Spoilers! (Plot Twists, Redux)

To those of you who recognize the picture: you are cooler than fezzes. You'll probably also have a bigger handle on the concepts I'm about to approach, but that isn't to say that the rest of you won't be able to grasp it. So! I'm going to approach the topic of plot twists again; this time, I'm talking about "secrets"...

Basic Plots: Independence

It's technically a day late, but that's because this is Tuesday. I figured that it was only appropriate to make a post about Independence, seeing as that's what me and a bunch of my American friends are celebrating today. So, then, how does an Independence plot work?

Independence: Overthrowing the Paradigm
If you've read my Plotting and Paradigm articles, you'll find this concept familiar. If not, well, here it goes. Every rebellion takes place against a paradigm: "the way things are". Usually, this paradigm is a government, but sometimes it can be as abstract as a cultural state. The civil rights struggles of the 60s are a great example of an Independence story.

Plotting and Paradigm: Shaking It Up

The First Post

Well, I'm here, continuing the post from last week that I called "How to Open a Story". Mainly because I like doing series, and relating one idea to other parts...and because it's nice to have pieces on opening, continuing, and ending a story. So, this time around, I'm approaching the idea of the middle of a story from what I call the "paradigm" perspective.

Plotting and Paradigm: How to Open a Story

I came across an unusually insightful tidbit the other day, watching Casino Royale. The start of the movie begins with Bond and another agent, following a bomb-maker. Eventually, of course, we find out exactly what this bomb-maker had to do with the general overarching story, and how he connected in with the main villain of the film. So far, that seems like a standard quest hook, right? You find a minor character, they have leads to other things, and so on.

Wheels Within Wheels
But is it?

I realized something important about the design of the plot. Whenever Bond stumbled across an initial lead, it was because something went wrong. A courier got noticed who wasn't supposed to be, a drop was made sloppily, leaving room for him to track. If you think about it, the exact same thing happens in a great many Alfred Hitchcock films: the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time mucks an entire plan up.

In essence, it's all about an organization. Every plan, every conspiracy, every villain operates through structures that work just like machines. To accomplish Objective X, parts A, B, and C need to come about, and each has a specific mechanism that makes it tick. If the plan is a recurring one, like a Mafia's money laundering scheme, then the machinery is more or less regular.

And every machine has parts that can break down. For example...

Lou, a middleman in the crime syndicate, wants to be a bit bigger, so he's got a goal: to kick town with enough "enforcers" to start his own little syndicate in a smaller town. So, Objective: get thugs who are loyal and willing to move somewhere else. Part A: hire up thugs from the syndicate. Part B: work on the payrolls of the syndicate to mask the hirings. Part C: find somewhat capable schmucks to replace the missing thugs.

Part A means convincing some of the lesser toughs in the syndicate to jump town, toughs who won't squeal on Lou's plans. That entails a bit of research and discrete questioning, plus raising the funds to do that.

Part B means getting some accountants to mix around numbers, and to swap names. It also means putting those accountants in the right positions, or else stealing the syndicate's ledgers.

Part C means finding a few tough guys to get working for the syndicate, so that nobody will notice the missing gaps. This entails recruitment, and also careful switch-arounds.

Points of Entry
The players' characters can enter into the story at any point where the machinery might go wrong. You can easily shape up an entire plot, and then work with the players, to find out what type of characters they're playing. This should give you an idea of how they can stumble into the scheme, and get drawn into the rest of the story. Wherever something can go wrong, that's an avenue for the players to run into it. It should also be appropriate for the characters themselves.

Into this mix, we have Willy, a shopkeeper who's noticed that his cashier goes missing from time to time. Turns out that his cashier knows a bit more about numbers than might be guessed, and he's been siphoning some funds from Willy's store for an unknown purpose. This ties into Part B of the plan, obviously, as the cashier is one of the accountants that Lou needs for his plan to work.

You could just as easily have Riley, a social worker who notices that some of the homeless she regularly works with are not coming around any longer. If she continues to poke around and investigate, she might find that they've landed some dubious employment under Lou: Part C of his plan.

You could also have the Old Widow Yetz, who's concerned about the unruly new tenants who're staying in her boarding house. This also ties into Part C: these are the thugs being hired as replacements, housed until they can be shuffled into the syndicate's lineup.

There's a lot of different ways you can expose the players to the machine that's going on. From that point, whatever they do, disruption of the mechanism is sure to follow, and then the real fun begins, as the people behind it all try to piece it together...and to eliminate the obstructions. All it takes is the wrong people noticing the wrong thing...

