Write On SC

So two weeks ago, we talked about basic outlines and discussed the turning point method versus the beats method for figuring out the structure of the story. Then last week we went into the 3 Act Structure and basically whined about Aristotle.

In searching for 3 Act Structure resources, I found this link gives us 11 basic structures:

1. The Fichtean Curve
2. The Three Act Structure
3. The Hero's Journey
4. Freytag's Pyramid
5. The Five Act Structure
6. Save the Cat Beats
7. The Snowflake Method
8. Dan Harmon's Story Circle
9. The Seven Point Story Structure
10. The Story Spine
11. In Media Res

and OMG there’s some NAMED types here. So we’re doing that today.

I guess if you make the shit up, you get to name it. So let’s unpack Fichtean, Freytag, and San Harmon this week.

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We’ve spent a few weeks on the various plot structures available and basically been working off this resource that gives us 11 basic structures:

1. The Fichtean Curve
2. The Three Act Structure
3. The Hero's Journey
4. Freytag's Pyramid
5. The Five Act Structure
6. Save the Cat Beats
7. The Snowflake Method
8. Dan Harmon's Story Circle
9. The Seven Point Story Structure
10. The Story Spine
11. In Media Res

We’re now down to numbers 5, 7, 9 and 10, leaving out 11 because we covered it here and three because that deserves a point-by-point breakdown which we gave here and here and here. Though it’s been a few years, so we might go back to it..

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It’s been more than a year since we studied plot arcs and even then we didn’t grab the recordings and add them to our podcast service. So we’re reviving those conversations for a few weeks to get some good episodes for the podcast.

Missed a week of Write On SC? Nostalgic for those oldy-but-goody topics? Check out our podcast library on Apple, Google, and Amazon.

ProWritingAid’s take on this story arc conversation can be found here. But here are some notable highlights:

1. Stasis. This is the current situation you find your main character in.
2. Trigger. This is an inciting event that changes the course for your main character.
3. Quest. The trigger results in a quest for your main character to achieve a goal.
4. Surprise. These are complications that prevent your main character from achieving his goal.
5. Critical Choice. This is when your main character chooses what path to take and confronts the obstacles.
6. Climax. The critical choice results in the climax, the peak of tension in your story.
7. Reversal. Your character is changed in some way.
8. Resolution. The story ends with a satisfactory closure.

These are high-level plot points. The Save the Cat beat sheet is more detailed:

(15-beat structure of Save the Cat!)

1. Opening image – catapult your audience into the story
2. Theme stated – what is this story about?
3. Set-up – includes the “old” world or the regular world, how things are before the disruption; establish place, characters, and hint at conflict
4. Catalyst or inciting incident – disrupt the status quo, but protagonist isn’t in it quite yet
5. Debate – will they or won’t they? What’s at stake? Should the protagonist get in this fight?
6. Break into two – the clear choice between the protagonist’s options and the choice gets made
7. B story – whatever subplot you have planned should commence here
8. Fun and games – protagonist learns new tricks, advances in new skills, starts to figure stuff out
9. Midpoint – this may be a realization, may be a complication, may be the end of the escape hatch
10. Bad guys close in – something has happened that brings the danger closer
11. All is lost – the inevitable moment where the protagonist realizes this is just too hard (impossible!)
12. Dark night of the soul – protagonist has actually lost hope
13. Break into three – character claws around looking for options and trying to salvage the mission, possibly having to overcome some deep fear or damning belief
14. Finale – character synthesizes what they’ve learned and applies the solution to the problem
15. Final image – leave the reader/audience seeing/feeling the theme of the story

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So we’re in the middle of the “Must Read” challenge and Rex has completed 50% of the recommended texts and Kasie has completed 0%. How should we punish her for not doing her homework?

But really, why we’re here this week is to celebrate the new version of Road House being advertised. Haven’t seen the trailer? Here it is.

So, should old(er) movies be “rebooted” or remade into modern versions? Today we’ll take on the debate.

