Adding complexity

In the last post

I introduced the idea of the five story stages, and the four threads of a story which all share a theme and tell a story which proves the theme in their own way.  In this post I will show you that each thread has its own little timeline, and the theme and story in each one goes though the five stages.


Look at Star Wars Again

If we take one of the threads of Star Wars, say the Personal Thread which tells the story of Luke Skywalker's journey, we can see that it goes through the five stages:

1. The way it's been - Luke is stuck on the farm, his uncle won't release him
2. The strange event - Luke meets Ben Kenobi, and his aunt and uncle are killed
3. Trying and failing - Luke fails in the Cantina, fails at lightsaber, fails to rescue Leia
4. The crisis point - Luke is unable to prevent Ben being killed by Darth Vader, despairs
5. Final resolution - Luke uses what Ben has taught him, to strike back at the Empire

Let's take another thread, say the Ensemble Thread

1. The way it's been - None of them trust each other, they are from differing backgrounds
2. The strange event - The Millennium Falcon escapes, new respect on all sides
3. Trying and failing - After rescuing Leia, they fail to escape properly
4. The crisis point - Ben is killed, this draws the remaining ensemble together, Han leaves
5. Final resolution - Han reneges and returns to help his new friends

So it seems that every thread has a little timeline of it's own, sometimes the inflection points happen at the same time - which are going to be the major crisis points of the story, and sometimes they move on at differing points - for example, the strange event for Luke's personal thread is before the strange event for the Ensemble thread.

I think it's important when writing timelines from scratch, to make only some of the points concur between threads, as this spreads out the progression of the stories over the chapters.


So what about Fiend?

So if we're going to apply all this to Fiend, where do we start?  Well I suppose we need to look at the threads, and choose a theme we can reflect in each thread.  So what is the theme of Fiend that we want to project over all our threads?

As we've said many times, the theme of Jake's story is not to allow the past to inhibit your potential in future.  His problem is that he's too afraid to allow himself free reign so has become stunted emotionally.  I'm not sure this theme can be expressed in a single word (even though Dramatica tries!) but it is to do with Self-Forgiveness. Jake needs to forgive himself.  The past is the past.

So now we can write the Personal thread and incorporate this.

1. Personal
Jake killed someone in the past, because of this he continually represses his emotions and has become emotionally closed.  This has wreaked havoc with his life, both romantic and in general.  He worked for his idiotic brother in a small criminal gang.  Jake inadvertently releases a charismatic yet chaotic man who takes over the gang and leads them into a spiral of violence.  Jake is unable to confront him, or convince his brother to step back.  When his brother is killed, he despairs but finds out a secret from the past which allows him to open up. With new-found freedom he can defeat Fiend.

Well that's not bad.  It fully expresses the theme of Self-Forgiveness in the most personal terms.  Now we need to look at the other threads and try to apply the tricky idea of self-forgiveness to them. 

2. Interpersonal
Now Jake and Fiend are apparently unconnected at the start of the story, so it would seem faintly ridiculous to try to apply the idea of self-forgiveness to the relationship between them.  But let's look a bit further and get creative.  If we expand the idea of self-forgiveness to encapsulate "setting aside the mistakes of the past in order to move on" we can see Jake releasing Fiend into the world as a mistake.  Fiend begged him not to release him, but he did it anyway.  This is the Original Sin of the relationship story.  The remainder of the story is the consequences of that mistake, and both Jake's journey from passive to active and also Fiend's journey from weak to strong. 

That's not bad either.  The thematic idea of a past wrong having to be righted is reflected in the release story of Fiend and Jake and their subsequent squaring up.

3. Ensemble
There is a group of people around Jake, his brother William, his current girlfriend Elaine, his previous Katie, and the further members of the gang such as Peter and Thomas.  In order for the theme to be reflected in this thread, these people must have been damaged in some way by an event in the past, an event which has coloured the way they behave towards each other now.  I haven't worked it out but I believe it has something to do with the circumstances around the killing that Jake did as a youngster.  They are trying to protect him from something, and there is not universal agreement between them about this. 

This part needs more work, so we'll return to this.

4. Historical
This thread is about the society in general, and in the case of Fiend this would be the community and the crime society that the story opens up in.  I think it's obvious that the historical 'wrong' which needs to be righted is around what happened the last time Fiend was out in the open.  That was settled in such a manner to provoke a group shame amongst the community.  This shame needs to be exposed and excised in the resolution of this incarnation of Fiend.

This also needs woven in better so let's return to this later.


New Stuff

Already this approach has already suggested new material that I need to create.  This is what I had hoped Dramatica would do, but didn't.  The plot and chronology I'd already worked out about Jake and Fiend which happens in the present tense of the story, I had worked out already in greatest detail.  But by reflecting the theme upwards towards the ensemble and historical themes, I can see where I need to create a whole raft of background that I haven't even seen was missing up until now.

Summary: everybody needs a wrong of the past to be forgiven and let go, in order to move on

Jake: needs to forgive himself about the killing, to allow him to express his emotions again.
Jake & Fiend: they need to repair the damage caused by Jake's original release of Fiend
Friends: they need to decide to tell Jake what really happened to order to heal those rifts
Society: need to expose and right the wrong done when Fiend was defeated the last time

I really should work now on the factual chronology in order to beef out the Ensemble and Historical threads.


Summary

I can already see how this thread approach is working better as a development tool for me.  By making themes resonate upwards, the theme of the overall story is becoming clear, and it will be proved in four ways -  by the end the story will have concluded each of these threads in a satisfying way, and the reader will glimpse or intuit overall theme.  I hope!