Short Story Dissection, Part 1
OK, so I’ve thoroughly dissected eleven short stories now, all winners of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and/or Locus awards over the last eight years.
The stories in question are:
- Kritzer, Naomi. “Cat Pictures Please.” Clarkesworld, Jan. 2015, https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/
- Clark, P. Djèlí. “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington.” Fireside, Feb. 2018, https://firesidefiction.com/the-secret-lives-of-the-nine-negro-teeth-of-george-washington
- Kritzer, Naomi. “Little Free Library.” Tor.com, 08 Apr. 2020, https://www.tor.com/2020/04/08/little-free-library-naomi-kritzer/
- Kassel, Mel. “Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake.” Lightspeed, Oct. 2018, http://lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/ten-deals-with-the-indigo-snake/
- Törzs, Emma. “Like a River Loves the Sky.” Uncanny, Apr. 2018, http://uncannymagazine.com/article/like-river-loves-sky/
- Wiswell, John. “Open House on Haunted Hill.” Diabolical Plots, 15 Jun. 2020, https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-64a-open-house-on-haunted-hill-by-john-wiswell/
- Pinsker, Sarah. “The Court Magician.” Lightspeed, Jan. 2018, https://lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-court-magician/
- Harrow, Alix. “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies.” Apex Magazine, 6 Feb. 2018, https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/a-witchs-guide-to-escape-a-practical-compendium-of-portal-fantasies/
- Roanhorse, Rebecca. “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience.” Apex Magazine, 8 Aug. 2017, https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/welcome-to-your-authentic-indian-experience/
- Wong, Alyssa. “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers.” Nightmare, Oct. 2015, https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/hungry-daughters-of-starving-mothers/
- Kowal, Mary Robinette. “Midnight Hour.” Uncanny, Jul. 2015, https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/midnight-hour/
Acronym IDs
To keep these eleven stories brief as I write through my thoughts here, I’ve given each one a basic acronym/ID:
- Cat Pictures Please - CPP
- Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington - 9NT
- Little Free Library - LFL
- Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake - TDIS
- Like a River Loves the Sky - LRLS
- Open House on Haunted Hill - OHHH
- The Court Magician - TCM
- A Witch’s Guide to Escape - WGE
- Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience - WAIE
- Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers - HDSM
- Midnight Hour - MH
Questions with Intent
As per two weeks ago, when I printed these out to study, I had very clear “questions with intent”. Again, they were…
- Focus on how the plot thread is condensed. Is it dramatized hook + snuck-in backstory in the opening scene like novelettes and then try-fail cycle one, try-success cycle two? How else do they structure it? What are the structures you can imprint as templates (but only after you fully understand what they’re doing plot thread and arc wise above)?
- How long are these scenes? Do they cram in more than 3-5? Or is that really the limit?
- What are the concept/hooks they’re using? Can you come up with similar ones?
- How much character arc is there? If little, how are they still giving you the emotional gut punch or satisfaction of one?
Let’s answer these questions now.
Scene Lengths & Uses
The first one that I can knock off quickly is the scene length question. my hypothesis was completely wrong on it being 3-5 scenes assuming average scene sizes of approximately 1000 words. Short stories at even the <4000 word level had up to ten scenes. Let’s take a look at the numbers…
- CPP - 3420 words / 5 scenes
- 9NT - 3601 words / 9 scenes
- LFL - 2508 words / 7 scenes (maybe six)
- TDIS - 3440 words / 10 scenes
- LRLS - 3902 words / 6 scenes
- OHHH - 3015 words / 3 scenes
- TCM - 3160 words / 4 scenes
- WGE - 4885 words / 10 scenes
- WAIE - 5806 words / 10 scenes
- HDSM - 6567 words / 9 scenes
- MH - 6916 words / 6 scenes
Both OHHH and TCM match my original hypothesis of scene length, but it’s clear you can be very flexible here. While I’m not sure 9NT counts, because it’s really a listcle of nine micro-stories, you could technically make the same argument for TDIS… except, not really? I mean, several of the final scenes are deals with the snake made quickly in the same timeframe. It’s only the first four deals or so that are huge time jumps. LRLS and WGE is more of the somewhat-timebound kind of story I’m interested in writing… stories that are under 5k. And everything above 5k in this list are timebound narratives. (They happen within days).
