Good morning everyone. Today we are going to be looking at our Act one in a little more depth. We have our sentence from Act 1 that we came up with yesterday and today we are going to take the over arching sentence and break the Act into parts.
Six parts to be exact.
You will need your sentence from yesterday and your timeline for this. And remember, this is all about plot. I know, how people feel does affect their actions, but right now we are just dealing with their actions. Think of it as the bones. We need to take the bones from a pile in the box and assemble them before we can add muscle and flesh. We are assembling the skeleton.
So what are the parts of Act 1?
They are: the Start of the story, The issue with the everyday world, The inciting incident (where the world starts to tremble), choices, second thoughts, and a decision. Let’s go through them one by one. Again, we will use Bob as our example.
We start Act One with our Set Up line (from yesterday) for Bob, it was: Bob, is working at the Garrison Family Lumber Yard and his father-in Law does not like the changes he has made to the management. And so we begin the break out…
1: The start of the Story. This is simple enough, It is a simple statement of where you are starting your story. So ours is…
Bob is working for his Father-in-law as he had a heart attack and there was no one else available to keep the family business afloat.
And we Move to 2: The issue with the everyday world. Obviously not everything is hunky dory in this tale. Otherwise, what is the point of writing it? There is no point in writing a story where everyone is happy, no one has problems and they go on being happy forever and ever. No matter how rosy the picture seems, there has to be something amiss. It can be something your main character doesn’t know about and will be blind sided with later, or it can be internal and something they have wrestled with and/or suppressed for a long time. Whatever it is, here is where you state it. With Bob it is
Bob went to school to be a Marine Biologist but even though he takes small jobs in his field when he can, he feels that more and more of his life is becoming about the Lumber Yard.
Now we are up to the inciting incident. In some cases this can be explosive, sometimes literally, like a volcano or gas explosion. Sometimes it is a quieter, but no less powerful moment. More of a stitches starting to pull out of the fabric than a literal explosion. Bob is more of the quiet sort. Just go with what works with your story.
Bob had to change systems and processes when he started taking over because the business was heading for bankruptcy and now that they are in the black Henry insists on going back to the way things were and making things more miserable (actively miserable) for Bob at work.
Next, we move into the choices. Here is where your character is presented with an option. It could be the chance to start a quest and be a hero. It could be a new job opportunity or the chance to steal a million dollars. This isn’t to say our protagonist acts on the choice just yet. Just that one, or more, choices are presented.
His FiL hints (in several unsubtle ways) that he should quit giving him the opportunity of walking away.
Second thoughts is of course, second thoughts. Your hero is presented a quest and thinks of the hardships. Or sees the opportunity to steal a million dollars and worries about what would happen if they get caught. For Bob…
Bob realizes that if he leaves everything will go back to being run the way it was and the business will fail in a year or two.
Decision time. This is the part where your character makes a choice that will set up the rest of the story. This is the action that really gets the ball rolling into Act 2. Do they go on the quest or choose another path. Do they take part in the robbery or not? Sometimes this action can be decided for them. They may decide not to go on the quest and the mayor decides they will, sending armed goons to get him on the road. This could provide a way to write a different sort of hero. So think about your character and what they would do.
Bob decides he will train some of the others so they will understand the system and then once they can manage things competently he will pull himself out of the company so it doesn’t just collapse.
For our example I think this works. I want to give Bob a chance to see the escape from the company but still feel he needs to do his best by it as one by one everyone in the story betrays him. At least that is how I set up the example. I also want him to find out about the embezzlement and affair before he is actually fired so I would ramp up the arguments with the FiL until instead of making Bob quite he actually fires him. (I would add reasonings like severance packet or something to the firing vs quitting angle so there is a reason for the FiL to behave this way. But for now, I think our example works. I also put the break out of Act one deliberately on a Friday so once it is written there is some time to sit and think about it and decide if it is going to play out how you want it. I suggest doing the task and letting it sit over the weekend. Since Monday is MLK day I am taking it off and there will be no task for the day. Perhaps let the break out of Act 1 sit over the weekend and then on Monday take a few minutes and go over it and see if it still works for you. And while you are at it, have a lovely weekend.
Ten til Midnight 