Assigned talking points:

• Rex – the classics: what old movies have been re-made that are better in their original form? (mostly Kasie and Hollie will listen and nod because we won’t have seen most of these)
• Hollie – the animated/live action travesty – why does every story need at least two versions?
• Kasie – why is it okay to try to re-vise (re-vision) the same story - Shakespearean upgrades, etc.

Feels like we won’t need much more than these prompts, but if you’re interested in links to th relevant arguments, we’ll add those after the show.

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Our first conversation about film adaptations of books happened way back in August 2019 with episodes 54 & 55 – we talked so much we had to continue it out the next week. But yesterday was National Screenwriters’ Day and so I delivered my five inimitable screenwriters on the morning show:

• Tina Fey — Mean Girls, 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live
• The Coen brothers — The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, o Brother Where Art Thou, and Fargo
• Julius J. And Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch — Casablanca
• Greta Gerwig — The Barbie Movie, Ladybird
• Aaron Sorkin — The West Wing, The Newsroom

Only the Casablanca crew was working from source material, and that was a play. The others were written for the screen, specifically.

So what about that category at the Oscars of “best adaptation” – what makes adapting harder (is it?) than creating for the screen?

Last April we visited specifically the adaptations process with Episode 228 with the focus on the origin of the story. And today we’re going to expound upon that with the craft of bringing the book alive with some great ones and some terrible ones.

For example, what’s the difference between Wonka as played by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp? They both have the same source material. So why are these interpretations so different?

I just watched Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. which was a Judy Blume novel in the 70s and became a cool retro look at teenage-ish girls 50 years later.

There’s a great line in Entourage (I think) where Jeremy Piven’s character says something to the effect of, “if screenwriting is hard, why do Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have Oscars?”

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Couple of paired episodes last week and this one. Last week we took on first person narrators. Some good discussion (if I do say so myself) on collective first person (we, us) and the limitations of the first person narrator, including the establishment of unreliability.

This week we take on the other point of view (POV) – third person. This is all those stories with the “he she they” characters. Increasingly we see a desire for “close” third so we’ll unpack that and help you identify third person when you see it.

BUT FIRST! Next week is listener appreciation week and we’ll be joined in studio by a couple of fans of us and the show. Our moms! Well, it’s Rex’s mom and my mother-in-law but she’s been my Mama for 20+ years so we’ll call her mom, too. If you want to weigh in on the show, complete this feedback form.

As always, Write On SC is grateful for the support of the South Carolina Writers Association. We have accepted the organization’s patronage this year and it’s helped us pay our bills and keep the lights on as they say. Thank you, SCWA for supporting the show and promoting our efforts to make better writers (and readers!) out of the audience on 100.7 The Point and our podcast audience, too.

Let’s get to it: What is a 3rd person narrator?

The narrator is the one telling the story and while sometimes the story is through the character’s eyes (1st person), a LOT of times, it’s more like a camera perched on one (or more) character’s shoulder observing what’s happening.

Back in Episode 83: Who’s Story is this Anyway? We talked about the different POVs. So we’ll borrow some from that. That was during COVID so we mighta been a little kooky. But then, before that, in Episode 56, way back in 2019, we also talked about this POV thing. So we’ll borrow some from then, too. I even did this was back on Episode 3 with my cousin Preston, who, not for nothin, now has a PhD in Literature and teaches out at Stanford. Back then I think he was still an undergrad.

So the primary advantage of third person is distance. Imagine reading all of Harry Potter’s books living in that kid’s head. Yikes. Third person lets the narrator tell the story, follow the character, but keep enough distance that we’re not bogged down with the internal monologue of our (likely) troubled protagonist.

What are some books that do a good third person?

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So we’ve been working on perspectives of the narrator the last few weeks and at the end of each episode we talked about how to choose. But today I thought we’d do something fun by imagining some pretty famous (well known) stories from someone else’s perspective.

Segment 1

But first! We have two very special guests in the studio this morning. Let’s introduce them and talk about how they’ve supported us and the show.

Segment 2/3

What is perspective? It’s the lens through which we view the story. Most of us are the hero in our own story and that’s true for fiction, too. Many of our villains don’t think they’re bad, they’re just doing what they need to do, what they feel called to do. Think of the retelling of The Karate Kid from Johnny’s perspective – this punk kid moves in from out of town and starts challenging everything. Ruining his senior year.

