The first big scene of a story
The Bent Wheel
Each tale has its big scenes and its small. The big scenes are the heart and guts of the tale, and we love the tale on the whole for what these big scenes do to us. The small scenes are the tale’s sinews bones and skin. They yoke the big scenes together in a whole shape, and they give us too the tale’s pace, and tell us things we need to know so we can enjoy the big scenes all the more without explanations. And on the whole the small scenes give the tale its sense. So we could say too that the big scenes make up the heart of the tale, but the small scenes make its head.
Small scenes vary from tale to tale, by the specifics of the tale. Bit scenes fall out in a few kinds that mark the tale’s main turns.
Think of a tale as a wheel that is bent out of true. The wheel is not a smooth circle but has flat sides and lumps. The flats are the small scenes and the wheel turns past them in a rush. Then the wheel hits the join between two flats or a lump, and thump the wheel slaps the ground and stops for a bit, before it lifts up off the bump to rush past the next flat.
Here I will consider the first big scene of a tale, where the ‘real story’ begins.
Point of Attack
The opening words of a tale don’t in the main give us a big scene. First we need to be told things, we have to meet our hero and get to know where he lived and what he did before the ‘real story’ starts.
Think of a fight between two unarmed men. They stand face to face and size each other up. They move from side to side, to see if they can get at each other’s flank. Then one rushes at the other to grab or kick or punch. That’s when the real fight starts.
The way a talesman goes at his tale is much the same. There’s always along list of things that took place before the first words out of the talesman’s mouth, and the talesman could start off with any one of them. He looks them over, sizes them up, moves about, to judge where to rush in and grab or kick or punch.
The last moments of this bit of looking-over I call the Point of Attack, and it is the part of the tale that begins with ‘Once upon a time, there was a…’ On the whole this is a state and not an event, but when we hear about states of being and they go on for very long, we itch and get bored and wonder when the story will start for real. And so the wise talesman makes this first flat part of his wheel as brief as he can, and he may turn it into a scene or two that sum up who the hero is and where he is in his life before he gets thrown into the story ‘for real.’
The Point of Attack leads us to the First Encounter, where the tale starts.
First Encounter
This is, then, the first heart-scene in the tale. After the ‘Once upon a time, there was a…’ point of attack, the First Encounter can start with ‘One day, he…’ The ‘one day’ (or its like) is a loud note to the audience. Wake up! Here comes the real story! is how we treat it. The hero in the tale of course doesn’t know that this scene will change his life. But the ‘one day, he…’ tells us that it will.
The First Encounter undoes the state of being the hero has lived in during the opening flat, the Point of Attack and before. It may or may not lead him on to many new turns. But if it does not lead him to some new thing, and to great disorder that he must deal with, then there won’t be a tale. So, even though the First Encounter doesn’t need to change the hero’s life, we in the audience know that it will. This is a big shift that parts us from the hero. From here on till the tale’s end, we will know some things and guess some others the hero can’t know, simply because we know we’re hearing a tale. The hero can’t reason out what is going to happen to him. He can guess, but his guess is weaker than ours, because we know the hero is inside a tale, but he can’t know that. (When the hero knows he’s in a tale, the tale stops working as a tale and turns into something else, a kind of literary trick or parody that goes outside the ‘true’ or classic kind of tale I mean.)
So the words ‘One day, it happened that’ will give us in the audience a thrill of delight; we know what’s coming is the story for real, and we look forward to seeing what kind of a story it will turn out to be. But to the hero, the First Encounter can be only an odd turn of events, something that bothers or annoys him, indeed. Or it might be the sort of thing that gives the hero a thrill of delight much like the one we feel. A boy who has dreamed of pirates feels such a thrill when he finds an old treasure-map, for instance.
There are as far as I can tell, two broad kinds of First Encounters:
- where the hero chooses some new thing
- where some new thing happens to the hero
The Choice
A man, long unsatisfied with his lot, suffers a string of losses and setbacks and even disasters (our Point of Attack). ‘One day, he makes up his mind’ to move to a new town and leave his old life behind.
This is a First Encounter the hero chooses. It tells us something about the hero’s character that he chooses this, where no one event has been enough to make him change. We could easily imagine the man carrying on doing what he had been doing, and hoping that his lot would change on its own. But no: this time the hero will change things of his own will. ‘One day, he made up his mind,’ or ‘In the end, he decided,’ will mark for us this choice. The hero here acts and this tells us we will have to do with an active hero. (Of course his choice may be wise or it may be foolish. Time & the tale will tell.)
The Trap
A man, long unsatisfied with his lot, suffers a string of losses and setbacks and even disasters (our Point of Attack). ‘One day, his neighbors (whose lives have upset as well by the man’s ill luck) decide' the man is cursed by God or Fate. They take him to the end of their lands and tell him they want no more to do with him and that he should keep on going and never come back.
This is a First Encounter the hero does not choose. It is chosen for him by his neighbors. The hero would have gone on where and as he was, but his neighbors didn’t let him. So we can see this kind of First Encounter as a sort of trap that springs on the hero and makes him react to it.
Because the hero here reacts, we mark him even so early as more of a passive type who, at this stage in his life at least, lets things happen to him more than making things happen by his choice. And just as the hero who chooses his First Encounter may choose well or ill, so too the Trap that makes the other hero’s First Encounter may be good for him or bad.
Traits of the First Encounter
Whether the hero chooses the new bent of his life or it springs itself upon him, the First Encounter will be one of these kinds of scenes:
- the hero meets someone new
- the hero starts a new career
- the hero finds some new object
- the hero learns some big news
- the hero looks at his life and past in a new way
- the hero finds he has a new skill or talent
- an accident befalls the hero
Each of these of course can take many shapes and masks. But when we look at these big scenes and turns in the tale from so far away, it makes me think of those ‘story generators’ that play out like text-adventure games. Roll the dice and they stop with one kind of First Encounter scene from the list above; then make up your mind if your hero will choose to act upon the encounter or if the encounter will force his hand even though he’d rather stay much the same.
(Composed with pen on paper Sunday, February 17, 2008)
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