Filling in the Sticky Notes: Act III: The Final Battle

Previous posts in this series:


Act I HERE
Act II part 1 HERE
Act II part 2 HERE
Act II part 3 HERE
Act II part 4 HERE

ACT III: THE FINAL BATTLE


In Act III, we're getting off the boat for the stone mattress viewing tour, and this is where Verna will kill Bob . . . or our world has gotten more and more restricted, till the whole family is in the kitchen, food and cigarettes running out, and the radio stations have stopped broadcasting . . . or we're confronting the witch in her own castle . . .

This is where the Final Battle takes place.

In some cases this is really close to the end, with not much occurring afterwards. For example, in "The Birds" you could argue that the very Final Battle actually occurs after the end of the story. We pretty much know what's going to happen, but we don't see it-- we're just left knowing that it will happen, which in a way is worse.

In The Wizard of Oz, though, the final battle with the antagonist-- the Witch-- happens well before the end, with lots of twists and turns following, as we get the broom back to the Wizard, then learn the Wizard isn't who he says, then he teaches everyone a valuable lesson, Dorothy thinks she won't get back to Kansas (Wizard has no magic), then she thinks she will (but he has a balloon!), then she thinks she won't (the balloon leaves without her), etc.

In Stone Mattress it's pretty much in the classic place going by Freytag's triangle, at least the way I was taught it in graduate school, with the climax coming quite close to the end, and then a short denoumont tail coming after that.

(source)



Verna kills Bob, then there are just a few paragraphs about how she tidies things up and arranges to hide his absence. I would argue that this story ends low on the "falling action" slope, leaving us to wonder about the resolution: Will Verna will get caught or not?

This is a classic and (to me) satisfying type of short story ending, which leaves us, not completely in the wilderness, but with one or two definite, but divergent, paths that the character might take after the last line of the story. In this case, Verna eiter will or won't get caught.

However, not all endings work that way. "The Birds" leaves us with basically one possibility for what will happen after the end, and that's effective too; and The Wizard of Oz tells us very little about what will happen next; it just leaves us with a general sense that things are tied up and okay now, in a way they weren't at the beginning of the story: Dorothy's restlessness is solved. We have gone all the way into the "resolution" stretch of Freytag's triangle. So there are many ways to handle Act III.

The classic movie ending is essentially a happy ending, with the character's basic problem solved. Often, they may not have gotten what they Wanted, but they have gotten what they Needed, but didn't realized they Needed until the story's adventures taught them. This is what happens in the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy wants to leave home in the beginning; soon this changes to wanting to be back home, but it's only after she's proven herself through many adventures that she has the power to really go back and inhabit that world, and feel satisfied to be there. She Wanted to escape to a world over the rainbow. She Needed to see that home was where she belonged all along. (And only by going over the rainbow could she truly learn that.)

This basically happy ending does not exist at all in the short fictions by Atwood and DuMaurier. What does happen is that things have come to a head, and a change, an irrevocable change, has occurred in the main character's life. They have gone on a very definite journey and have wound up in a different place than they were in the beginning. Although they may or may not have solved their initial problems, movie-style, we know this narrative is truly a story because a significant change has occurred.

Looking back at Hemingway's "Indian Camp," we also see an un-movie-like ending, but different from the other short-story endings. After the climactic passages, in which we as the readers really feel the the unnamed woman's pain and its impact on others in several different ways, we end with falling action (finishing up, leaving), then the last line, which feels so powerful every time I read it. We learn that these experiences, which have changed us just through reading about them in a very short story, have not really touched Nick after all. He still sees the woman essentially as an other: female, "Indian," living on an island apart from where Nick lives. He doesn't really get it. Yet. I think it's that sense of "yet" that makes the ending so effective, that seems to leave me at the edge of a cliff after that last period.

TO DO:

Bring your character to the Final Showdown. Whatever you have promised or planted earlier in the story should bear fruit now. If you have shown us a gun in Act I, this is where it has to go off.  By the time you write the climax, you'll probably have a pretty good sense of what needs to happen between there and the end--what shape you want the end to take.

Next comes the really fun part: revising with a knowledge of the shape of your plot. If you find you want a gun to go off in the Act III climax, don't worry about whether you've shown it to us yet. Have it go off. Then go back and revise: plant it in the beginning, and make sure we glimpse it a couple more times before the payoff in Act III.

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Filling in the Sticky Notes: Act II, Part 3: The Midpoint

Previous posts in this series:

Act I 
Act II part 1 
Act II part 2 


ACT II, PART 3: THE MIDPOINT


Act II is long, and the Midpoint is a kind of climactic point right in the middle of it. Usually, stakes are raised in re: the overall goal.