With that said, because of this analysis, I have a lot more potential tools to work with here. I like the listicle of items structure that Clark used for 9NT. You still get a strong impact with the final item/micro-story. I also like the early scene time jumps in TDIS. It’s one of my favorite story-tricks in literary fiction. I still get frisson when I think of the final scene in Lolita where Humbert the hebephile, for a brief moment, realizes the damage he’s done. Same goes for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with the 20 year time jump.
Ultimately, scene sizes was the original exercise.. While they do average 500-1000… final scenes can be 1000-2000 even in a short story. And <500 word scenes can be the penultimate scene prior to the conflict or just short transitory/punctuation scenes. Or sequels I guess. They’re used for telling or reactions after a dramatized scene to make time jumps. There were two brief ones in HDMS where Aiko makes an appearance to remind the daughter of normalcy before she goes to her mom, and secondly to Seo-Yun’s party. (Which is a very clever way of contrasting before the next scene).
Condensed Structures & Plot Threads
So when I did a short story study earlier, I think I might’ve simplified it too much as:
- One Encounter
- One realtionship/conflict
- One truth reveal/plot twist
I think the second and third point holds up for the most part. It’s the first that I question now. I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s one relationship (or mechanic) with multiple encounters/situations/variations.
But does a short story have only just enough time to reveal “one thing” (a hidden cost, a secret truth, an escalated cost)? I think so… but not the way I thought of it previously. I think it’s more of an EGP, the “emotional gut punch” moment… which I’m starting to grasp is one of a few KEY ELEMENTS that you need in order to build the core engine of a story.
Key Ingredients to Build Story Engine
Ever since I listened to Craig Mazin’s Scriptnotes episode 403 (notes here and here), I’ve been questioning everything I’ve previously learned about fiction. The frame and lenses I have on these days is: there is a difference between MAKING a story versus ANALYZING a story in retrospect. The Hero’s Journey analyzes a story retroactively and cannot teach you a damn thing about CREATING one. Ditto with Save the Cat’s 15 beats.
So I’ve been thinking deeply about what CORE ELEMENTS or KEY INGREDIENTS I need to build a story’s engine. What do you need? The obvious answers that are taught to us over and over again in any writing class are: character, plot, and setting. But I’m not sure that’s useful. It’s… too familiar, to the point of misunderstanding. What’s more – because I’m aiming for short stories first here… character is almost… overkill. I don’t need a long arc. I need to get them to make one decisive action. I feel like if I do too much work on them, I will be wasting time and/or procrastinating.
Anyway, I think I’ve identified three “key elements” here for short stories. They are MECH, PROG, and EGP. It’s similary to Sanderson’s Promise > Progress > Payoff, but the promise in this case is tied into the world’s setting. Since you can’t do too much character arc in a short story, you let the world/setting/premise of the story do the heavy lifting. PROG remains the same. You need to show progress for the character as they explore the world. It has to move the story forward either by releasing more clues, shortening the time, or any of the plot thread tools. Finally, the payoff is an “emotional gut punch”. While we don’t get a nice long arc for the character, the interaction between them and the world, plus dripping their backstory over the course of the short story, we can still do a EGP via several methods, like revealing a secret, having them realize the hidden cost of a deal they made, or making a sacrifice.
Let’s go into more detail for each.. The first of which is…
1. The Concept Is King (MECH Element)
In dissecting these award-winning short stories, it’s clear to me that CONCEPT IS KING. Each of these winners (minus one or two) have a very clear CONCEPT, or MECHANISM, and what I mean by that is, they have clear RULES in their WORLD BUILDING. These rules define what the characters can or cannot do, what limits them, what the costs are, and what they need to uphold. This forces the “setting”, which in this case is the world building, to INTERACT with the characters immediately. It becomes a character almost. This creates a triangle of two characters interacting, and the characters interacting with the setting.
