Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Tools for writing

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.

Tuesday prompt: #13 2013

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What if these jasmine blooms were orange with white tips?

Take an ordinary outdoor scene and start describing it, but add a twist.  Alter shapes, colors and textures to the things you describe.

Rather than a tall oak, give it an awkward crouching trunk with filament-like leaves of puce.  Make the scene both alien and familiar.  Call a tree a tree, but what a tree it is!

Tuesday prompt: #12 2013

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I don’t often give prompts for poetry, but I do write poetry on occasion.  Much of the prompts I have provided are easy to manipulate if one wishes to apply it to lines of verse.  In this prompt, though it will be directed at extending images in poetry, it is reasonable to expect that extending a descriptive image in prose writing is just as important, so feel free to adjust it to fit a story.

Below are three short images.  As a sample, I am extending one of them.  But the other two are for anybody visiting to practice extending the image.

tiny ships in a busy harbor

 a boat moored in a small busy harbor

The skiff tipped a bobbing gait with the wash
of the waves coming in, coming in and going out
in rippled ramps, after being beat into gentleness
by the tight harbor’s cluttered docks.

Now your turn.

  • a barking dog at night
  • dark clouds overhead

Tuesday prompt: #11 2013

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Responding to the call to adventure

Write a few paragraphs using the opening steps of the heroic journey by introducing a character capable of heroic actions, though she or he may not feel capable of such things.  Supply a problem or other motivating situation for the character to accept a call to adventure.  The common enough character feels a need, desire or push to proceed on a journey that under normal circumstance would not be considered the norm among choices of action.  That is it.  If you need more detailed information follow this link to my explanation of the Heroic Journey narrative mode.