Focus on PLOT

1. Elements of Fiction Focus onPLOT

2. EnhancingYour Understanding 1 3 2 Set the Stage Find Some Resolution Develop the Conflict Make a path, deviate, return, discover.

3. 1 Set The Stage When, Where, and Who

5. WHEN “If you nurture your mind, body, and spirit, your time will expand. You will gain a new perspective that will allow you to accomplish much more.” Brian Koslow

6. WHERE “The set is absolutely amazing and unbelievable. The set places the choir in the courtyard in front of a temple ruin forcing us to become part of the drama.” Bill Downs

7. MOOD “Of all the ruinous and desolate places my uncle had ever beheld, this was the most so. It looked as if it had once been a large house of entertainment; but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. There was a huge fire-place in the room into which they walked, and the chimney was blackened with smoke; but no warm blaze lighted it up now. The white feathery dust of burnt wood was still strewed over the hearth, but the stove was cold, and all was dark and gloomy.” Charles Dickens

8. We left the home place behind, mile by slow mile, heading for the mountains, across the prairie where the wind blew forever. At first there were four of us with one horse wagon and its skimpy load. Pa and I walked, because I was a big boy of eleven. My two little sisters romped and trotted until they got tired and had to be boosted up to the wagon bed. That was no covered Conestoga, like Pa’s folks came West in, but just an old farm wagon, drawn by one weary horse, creaking and rumbling westward to the mountains, toward the little woods town where Pa thought he had an old uncle who owned a little two-bit sawmill.

9. Setting the Stage INCITING INCIDENT

10. Inciting INCIDENT

11. 2 Develop The Conflict Give ‘em something to fight over!

12. In the Middle “Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts.”Sandra Bullock

14. “Fiction is love and hate and agreement and and common adventure.” A. B. Guthrie Jr.

15. Conflict Exists Inside and Outside

16. Man vs. SELF “The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.” Garth Brooks

17. Man vs. MAN “There are terrible conflicts that arise out of misunderstandings and people just think someone else is doing something terrible when they're not, and we know how to fix that.” Guy Burgess

18. Man vs. SOCIETY “In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary” Kathleen Norris

19. Man vs. NATURE “The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear” Ralph Waldo Emerson

20. Man vs. SUPERNATURAL “It's a fabulous story . . . It's got these supernatural elements as well. It's one man's fight against a man-shaped monster and against his mother who is bestial, and then against a dragon.” Andy Orchard

21. Rising Action, Increasing Tension “Whatever course you decide upon, there are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”Ralph Waldo Emerson

22. SUSPENSE Darkness. Dust. The musty odor of old furniture and draperies. The stifling inability to draw a free breath. The cold, paralyzing terror. And the furtive steps drawing nearer and nearer! --The Mystery of the Empty Room (Augusta Huiell Seaman)

23. FORESHADOWING “…but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward.” H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

24. FLASHBACK I walked out of the room, and saw the portrait of my mother in the otherwise empty hallway. I remembered, years ago, my father would stare mindlessly at it for minutes, sometimes hours, before a bird chirping would awaken him from his trance. Without warning, a bird chirped, and I immediately tore my eyes away from that portrait.

25. We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a Samuel Goldwyn

27. The CLIMAX of the Mountain

28. 3 Find Some Resolution Happily Ever After

29. “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”Gilda Radner

31. RESOLUTION “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” Orson Welles

32. DENOUEMENT “I knew I wanted the ending of the story to be poignant and heart-felt. If I couldn't do it, I didn't want to waste my time writing the rest of the novel, knowing it would collapse at the end.” Nicholas Sparks

33. Want to jump to a bookmark in your video? Hover over the video and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Did we mention you can add bookmarks, includefades, andtrimyour videos now? Fountain Geyser

34. FOCUS ON FICTION What’s Your Message?