing.

Imagine that each of these would be revealed in its own scene. (That isn't the only way to do this -- you could smush two into the same scene, or reveal one over several scenes-- but for the sake of simplicity, let's consider that you have three separate scenes.)

In what order would you have them and why? I don't mean they all have to be together, but if you have one a lot later than the others, tell us why?

Alicia