Another Monomythic Structure

I was reading the October issue of the Journal of Popular Culture (yes, a little behind on my reading), and I stumbled across this gem in a paper about the Omen trilogy.

Jewett and Lawrence have argued that the classical monomyth is not a common pattern in American popular culture. In the United States, mythic consciousness has evolved into a distinct form that highlights redemption rather than initiation. It dramatizes the Judeo-Christian redemption discourse that emerged early in American culture to produce a narrative in which "[a] community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil: normal institutions fail to contend with this threat: a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task: aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisal condition: the superhero then recedes into obscurity" (Jewett and Lawrence, American Monomyth xx). In this mythic narrative, helpless communities are redeemed by a Christ figure who is never integrated into the community, but leaves at the end, remaining a perpetual outsider. He or she has an unchanging moral perfection and a strong capability for action while the community is changeable and must be saved through the violent action of the hero.

The author is Neil Gerlach, and the paper is "Antichrist as Anti-Monomyth." As you might imagine, this paragraph has grabbed my interest. I'm deeply interested in the ways these various monomyths might be useful to writers. So I hopped onto my university's library site and ran a quick search, and from this preliminary scan, it seems Jewett and Lawrence were primarily concerned with comic book narratives and characters, though they did apply some of these concepts to news stories about modern warfare.

Before I pursue this line of inquiry further, I thought I would ask if any of you have looked at this American monomyth, and if so, did you find it useful?

Theresa

Interdiction

If you've been hanging around writers circles at any point in the last fifteen or so years, you have probably run into the concepts of "call to action" and "refusal of the call" from the hero's journey. There's another pattern which is something like the flipside of this call/refusal pattern, though, which centers around the concept of what is forbidden to the protagonist.

As a brief reminder, the call/refusal comes in the early part of the structure referred to as the hero's journey, the quest myth, or Campbell's sun god monomyth. This is a powerful and enduring story structure which begins with an extraordinary character, unaware of his true nature, who has been stashed in an ordinary world for safekeeping (or for some other purpose) during his youth. The call to action is the first major step in this character's evolution. An external force intrudes on the ordinary world and makes some request or demand of the protagonist. Whether due to fear, uncertainty, or a general feeling of unreadiness, the hero refuses this request or demand. Ultimately, of course, the hero changes his mind and does it anyway.

Some story analysts have suggested that the refusal of the call -- more specifically, the way that this refusal allows the protagonist to demonstrate humility, uncertainty, insecurity, or other less heroic emotions -- is necessary to allow the reader to bond with the character. Without it, the hero might seem foolhardy or arrogant. With it, he seems more moderate or tempered. So this might be the purpose of this refusal to do something we all know he'll end up doing anyway.

This particular story structure is naturally well-suited to action/adventure, fantasy, some scifi, and can be adapted to other story types. But there are other structural models, and one that I talk about quite a lot is the fairy tale structure which lends itself well to horror and romance. (By the way, if you've ever wondered why paranormal romance works so beautifully as a subgenre, but scifi romance is a trickier marriage, it may have something to do with these structural tendencies.)

In fairy tale structure, we start with a virtuous character in a hostile or treacherous world. (Virtue, by the way, doesn't mean sexual innocence in this context. It means the characteristics which we most value in that type of character.) Frequently, the hostility or treachery in the environment follows the loss of a key family member -- think about what happens to Cinderella when her dad dies.

But there might be another aspect to the hostility or treachery of this world, and it comes in the form of what Vladimir Propp (who analyzed a wad of Russian wonder tales much the same way Campbell analyzed all those sun god stories) calls an interdiction. This just means that someone in a position of authority -- or perhaps, an authoritative entity -- has officially banned some act. There might be legitimate safety reasons for that interdiction. "Don't go into the woods at night." Well, we all know what happens when you ignore this rule and go into the woods at night anyway. Freaky bad stuff.

But hey, we're going into the woods anyway, right? Because that's the next step in the structure. Just as the call to action is met with a refusal, the interdiction must be violated. If Cinderella is banned from going to the ball, you'd better be sure she's going to find a way to get to the ball. The ban must be broken, and the forbidden must be experienced. Yes, there will be problems. But those problems will test the heroic traits in a way that proves them to be true and worthy of reward. So, even though we might think it's bad for a "virtuous" character to break the rules, really, it's all part and parcel of that virtuous nature. (This technique, if not this exact structure, is sometimes used in "rebel cop" stories, too. Anyone want to discuss the difference between using this as a mid-scale character technique and using it as a structural element?)

Theresa

Structure of Game of Thrones Season One

Spoiler Alert! Don't read this post unless you've seen as much of Game of Thrones season 1 as you intend to.

Last weekend I had some hours to fill, so I watched most of Game of Thrones season 1, and I rounded out the season over the next few days. I think sometimes when we view an entire complex series in a compressed time, we absorb it differently than if we had watched it week by week over the course of a series. So I'm not sure if my response to the series was due to this compressed viewing, or maybe it's been influenced by never having read the books.

I think that in structural terms, episode 9 ended season 1 and episode 10 launched season 2. But given that I have no idea what to expect from season 2 -- never read the books, remember -- this interpretation might be idiosyncratic. But let me explain my thinking, and if you see it differently, please speak up in the comments.

When we analyze large-scale structure, we look at the main plot question raised in the beginning of the story and answered at the end. The nature of these questions can vary depending on the story archetype. With an adventure story, we leave in the beginning and return at the end. In a quest story, the grail is identified in the beginning and claimed in the end. In a fairy tale, the beginning is about the interdiction and the end is about the triumph over the interdiction. In a relationship story, the relationship is broken in the beginning and whole in the end. In a murder mystery, we start with a corpse and end with an arrest. And so on. The beginning and end points of the stories are structurally linked when we analyze the large elements. The beginning point defines the conflict and premise, too, and the end point resolves the conflict or answers the question raised by the premise. These two points, start and end, are connected.

So, in episode one of season one, the main plot is established, along with a couple of subplots.

Main plot - King Robert asks his buddy Ned to be the hand of the king. Ned doesn't want to do it. His wife doesn't want him to do it. But he can't say no to the king. This is the first conflict, and it drives most of the rest of the story. What happens at Robert's castle, with his family and lords, political squabbles, the effect on Ned's family -- this is the framework for the season. We can define this plot line as one lord's rise to power at the behest of his king. It begins with the hand (Ned's rise to power) and ends with a head (his politically motivated murder following the king's death).

A Subplot - The deposed dragon king is in exile and wants his throne back. He needs an army and allies. These needs set this subplot in motion, but the plot arc depends upon his sister's marriage to a horse lord. She is actually the main character in this subplot, though she's not a protagonist in the classic "active" sense. In any case, we can say that her subplot begins with her betrothal. We can define this subplot line as a marriage plot. It begins with her betrothal and ends with her husband's death.

