A good general guideline would be to try to introduce your Inciting Incident no more than 1/12 of the way into your story. This holds true across the format-board. If you are writing a television pilot that is 50 pages long (60 minutes with commercials), that means your inciting incident should happen on or around page 5 (Halfway through Act One if you don’t have a teaser). If you are writing a graphic novel that will wind up 180 pages long, then shoot for an Inciting Incident happening on page 15. For a serialized comic book, the end of your first issue is a great place to use your Inciting Incident as a cliffhanger, as long as your Place of Rest is engaging enough to form the heart of the first issue.
In a short story, you have a lot less space so choose your Inciting Incident and Place of Rest wisely. Remember we need to know who the protagonist was before their world was thrown off balance, but with so little room, this might mean you telling us after they have been Incited what has changed. This form of flashing back to the Place of Rest is similar to what many game writers do (see Chapter Five). Just as character traits, equipment slots and descriptors can tell us about a character’s past in a game, details about the characters, their actions and lines of dialogue can give us a sense of who they were in a short story.
Rising Action – Regardless of what kind of format you write, it’s important to remember the bulk of your story needs to exist in this section. Ask yourself the following questions: What are all the tactics my protagonist uses to win her or his goal? What stands in his or her way? Is my protagonist fighting for this goal like her or his life depends on it? What’s at stake? What will he or she lose if the goal isn’t won? How can I increase the stakes? What can I do to my character to make it seem like she or he couldn’t possibly win? What are the obstacles standing in my character’s way? How can I make these obstacles harder to overcome?
Remember, a protagonist can’t just sit back and react to everything. She or he needs to be actively fighting for the goal. It should feel like the protagonist’s life will change forever if she or he doesn’t win. There has to be something important wrapped up in this journey for the protagonist or else the cathartic experience the reader/viewer wants to have as a result of sharing this narrative will be decreased.
I have one warning for novel and short story writers getting ready to tackle their Rising Action. Anyone working in prose has a distinct advantage over other types of writers: we are allowed to look inside a character’s head. This means you can use a character’s low self-esteem, doubts or fear as some of their obstacles. It’s important, however, you don’t restrict your obstacles to these internal factors. For a protagonist to actively fight for a goal, we need to “see” them doing something. We want to see Bella jumping off mountains and driving dangerous motorcycles, not Bella reacting to someone staring at her for an entire book. Make your protagonist active, and don’t fall prey to a beginner’s mistake of making the majority of the obstacles internal. Internal obstacles lead to a passive protagonist instead of an active protagonist. As mentioned in Chapter Two, there are successful reactive protagonists out there, but it’s always best to challenge yourself to write active main characters whenever you can.
Crisis Point – The Crisis Point, as a general rule, usually happens about 3/4 of the way through any given narrative. For screenwriters, this means it usually happens right around the Plot Point Two. It can happen just before it, just after it, or the Crisis Point and Plot Point Two can be the same event. It all depends on the components of your individual story. If you use the Save the Cat Beat sheet, your Crisis Point is the same thing as your All is Lost moment, occurring on page 75.
For all other writers, you can just use the 3/4 guideline to help you out. If you are writing an 80,000 word novel, then you safely place your Crisis Point right around your 60,000 word mark. For TV Writers, your four act structure makes it easy to find a Crisis Point at the end of Act Three. If you are writing a comic series, it’s really going to come down to how many issues you are planning and how many pages each issue lasts. But if you have a twelve issue series, then ending your 8th issue with a Crisis Point would be a great cliffhanger for your readers.
Trying to put your Crisis Point earlier than the 3/4 mark results in the pacing of the story dragging a bit between the Crisis Point and the Climax. Once we have that earth-shattering Point of No Return, we know the character has fundamentally changed. We want to see the consequences of that change, for good or for bad.
The Climax, Falling Action and New Place of Rest – As mentioned several times, when the goal is won, the story is done. The same is true if the goal is lost. Remember the protagonist’s goal is what drives the main story, so once that goal is resolved (won or lost), there’s really no reason to stick around. In films, you will often see the Emotional Climax occur between 5-10 minutes before the end of the film, but the Major Dramatic Curve climax can occur as late as the last page or scene. Sometimes this is reversed (as with Romancing the Stone where the Emotional Climax occurs after the Major Dramatic Curve Climax), but as a general rule, both Climaxes should occur within the last five minutes of the film.
With novels, it’s important to get to the Climax as close to the end as possible, but there is a bit more flexibility. As I mentioned before, there is an entire chapter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire after Harry’s escape from Barty Crouch Jr. and this is seen in other places in the series as well. JK Rowling gives us a satisfying Climax but then uses one additional chapter to wrap things up, usually ending with Harry getting onto the Hogwarts Express or otherwise preparing for his trip back to the Dursley’s home. The key to remember is that the story is complete once the goal has been won or lost, so tying up those loose ends and ending the story is extremely important. If the reader feels like the story is done, there is nothing to stop them from putting down the book, especially if it feels like it drags on.
