Is This the Final Breakthrough?

OK, let’s summarize these past few months again.

• On June 11th, 2024, I got thrown by the utter lack of attention to character arcs. That’s when I wrote “I’m so fucking stupid”.
• Then on June 15th, 2024, I took MRK’s three trauma anchors (safety, connection, empowerment), which is ultimately the PROT’s ghost or backstory. MRK said you can self-deprive or overreact to these trauma anchors. That’s when I split them into six. At this point, the concept of the “wound” was still throwing me off.
  • ROOTLESS (RTLS): Values FREEDOM
  • PRISON (PRSN): Values SECURITY.
  • LONE WOLF (LNWF): Values INDEPENDENCE.
  • FAMIGLIA (FAMG): Values LOYALTIES.
  • OUTSIDER (OUTR): Values AUTONOMY.
  • POWER CLIMB (CLMB): Values WINNING.
• On June 23rd, 2024, I thought I made a brilliant observation that could conflat the LIE with stasis (STS). And that’s where I created Ghost-Stases pairs. Ghost being the anchor trauma as per above, Stases based on how the PROT reacts to the trauma, relying on one of four KPTs (again, a MRK technology, which says people have four factors about them: ability, responsibilities, role, and status). The naming nor the order in which she had them didn’t gel with me. I edited it via Maslow again: ability, loyalties, status¹, and identity. Or ALSI.
• What defined the CORE ELEMENTS of a character arc, despite breaking down 24 ghost-stasis pairs still eluded me on July 1st, 2024 as per this journal entry
• That’s when I bought, read, and took notes on K.M. Weiland’s Creating Character Arcs (2016) on July 13, 2024. Notes here
• It was also around this time that I decided to break down the Ghost-Stases pairs into Lies and Truths.
• On July 20th, 2024, I broke down the five arcs in Weiland’s book further. Weiland’s book is what helped me get over the fact that there isn’t always a LIE the PROT has to get over. Flat arcs was a REVELATION. It helped me understood the LIE/TRUTH issue further. And of course, all three negative arcs opened my eyes even further. It gave me even more ammunition to realize the Hero’s Journey is so STUPID and MISGUIDED.
• On July 22nd, 2024, I thought I had the CORE INGREDIENTS for a story nailed down. I’m calling them Story Kernels. But something still felt wrong. It was the core elements I have under PROT: LIE, GHOST, NEED/TRUTH, and WANT
• This push from June 11 to July 22 wore me out. Sussing out the key elements, and more specifically the funcional, useful ones for creating stories (as opposed to elements you use to analyse stories) was a lot of work. I feel like I’m building an operating system from scratch. I don’t understand why there isn’t one out there that’s actually functional and useful for the way I think and operate. All the books out there with all their stupid systems: Campbell, Harmon, Snyder, Pixar, McKee, Truby, Brooks, Ingermanson, and on and on and on. All of them give you this “structure” and none of it is USEFUL. Mazin was the first to really help me crack this open. “Structure is a Trap”.
• From the end of July to present day, I’ve been drowning in Marvel comics after getting Marvel Unlimited. It was good to get back into consuming stories and not trying to figure them out. But of course, I was still “figuring things out” as I was doing this. Listening to Connor Goldsmith’s Cerebro (2020-) podcast really helped me get into the weeds of character motivation and drivers through the lens of X-Men characters. And reading The Insider’s Guide To Creating Comics And Graphic Novels (2009) by Andy Schmidt, despite being a really, really, really basic and foundational book, helped me see the super core basics of story again so that I could layer all the work of the last two months on top of it with new context.
• For the last week (August 12-15, 2024), I dove back into the lie-truth pairs I started back in mid-July. I think I have a clearer understanding on the key elements of what a PROT needs now. It’s not LIE, GHOST, NEED/TRUTH and WANT. The WANT is dictated by the DSR/PROG. In the first stage of story development, what you need is GHOST, Motivation (MTVN) as defined by values/beliefs (a LIE/TRUTH pair), KPTs, and the ARC you think this PROT should go on. This, altogether, creates the STS. GLAK as an acronym?
• Also reading Comics Experience Guide to Writing Comics (2018) by Andy Schmidt. Just as foundational and basic as the other Schmidt book… but some concepts are great. His “layering approach” is kinda what I’m going for here, and I’m developing preliminary stages that make sense to me.