B Subplot - Bad shit is happening on the other side of a giant wall. This subplot opens the entire season: first episode, first scene, a guy sees some dead people and concludes they were killed by supernatural forces from beyond the wall. He carries his tale back to Ned and is beheaded for his pains, but Ned's bastard son Snow decides to join the watch at the wall. This is a form of transformation plot, akin to a bildungsroman except that rather than forming an adult understanding of emotion, Snow forms an adult career role. It begins with Snow watching the deserter's beheading and formulates the goal of joining the watch, and it ends when he takes his vows and is formally made a member of the watch.

Let's start with this B Subplot. Snow takes his vows in episode 7 of a 10-episode season. It's not unusual for a subplot to wrap up ahead of the main plot, even well ahead of the main plot's ending, so the timing doesn't trouble me. What I find interesting is that they revisit the central question of this subplot (Snow asking, "Should I join the watch?") several times after the question has already been answered. Snow wavers more after taking his vows than before them. At first I wasn't sure why they kept reopening that story question, but I think (again, I have not read the books, so this is conjecture) it is meant to inflate the importance of his presence on the wall. The story, in effect, keeps asking Snow if he really, really means to answer yes to the question, "Should I join the watch?" Yes, yes, and yes again. Yes when he takes the actual vows. Yes when his father is imprisoned and murdered. Yes a third time when his brother goes to war.

And I think there's probably a good reason to inflate the power and meaning of that yes, and I think that reason will be revealed through new story questions and conflicts in upcoming seasons. I don't know what those story questions might be, but I can think of a few possibilities. Where are these zombies coming from and how can we defeat them? What's happening beyond the wall that's making all the wild people run south? However the story question is phrased, it will have something to do with the evils beyond the wall, and Snow will be a key player in that battle. I think.

But those are not season one questions, so the events at the wall in episodes 8, 9, and 10 are primarily preparing us for new story questions in new seasons. Right? Or do you read it differently?

Now, the A Subplot, the dragon lady marries the horse dude. It begins with their betrothal and ends when their marriage ends -- with his death. Except he kind of dies twice, right? He dies the first time in episode 9, and that witch slave woman uses evil magic to keep his body alive, but he's not really alive. Dragon lady even says so when she yells at the witch, right before she smothers what's left of her husband. So, do we see a parallel to Snow's subplot? In both cases, a story question is resolved more than once. He's dead in episode 9, and then he's really most sincerely dead in episode 10. Only the second death isn't about him and the marriage anymore. Now it's about a funeral pyre that wakes up some fossilized dragon eggs and makes the dragon lady a dragon lady in more than name and lineage.

But those dragon babies and the final, powerful, incredible image of them scrambling over the naked dragon lady's flesh doesn't resolve the existing season one Subplot A story question, which is about the marriage of dragon to horse. That image sets up a new one for the next season. What will the new story question be for Callesie (or whatever her name is)? Um. Maybe, what's she going to do with those dragons, launch an invasion?

And the main plot, as we've already said, starts with a hand and ends with a head. Ned Stark is beheaded in episode 9 -- and was I the only one shocked by that? That inbred boy king is going to catch hell for that one. And that hell-catching will be a revenge plot that drives most of the next season, I'll bet. The seeds for this were sown in episode 10 when the fiancee daughter-of-Ned nearly managed to push the boy king off a small bridge, and the warrior son-of-Ned summoned an army and was named King of the North. But that's all episode 10, right? Starting up the conflicts for season 2.

It's a neat trick, and you can be sure I'll be watching season 2 eagerly. But in terms of structural analysis, I think season 1's story line really covered 9 episodes, and that 10th episode was more or less the start of season 2.

Agree? Disagree? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Theresa

It Always Comes Back to Aristotle

Okay, so I think I've mentioned a time or ten that I've been reading these anthropology structuralist dudes from the mid-20th century, mainly because I wanted to expand my knowledge of superstructures beyond the basic Campbell mythic quest structure. And as part of that exploration, I've been reading Claude Levi-Strauss, a French academic who collected Pan-American myths and analyzed their structure until they cried uncle. Or oncle, actually, in deference to Levi-Strauss's nationality.

Anyway, he's taken a lot of heat for the way he tried to disconnect story structure from time. The basic idea here is that there are two kinds of structure. The first is what we describe as linear -- events unfold along a timeline, and generally have to occur in that specific sequence in order for the story to make sense. The girl can't fall in love with the boy before she meets the boy, right? Temporality is key to understanding most story structures. First this, then that.

Levi-Strauss, though, wanted to unhook structure from time. So he developed a theory of latent structures -- he called them paradigmatic structures, or, depending on the translation, structural paradigms. He said that structural paradigms are oppositional structural elements which can be uncoupled from the story's timeline and moved around. These can be reduced to single-word concepts which are the opposite of each other: love/hate, life/death, and so on. The order in which the concepts are presented isn't important (according to old Claude), as long as they both exist within the tale.

This can make your brain melt if you think about it too hard -- it nearly melted mine, until I realized he's basically talking about (wait for it) (and sing along if you know the words) one of Aristotle's ideas. Reversals. Yummy, delicious, drama-making reversals.

What's a reversal? It's when a story element becomes its opposite. Life/death, love/hate, and so on. Why did Aristotle care about it? Because reversals create drama: the essence of drama is change. And when we're talking about rising action on Ari's incline, we're talking about ways to pump up the drama. A reversal is a structural element with a big built-in dramatic oomph because the nature of the change is big.

The difference between a reversal and another kind of change is the oppositional nature of the elements. One is either alive or dead (excepting certain zombies and other paranormal creatures, of course *ggg*), and there aren't degrees of deadness or aliveness (again, excepting zombies, etc.). What are examples of non-oppositional changes? Anything that changes not in essential nature but rather in degree (mist to rain -- it's still precipitation, just more of it) or quality (green to blue -- color is still present, but it's a different color) is a non-oppositional change. These things might also have some dramatic value, but they don't pack quite the same pop as a reversal.

Why should writers care about this? Two words. Sagging. Middle. If your story slumps along through the middle, if reviewers described chapter eight as the perfect cure for insomnia, then think about the changes presented by the action in the middle of the book. What changes? Does it change in degree, or does it completely reverse itself? How can you magnify that change for more drama?

What are some other examples of oppositional pairs -- or, as our buddy Claude would have it, structural paradigms?

Theresa

Myth and Paradox

"Every myth is driven by the obsessive need to solve a paradox that cannot be solved."
~ Wendy Doniger, in the Foreword to Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture by Claude Levi-Strauss (emphasis in original)

Okay. So I've been reading a lot of cultural anthropology lately, particularly the mid-20th century structuralists. If you're a writer who came up in the era of the Disney memo and its aftermath, you've already been exposed to a subset of these ideas. Chris Voegler's book, The Hero's Journey, was basically a recodification of Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces in screenwriting terms. I think technically Campbell would be classified a comparative mythologist rather than a true structuralist, but I think nobody would dispute that his work was related to what came later from the structuralists. Certainly, they were all looking for commonalities among groups of folkloric stories.