To simplify all this, I’m simply calling this the MECH moving forward. Mechanism works for me, as I’m borrowing it from my copywriting world. It’s how the product/solution works. And in the fiction world, it’s the rules for which the magic, technology, ritual, culture, process/procedures, or power dynamics of the world works. This way, it’s not just for SFF stories, you can apply it to literary writing as well. Power dynamics always prefigure into literary stories. Cheever, Lahiri, Adichie, and Saunders are the ones I’ve studied the most. (Gotta read Munroe soon)… but point is… in their stories, they still have a MECH element. The underlying themes can be betrayal, immigration, colonialization, affairs, regret, maturity, whatever… but within the world of their short story, the characters have rules they have to follow, or if they break them, a cost to pay.
Back to SFF stories, let’s look at what’s in these eleven stories:
- CPP - The benevolent A.I. can fudge the algorithm to nudge its users to healthier life choices, but it needs data from them (and cat pictures). It can’t go beyond nudging, but it can email their user’s friends once it gets a hold of them.
- 9NT - Each tooth affects George Washington in a different way that progresses racial equality. The magical ones are fun and wondrous, but the last one, the non-magical one does the most work in moving the issue forward.
- LFL - Prot can’t see or meet this creature who’s stealing books, but can communicate through the little free library. The books she puts in there becomes actual useful manuals for the war he’s prosecuting.
- TDIS - The rules are simple: the snake can’t say no, but can include monkey’s paw effects in the price it demands to make wishes come true.
- LRLS - Not sure this one counts. It’s pretty much a mystery that keeps you guessing until you see the zombie dogs. The dreams are never explained. Feels like a Kelly Link story where everything is opaque and could mean multiple things.
- OHHH - Same as Kritzer’s A.I. in CPP, the house can “haunt” by moving things around, hiding things, making a few things move, and even opening/closing doors/windows… but doesn’t seem to have power/will to kill. If it does, it becomes a “bad house”. 133 Poisonwood compares itself to 35 Silver Street and how it’s weaker than them.
- TCM - Every time the boy uses the magic word, they lose something they love. Can be a body part or the ability to find comfort in a chair, or a person. The cost was never explained (to suck them in), and eventually the boy refuses to pay and leaves.
- WGE - The witch can’t share the “real books” (witchcraft), but does her best to push fantasy books of escape to the black teenager. She can sense/read the patrons and what they need.
- WAIE - The mechanism here, virutal reality experience, at first, doesn’t seem to figure much except to get the story going… driving home the social commentary that white people want the cheap, tacky version of a “real experience”. The story moves away from the mechanism very quickly as White Wolf and the Prot talk offline. But the ending… when it’s revealed the Prot could be the tourist instead, and since it’s written in second person, making us the Prot… it’s genius. Because fiction is VR. It’s very very clever. I love that it gets meta.
- HDSM - The predator protagonist sucks thoughts from toxic men. The more evil, the more filling and drug-like and addictive. This hunger must be fed. She throws it back up to reuse later? That part isn’t clear to me. Or maybe it just needs to sit in the stomach for a bit to “fill her”… and then she regurgitates it to reuse later? And also, briefly after sucking someone dry, the predator becomes their victim’s doppelganger briefly.
- MH - So many rules. In return for seven years of avoiding a plague and famine: rule one, the king is mad 23 of 24 hours. Two: the queen’s name can’t be said. and Three: queen can’t leave the castle grounds. They have to keep this up for seven years. With that said, MRK masterfully gets all three crammed into the first scene and it’s setup well. Scenes 2-6 is just this rollercoaster cat-and-mouse thriller afterwards.
OK, so having a clear concept for the short story is number one. Number two is…
2. Countdown, Mystery and/or Relationship (PROG Element)
The second element is how the story progresses once you’ve defined the MECH rules in the first or second scene. First if you need to get the story moving fast, second if the first scene was pure hook, dramatization, and setting up the mysteries and teases. The PROG can be a ticking time bomb (TTB), or it can be a mystery (what’s happening and why) (MYS), or it can be a relationship that’s about to change (REL).
