Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

plots

Narrative Mode #9: Shakespeare’s HAMLET as a narrative plot

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Following the Hamlet narrative brings a lot of tension and mystery to the piece.  The complex changes in the character make for a dramatic, dark plot line.

  • The main character (we’ll call him Fred) suffers the loss of someone important in his life and learns through unlikely or supernatural means that it was caused by someone close.  
  • Fred is conflicted by his loyalty to those close to him and the fact that he also blames them for the tragedy. This gives you plenty of room for contradictory qualities in the character because there is the constant question of madness.  
  • Fred’s desire for revenge, as well as making it public who is responsible, exacerbates his loss of control over his own life and injures others.  And he drops further into madness or perhaps it is all a ruse to flush out the perpetrator.
  • Anger and jealousy are driving forces. 
  • An innocent person suffers, and Fred is so involved in revenge, he considers the injury (mental anguish and later a possible suicide) just collateral damage, which supports the belief that he is going mad.
  • Death is an important feature: death of those important to Fred or who were the cause of the tragedy.  This could be modified to be death of a relationship, death of faith, or death of hope.  But destruction of Fred’s sense of right and fairness is essential.
  • With Hamlet, his efforts to get revenge ended in the death of his mother, his uncle (who killed his father), his girlfriend, her father and brother and Fred himself. 

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Narrative mode: #8 The Christ Figure

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A traditional narrative plot is the Christ Figure.  It works well with stories which require a hero but follow the version where the hero does not survive the challenge he has to face.

  • There must be a social catastrophe in the making.  
  • Tension should lead up to it with the designated hero a known quantity: always reliable, always there to help others, and yet he will lack belief in himself though he always meets the demands that seem to feel likely to overwhelm him. That’s his role in life and he accepts it.
  • Alternate:  He can even be a recognized rogue who is thought of as less then worthy, but that is merely misunderstanding.  He has never met with a challenge that has caught him ethically or spiritually before. No one expects him to be of any use in the conflict that is building.  But something this time drags him in, inspires him.
  • In either case, now society needs someone to rise and meet the danger that is coming to the community. (This can be more personal: one character with a personal tragedy and one hero who doesn’t know he can make a difference.)
  • There needs to be subtle change and subtle challenge that will bring the hero into the bout of his life.  Whether he is the recognized do-gooder or the ne’er-do-well, he takes part in the effort to slow the arrival or stop it all together.  He even seems for the moment to have saved them all.
  • However, the challenge has greater complication than anticipated, greater danger.   Here is the greatest tension, for the hero must make a difficult decision.  Never has he had to give so much of himself, never had he expected to. But the hero chooses sacrifice to ensure that the community survives.
  • And survive it does, with the reciprocal challenge of being better than it was, worthy of his sacrifice.  The perfect hero is purer than imagined.  Or if the hero was the less-than-model citizen, then he is glorified, proving that everyone can rise to the finer self.

Tale of Two Cities by Dickens makes use of this narrative.  Sidney Carton, an excessive drinker, flawed to the extreme, faithless, presents himself as promised to be the saving grace for another human being should the need ever be called upon.  Neither his lifestyle nor his philosophy supports this promise.  But the condition he set forth does arrive, and he becomes a savior, giving his life so that another person, more worthy than himself, may live, and in the end, he gains worthiness and personal faith, and those he has sacrificed himself for reach the safe haven he hoped to give.

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Narrative Mode: #7 Cinderella plot

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Cinderella plot: simplicity

Writing a modern Cinderella story is quite popular.  The simplicity of it makes for an easy plot and that increases the opportunity to add complexity to it.

  • Life is good between the two people, and the one dependent they have is healthy and happy.  [I am keeping this vague because like many of the other narrative modes, you can enlarge this one to encompass the business world, economics, politics, etc.  Imagine two political allies and their constituents.]  All is well until one suffers a death (political or personal).  
  • So a separation of some sort pulls the two apart.  The dependent must cling to the one who is left.  But he (or she) takes on a new partner, one certain to embrace the dependent.  All seems well in this change of events.
  • Until the original caretaker also dies.  Now the dependent is at the mercy of the replacement, and that individual is not the trustworthy person (business, system, etc.) that was first assumed.
  • Life gets very difficult for the dependent.  She (he, they) suffer greatly, must complete menial tasks in order to remain in this relatively safe condition.  The dependent loses hope and thinks she will never rise out of this lowly position.
  • Until opportunity arrives.  A young man (or new comer with high ideals) must make a connection and through the acts of individuals or groups who have sympathized with the plight of the dependent finds him or her or it.
  • They struggle with various difficulties that pull them apart. Then the magic moment, and life is sweet and promising again.

It does not take a girl, her father, step-mother, step-sisters and a prince to make this narrative work.  Any number of things can replace this simple story framework and add complexity.