In any case, if you've read Voegler or Campbell, you've been exposed to one collective myth analysis. What I've been reading lately are similar studies about other kinds of collective myths -- that is, myths other than the hero's quest. Not all the work of the comparative mythologists and structuralists is relevant to writers, but some of it is. Levi-Strauss's studies of Pan-American myths have been particularly fascinating to me (especially the stuff on twinning and untwinning -- whoa dayumn), and Vladimir Propp's work on Russian folk tales has been a thought-provoking read. Highly recommended if you're interested in that sort of thing.

For something like the past ten years, I've been quietly proposing my own theory that genre romance novels are, at their core, an attempt to recast the woman's sociobiological paradox into a pleasant and easily digested story type with a guaranteed positive outcome. And Alicia has been saying for quite some time that romance novels are folkloric in nature. We didn't pull these ideas out of thin air -- for my part, I was strongly influenced by, again, an anthropological study I read some years ago, which I can no longer cite because I can't find it. (But why is it always the anthropologists who are making these bells chime?) The study was either commissioned or produced by a Harvard professor, and it made for fascinating reading. I wish I could tell you more than that, but all I ever had was a paper copy of the study and only heaven knows where I put it. I may have lost it in a move a few years ago.

In any case, the paper addressed the two sociobiological functions of both genders and how that has influenced gender roles. The female's two functions are to get pregnant and to feed the young. The male's are to inseminate females and to fight off predators.

It's that grouping, or that division of roles, if you prefer, that causes a paradox. The female needs a male to get pregnant, of course, but she also expects him to fight off predators. Except that sometimes the male himself is a predator. So she needs to bring a potential predator close in order to keep other potential predators away. The trick for the female is to find a man who is willing to fight others but not willing to fight her. She has to trigger his protective instincts rather than his battle instincts.

In romance novels, the hero almost never starts off as perfect hero material. He's an unreachable lone wolf, or a brooding wounded heart, or a charming rogue who's delightful to be around but can't be trusted in an emergency. The heroine recognizes this in him, this initial tendency in him to have traits that might not make him such a perfect partner. And she also generally recognizes traits in him that would make him a worthy partner, things like strength and size and power. The journey of the romance novel is one in which the heroine develops trust, the hero develops protectiveness, and both of them develop mutual love and passion.

We retell this story over and over in genre romance novels and other formats because it's an important myth. I don't mean "myth" in the sense of something that doesn't exist -- in fact, happy marriages and good partnerships do exist, and plenty of them. I mean "myth" in the anthropological sense of a story that is part of a cultural tradition or heritage. These are stories that contain a deeper meaning, something almost primal. These are stories that help us understand the world and our parts in it. For female readers of romance novels, these may be stories that help us understand the almost instinctive ways we identify and come to love good men.

In any case, all of this is just to say that I really got a kick out of the Doniger quote, and now you all know why. fwiw.

Theresa

Romance Endings

Romance follows fairy tale structure. Not mythic quest structure. Can't say that often enough. Study Voegler, study Campbell, if you think it will give you something to think about or a point of comparison. But never forget, dear romance author, that you're actually writing a fairy tale.

Exhibit A

Say it with me now. Fill in the blanks.

"And they all lived ______ _______ _______."

This concept is so intrinsic to genre romance that authors have shorthanded it: HEA, for Happily Ever After, a/k/a the way the good romance novel ends.

There is some debate about the shape and form of that HEA ending. Vladimir Propp, the Russian formalist who studied thousands of local wonder tales and created a 31-step template for this type of folklore, held that the final step was a wedding. All other steps -- whether obstacles, challenges, triumphs, or meetings -- led inexorably to the wedding IF the protagonist was successful on the journey. Cinderella marries the Prince in the final moments of her story.

Now we're less inclined to view a formal wedding ceremony as essential to the HEA. Now we discuss this ingredient in terms of the promise of commitment or the proof of an enduring relationship. Regardless, the final moments of a romance novel will demonstrate to the reader that the pair-bond has been created and will not break. The form of that pair-bond can vary a little, but its presence is mandatory.

Or, as Leslie Wainger puts it in Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies (which is actually a damned smart book),

The final expectation every reader has when reading a romance novel is that it will end with the hero and heroine expecting to spend their lives together and face any future trials as one.

Compare this to the mythic quest structure, which ends with the hero recrossing a threshold and becoming the master of two worlds. Dorothy returns to Kansas in the end and is as comfortable there as in Oz. But she doesn't marry the wizard, does she? Of course not. Marriage can occur along the path of the hero's journey, but it's not the destination.

I'm going to keep this short -- there's more I could say on this subject, but my goal in this post is to make you think about the differences between fairy tale endings and mythic quest endings. A lot of you are going to resist these ideas because you've been taught quest structure as if there are no other options. There are. And we use them. We just don't always recognize them.

Theresa

Define "Ordinary"

We periodically get interested around here in the concept of ordinary world in the mythic quest structure. I don't know why this happens. I don't know why this is a hot button topic for so many writers. Do you?

In any case, last week on our working retreat to San Francisco, Alicia and I found ourselves once again talking about ordinary world and some of the concepts and comments we've kicked around here over the years. One concept in particular kept recurring -- that is, the difference between ordinary environment and ordinary character. This kept recurring because of last month's Ask an Editor column at Romance University, where I answered some FAQs about ordinary world. In part, that column mentions an idea advanced by the folklorist Vladimir Propp, namely, that folklore structure begins with an ordinary (pure and virtuous) character in a treacherous or unsettled environment. This is almost the perfect reverse of the ordinary world familiar to students of Campbell and Voegler, in which (in at least some iterations) an extraordinary character is placed into an ordinary environment for safekeeping.

It's Harry Potter versus Cinderella.

In Harry Potter, which tracks the mythic structure almost perfectly, the character is not ordinary. He has special abilities and powers which have been largely dormant or ignored. The special outside world associated with those abilities has been hidden from his view. He has been placed for safekeeping in an "ordinary world" -- in this story, the term is quite literal because nothing non-ordinary or magical can intrude.

Special character, ordinary world.

Cinderella follows fairy tale structure, but whether it follows it perfectly depends on which Cinderella we discuss. There are many versions of this tale, and not all of them include stepsisters. But for those that do, the set-up generally references a few key points:

1. Cinderella is an obedient girl with a sweet, unassuming temperament.
2. But this virtuous nature is uncoupled with any special powers or attributes.
3. Her existing world is threatening or dangerous thanks to the presence of evil people in the home. (Resulting from Propp's "Absentation" -- the death of the mother, which disrupts the existing world.)
   

The question we often hear asked of Cinderella is, "How does she manage to remain so pure in that house?" Because, let's be honest, sooner or later many of us would snap and pummel the stepsisters with that damn broom. But Cinderella never does, and that purity of virtue is precisely what constitutes the "ordinariness" of this character type. In other words, one of the central tenets of this type of wonder tale is that goodness is an ordinary quality for a hero or heroine, that even in an impure world, a heroic character remains pure. It's their nature.

So:
Mythic = extraordinary character in an ordinary world
Folkloric = ordinary (heroic) character in a threatening world

From there, the two structures deviate in particular ways even as they reflect each other. For example, in mythic structure, there's a call to action which is initially ignored. In folkloric structure, there's an interdiction which is similarly ignored. But where the myth demands action, the folk tale prohibits it.