In Stone Mattress, I think it could be the line " It was Bob who’d turned her into—why not say the word?—a murderer." We've been with Verna, as worse and worse memories about Bob surface-- as she processes the information because he has returned to her life. Up until this point in the story, although she admits to herself she has eased the way to death for a few husbands, she hasn't used that word in reference to herself. Once all the awful memories have surfaced and been given to the reader, we go from knowing that Verna wants to turn the tables on Bob somehow, to learning, at the same time as she herself has the realization, that she wants to kill him. This is a definite raising of the stakes.

In "The Birds" this might come on page 9 where we learn the birds have been acting strangely all over the country. Basically, the tension in this story escalates so continuously that I'm not sure there's one clear Midpoint raising-the-stakes moment. Even once the birds' strange behavior is acknowledged as a national problem, many people aren't taking it seriously. And yet this is the point when people stop trying to claim that it's simply the weather, or Nat's imagination: this is when even the news announcers admit that there is a real, widespread issue and nobody--from regular folks in their homes like Nat, to the military and the government-- knows the cause or the solution.

In The Wizard of Oz, this could be when Dorothy finally reaches her original goal-- the Wizard-- but it turns out he won't help her unless she accomplishes something else: getting the Witch's broom. She's gone through a lot to get to the Wizard but the stakes are raised here because she'll have to go into really hostile territory to get hold of the broom.

Let's look for a moment at how this escalation in stakes relates to your character's Want from early in the story.

In Stone Mattress, Verna enters the story with this Want: to be surrounded by enough padding that no one can ever hurt her. However, that protection is breached when she runs into Bob and the original hurt returns. Her new Want, then, becomes to get the better of Bob in some way. The Midpoint is when that way turns out to be murder. It's still basically the same Want from the beginning of the story: to triumph over that event that changed her life at 14.

In The Birds, we learn in the second paragraph that Nat has "a wartime disability" and we learn that he likes solitary, predictable part-time work on the farm. From this I get the feeling that Nat's Want is to have a steady, quiet life after the chaos of his wartime experiences. As in Stone Mattress, Act II is about how his quiet life is threatened. He continues to want basically the same thing-- safety and security-- but that gets harder and harder as the threats from outside increase. From the moment the birds attack his kids, protecting his family is his one big Want, and that doesn't really change throughout the story.

In The Wizard of Oz, interestingly, Act I is about Dorothy wanting to get away from Kansas, into some better, more colorful place, but as soon as she's there, all she wants is to go home. That's a big change, but after that, her Want stays the same through the end of the story. In one way, you could say her longing throughout is for "home," for the place where things are right, are the way they should be. The process she goes through in the story is figuring out what that really means to her. She actually realizes that the farm with Aunt Em-- who is worried about her and loves her-- is where she wants to be, before she gets to Oz, as soon as she sees Em in the crystal ball during the tornado's approach.



TO DO: 


Think about what your character's Want is early in the story. Is it the same now, as you get to the middle of Act II? Is it at least related?

What might the Act II Midpoint be in your story? Jot it down on a sticky note and put it at the bottom of the first Act II column, or the top of the second column.

Filling in the Sticky Notes: Act II, Part 4: Somehow things get even more tense

Previous posts in this series:

Act I HERE
Act II part 1 HERE
Act II part 2 HERE
Act II part 3 HERE



ACT II, PART 4


Just when things have gotten really super tense . . . they get even more tense. Not only do you have to go to the witch's castle and get her broom-- before you even get there she captures you with her flying monkeys, and imprisons you! Not only has Verna decided she'll kill Bob, now she has to figure out all the particulars, from how much time she might have before he recognizes her, to what method she'll use, and how she'll escape being caught. Not only is the whole country afflicted by strange bird behavior, people are dying from it. More and more people.

Sometimes, there are ups and downs, temporary triumphs but then greater losses. You're drunk, in your nightgown, in public, on stage . . . but then, you're giving a good comedy act. But then you flash your boob and you're in jail. All Is Lost.

You finally, miraculously get the witch's broom . . . but then the wizard turns out to be a fake who can't help you. But then he can help you because has a balloon to get you back to Kansas! But then the balloon takes off without you. All Is Lost.

TO DO:

What further obstacles/ challenges does your character face in Act II, as the tension ramps even higher after the stakes-raising Midpoint? Is there a point at which it seems there is really no way out, that all is lost? Add four or more scenes showing what happens after the Midpoint, including an All is Lost moment if you want to.

