Step x Step

One way to plot from the gut

Plan or Roam?

Some talesmen plan their tales from start to end before they utter the words, ‘Once upon a time.’ Some talesmen may have no clue as to the words to go before ‘The End’ and just start somewhere and see where ‘Once upon a time’ takes them. Most talesmen have their tale in hand before they start, for they tell an old tale, or a tale that comes from true events.

This is one way to roam through a tale as you tell it, making it up as you go along.

Threshold

We start at ‘Once upon a time’ and this must spring from a situation, a setting, a scene or a character. Whichever it is, it has a balance, so to get the tale off on its way, we give it a bit of a shove, one way or the other, to nudge it off balance.

Stage One

At this point, off balance in motion, we can either train our eyes on where we are, on the ground under our feet as we walk along, as it were, or we can lift our eyes and look ahead a bit.

Look ahead, then, to the next stopping place. This can be a place of rest where (for the moment) some threat has passed or some danger has been parried. Or it might be the farthest thing from a resting-place — it might in fact be the point where our hero gets his next shove, more off balance than ever.

One way or the other, if we know that first stopping place, we can say ‘Once upon a time’ with these two points in pind, the threshold and stop one. We know then what our first stage must show, and in it we must drive our hero from threshold to stop one.

More Stops

From the first stop, we think up what will be stop two. This gives us tow point again, and we drive our hero from stop one to stop two. From stop two we go to stop three, from three to four.

When we compse the first stage to stop one, we will as yet have no clue where stop two will lie. When we compose the second stage to stop two, we won’t know where stop three will lie.

Full Stop

In this way we can go far. We will fint the tale not wholly satisfying, though, if the last stop of all is but one more stop on the way. Something must mark it off to make it Full Stop, so our audience knows ‘this is The End for sure.’

Here are some basic traits that can make a stop feel like Full Stop. I don’t say these are all.

1. The last stop brings our hero back to threshold. The tale (and hero) returns to where it started. This gives the tale a shape like a circle or ring, and is an old favorite of talesmen. But when the hero comes back to his start, he is changed, or it is changed, in most of the tales that use this. Only a comedic, ironic, satiric tale ends up in just the same spot where it started, and all the ado has proved for naught (which is the cynical talesman’s point).
2. The last stop ends the hero’s life. He can’t well go on after he’s dead; death marks the end of his strife. As the old Greek adage goes, ‘Call no man happy until after he is dead.’
3. The last stop picks up, and ends at last, some tension or threat that has come back many times through the tale. This can be done in one of sevral ways. It might be an antagonist, a foe or love-object, with whom the hero has dealt off and on in his road, and this final gain or loss of his hope is thus marked out as more significant than any other stop the hero has reached.
4. The last stop scratches the first itch of all. Whatever first nudged the threshold off balance has never yet been undone or answered. Here at last it is.
5. More than one problem is solved at once. This gives the last stop more weight in what it answers and resolves.
6. All threats and imbalances have been passed and resolved. While other stops may have solved problems only for the time being, or may have solved some minor problem and left a large problem still unanswered, or may have solved one large problem but others still remain, in this last stop we find no more bars to happiness or balance, no more reason to go on.

(Composed with pen on paper Wednesday 5 March 2008)