In any case, this might be very interesting in an academic sense, but what has it to do with writing actual books? A book is written in scenes. (Please, Gods of Literature, let most books be written in scenes.) Scenes, as we've discussed many times here before, are composed of three elements:

1. A character
2. In meaningful motion
3. Against a background
   

The nature of the three elements varies somewhat depending on the scene itself, but that's the basic recipe. Character, action, setting. And depending on the story form you're incorporating, your "ordinary world" might not refer to the world/setting at all, but to the character. Think about the source of ordinariness before the story kicks into gear -- don't merely think about how much ordinary world you need, or how to transition out of it, but think about what is ordinary and what changes.

But probably "ordinary" won't refer to the action. Anyone care to take a stab at explaining why?

Theresa

Off the Stage and Off the Page

One of the things we sometimes debate is what to leave off the page. There are those obvious things like household chores and other non-dramatic moments that are best cut. (Thinking now of a manuscript I once edited where every change of clothing was narrated as it was changed. Really, we don't need that.)

But there are also times when otherwise dramatic events are left out for thematic reasons, and I had a strong reminder of that last night at the theater. I saw a Chekhov play, The Seagull, and as with many of his other writings, key events happened off stage during the act breaks. I thought it might be useful to break it down here and ponder why these particular events are left out.

The story takes place on the lakefront estate of a Russian farmer during a visit from his actress sister. The main themes have to do with unrequited love, tension between generations, and the nature and form of drama and writing. For our purpose, we're primarily concerned with the unrequited love in two of the triangles.

Triangle #1
There are two writers, an established older novelist and a young struggling dramatist. The dramatist is in love with Nina, the lead actress in a play he's staging. Nina is in love with the novelist.

Triangle #2
A young depressive named Masha is in love with the dramatist. A schoolteacher is in love with Masha.


Keep in mind, none of these loves are returned. However, between the third and fourth acts, a gap of about two years, the nature of these relationships changes.

Triangle #1
Nina has an affair with the novelist. She has a baby, the baby dies, and the affair ends.

Triangle #2
Masha marries the schoolteacher. They have a baby together.


These are key events, right? Ordinarily, a writer might be tempted, in a story about love triangles, to write the scenes in which a character finds some form of romantic satisfaction (although not love) with the object of their affections. So why is it left off stage?

I think it's because the play isn't about finding that kind of romantic satisfaction. It's about how this kind of passion can drive someone to desperate moves. It's possible that in the beginning of the affair or at the start of the marriage, at least one and perhaps both of the lovers would be happy -- or at least happier than we've seen them otherwise. And the play isn't about the kind of happiness we feel in the arms of a lover.

So those scenes are left off. We skip over the newlywed phase and are left to imagine whether there was passion (two babies, so there must have been some passion), or any true meeting of the minds, or any meaningful bonding of the hearts or spirits. And audiences can debate whether Masha might have found a temporary abatement of her depression in the early months of her marriage -- but in the end, it doesn't really matter. Because at the start of the fourth act, after the two year gap, she's right back to her depressed yearning for the dramatist.

And that yearning with it's consequent depression is a necessary thematic state for this character.

I don't know that I can take this example and reduce it to a tight set of principles (something you know I ordinarily would do), because I think this sort of decision is very case specific. But this is a good example of the kind of analysis that might transfer, regardless of context. What is the theme of your story? And how are those themes enhanced or undercut by scenes that might be skip-worthy?

Theresa

The Romantic Hero's Purpose

This one goes out to the romance people reading this blog. I've been thinking over Alicia's post on Contrasts and Juxtapositions from earlier this week. It's been a while since I had to quibble with Alicia about one of her points, and as usual, it's sort of a side point and not really her main point. And as usual, I find myself wanting to start by noting where we think in tandem. It's so rare that we disagree that the urge to preface and even conciliate runs strong.

So here's a quick rundown of two places where I nodded in agreement while reading the post.

-- Genre fiction as folk art? Yes. Exactly. Love the point about innovation within a framework, "the same but different" so often referenced by agents and editors, or as Alicia puts it, something new balanced on the familiar and expected.

-- Victoria Dahl is an adept writer with a knack for surprising readers in a delightful way. No argument there. I haven't read Crazy for Love, the new release Alicia cites, but it's only a matter of time. (And nothing in this post should be construed as criticism of a book I haven't read or an author I respect.)


And then the wheels screeched as my ability to agree with Alicia ran off the side of the road.

You see, I don't think it should be at all unexpected for a hero to have the urge to protect the heroine. In fact, I think if he doesn't have that urge, at least by the end of the book, then he can't be a romantic hero. By definition.

In sociobiological terms, human males have two primary roles: to impregnate women and to fight off predators. There are other sub-roles, of course, and the way these roles manifest in modern men is surely different from how they manifested in our ancestors. Nevertheless, this is what the male body was designed to do, and it's what the deepest part of the instinctive brain will urge males to do.

The way these roles translate into romance hero archetypes is probably pretty obvious. The sexual urges, for example, form part of the tension in even the sweetest romances. Ever wonder why babies factor so prominently in sweets? It's because, in part, if we don't get to see the sexual behavior of the male during the course of the story, we need some other signal that he's capable of fathering a child. So we have an epilogue with the happy couple cuddling their infant a year later, and the reader is left to understand this is a coupling that works.

And as to the warrior/protector side of the male, this manifests in dozens of different ways. Some are obvious -- he's a SEAL or a Scottish chieftain or some other battle-hardened sort. Some are less direct -- he's a CEO (conquerer of the boardroom and enemy competitors), or an aristocrat (lord of all he surveys), or some other high-status male type. A big part of the emotional arc in romance is the journey this male must take from independent warrior to the man who will risk injury and even death to save his mate and children.

This is why so many successful romances have elements of danger to the heroines which allow the hero to intervene and prove his worth as a protector.

And this is why, when I read Alicia's description of the hero trying to save the heroine from imaginary sea monsters, I thought, "But that's what he should do."

It may be that this particular scene was set up so deftly as a sex scene that it was surprising to watch it morph into a protection scene. I don't know because I haven't read it. But that's a different kind of surprise from surprise that he's protective at all. And when Alicia describes the protective urge as more individual or more unique to this character, well, that's when I knew I had to write this post. That urge is not unique to any one romance hero. They should all have it. How they express it might be unique, but they should all have it, even if only by growing into it by the end of the book.

(So tempted now to shift into Darcy Discussion Mode now, a nearly perpetual condition for me these days. Instead will assert that it was his rescue of Lydia that allowed Elizabeth to ultimately love him, knowing he would not only protect her but her family as well, and even protect her from her family if need be. Heroic actions from a heroic character. Debate among yourselves if you like.)

As to Alicia's assertion that this could translate into some kind of 3-act structure, I think I will limit myself to this: what she describes is not so much a story structure as one method for creating a reversal, which is a structural device. I might not be parsing that part of the post correctly, but that's how I read it. There are many different ways to leverage the power of the reversal, and that sort of surprise behavior built upon a reader's assumptions or expectations is a good one.