Basic Plots: Revenge

Well, I figured that this topic may be of interest to some of you. In Fiction Writing class, we're going over basic plots, of which there are many. As it goes, stories can be analyzed as using combinations of these basic plots as a framework. Think of it as a toolbox: no one plot can handle every single story out there, but when you use the right ones for the job, and sometimes use the right ones together, you can drive the plot of the story in a compelling way.

Once you've got a primer on the basic plots, you can weave them into RPGs, making for better-paced and more compelling storytelling. When a plot is driving and engaging, you can get to the heart and soul of story much easier.

Revenge: Turning of the Gears
Most of you are probably familiar with the typical "quest" plot; it's straightforward and well-known enough that Joseph Campbell believed that it laid at the core of all human mythology. I personally don't hold with that view, for a few reasons, though I won't get into it here. I figure, though, that since the general "quest" plot is so well-known, I'd crank things into another common plot, which lends itself to all sorts of fun.

The revenge plot is perhaps exemplified best by Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, a lavish tale spun around the traps set by [SPOILER ALERT!]Edmond Dantes[/SPOILER ALERT!] (well, it's not a major spoiler...after all, it's the premise of the book) against the men who ruined his life. In a revenge plot, the lead is wronged, grows in strength (of some sort or another), and finally strikes at the ones who wronged him. Simple enough, right?

The Three Acts
Breaking things down a little further, we can use the "Three Acts" frame popularized by movies. The first Act, the beginning, introduces the situation and protagonist. The second Act, the middle, complicates things and makes them more intense, setting the stage for the end. The third Act, the conclusion, wraps everything up: this is where all the story comes to a head, and heads roll. The divisions between the acts can be marked by "doorways", which are specific events leading from one Act to the next. (The transition can easily be more subtle, but humans can be decidedly unsubtle in their perception, especially when it comes to the dramatic. A clear dividing-line is always nice.) The "first doorway" is that point where Act I becomes Act II, where the lead commits to action and moves the plot along. The "second doorway" is the point where all of the drama, action, and frustration of the Second Act leads the protagonist into position for the Third Act.

You still with me? That was a crash course in narrative terminology, so that you won't all be confused. Basically, as long as you know what the Three Acts are, sorta, and that the doorways are the dividers between them, you'll do fine. At this point, I explain what happens in each act...

First Act: We meet the protagonist. He should be sympathetic, or else we won't generally care about the wrong done to him. (Unless you're trying to be avant-garde and literary, this is the best approach to take. Experiment with it as you will.) Then, his life should become miserable. This suffering should come from the decision of someone else; there needs to be a villain who decides to make life miserable for the protagonist. Otherwise, the protagonist won't have anyone to take revenge on. So, we have the protagonist whose life is awful because of a villain. Make it worse. Then comes the First Doorway: when the protagonist decides to take revenge, instead of putting up with suffering.

Second Act: The protagonist plots. This is also where complications enter the story. Think of this act as the "training montage" of the story. The events which occur here are initiated by the protagonist, with the intention of getting advantage over the revenge targets, learning more about the targets, and laying plans for the decisive moment. These are often contrasted with the movements of the "enemy", tracking the opposition as they maneuver. (One potential complication here is the target discovering aspects of the revenge plot before the protagonist is ready.) The Second Doorway comes when all of the plotting leads to a point where the protagonist has the perfect opportunity to strike, or enough strength to crush the target with impunity. A more complicated way to move to Act III is events happening which force the protagonist to move the plan along, even if it's not ready.

Third Act: All the pieces come into play. Does the revenge plot succeed? Does the protagonist follow through with the revenge plot? How much pain and suffering fall out by the end? A revenge story can have a few different endings. The plan may succeed, though the protagonist might not be satisfied. The plan may fail, but perhaps it's because the protagonist wasn't willing to follow through. At any rate, tie up the loose ends, and you have the revenge plot completed.

The Sum-Up
The revenge plot is a compelling story, because it plays into the human sense of justice. When the protagonist is wronged in a sudden, violent way, it warps the morality of the world, and revenge can be seen as merely restoring the world to its previous state. If you roughly hit the Acts like above, you can branch out and put your own twists on the story. The best plots know their basis, and then play with it. It's plot alchemy, of sorts. And hopefully it works for you. Hang around, because I'll be coming back to this series...