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Narrative Mode ~ #5 Frame Narrative

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framed with a strong outer shell

The frame narrative is a fairly difficult format because it requires a fair bit of juggling between the framing story and the story within the frame.  The two must be connected, each enhancing the other by offering interpretive value on the part of the frame, while the inner story offers details and meaningful specifics.  Before I lay out the process, let me give some examples most people will be familiar with.

  • Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales ~ Chaucer sets up his frame with a menagerie of characters who are individually or in small groups going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.  They meet at a tavern and agree, with some finagling by the tavern owner, to travel together and participate in a story-telling challenge.  This is a very complicated frame narrative because not just one story is to be told but several, two by every member heading out on this jaunt and two by everybody on the return trip.  Chaucer never finished all the stories, but it was even more complicated because within the outer frame were several inner frames (various mini prologues and epilogues) which introduced and leapfrogged off each story to the next.  To add to the complication, Chaucer created a character named Chaucer who was the speaker in the outer frame who was retelling each of the stories by presenting it exactly as “he” heard it told by his fellow pilgrims.
  • Conrad’s Heart of Darkness ~  Conrad’s framing was not nearly so complicated as Chaucer’s.  His frame has five characters on a ship on the Thames in England.  One is telling about where they are and who the other characters are.  A second (Marlow) is telling his story about an experience he had on the Congo in Africa, but the story is retold by the original frame speaker who on occasion intrudes on Marlow’s narrative, inferring meaning and commenting on Marlow’s actions and personal interpretation of his experience.
  • Bronte’s Wuthering Heights ~ Bronte sets up a visitor (Lockwood) coming to the region to rent a manor house and its surrounding property from Heathcliff, the unscrupulous owner of side-by-side properties.  The visitor retells for a large part of the story the narrative of Nelly, all-around servant of the Earnshaw/Heathcliff/Linton families.  Nelly shares with Lockwood the activities of the other characters over the past twenty years in several gossip sessions the two hold over the course of his several months stay.  Lockwood picks up near the end of the novel upon revisiting the manor to tell much of the finale of the inner story.  His part in the frame is limited, his character more a foil for Heathcliff and a vehicle for telling the story than anything else.

So those are the popular examples.  The format breaks down in the following manner.

  1. First an outer story which provides an opportunity to tell a story.  This can be two people meeting at a coffee shop or something else equally simple or much more complex. If one of the two characters comes in appearing moody and withdrawn, the other character may wish to know the reason for the emotional condition. 
  2. The second then may agree or not agree to share the problem.  What is essential is that the frame and the inner story must be connected and somehow one of the characters feels free to or is compelled to tell a story.
  3. One option to the example above is that the first speaker tells about his recent experience.  If written ironically, the reader may come to understand that the recent experience of the happy character is the cause of the moody character’s troubles.  A second option might be that the moody character’s telling of an experience leaves him feeling better and the first, happier character is made moody because he is affected by the story told.  In any case, some story of epiphany would tie the two together.
  4. The inner story must be a thorough immersion for the reader whose return to the framing story completes the last piece to understanding the whole story (frame and inner narrative).

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Narrative Mode ~ #4 Cain & Abel

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The Cain and Abel narrative is very versatile with lots of opportunities for adjustment:  two brothers, two sisters, two siblings, two cousins, two co-workers, two businesses, etc.

  • You need opposing factors in single or equal multiples who seem at first to be on the same side.  Brothers in the same family, friendly competitors, step-sisters who get along well.
  • They start out friendly and social, but one starts getting more recognition, more appreciation.  Parents don’t feel there is any preference, but the older child sees things differently.  Or one company notices stock market increases where the two companies used to be rising equally.
  • Some denied jealousy, a little frustration when efforts are made to get that recognition and it doesn’t work.  Everybody loves a little sibling rivalry, improves the effort.  Companies always rise and fall in value over time.
  • Things escalate, but the brotherly love seems safe from damage.  A little argument here, a friendly challenge maybe taken to extreme.  But one uses less than quality workmanship.
  • Until the tipping point arrives and one destroys the other.
  • No sign of guilt or taking reponsibility.  Then punishment, ostracism, life of misery.  Or earned forgiveness.

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Tuesday prompt: #10 2013

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This is an exercise for plotting.  Below is a plot that contains a major flaw: the main character has no challenge to reaching her goal.  Replot the events so that the character still gets to the goal, but she doesn’t have an easy time of it.

  • Susie eats at the same diner each day without fail, ordering eggs, bacon, and hash browns.  Though she does not know the cook’s name, he always nods at her when he sees her head for a her favorite booth in the corner.  A short time later, her breakfast arrives.
  • Sam enters and takes the booth beside her own.  She sits looking in his direction over the two seat backs, he hers.
  • Each time she looks up, she finds herself looking into his eyes.  He smiles every time.
  • She hasn’t any ketchup at her table and asks him if he could pass her his.  He walks it over to her and waits for her to finish before returning to his own seat.
  • She eats every bite, pleased she didn’t have to do so without the ketchup.

(And you thought this was all about Susie and Sam.)

Now the goal is the ketchup.  Time to alter the plot so that she still gets the ketchup but the process is not easy.