Theresa

For Those of You Who Are Wondering but Are Too Shy to Ask

I've received several questions about the September Structure workshop, and thought it made sense to address them here, too.

I'm a new writer. Can I take your class, or will it be too advanced for me?

No, I don't think it's too advanced for a beginner. It will flood your brain with information, but it's information you can use right now to make your writing better, and none of it is conceptually difficult. And you need at least a fundamental understanding of structure to shape a book, so in that way, it's perfect for new writers.

But it is a lot of material. A lot. My whole goal in this course is to take abstract concepts (Aristotle's notion of magnitude, for example), and show you how to translate that to real scenes and plots and characters. So it's very practical, and for that reason alone, it would be great for a new writer.

My advice to the new writer, though, is to hang onto the lessons and revisit them in a year or two. What's important to you in the early stages is not what will be important to you later. Today you might be wrestling with conflict and causation. Tomorrow, it might be sequencing and logic. The workshop addresses a broad range of structure concepts, some of which might be more worthwhile later. (But it sure won't hurt you any to get exposed to these ideas early on.)


I've published six books. Will there be anything new for me to learn in this class?

Experienced writers like the structure workshop because, even if they know these theories, they don't always know what to do with them. I mean, it's one thing to say that events must have a certain magnitude. It's another to know how to evaluate your writing for magnitude and change it where necessary. (I've been working on the magnitude lesson today, which is why this is on my mind.)

And if you've had little training in literary theory, but still manage to pull together publishable books, this class might provide you with a new understanding of your instinctive approach to your work. Perhaps you already "get" the mechanics of character shifts in some deeply intuitive way. This workshop will give you the tools and the vocabulary to manage your draft structures in a more thoughtful way.


Are there still spaces left?

Yes, a few, but not many. I want to keep this class size fairly small because it's intensive. I've done it in person for years, but never online before now, and I'm not sure how that will affect the Q&A. But if we keep it fairly intimate, I'll know that I have ample time to handle whatever arises, and nobody will be shortchanged.


I don't understand what this workshop will be about. What is structure?

Take the class and find out. :)

It's going to be a great workshop. I've given this one in person a million times over the past two decades, and believe me, people walk out of it armed for battle. This isn't just academic theory blah blah blah, and there will be a lot of step-by-step explanations of how to handle different structural concepts when working on real manuscripts.

Theresa

Announcing the September Workshop

Alicia and I are very excited to announce the first ever edittorrent online workshop.

Starting September 1 and running for two weeks, I will be leading an intensive class in Fiction Structure. (Some of you out there may have taken the face-to-face version of this seminar and might be able to comment on what our workshoppers would be in for. *evil grin* Try not to scare them too much.)

We'll start by examining some of the classic theories analyzing structure (Aristotle, of course). This is all big-picture stuff that gives form and coherence to your story as a whole.

Then we'll look at mid-scale structure: scenes, sequences of scenes, and how to create coherency in blocks of actions. We'll talk about structural tricks for incorporating things like theme and motif in easy ways, all with the goal of making the text feel integrated.

We'll wrap up with a brief look a small-scale structure at the sentence and paragraph level, but if history can predict the future, we won't dwell too long on this part of the workshop. When I teach this class in person, we tend to spend a lot of time on the large scale and mid-scale sections, which is where the students seem to gravitate. I always want to cram in some thoughts on sentences and paragraphs, but I'm also willing to be guided by ongoing Q&A. That's the nature of a workshop. :)

This course will be conducted through a simple yahoo loop, meaning that you'll need to be able to join the yahoo group.

The cost will be US$50. There's a paypal button on the blog sidebar for those of you interested in signing up.

I'm leading this one, and Alicia will lead the October workshop. We'll be alternating months with this ongoing series, and I'll have more information for everyone on the course schedule soon. Some of you might recall that we talked about a different topic for the September workshop, but that particular one has been rescheduled.

Anyway, registration for the September workshop may begin now. The class size is limited, so you might want to sign up early.

Questions? You know where to post them. :)

Theresa

One Funny Paragraph

I’m re-reading the Iain Pears book, Stone’s Fall, this time with the intent of culling every bit of writerly magic from it which I can find. Pears does many things well, but I’ve been struck by the way he manipulates his paragraphs. This one in particular seemed worth sharing.

To set up this example paragraph, let me tell you that Brock is an aspiring painter down on his luck. He lives in the same boardinghouse as the narrator, a shabby place that smells like overcooked cabbage. We’ve already heard a joke about the fact that it’s situated on Paradise Walk, and we’ve heard one of the poet tenants compose a humorous ode to the unidentifiable gray meat served up by their landlady. This was all in a prior chapter.

The narrator leads into the example paragraph by saying that the painter Brock will make his mark years later during the great war, that the bleakness of those years suited his temperament and vision, but that artistic clarity “eluded him when he lived with us in Chelsea.”

No, he had come up with this project for a gigantic portrait of the crowned heads of Europe, a scheme for which he was so totally unsuited that I did not know whether to wonder at his impudence or at his lack of reality. He wished-he, John Praxiteles Brock-to summon every monarch, from Tsar Nicholas to the Kaiser, from King Edward to the Emperor of Austria, and every last kinglet of Scandinavia and the Balkans, to sit together to be painted by him. Presumably not in the dining room of 17 Paradise Walk, Chelsea.

Every time I read this, I laugh at that final punch line. Three sentences, and the last is a fragment, but it’s structured so well that it could almost be used as a clinic on comedy writing. So let’s do that, shall we?

The first sentence sets up the premise.
“A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar”
=
“he had come up with this project for a gigantic portrait of the crowned heads of Europe”

I particularly like the use of the word gigantic here. It feels just slightly off-tone. (You’ll have to trust me on that -- in the context of the rest of the passage, the word is exaggerated and cheeky enough to stick out a bit.) Likewise, “crowned heads of Europe” feels casual. Consider how the tone would change by substituting “ruling monarchs of Europe.” Ruling monarchs are more dignified than crowned heads, don’t you think?

Then we get an emotional note from the narrator that sets the tone for the rest of the paragraph. You don’t always find this in comedy writing, and in fact, I generally caution against telling emotions, but I think it’s used to good effect here. “I did not know whether to wonder at his impudence or at his lack of reality.” By confessing to this emotional response, the narrator guides our own response. It’s almost a direct wink at the reader.

Next we get the sense of shocked emphasis implied by the phrase, “He wished-he, John Praxiteles Brock-to summon every monarch.” By contrasting this untitled painter with the long list of monarchs to follow, we get a sense of the outlandishness of the situation. Every new name added to the list serves to contrast the original emphasized name, John Praxiteles Brock. And with each new Tsar and Emperor, we get another layer of emotional emphasis to both the impudence and the unreality.

By the time we’re done with the list, we are also filled with a sort of amused wonder, just as the narrator predicted. And then, after layering on magnificent title after regal name, after building up this carefully detailed impression of magnificence far out of the reach of the ordinary painter, only after all this controlled set-up, he hits us with,
“Presumably not in the dining room of 17 Paradise Walk, Chelsea.”

