STORYTELLING IS NEAT; LIFE IS SLOPPY

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STORYTELLING IS NEAT LIFE IS SLOPPY

• Perry Glasser

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BASICS

• Plot in fiction or tales in memoir require
  conflict
• People are revealed by struggle
• Stories proceed by causality
• Climax is the confrontation of opposites
• Retrograde Plotting for Closure

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BASICS Plot Conflict

• Character vs. Character
• Batman vs. Joker Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed
• Character vs. Physical Environment
• To Build a Fire The Old Man and the Sea
• Character vs. Social Environment
• Beloved, by Toni Morrison
• Character vs. Self
• The psychological story
• Should Anna Karenina leave her husband and
  children for her lover? Agonies of choice with an
  object both good and baddrugs, alcohol, guilty
  pleasures, anyone?

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Characters Struggle

• Nice people have nice lives - boring
• Characters in trouble whatever shall they do?
  defines compelling reading. (The characters
  dont need to know it, but we do!)
• Write about troubled, willful characters
• We learn what our characters value and what they
  are like when they perform under stress
• Victims make few decisions the world decides for
  them and so they are less interesting characters.

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Structure

• Exposition
• Social or personal stability is upset
• Rising Action
• Complications character(s) struggle to regain
  stability
• Wants
• Fears
• Needs
• Climax
• Confrontation of the plots opposites
• Falling Action
• Resolution
• Stability is restored

Remember Chronological Structure need not be the
same as Narrative Structure!
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Causality

• Because stability is upset, characters move
  through time and space.
• Thats called motivation
• Because they have distinct personalities and
  talents, characters struggle in specific ways.
• Thats called characterization
• Because the challenges they confront dont
  immediately restore stability, the story moves
  forward.
• Thats called rising action
• Because they persevere in fulfilling their
  motives, they eventually confront whatever
  opposes them.
• Thats called climax
• Because of their experiences, characters change.
• Thats called significance
• Because, because, because.

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Climax and Confrontation

• The climax is exciting because it epitomizes the
  fight.
• The climax is a necessary scene sometimes
  called payoff.
• The issue must be in doubt with the antagonists
  each capable of victory, though one can be much
  an underdog.

Ahab on Moby Dicks back says To the last, I
will grapple with thee... from Hell's heart, I
stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last
breath at thee! Khan quotes it, too!
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Retrograde Plotting 1 - Imagining

• The writer while creating mentally turns the
  story upside down and thinks backward.
• If I want my protagonist to leave the earth as
  North America splits in two, what will I need to
  invent to make my artistic vision plausible?
• My protagonist will need certain cognitive
  characteristics
• My protagonist will need a means to leave the
  planet
• My protagonist will need certain physical
  characteristics to achieve that goal
• I will need to invent a reason for North America
  to split.

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Retrograde Plotting 2 - THINKING
The writer needs her story to advance from A1 to
A5, two crucial moments that mark change. Her
sense of craft tells her how to write scene A1.
Its terrific! What a start! Her sense of craft
will tell her how to write scene A5. She has
vision! She THINKS backward. How can A5 be
achieved? Ah-ha! We need to take the reader
through A2, A3, and A4. She is plotting backward!
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A Final Thought

• Your imagination supplies narrative form.
• N.A. is to split in two because
• Terrorists are planting atomic weapons along a
  fault line can they be stopped?
• An evil wizard is casting a mighty spell, and so
  we must leave by winged dragon for a better,
  purer place from which to fight Evil
• An evil Emperor has constructed a Death Star and
  so we must leave by our rickety spacecraft to
  organize the intergalactic resistance.
• Natural causes hastened by poor ecology. No one
  heeds our heroine, an independent rocket
  scientist(to be played by Jodie Foster)
• Natural causes, but humankinds only hope is the
  mysterious widower, handsome Nobel prize-winning
  physicist, Lance Recluse, who needs to be
  summoned from his grief over the death of his
  wife. The fate of the world is in the hands of
  star-journalist, the young Belle Innocente as she
  journeys to his private laboratory on an isolated
  tropical island

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Time permitting An exercise The Story Machine