Filling in the Sticky Notes: Act II: Throw Rocks at Him

"Get your character up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him down."

--quote on three-act structure that has been attributed to many people

This is the third followup post to my Mapping the Plot course.

Post 1 HERE
Post 2 HERE

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Your character has entered the New World of Act II and looked around. You've filled in maybe half of one of the two "Act II" columns on your posterboard. Now she's going to be encountering some obstacles. Rocks will be thrown.

Continuing with some of the texts we've been looking at:

In Hemingway's "Indian Camp," this is where Nick encounters the woman in labor and hears her screams. And things get worse from there. (Note that Nick is pretty passive as a main character; mostly an observer. In general, it's good to have your character take action to propel the story forward. But like every rule, that one can be broken.)

In the Mrs Maisel pilot, it's where Midge learns Joel has stolen his act from Bob Newhart. And things get worse from there: he bombs, he tells her he's having an affair, he leaves her, she gets drunk . . .

In DuMaurier's "The Birds," it's where Nat gets his first wound: bleeding knuckles from the bird at the window. Things quickly get worse from there.

In Atwood's "Stone Mattress," many complicated things happen in this section. One is that we see the backstory of Verna at 14 with Bob . . . and things definitely go from bad to worse within this story. One the one hand, this is exposition-- it's not happening in the present and it provides a foundation for what will happen in the present. On the other hand, the story of Verna at 14 and Bob is unfolded for us as story, not as an information dump, but as a narrative of its own. As the memories that surface go from the basic facts, to the more and more painful details, we trace the evolution of Verna's emotional state in the present: the state that is building and pushing towards the climax of the story. The way in which the backstory is told mirrors the way in which Verna is recalling the various details in present time, so in essence this describes her present experience.

In The Wizard of Oz, this is after Dorothy sets off down the Yellow Brick Road. Even though she has some positive experience, picking up friends on the way, tension does build as she encounters the dangers of this new world-- the angry trees and, especially, the witch who's out to get her.

A common theme for this "throw rocks" section, is that each rock hits a little harder than the last . . . until the really big hit in the middle of Act II that is the Act II climax. (Next post.)

In this section you'll want to use Coats' Pixar Rule #6:

"What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?"

If your character has retreated from the chaos of war into a private life-- throw war-like chaos at him. If your character has protected herself from the trauma and vulnerability caused by Bob-- throw Bob at her. If your character has never known anything but Kansas, throw Oz at her. If your character is used to a planned-out perfect life, have that life fall apart.

TO DO:

Fill in the remainder of your first Act II column with "rocks" that get thrown at your character. Sketch three or four scenes that show some sort of trajectory: e.g. difficulties increasing, tensions building. If you have an antagonist (witch, birds, Bob) then tensions are likely building, here, between your protagonist and antagonist.

Filling in the Sticky Notes: Act II -- The New Landscape

This is #2 in a series of posts following up my Mapping the Plot class.

Post #1 is HERE

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So-- we were discussing Emma Coats' Pixar Rule #4:

"#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___."

At the end of Act I, and moving into Act II, is where the "One day ______" event occurs. This was the last sticky note you filled in yesterday.

Act II contains a lot of "Because of that, _______." One event following another.

Early in Act II you want to establish the New World, as your character explores it. How is it different from the Known World of Act I? How does your character respond? Think about some scenes that can show this.

This overlaps with Blake Snyder's idea of the "fun and games" section of the story. According to Snyder's framework, this section provides the images on your movie poster, images that show this New World your character finds and explores in your narrative. (Note that there are many exceptions to Snyder's rules-- and anybody's rules!)

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and Toto look around Oz and take in all the strange sights that tell them they're not in Kansas anymore. This section is all about realizing this is no longer Kansas. Lots of characters introduce themselves and tell Dorothy about the new world. (That she's killed the witch, that she can get back home by finding the Wizard, that the Wizard can be found at the end of the Yellow Brick Road, etc.)

In the movie Elf (which really did not hold up well when I watched it this year, imo!) this is where the main character runs around New York doing stupid things and marveling at things that a normal resident of NYC wouldn't. Acting amazed by shoe-shine men, etc.

In Hemingway's "Indian Camp" this might be the section where Nick follows his dad to the house of the woman in labor, and enters the house, taking everything in.

In DuMaurier's "The Birds," I would put this in the three paragraphs following the line "The birds had been more restless than ever." These are three paragraphs where we survey, through Nat's eyes, the new, strange behavior of the birds this season.