Pure relationship PROGs are interesting to me because they can be romance (lovers, friends, allies) or it can be antagonists (villain, rival, stranger, attacker).
In the former, it can also be parent/child relationsihps, teacher/apprentice, boss/employee, rivals, self/society, self/flaw. Maybe “romance” is not the correct terminology if I include the working and self relationships. But they are interesting in the sense that they have to be tied to a Mystery (MYS) and/or a Ticking Time Bomb (TTB) plot. I’ll talk more about emotional gut punches and payoffs in the next section… because I guess this isn’t 100% clear to me right now. Whereas, the latter, the antagonist PROGs are straight forward. If we’re being attacked, then you can evade, deceive, hide, gamble, and fight. If you’re being betrayed/exploited and don’t know it (or even if you do), you just get a series of worst and worst circumstances.
Maybe breaking them down via example will clarify things better. I mean, going back to what I wrote on plot threads above, “it’s one relationship (or mechanic) with multiple encounters/situations/variations”… that’s sorta what PROG is right?
- CPP - The benevolent A.I. is trying to help people. We get three examples of this happening. It helps one easily, it fails on the second, and really fails bad on the last one… but finds out later the second one turned out alright. It’s a progress of examples.
- 9NT - This one is nine micro-stories. I wonder if they’re more and more wondrous. Hold on, lemme check. Blacksmith chains, Merman friend, teleportation spell, dreams, cursed conjure man, parallel universe traveller, cursed immortal slave trader, Circe cook named Ulysses. Yeah, OK. There is a clear progression here. Progress of increasing wonder… and the last one is for a surprising unexpected effect. Like the punchline of a “rule of three” joke.
- LFL - Same as above progress of increasing wonder… but via messages and gifts in an interesting communication device. (The free library).
- TDIS - this one is simple: a progress of increasing cost for deals. Each deal gets more and more expensive until the prot’s life is ruined.
- LRLS - The mystery drags out in this one. NPW keeps asking questions about what animals mean to the prot. So maybe progress of interactions/questions? But there’s also the secondary and tertiary plot threads (the prot’s dreams and showing all the ways she’s lonely and sad). So progress of symbolic dreams and progress of sad circumstances? This story has a lot of plot threads going for it.
- OHHH - This is a romance. So it’s a progress of separation and reunion. Except because it’s literally three scenes, it has time for one meetcute, one gambit, one seperation, and one reunion. We learn more and more about the father and daughter and dead mom in the locket.
- TCM - a series of payments. Each time the boy uses the spell, the cost goes up.
- WGE - a series of book recommendations. This is cute. It fits so well with the MECH. She’s a witch librarian! She recommends books to help people with their lives because she can read their minds!
- WAIE - a series of theft. Just as clever as WGE, it’s a social commentary, or allegory on the American Aboriginal experience. White guy shows up, pretends to be a friend, gets him sick, steals his job, his friends, his home, his wife. It’s just so very clever.
- HDSM - This one, like Bacigalupi’s Pop Squad is really a “dissertation” on the MECH’s values. You have three dynamic characters to bounce ideas off of. Aiko is the loving present. Pure. Mom in Flushing is the past. The Status Quo. Play it safe. Seo-Yun is the future, the temptation to feed on more and more evil, but becoming evil themselves. It’s not a series so much as three relationship dynamics that sets the foundation for the story… taking up almost two-thirds of the story… arguing different POVs of the MECH… and then stakes keep rising in the final scenes to a screaming pitch as the Prot realizes too late the cost of chasing the future and is changed. In HDSM, it’s regret. In Pop Squad, it’s seeing the mom’s POV for a brief moment and feeling the rain for the first time again. I think when the MECH is heavy like these two stories are… you need to explore the angles… and then end in a thrilling conflict.
- MH - The Nameless Queen and King Lennert are defending their MECH (which is a curse). So Prince Volis forces them to put up a series of defenses. They evade, they deceive and hide, they negotiate, but eventually, they have no choice but to run and finally, fight. It’s an escalation of violent reactions.