In other formats, the same underlying truth holds: end the play, the comic, the web series, etc. You’re player has destroyed the Big Boss, so end the game. When the goal is won, the story is done.
Guidelines More Than Actual Rules
Regardless of where you are in the writing process, the most important thing to remember is not to lose heart. You are learning the material in this book, but if your story doesn’t quite fit into the mold of what I’m suggesting here, it doesn’t mean your story is “bad.” Creativity takes on many forms, and the materials here are meant to act as guidelines and not hard and fast rules.
Chapter 12
The Exceptions to the Rule
New forms of storytelling have emerged, and those new forms don’t always follow the same underlying structures as its predecessors. In this chapter, I’m going to look at a few variations on the traditional narrative structure and look at how the Major Dramatic Curve can adapt to each of them.
Multiple Protagonists
While the traditional Major Dramatic Curve focuses on just one main character, more and more narratives are popping up where you can’t quite identify one, solitary lead. Sometimes a story isn’t about just one person, and those kinds of stories deserve just as much attention to character development as all the rest.
When it comes to writing a multiple protagonist narrative, first a writer needs to honestly ask what the dramatic function of each main character truly is. Sometimes, you might think you have multiple protagonist when really, you don’t. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a great “buddy” film where a viewer might believe, at first glance, that two protagonist’s drive this storyline. But if you really analyze the story, you will notice that Ted (Keanu Reeves) really drives the action. They both need to pass history, but Ted has the most to lose. If they don’t pass, he will be shipped off to Alaska. It’s also Ted who makes most of the plot choices that really drive the story, including going to talk to the princess in Medieval England and going back in time to steal his father’s keys. Bill might have just as much screen time as Ted, but this doesn’t automatically grant him a place as co-pro
tagonist. If you are writing a narrative similar to Bill & Ted, then you want to make sure you really have multiple protagonists and not just multiple leading characters – there is a difference!
Some narratives, however, really are ensemble pieces. You can have multiple stories that only intersect in minor places, such as Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club or the Richard Curtis film Love Actually, or you can have narratives where the lives of the characters intersect throughout the narrative, such as the television show Downton Abbey. The important thing to remember with these kinds of stories is that each character needs to have a unique and fully developed Major Dramatic Curve. How you make those Curves interact is part of the creative process that makes your story unique. Let’s look at how the three above named narratives operate:
In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan explores how well four first generation Chinese American women know their mothers and how their perspective on life in America varies from their mothers’ more traditional views. Amy Tan has eight characters to explore – the four mothers and the four daughters. Each character receives her own chapter (or chapters) in which to tell their story. The chapters are unique and each has the ability to stand alone. Together, this collection of short stories points to a larger picture of the first generation Chinese American culture. Since each chapter stands alone, it’s no surprise that each chapter also contains its own, unique Major Dramatic Curve. Each chapter has a beginning-middle-end driven by a singular goal. Lindo fights to honor her parents even after being matched to the worst husband possible. Jing-mei fights to live up to her mother’s dream of her becoming a prodigy. Ying-ying fights to motivate her daughter to bring out her “inner tiger” and treat herself well. Each woman has an active Curve with all the elements in place: Place of Rest, Inciting Incident, Rising Action, Crisis Point, Climax and Falling Action/New Place of Rest. (The Joy Luck Club offers great examples of how to apply the Dramatic Curve within the limited space of short stories.)
Like The Joy Luck Club, the film Love Actually also creates a larger picture by presenting us with a number of short stories featuring interconnected characters. While film has the ability to give us each story as a complete unit (see the film Four Rooms for a great example of this), Love Actually intertwines each Major Dramatic Curve so we see each Curve develop together. When the film opens, we meet each of the major characters of the film in their Place of Rest: aging rock star Billy Mack records a single he knows is terrible, dotting Jamie leaves his sick girlfriend to go to a wedding, mourning Daniel calls his best friend to talk about his recently deceased wife, a new Prime Minister walks into Downing Street for the first time. As the audience gets introduced to each character, we immediately get a sense of what kind of person they are.
Almost right away, we see each plotline’s Inciting Incident: Billy Mack hears a radio DJ saying his new album is terrible, and he decides to use this to his advantage. Daniel finds out his stepson is in love for the first time and uses this as a bonding opportunity after his wife’s death. Jamie meets his new non-English speaking maid, Aurelia, and tries to find a way to communicate with her. The new Prime Minister falls for his catering manager, Natalie (“That is so inconvenient”) and must battle his emotions while trying to run the entire country. We bounce from storyline to storyline, staying relatively consistent in terms of where we are on the Major Dramatic Curve. The Crisis Points come together, and the Climaxes come together. This makes the overall film feel like a cohesive unit, working together to tell a great story.
In this case, you could almost unite the various plotlines under a conceptual protagonist – Love. At the beginning of the film, Love’s Place of Rest is that it has been beaten down in some way, shape or form: a professional career that’s lost its excitement, a girlfriend who has cheated, an unrequited love who has married your best friend, a career man who never had time for love. Then, we see a spark that gives Love a chance to succeed (see the Inciting Incidents listed above). The rest of the film shows Love trying to answer the dramatic question, Will Love conquer all? Each plotline explores a different kind of love to see if it can beat the odds and win out in the end. To help unite all aspects of the film, the movie both opens and closes with the idea of love at an airport – a physical symbol of the idea of love being a universal theme.