In Atwood's "Stone Mattress," some of this surveying-the-New-World occurs in the first passage of backstory that tells us about Verna's history with Bob. The New World is going to be one in which she is, again-- for the first time since age 14-- dealing with Bob. The New World is where Verna, who had her life and routine down pat, is suddenly gut-punched with these memories; emotionally vulnerable again as she was then.

In Mrs. Maisel, this is where we get an overview of Midge's Life With Joel as his helper and perfect wife. (Although timewise she has already been married to Joel for four years, the narrative skips those years, so for us the audience, it's our first look at this new World of Marriage.)

TO DO: 

Fill in four or more sticky notes early in Act II with scenes that show your character encountering this New World of Act II, bumping up against its strangeness, experiencing that it's different from the world left behind in Act I.

Again, do this as a thought experiment-- don't wait until you have perfect ideas, just imagine what might work here. DO make sure the scenes are concrete: things you can picture visually.

Filling in the Sticky Notes: Act I

This is a series of posts I'm writing as a followup to my Mapping the Plot class. Even if you didn't take the class you might find something useful here!

Everyone left Saturday's class with posterboard folded into three act-sections, with the middle one being twice as long as the ones on either end. Also lots of sticky notes, some filled in, some blank. These posts will be geared towards filling in some of those still-blank notes. 

We talked about Emma Coats' Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling, and in particular about Rule #4: "Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___."

In Act I, you filled in the sticky for your first scene. This establishes the context (time, place) and the character within that context. In other words, "Once upon a time, there was _________" is covered (or at least starting to be established) in Scene 1. 

The following scenes will cover "Every day, ________."

In The Wizard of Oz, for example, these are the scenes with Dorothy on the farm, the ups and downs of Kansas farm life. 

These scenes may include the "I Want Song" idea discussed in class: your character showing us what s/he Wants. (For example, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in Wizard of Oz.)

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Here are a few other examples of Act I/ setting up the-world-as-it-is, using narratives we've discussed recently in my classes:

-In "The Birds" by Daphne DuMaurier, this covers about the first page of the story. Where does the narrative shift from things-as-usual to the "One day _______" phase? I think this occurs with the line at the bottom of page 1: "The birds had been more restless than ever this fall of the year."

-"Indian Camp" by Ernest Hemingway is a tiny story and barely has room for an Act I, but you can see the world-as-it-is sketched for us as Nick and his dad are leaving it: we infer it's a known place, and a place where Dad has authority and can handle things. Whatever the Known, Usual world is, we know we're leaving it as we get on that boat. "One day, ______" is Nick getting on a boat to head out to the Camp.

-In the pilot for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, I think it's in the wedding monologue, the main character's survey of her life/past, in which everything has always gone according to her careful plans . . . up to meeting Joel, who wasn't exactly the prince she planned on. ("One day, ______" is: she meets Joel.) Next, we'll embark on the next phase/new world: Life with Joel.

-in Margaret Atwood's "Stone Mattress," this is the section where Verna follows her usual habit of scanning the crowd for men of interest, dressing to attract, etc. The "One day, _____" event occurs when she recognizes one of the Bobs as the Bob. ("Verna smiles widely to disguise her shock" is the exact moment.)

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TO DO:

Fill in more of the sticky notes in your Act I section-- at least four-- with scenes that might show us the world-as-it-is. 

Also, if you didn't do it Saturday, fill in the "One day, _____" sticky note which will come somewhere at the end of Act I.

Remember this is a thought experiment and it's not necessary to find the perfect answers or to be rigid about anything. Just come up with four or more scene ideas to show us different aspects of the Known World of Act I and fill up that column of the posterboard.

Mapping the Plot - Saturday 12/15

Mapping the Plot

Saturday, December 15

12:30 to 4:30

Hudson Valley Writers' Center

Sleepy Hollow, NY

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SIGN UP HERE

Spend an afternoon with snacks, coffee, markers, index cards, and poster board at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center, mapping out a plot for your novel.

Whether you're in the revision stage and want to find the structure in your story, or are in the dreaming stage and want to lay down a blueprint for your novel-to-be, this class will give you the tools and time to do it.

Participants will leave with a physical plot map constructed during the afternoon, plus exercises, readings, and a personalized timetable with deadlines for the next stage of your writing/ revision.

SIGN UP HERE

Star Map, Albrecht Durer, 1515

Mapping the Plot

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Come meet this plug-in fireplace at my class Mapping The Plot 

in Sleepy Hollow on Saturday 12/15.

~.:.~

SIGN UP HERE

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