STORYTELLING IS NEAT;
LIFE IS SLOPPY
Perry Glasser
BASICS
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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
BASICS: Plot & Conflict
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Character vs. Character
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Character vs. Physical Environment
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“To Build a Fire”; The Old Man and the Sea
Character vs. Social Environment
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Batman vs. Joker; Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Character vs. Self
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The “psychological” story
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Should Anna Karenina leave her husband and children for her
lover? Agonies of choice with an object both good and
bad…drugs, alcohol, guilty pleasures, anyone?
Characters & Struggle
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Nice people have nice lives - boring
Characters in trouble – whatever shall they do? –defines compelling
reading. (The characters don’t 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.
Structure
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Exposition
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Social or personal stability is upset
Rising Action
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Complications – character(s) struggle to regain stability
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Climax
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Wants
Fears
Needs
Confrontation of the plot’s opposites
Falling Action
Resolution
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Stability is restored
Remember: Chronological Structure need not be the same as Narrative Structure!
Causality
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Because stability is upset, characters move through time and space.
– That’s called “motivation”
Because they have distinct personalities and talents, characters struggle in
specific ways.
– That’s called “characterization”
Because the challenges they confront don’t immediately restore stability, the
story moves forward.
– That’s called “rising action”
Because they persevere in fulfilling their motives, they eventually confront
whatever opposes them.
– That’s called “climax”
Because of their experiences, characters change.
– That’s called “significance”
Because, because, because….
Climax and Confrontation
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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 Dick’s 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!
Retrograde Plotting 1 - Imagining
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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?
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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.
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.
It’s 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!
A Final Thought
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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 humankind’s 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…
DISCUSSION & QUESTIONS
Time permitting:
An exercise – The Story Machine