Beautiful. This single fragment pulls the rug out from under all the magnificent detail in the middle of the paragraph. It’s a reversal of sorts, and much comedy depends on the principle that unexpected reversals are amusing. Stark contrasts are amusing. Exaggeration is amusing. We get all of them in this single short paragraph.

Any comedy writers out there want to take a stab at explaining why this structure works so well?

Theresa

Sons of Anarchy dark moment

Anybody else watching this? It sounds crazy-- Hamlet in a motorcycle gang-- but it's really good.
The episode before the latest had a great crisis/dark moment. Gemma, the mother, my choice for the best woman anti-hero, saw her husband and son (his stepson) at odds, so much so that Jax, the son, has decided to leave the gang, and Clay (the husband) has voted him out. Very powerful, and well-acted. Okay, so Gemma sees this, and in her desperation to keep them both (she is afraid, btw, that Jax will kill Clay or vice versa, as they have been more and more in conflict during the season), she confesses something that she has kept secret for months, that the bad guys gang-raped her to send Clay "a message". She covered it up and never told her men or the gang because she feared their reaction, especially Clay's-- she thought that his ethos would mean that he had to reject her as she had been "violated".

Anyway, you can find this episode ("Balm") online, and it's On Demand for a lot of cable systems. Watch the ending. (Very nice Patti Griffin song accompanying, explicitly connecting Gemma to the Virgin Mary, for all you other parochial school dropouts.) Gemma, hard and tearless, explains in harsh detail what happened to her. The men are of course blasted. Jax comes to her and takes her hands and kisses them-- a sign of fealty and respect. As he leaves, he puts his hand on Clay's shoulder (understanding Clay's own dilemma here), and Clay covers that hand with his own. Very affecting. Finally Clay reaches over to embrace Gemma. Fade-out.

So her decision coming out of the dark moment is confession-- truth-telling. And it's painful and hard, as it should be. And it transfers the terrible pain to the men she loves most-- and forces Jax back into the group, and Clay to decide between his love and his code. (See how the dark moment decision can actually cause other characters to change too.)

Beautifully done. This is a very good show, and don't let the crazy premise get in your way. There are similarities to Hamlet, but in this, Clay and Jax do love each other in a way, and I hope that they'll end up reconciled and not dead!
Alicia

More about the dark moment--

Murph, in a really good comment-- the whole comment thread is helpful, so hie thee to it!-- asks if the decision/choice made in the dark moment is a "right or wrong" choice--

Well, right, wrong, I don't want to be judgmental. :) But for this person to resolve the internal issue (fear of whatever, lack of trust, etc), he/she probably needs to choose some course or action which forces the overcoming of that. If he can't trust, he chooses to trust. If she can't commit, she chooses to commit.

The clever part is... when this is exactly what's needed to give the power to resolve the external problem in the climax-- when trusting brings a new ally, say.

Let's think about possible dark moment choices that are "wrong" in the sense that they do violate some common morality. I'm thinking of the woman who is utterly dedicated to honesty, always tells the truth, no matter what the cost-- and then, in the dark moment, decides she had to lie to save someone or protect something important.
A

p.s. If you're new to this blog, please note that the comments on posts are often more interesting than the posts themselves. :) So if a post subject interests you, always check the comments! The commenters often provide great insight and sharp examples.

Dark moment article

Developing the Dark Moment


Not all books need dark moments, but properly used, this point of crisis can intensify the conflict and at the same time, initiate its resolution.

Think of the dark moment as the time when the protagonist reaches rock bottom. All seems lost. This will usually precede the climax (where the major plot problem is resolved), and thus take place near the beginning of the final part of the book. This is when all the torturing you've done has its greatest effect. But, just as Mommy always tells Tot during the spanking, the torture is meant to build character. The protagonist should experience despair, and then through courage come out of it with redoubled determination and greater wisdom.



The 5 Ds of the Dark Moment:
Dilemma-- the situation has disintegrated around the protagonist, and all seems lost.

Desperation-- the protagonist flails about, considering the most extreme escapes from the dilemma.

Despair-- the protagonist surrenders to despair, certain that there is no way out.

Deconstruction-- in the calm that follows despair, the protagonist begins to analyze the situation, deconstructing needs, values, and options.

Decision-- the protagonist decides what can be discarded, and what's most essential to be kept, and determines a course to achieve that.

The climax is the working out of the decision the protagonist made as a result of the brutal deconstruction forced on him by the dark moment.

So the dark moment is something of an acid test, if you don't mind mixed metaphors. As novelist and writing teacher Jenny Crusie puts it, the dark moment can offer a moral dilemma, one that confronts the protagonist with a threat to the internal identity. It's a time to clarify what sort of "self" the protagonist wants to be. Somehow the darkness forces light on what seemed to be impenetrable conflict.

Point of no return

Been thinking about dramatic moments, and here's one-- it can be deceptively low-key, actually, and might be revealed as essential only when the events of the last act play out. I find it a fascinating turning point because, unlike most turning points, it often doesn't seem like a turning point-- and that "sneaking up on" aspect adds to the fun.

The point of no return is another Act 2 turning point, and usually comes pretty hard on the heels of the reversal. This is an action taken by the protagonist or an event that happens that means there’s no turning back, that the story is going to hurtle towards the climax, that the crisis can’t be avoided, that the protagonist has taken a fatal step into the inevitable.

This can be a clearly dramatic event (in a fast-paced story) or a seemingly trivial one, but no matter what, it’s important, essential, as it forces the protagonist and the plot into the final act (and actions).

I actually like to end Act 2 on the point of no return or have a scene or two of reaction/response/further action after that, more down-peltering to the crisis (when the worst that can happen happens). But I notice that in longer works

Hmm. Let’s speculate about why you would have an event happening to the protagonist or a protagonist taking an action, and which would be better for which kind of story. Why?

In Casablanca, as I said, the point of no return is when Rick nods—that’s all— to tell the band to play La Marseillaise, and thus he incurs the wrath of Major Strasser. But he’s also choosing a side, the side of the Resistance (as the US chose to join the Allies), while he’s spent the first part of the story avoiding just that. “I stick my neck out for no man,” remember. That nod seems trivial, but it brings on the closing of his café, the fury of Strasser, and leads to Ilsa re-committing to Laslo and the cause, and also makes it imperative for Laslo to leave Casablanca (and Rick eventually to help).

In The Godfather, the point of no return for Michael is when he chooses to shoot the police captain, thereby making himself an outlaw, choosing to join the family business, and estranging himself from “the straight world” embodied in Kay, the WASP fiancée who he leaves behind. (Notice how this happens nearer the middle than the end. The final act in this film --- and book—have always seemed very long to me, and for some reason, this really heightens the excitement.)

What’s the point of no return for Scarlett? Is it marrying Frank (her sister’s beau) or marrying Rhett? And why—in this most active and purposeful of heroines—do I think marriage is her important action? Maybe it’s definitely an action—she’s never swept away and marries due to love or impetuosity. She always has a reason.

Can you think of PNRs which happen to the protagonist, rather than actions of the protagonist? What about Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?