OK, so that’s the second ingredient needed to build a story’s engine. The final one is…
3. Reveal, Payoff, or Twist (EGP Element)
So the MECH is the concept, and within that, is a promise. The PROG is progress, exactly as Brandon Sanderson teaches it: Promise>Progress>Payoff. Which means, this final element is the Payoff, and to ensure we have a strong emotional finish, we want it to be an emotional gut punch. Something that wrenches a feeling out of our readers. The MECH itself won’t do it. It’s always how the MECH interacts with the characters, and pushes them through the PROG until the story BREAKS the character so that we can get the pay off.
That’s important. The MECH’s job – once the disruption event (inciting incident) occurs, is to put us on the path of PROG and keep grinding down the relationship b/w the characters breaks. That’s the “anti-theme limit”.
The disruption event in the stories are…
- CPP - After describing who they are, how they came about, and what they want… the A.I. starts sharing examples of lives it had nudged.
- 9NT - N/A
- LFL - Puts up a free library and books are taken. The inciting incident is the library is cleared out and she leaves a note for the thief.
- TDIS - Prot makes the first deal thinking it’s no big deal.
- LRLS - We find out NPW is moving. That’s our ticking time bomb. NPW is picking up dead dogs but not turning them to taxidermy. That’s our mystery. Prot is having weird symbolic dreams. That’s another plot thread. All three move together.
- OHHH - Daddy and 4yo girl with dead mom visit the open house.
- TCM - The boy follows the teacher to the king’s castle.
- WGE - The black teenager keeps borrowing the same shitty fantasy book over and over again.
- WAIE - White guy shows up and says “naw” to the vision quest.
- HDSM - Prot has a taste of something that’s too potent for her. Now she’s chasing the next big hit.
- MH - The Nameless Queen and King Lennert are informed that Volis wants to meet face-to-face.
OK, back to the EGPs though. In my original short story study, I found that there were a few recurring EGPs…
- A Halfman warns of consequences too late
- Underworld with own rules here, you missed it. Too bad, too sad.
- Bad thing that happened wasn’t X’s fault, it was Y
- Characters voice unspoken (or shared) secret to each other. An admission and acceptance.
- I am actually a monster and you knew, and still took the deal. Or didn’t know, and now you do and you’re trapped.
- You can’t really escape without paying the cost
- Fuck around and find out, found out.
- Secret reveals (affair, old promise/deal, real reason behind death/firing/breakup)
- The McGuffin was a deke from the real goal
After dissecting these eleven award winners, I found a few more. And I’m thinking that EGPs are much more varied. Or not. Maybe there’s a few categories I haven’t figured out yet. Let’s type them out to see if I see it.
- Multiple examples of wondrous deeds, but the most powerful one isn’t magic. It’s simply a human being human (resilient).
PMB (Powerful Magic Being)…
- Nudges stupid/stubborn human to drop mask, be vulnerable, and get what they need fails at helping an “other”, and feels bad
- Realizes they must give up X / pay the cost to help the human
- Realizes how broken the human is, how fragile but also how resilient they are, and does what they can to help
DWD - Deals with the Devil
- Prot finally realizes the high cost they’ve paid for their DWD and leaves. Or stays trapped.
- Prot finally accepts/admits it was their fault for making the DWD
- Prot realizes too late how expensive the costs of DWD/FAFO is (lose something huge)
- Prot pays a really high cost for their DWD.
REV - Releationship Reveal
- Prot finally drops guard, screw up the courage, and asks ____ out / for help / the truth / declares the truth / reveals secret
- Prot finally accepts that their important relationship is dying, dead, or leaving.
- Prot finally sees/realizes they were wrong the entire time and apologizes.
- Prot finally accepts they have no choice but to sacrifice themselves.
As I review the above two lists of EGPs, there are a few recurring patterns. A lot of short stories seem to rely on a few similar MECHs:
- PMB - Powerful Magic Being helps the human character(s) to varying degrees of success. (CPP, OHHH, WGE). Ultimately, the EGP comes from the humans dropping their mask and doing what they need. In the case of LFL, the roles are reversed, and the human prot realizes she can’t help the magical being who’s fighting a war. So the EGP here seems to be one of nudging humans to do the thing they need.
