Tag: 10 plots

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A Conceptual Sacrifice

I did plot through the weekend. I wasn’t pleased with the themes of Love or Forbidden Love; I wasn’t pleased with the effort either. I didnt like some of these plots when I first read the book, and I still don’t like many of them. I’m bothered by that but don’t have time to really analyze that right now.

Theme – Sacrifice. The novel writing book references Casablanca—the movie. Eventually Tobias talks aboutA Tale of Two Cities.

Setup – Describe someone unlikely to sacrifice him or herself in a situation unlikey to generate a need for sacrifice. Sacrifice should have a hierarchical component that allows threshols of giving(up).

Hook –

Plot Point 1 – Have main character make descision to change life which doesn’t at first appear to have sacrificial implications. Falling in love usually does the trick.

Pinch 1 – Tempt protagonist to abandon long held belief or put in position to make mini-sacrifice similar to one required to conclude PP2.

Mid-point Twist – Take away reward or benefit of descision made in PP1.

Pinch 2 – Sacrifice required in P1 resurfaces, but accepting doesn’t win back prize lost in MPT.

Lull – Reflecting on the sunk cost of minor sacrifice made in P2 and the loss of reward in MPT.

Plot Point 2 – Loss in MPT threatens to become permanent. Love cooled becomes love crushed; lover separated becomes lover dead.

Conclusion – Long held belief cast aside with no hope of redemption in order to protect reward’s integrity, but not reunite reward with protagonist.

Yes, conceptual—sorry about that. The effort was helpful to me despite it’s lack of specificity.

I see another version of this now that I’d not considered when I started. The protagonist could be sacrificing willingly all along the course of the plot thinking they’d be rewarded. Give a little to gain the prize; give a little more to gain it; give a lot to get it; give it all, but still get nothing in return. The sacrificer and the reward diverge throughout the story.

350 words on day 674

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Red Roy

I’m not a fan of this one either as I predicted I wouldn’t be yesterday, but I do think I’ve come up with a good idea of how to work it as best I can.

Theme – Maturation

Setup – Darcy, a girl from Lawrence, Kansas, attends the University of Missouri as a nursing student. She is in a serious relationship with a young man from Virginia (he’s doesn’t appreciate her major). Neither can stay in Columbia for the summer, but neither can go to the other’s hometown (for some super valid sounding reason).

Hook – Darcy’s tearful good-bye to her college boyfriend who is returning the Virginia for the summer following Finals.

Plot Point 1 – Darcy decides she can’t spend the summer after her Sophomore year in college moping around her parents home; she joins a scout friend of hers at a summer camp in New Mexico as a camp counselor.

Pinch 1 – In a backcountry rockclimbing camp officially named Arroyo Rojo but affectionatly called ‘Red Roy’, a camper hanging a bear bag for the night slips on a rock and breaks his arm. Everyone turns to Darcy; she turns out to be so nervous as to almost worse than useless. Darcy quits her position at Red Roy, but the camp director convinces her to at least stay on at base camp in a role that won’t put her at risk of working with injuries.

Mid-point Twist – bushwhacking back to base camp for days-off, Darcy comes upon an advisor stumbling in the woods; he collapses and is unconcious before she can speak to him. She starts CPR.

Pinch 2 – Doctors arrive on scene hours later and pronounce the advisor dead.

Lull – Darcy talks with with her Red Roy friends around a campfire about the incident..

Plot Point 2 – bah!

Conclusion – I’m skipping to this part because I can’t stop the different scenes needed for all this from flooding in. I’m not sure how to organize them best to make this all work out or exactly how far back to Mizzou and Darcy’s boyfriend I need to go. If it’s maturation then is seems like I ought to get her back to school for the contrast, but i can’t figure out wear to put all the action just yet.

376 words on day 671

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The Transformation of a Honga Rider

Allow me to begin with a bit of complaining. I never understood parts of this book I’ve got on plots because several sets of plots noted as distinct never struck me as such. Unfortunately I’ve hit a triple patch: metamorphosis, transformation, and maturation. I’ll forgive the literal interpretation of metamorphosis as maybe different than the other two, but I still read all three as a group meaning not much more than ‘the character changes in some way’. I suppose that Transformation is different from Maturation in the same way that girl becomes cheerleader is different from girl becomes doctor, but I think the differences are subtle.

I doubt I’ll be happy with tomorrow’s theme.

Theme – Transformation

Setup – Tyh is the 8th son of a nobody farmer; destined to be a nobody farmer himself. When apprentice honga rider Keena goes looking for help she tricks Tyh’s father into giving her Tyh.

Hook – Keena dragging Tyh into the honga pit to meet Bem and the Quartermaster.

Plot Point 1 – Tyh discovers he can telepathically communicate with the honga like a rider does and decides to find out how to become one.

Pinch 1 – a group of tyro riders catch Tyh interacting with a honga and beat him up for the audacity.

Mid-point Twist – Almost simultaneously Tyh learns he can communicate with all honga over nearly any distance and that other riders can’t.

Pinch 2 – Keena, Tyh’s sometime friend, sides with the trainer’s council against admitting Tyh to the rider program.

Lull – Tyh returns to his home; there he discovers he can’t settle for farming when he knows he should be a rider.

Plot Point 2 – Tyh returns to the honga pit to at least work out his days as a helper for the Quartermaster when the alarm for marching to war goes up.

Conclusion – sneaking into the battalion (or allowed, but as a supply line drudge) Tyh’s ability to communicate with all the hongas proves invaluable in saving the battalion from a rout.

That didn’t turn out as bad as I’d thought it would. I’m not sure I adhered to the concept of Transformation as well as I could have, but that could be worked out in the details not shown here.

380 words on day 670