I wonder if there’s usually (or always, if only in retrospect?) some moral or values component in this moment. Rick, whether he understands it or not, has chosen his side. Michael has chosen family loyalty over conventional morality. Is this a redefining of what’s important to the New Person? In light of the New Reality revealed in the reversal?


Alicia

The Reversal

The Reversal is a turning point that appears in many stories (and is particularly important, I think, in film). This is an event usually quite close to the midpoint of a story, that is, in Chapter 10 of 20 or 1 hour into a 2-hour film. It’s where something reverses, where what seemed true or important or self-evident in the first half of the story is shown to be false or trivial or mysterious.

What that does is force the protagonist to stop, regroup, assemble perhaps a new set of skills or apply a new strength. It creates conflicts because what might seem to be feasible in the first half no longer works. For example:

Someone the protagonist trusted is proved untrustworthy.

Someone the pro believed to be an enemy becomes an ally.

Something the pro believed is proved false (like his parentage or his cause’s moral rightness).

The protagonist’s role is reversed: The detective becomes the suspect, the hunter becomes the hunted, the insider becomes the outsider.

(Remind me to think about this—this is usually an event that happens to the protagonist, rather than an action the pro takes, though it can happen in response to an action… why—because the character has to be blindsided, which is hard to do when the pro is dictating the action.)

This is the event that often turns the protagonist from a character into a hero—because merely reacting no longer will work. She can’t go on being merely what she was before—because that doesn’t work. She has to become something else also, something that can solve the problem, whatever it is.

Let’s generate some examples.

In The Godfather, the reversal comes (I think) when Vito is shot, because he is revealed to Michael not as the all-powerful father, but as a victim in need of protection (and Michael, in protecting him, is drawn into the family business).

In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford jumps and thus frees himself from being hunted, and becomes the hunter himself (calling Tommy Lee Jones to tell him, “I’m going to find the one-armed man”). Notice that the protagonist role shifts here— is Tommy Lee or Harrison the protagonist of the second half?

In Gone With the Wind, the reversal happens when Scarlett is seeking shelter from the war and goes home to Tara, only to discover that there is no surcease, that Tara has been damaged by the war, that the mother she longed for is dead and the father she needed has gone mad.

In Pride and Prejudice, it comes when Lizzie gets the letter from Darcy and realizes he had his reasons both for loving her and resisting it. Notice that the proposal (however unexpected) isn’t the reversal—that merely hardens her existing prejudice against him.

Okay, your suggestions here. Take some famous movie or novel and tell us what you think is the reversal, and where it happens, and what it changes.

Hamlet?

Oedipus the King?

West Side Story?

Wuthering Heights?

Your choice?

Alicia

Quick turning points schema

I thought maybe I'd post this-- because I want to later talk about the Point of No Return, so thought it might be helpful to see how I envision the three-act structure and positioning of turning points (those scenes/events where the plot changes in some important way).

This is by no means the only way to plot a book, etc., etc., and we might discuss different turning point designations and positions. This is just to start up a discussion of structure-- and Theresa's way better at this than I am, so ask her how she would suggest a typical plot structure. And Aristotle thought up most of this a few years before I did. But enough disclaimers! This is simply one structural schema, and I elaborate on each turning point in my article The Three Acts, archived on my website.

So without further ado:
Turning points are *---
Act 1 (The Beginning)
Set up (establishment of character, setting, situation, whatever)
* Initiating Event (what starts off the new storyline, the interruption of the routine, etc. This often comes at the very end of the Set up Scene)

Act 2 (The Middle)
* Emergence of External Conflict (and following that, the protagonist's response)
(rising conflict in between)
* The Reversal (when something reverses -- the hunter becomes the hunted, someone trusted proves untrustworthy, something surprising is revealed)
(rising conflict in between, but usually these two scenes are pretty close together)
* The Point of No Return (of which more later-- some action or event that once embarked on by the protagonist, inevitably leads to the crisis/disaster/dark moment)

Act 3 (The Ending)
*Crisis/Dark Moment (when the worst that can happen happens, and then the protagonist faces despair- usually some major step towards resolving the internal conflict happens here, and that gives the protagonist the courage, skills, ability, whatever, to tackle the external conflict again)

* Climax (when the protagonist resolves the external conflict)

* Resolution (when the protagonist resolves the remaining internal and/or interactional conflict)

I think that in Act 1 and Act 3, there's more pounding drama-- less between the turning points. In the middle act, there are scenes of rising conflict between the turning points.


A good film example for this schema is Casablanca. Well, that's a good film for about everything. :)

Let's see:

Act 1
The Casablanca set up is fairly long (because, I think, there are a lot of supporting subplots to set up).
Initiating event:
Ugarte gives Rick the letters of transit.
(Notice that the interactional plot-- the romance-- has its own set of turning points, and the initiating event for that is, of course, Ilsa coming into the cafe.)


Act 2
External conflict emerges:
Major Strasser comes into the cafe and recognizes Rick as a potential troublemaker, and Rick can't help but respond by being defiant. Same scene-- Ugarte is shot and killed, and Rick wants to but doesn't help him.
(Romance-- Rick sits with Ilsa and starts competing with Laslo.)

Reversal:
(The romantic reversal comes first-- at the market, Rick pretty much calls Ilsa a whore, and she reveals that she is married to Laslo and was even when she and Rick were lovers in Paris.)

Laslo reveals that he needs the letters and knows Rick has them, and Rick refuses to sell them and tells him to ask his wife for the reason. The reversal is that Laslo (as her patron) has had the upperhand with Ilsa, and now Rick does-- knows more about his wife than Laslo does.

Point of No Return:
The two plots kind of converge here, with the romantic and the external PNR in the same scene, where Rick throws his lot in with Ilsa and Laslo when he gives his band permission to play La Marseillaise. (More about this in next post.)

Act 3:
Crisis:
Ilsa arrives with a gun and demands the letters of transit, sure that her husband will be killed if he doesn't get out of Casablanca.
Dark Moment:
(same scene) Rick is willing to commit suicide-by-Ilsa rather than give into his love for her.
(Action that comes out of this-- She professes her love, and he surprises himself by agreeing to protect "all of them"-- taking responsibility for Laslo too.)
(This is an AMAZING scene-- one of the greatest ever in film.)

Climax:
Rick gets everything organized to get himself and Ilsa out of Casablanca... but of course, at the airport he reveals that the letters of transit are to be used by Laslo and Ilsa. They get away, but Rick stays.
(Romantic climax-- he and Ilsa "get Paris back" because of his unconditionally loving act of sacrifice to save her and her husband.)

Resolution:
He kills Strasser (how cool that this is a resolution, not a climax!), and he and Capt. Renault decide to join the Resistance and fight the Nazis together.

Thoughts? Any one of those turning points stand out as especially important in your story?

Alicia

Character-Driven/Plot-Driven

Most writers use both character and plot to drive the story forward. Keep that in mind as we go through the ideas in this post. It's not an either/or. It's a sometimes this/sometimes that/sometimes a blend of both.