The Paul Haggis film Crash follows a similar multiple storyline, theme-driven structure as well. In this narrative, we look at the battle between racism and tolerance in a similar fashion. From a conceptual point of view, we can look at the Major Dramatic Question of this film as Will Tolerance defeat Racism? In each plotline, we see how racism emerges in every day life and how the multiracial characters deal with it.
Unlike Love Actually, the individual narratives in Crash aren’t quite so in sync when it comes to introducing us to each character’s Major Dramatic Curve. As we experience each story, we see each Curve develop at various places in the film. For example, we first see Jean and Rick’s Curve when they are mugged in Santa Monica. The locksmith who comes to their house to change their locks, Daniel, experiences some racism at their house, but his Curve doesn’t really begin until we see his interaction with the shopkeeper, Farhad. All of the Major Dramatic Curve elements are present for each character, but they are sprinkled in over time instead of being presented together.
Some narratives can take this wide distribution of Major Dramatic Curve elements a step further. Stories like Downton Abbey, that don’t unite all their storylines with a theme or concept, can have even greater flexibility in how they present their Major Dramatic Curve elements. In Season One, the main conflict of the show involves the question of what will happen to Downton Abbey now that the heir has died on the Titanic. Once Robert, the Earl of Grantham, decides to pass the estate over to Matthew Crawley, a distant cousin who works for a living and is not used to living life in the family’s traditional fashion, the show’s twists and turns all involve Matthew’s attempts to adapt to his new life as the future Earl of Grantham.
While the pilot (first) episode of the show is driven by Robert’s goal of protecting the estate, the rest of the show features multiple characters, both servants and ladies and gentlemen of the house, fighting for what they want. Mary Crawley fights to find a good husband. Matthew’s mother Violet fights to correct the Crawley family’s “outdated” way of life. Servant Gwen fights to improve her position in life by learning to type and then applying for jobs as a secretary. Cook Mrs. Padmore fights to keep her job despite evolving technologies and failing eyesight. Lady Sybil fights to claim her role as a liberated woman, and footman Thomas just tries to screw up as much as he can for his personal amusement. With each character, we see their goals introduced and paid off in various episodes. Many times, we will see a new Curve introduced just as another one is paid off. This keeps the viewer engaged in the show throughout the season and prevents the show from ever feeling like it is dragging.
Each of these multi-protagonist stories are all exceedingly different in terms of structure, plot and themes but they all have the same thing in common: fully developed Major Dramatic Curves for any and all major characters.
The Storyteller Structure
Sometimes, a narrative is told through the eyes of another individual or individuals. In other words, one character in the story relates another character’s tale in order to drive the narrative forward. I call this kind of narrative structure The Storyteller Structure. In this type of story, the storyteller has a very clear goal, and he or she uses the story as a tactic to win that goal.
A great example of this kind of structure is the film version of The Princess Bride. The story revolves around a grandfather reads a book to his sick grandson. The story of the book is the love story between Westley and Buttercup, two soul mates separated by class, monsters and even death. If you asked a passive viewer who the protagonist of this film would be, that viewer might immediately choose Buttercup or Westley since they are the “main” characters of the story within the story. But remember a protagonist i
s the character whose goal drives the story forward, and while both of these characters are interesting, you can’t really say one or the other one really drives the plot. The real protagonist of the film is the Grandfather (Peter Falk). He has a very clear goal, and he tells the story of Westley and Buttercup in order to win that goal.
What is the Grandfather’s goal, you may ask? Think about the opening of the film: the Grandson is sick, and his Grandfather comes over to read him a story. The Grandson would prefer to lie in bed and play video games, but the Grandfather has other plans. “It was the book my father use to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father, and today, I’m gonna read it to you.” While we aren’t entirely sure where the sick Grandson’s father currently is, we get the idea he might be deceased. Therefore, the Grandfather’s goal is to reignite a tradition that means a lot to him. He wants his Grandson to continue the legacy of reading to their sons when they are sick. This is why the Grandfather happily skips some sections of the book (“They’re kissing again…”) in order to keep the Grandson engaged. He wants to keep him interested in the tradition. We know the Grandfather wins his goal at the end of the story because the Grandson says “Maybe you can come and read it to me again.” The story of Westley and Buttercup is the most interesting story, but it’s the B-plot from a structural point of view. The A-plot is the storyteller Grandfather fighting to reestablish a family tradition.
If you are familiar with the novel version of The Princess Bride, the storyteller structure is also present in that text. While the Grandfather and Grandson of the film are absent, a father is “editing” the story of Westley and Buttercup into a “good parts version” for his son. The father’s goal is to make the story acceptable to his son in order to reclaim what he once shared with his own father.
Crafting the Character Arc Page 11