- DWD - Deal with the Devil. A lot of stories seem to fit this category (TDIS, TCM, WAIE, MH, Pop Squad). In TDIS and TCM, the characters didn’t know the cost (or all of the terms and conditions) and said yes, and realized by the end of the story how expensive their deals were. In WAIE, the prot is being tricked into a relationship in which they will eventually be exploited, and they realize the cost too late as well. In MH, they knew the cost of the magic, but not the cost of defending it, which led them to murder of a highborn noble from a neighboring country, no less. And in Pop Squad, it’s all of society’s deal to take Rejoo and be immortal, but forcing everyone to be sterilized. That cost isn’t thought through or neglected until the prot tries to figure out the culture he unknowingly was born into. In DWD stories. the emotional gut punch comes from either TRAGEDY where the protagonist realizes the hidden costs of their deal too late. Or a BITTERSWEET ending where they escape or make a run for it, or say no and commit suicide (Spiderhead). Or vaguely HOPEFUL where they change their perspective at least.
- FAFO - Closely related to DWD, in HDSM, there’s no “deal” made per se, but the main character is a born predator and makes compromises and/or neglects the good person in her life and ignores her mom’s advice to play it safe. The character is literally fucking around and finding out because they got a taste of a highly potent drugs and chases it. It’s a cautionary tale.
I mean, these stories, albeit exemplarary… given these eleven short stories are all award winners… it’s still ultimately a very small sample size. And they’re all SFF.
If I look at some other stories I’ve studied in depth… do I see the same types of MECHs?
- Escape from Spiderhead isn’t exactly a DWD. They’re kinda stuck/trapped there (it is prison, after all). But it has elements of a series of experiments that keeps raising stakes and lowering ethics until the prot can’t take it anymore, says no, and commits suicide.
- Pocketful of Dharma is a thriller. Wang Jun is given a job to deliver an item. He tries to do the job, but guy doesn’t show, so he tries ot sell it, then tries to find out what’s on it to sell it for more money, but gets caught up in a huge political intrigue. It’s a series of botched jobs in an attempt to get rid of the McGuffin for profit.
- The Fluted Girl has a lot of flashbacks to get the progress going. It’s a series of flashbacks to build up Lidia’s final decision to poison Belari. OR maybe it’s a series of exploitation/persecution where eating Stephen is the final straw for Lidia to act in vengeance.
- Calorie Man is a travelogue with a McGuffin.
Hmm… maybe these aren’t useful for the <5000 exercise. All of Bacigalupi’s stories are first, novelettes. But secondly, that gives him a lot of room to be a more immersive world and we’re travelling through them. We get tons of interesting tech, world building, and weird interesting ideas. But it’s not one simple MECH that drives the story. That seems to be what’s in fashion.
Plot Thread Condensation
So it seems like we have three key elements: MECH, PROG and EGP. I feel like that’s a very strong foundation for writing stories. We have multiple structures we can use here too. I feel like plot thread length is the only question I haven’t fully answered here. From what I can see, whether you dramatize in the first scene then explain the MECH in the second… or frontload everything in the first… you want to start as late as possible so there’s a good rush to the moment of decision and EGP.
- CPP - This one is so concept driven, and because the PROG is a series of examples… I don’t think we need to break this one down.
- 9NT - Also concept driven. No real timeline PROG.
- LFL - Library goes up, messages and gift exchanges happen, each with more stakes. Two days are summarized. Tuesday is the major theft. Two weeks. Then message. Another four days or so of exchanges. I don’t think TIME matters here in an urgent sense. It’s the curiosity and mystery of the stranger… along with the weird messages, gifts, and requests that keep going up in stakes that matter.
- TDIS - First 3 deals are childhood, and early-twenties. Then deal 4/5 is Simone plus breakup. Deal 6/7/8 is dealing with the gambling killer. Deal 9/10 is the aftermath. So in a way, first 3 scenes (1500 words) lays foundation for the MECH. 33% mark. Next 2 scenes (1000 words / 60% mark) introduces Simone stakes. Next 3 (1000 words /85% mark) is the big conflict coming to a head. Last 2 (500 words) is the sad denoument. It’s really four acts almost. The ALB is the pint of blood. It’s a huge cost to reverse the Simone deal.