So, what about some of these stories:

• Star Wars from the perspective of the Empire, or from Leia’s perspective
• Gone With the Wind from Melanie’s point of view, or from Ashley’s perspective
• Harry Potter as told by Neville Longbottom – this is actually a fan fic
• Goonies and Home Alone from the villains’ perspectives
• The Incredibles from Frozone’s perspective
• Rocky from Adrienne’s perspective

Or these Christmas stories:

• A Christmas Story from the mom’s perspective
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas from the perspective of the Whos in Whoville or Max the dog
• A Christmas Carol from Tiny Tim’s perspective

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Is there any more arbitrary experience than Groundhog Day? It’s a day when an entire town lets a rodent predict the future. Or the weather anyway. Several questions:

1. Is there any other profession besides weatherman insulted by the insinuation that an animal could do it as well or better than them?
2. Is there any other animal with psycho abilities equal to the groundhog (who, by the way, is wrong like 80% of the time)?
3. Is there any other tradition that is so meaningless and yet has persisted this long?

The answer to all of these questions is yes. Because humans are not always very smart.

Let’s start with animals who predict the future: before meteorologists we humans needed to know if it would rain and stuff and we relied on the animals’ superior senses (this link):

• Cows lie down and dogs eat grass before it rains
• Woolly bear caterpillars have less color before a cold spell
• Oak leaves reach a certain size (a squirrel’s ear) and that’s when it’s time to plant corn
• Migrant birds can hear the undetectable to humans infrasound that indicates a storm on the way
• Cows, sheep, and dogs have all been recorded as having hyperactivity before an earthquake.

But it’s not just the weather, animals have senses about other things, too:

• Oscar the nursing home cat predicts the imminent death of patients and he’s persistent - he’ll scratch at a door to be let in and stay with the ailing—dying—until they're gone.
• Paul the octopus has predicted eight world cup champions from his aquarium in Germany (link) then he died
• Sonny Wool the sheep took up where he left off and predicted all of his home team’s matches in the 2011 Rugby World Cup
• Jim the dog, though, is even more impressive: identifying hickory trees, identifying cars by color and license plate, predict the sex of unborn children, and pick individuals from a crowd. The Missouri state legislature even tested Jim to prove his abilities and he passed. (link)
• Here’s an article of 20 other predictor animals (link)

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Couple of paired episodes this week and next. The 1st POV and the 3rd POV to finish off the craft part of the year. Then we’ll have a listener appreciation episode, with a very special patron of the show live in the studio. If you’ve got thoughts to share with us, fill out THIS FORM and tune in on the 23rd to see if we read your responses on the air.

Special thanks to the South Carolina Writers Association for supporting Write On SC all year long. We’re grateful to them and glad to promote the SCWA as the place to go to improve your own writing, learn more about the craft and publishing, and join a community of writers here in South Carolina. Learn more at myscwa.org.

Borrowing some from Episode 56 (can you believe it’s been that long ago?): There are basically three kinds of narrative perspective: first, second, and third person. Some of the more interesting versions include collective first (“we”) and epistle second person (letters) and omniscient third (all-knowing).

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Segment 1

So we have a couple of things to catch up on first. Two weeks ago was HorrorCON. How did that go?

Our dear friend and writing group lead, Ginny Padgett passed away on September 11th. So we’d like to take a moment to honor Ginny and talk about her influence on us.

Segment 2

In August, we talked about antagonists and their impact on the protagonist’s pursuit of his own objectives. Check episodes 241 and 242 for details. In thinking about all the elements of a successful plot, I considered taking us down the “plot arcs” road again since our shows from last December on those topics do not have recordings available for them. But I wanted to make sure we do those one after the next and since it’s football season, we’re on an every-other-week rhythm here right now.

So, that said, we’ll keep looking at plot elements until we can get back to the plot types and arcs. Today’s element is conflict. 

• Primary conflict
• Secondary conflict
• Adjacent conflicts.

We did conflict about a year ago. Check out that episode here.

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