In the simplest form, here are two definitions.

Character-driven: When something about the character's essential self leads to a particular action or event in the story.

Plot-driven: When a character takes a particular action so that the result is a particular plot point.


These definitions are fairly abstract, so let's take a look at an example.

Let's say that when you first dreamed up Johnny and Drago's story, you thought of a couple of plot points right away. You knew that these two would start their struggles at the lunch with the doctor. You knew they would end up working at the same hospital, and that they engage in a grim and brutal competition there. And you have a clear vision of Johnny, bloody and prone after some terrible event -- Drago leans over him, their eyes meet, and neither of them knows for a split second whether Drago will save Johnny or let him die.

That's a rough story structure right there. Three points, beginning, middle, and end. The conflict is initiated at the lunch. It escalates while they work together. It climaxes during that scene where Johnny is gravely injured and Drago holds the power of life and death.

That final scene -- we'll call it the bloody Johnny scene -- is a plot point. You're going to have to do something to get the characters to that point. You will start by asking a few basic questions. Where does the bloody Johnny scene occur? Regardless of the answer, you'll have to find a way to get them there. How does Johnny get injured? This event must also be narrated in a scene or scenes.

In other words, that bloody Johnny plot point will drive several other key points along the narrative. And those points -- travel, battle, whatever -- will be plot-driven.

But before you get to that scene, you'll have these two characters engage in a fierce and nasty competition. First they compete for the internship. Regardless of how that internship question resolves itself, you know that in order for their characters to really engage in conflict escalation -- the "rising action" in Aristotelian structure -- you must have them both in the same place. Working in the same hospital. Interacting with the same people.

You want really juicy stuff to happen in the hospital so that you can avoid the dreaded sagging middle. So you ask some questions. Drago's got that survivor's quiet toughness; how can I make him appear weak? Johnny's got that suave charm; how can I make that a liability instead of an advantage?

These questions focus on aspects of character. You might come up with a short list of key character traits which you want to attack in the rising action. These traits can be positives or negatives.

Johnny -- arrogant, charming, sophisticated, smart but not intellectual
Drago -- withdrawn, strong, suspicious, intellectual but not smart

And then you start brainstorming things that can happen to exploit these character traits. Johnny flirts with a nurse and gets in trouble for fraternizing. Drago sits alone at lunch until someone joins him one day without even asking. (Who will it be? How will this affect Drago?) You might come up with a list of ways to exploit each man's character traits, and pick the most dramatic to craft a series of events along the middle of the plot.

When a plot point occurs as a way of advancing the character's arc, or when it is a direct outgrowth of a character trait, that is a character-driven plot. All our work on core conflicts is a form of character-driven scene mapping. We first decided who these people were, and then we decided what could happen to them.

It's worth repeating here: most writers and stories use a blend of character and plot to drive the narrative.

One special point for romance writers. Romance writers tend to use the term "character-driven" and "plot-driven" to talk about something a bit different. Because the endpoint of a romance is always presumed -- an HEA between the hero(es) and heroine(s) -- the story will always be plot-driven. That is presumed. It's built into the conventions of the genre.

And because romance requires the resolution of characters into a pair-bond (or trio-bond, or alien-orthodontist bond, or what have you), there will also always be aspects of the story which are character-driven. Each character will have to figure out a way to evolve in order to be worthy of the HEA, and that evolution will take place in the context of action. So romance is also always character-driven. It is presumed and built into the conventions of the genre, just the same as the HEA is a plot-driven aspect of the genre.

So given all these assumptions, romance writers use the terms character-driven and plot-driven to describe something else, something particular to their genre. Romance stories always have what are known as the external and internal plots (or, sometimes, the internal and external conflicts). Let's look at an example from "These Old Shades," the classic Georgette Heyer Georgian romance.

External: The young boy is actually a girl. She was swapped at birth with another baby, and since her pseudo-parents died and she went to live with her brutal pseudo-brother, she has been in disguise as a boy. The hero discovers her true identity and uses her as a pawn in a game of revenge against her true father. He buys her from her psuedo-brother and takes her into his house as a page before transforming her into a lady with appropriate manners.

Internal: The girl must come to terms with her femininity. She must adapt to the ways of the aristocracy and lose some of her sharp edges. She must learn how to trust, and whom to trust, and when. The man must leave behind his cruel and arrogant ways if he is ever to succeed with this girl. He must find his personal goodness. He must learn to be a protector. And so on....

You might notice that the external plot has little to do with the formation of the romantic bond, and the internal plot revolves around the formation of that bond. External events might help the couple face internal obstacles, or might drive the internal plot in other ways, but the external plot is generally something separate from the pure romantic plot itself.

So when romance writers say their story is plot-driven, they're usually referring to the external plot. And when they say it's character-driven, they're usually referring to the internal plot. The internal plot tends to draw more upon true character-driven plotting techniques (even though the endpoint is a predetermined outcome), and the external plot tends to draw more upon plot-driven plotting techniques (even though the endpoint can be up for grabs).

This is a flip on the usual way we mean these terms. If the endpoint controls the outcome in a plot-driven story, and the external conflict in romance has an open endpoint, then that aspect of the story is not "plot-driven" as non-romance writers generally use the term. You follow me? It's a distinction in terminology, but it's one I wanted to address in the context of this post just so we're all clear on what we mean.

Now, you're probably wondering why this matters. Who cares if your story is plot-driven or character-driven? The truth is that the technique will not show in the final manuscript. When I read a book, I can't tell if they started with a character or an event. And I shouldn't be able to.

But some of you are getting ready to start NaNo. You'll need some tricks to keep your story moving forward at a fast pace. So here is one: if you get stuck in the plot, switch tactics. If you've been focusing on the action, switch to the characters. If you've been giving the characters free rein, create an event and make them work toward it. It's a quick and dirty way to get unstuck, and as an added bonus, it can make you see new angles in your story and develop it more deeply in the fast-draft/first-draft stage.

Theresa

Tragedy is just comedy cut short?

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
Orson Welles

I mean, of course, comedy in the sense of a positive ending, not ha-ha. I was thinking that in popular fiction, we have the same structure as a tragedy, but the tragedy happens in the dark moment ("When the worst that can happen happens"), not at the climax-- in "comedy" there's a climax where the tragedy is resolved and maybe fixed or at least transcended. (The tragedy, I suppose, does have to be fixable-- you don't really have much room for a happy ending tacked on to Hamlet, after all! Everyone's dead! But you know, it IS a happy ending for Fortinbras, who gets a new kingdom without any work at all.)

Hey, I learned something! I was wondering why there's this trend in performances of Shakespeare comedies to have all the actors appear at the curtain call and then dance to some happy music (usually pop). I assumed there was some Journal of Shakespearian Comic Theatre and they'd had an article saying that audiences like this, so all the directors stole the idea. Turns out this has been done since S's time, and it's called "the Jig," and the purpose was to get the audience to see that all the actors were alive again and everyone was happy. (I don't know why they didn't have those after tragedies, where you think they'd be more needed.) What a good idea. It's fun, but what if you could act but you couldn't dance???
Alicia