- LRLS - Friend NPW asks questions, is doing something mysterious, and is moving away. It’s a month. NPW takes friend to see mom with alzheimer’s at nursing home. Scene 4 has a lot of reflection on the social dynamics. One more scene of weird questions (and dream). And scene 6 is goodbye. It starts with “at the end of the month”. The ALB is the dream (fire/forest), and the dog question all in the penultimate scene.
- OHHH - Open house. Family visits, shows secret room, girl gets hurt and they leave. 70% mark here. Hours pass. And dad comes back to get locket. ONE DAY, three scenes. ALB is girl getting hurt and the house is tempted to trap them.
- TCM - First scene is who the boy is, then tempt in court, then first spell. That’s 3 scenes at 1800 words. More than half the story. 60%. Last scene is 1350 words, which is 40% of the story. Setup, setup, setup, dramatized hell.
- WGE - S1, introduce black teen taking out same book. S2, explain the MECH. S3, show black teen with case worker. S4/S5, push books, and reveal a secret library. We’re at the 50% mark. S6 is 20%, so gets us to the 75% mark. Prot reflects on the one time she didn’t help and the pregnant girl committed suicide. Also explain the rules of the MECH if she did help. S7/S8 fears that she might lose him too if she doesn’t help. S9 does the thing that she’s not supposed to. S10 - boy escapes. ALB is S7/S8 after she reflects on losing the pregnant girl.
- WAIE - S1, VR concept and what it is. S2, dramatized, but white guy is disappointed. 33% mark. S3 - shows up at bar, S4/S5/S6 - talking. 70% mark. S7 - Gets sick, 75% mark. Rest of the S8/S9/S10 is him getting screwed over.
- HDSM - S1/S2 dramatize the kill. 20% mark. S3 show normal life 30%. TRANSITION S4 35%. S5 is the PAST, it gets us to 50ish%. S6 is the FUTURE, 70ish%. One more TRANSITION at S7. 75% mark. Party and repurcussions. ALB is prot moving in with Seo-Yun.
- MH - S1 lays all the rules down with a S2 sequel. About 25% mark. S3 to S5 is evade, deceive, fuck up. 55% mark. The final S6 is a mad action scene. ALB is Volis finding out by tricking the king.
What I’m learning here is there’s very little room to establish “STASIS”. The MECH is the stasis really. And the moment the DWD is made, or the dynamic character is introduced to the PMB (almost right away), if not the second scene… You’re off on the PROG. The PROG is the B-World I guess, but we’re not going to a new setting. We’re just setting things in motion. The DISRUPTION starts the PROG train. There’s not really a MIDPOINT mirror moment really. But the MIDPOINT does have something important revealed to carry us into the ALB/LOWPOINT and then final CLIMAX.
MIDPOINT REVEALS:
- LFL - Gold coin thanking for the defending castle book. Weirdness ramped up
- TDIS - First girlfriend. Simone. Makes her never forget prot.
- LRLS - Reflects on the nature of friendship vs. romantic relationships
- OHHH - Look at my secret room
- TCM - Here’s the magic word. You can cast magic now.
- WGE - Reveals the secret bookshelf of witch books you’re never supposed to lend out.
- WAIE - Prot agrees to talk to White Wolf outside of work.
- HDSM - Prot agrees to meet up with Seo-Yun
- MH - I know about the curse.
And what we really want is to get to the FINAL SCENE. The scene where the MECH<>PROT relationship finally crashes the PROG train. There’s an ANTI-THEME LIMIT BREAK. (ALB). It usually occurs at the 70-75% mark where you need to start wrapping things up.
First 30 to even up to 50% is establishing all the stakes, rules, costs. Next 30-40% is the PROG. And the final 25% is the major conflict.
Hmm… Still not sure I have this nailed down. Giving this more thought.