Retrograde Plotting

1. Retrograde Plotting Perry Glasser

2. What We’ll Learn • Plot requires conflict • Characters are revealed by struggle • Story Structure • Stories proceed by causality • Climax is the confrontation of opposites • Retrograde Plotting

3. Plot & Conflict • Character vs. Character • Batman vs. Joker; Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed • Character vs. Physical Environment • “To Build a Fire”; The Old Man and the Sea • Character vs. Social Environment • Beloved, by Toni Morrison • Character vs. Self • The “psychological” story • Should Anna Karenina leave her husband and children for her lover? Agonies of choice with an object both good and bad…drugs, alcohol, guilty pleasures, anyone?

4. Characters & Struggle • Nice people have nice lives - boring • Good characters in trouble – whatever shall they do? • Write about trouble and willful characters • We learn what our characters value and what they are like when they perform under stress • Victims make few decisions; the world decides for them and so they are less interesting characters.

5. Structure • Exposition • Social or personal stability is upset • Rising Action • Complications – character(s) struggle to regain stability • Wants • Fears • Needs • Climax • Confrontation of the plot’s opposites • Falling Action • Resolution • Stability is restored

6. Causality • Because stability is upset, characters move through time and space. • That’s called “motivation.” • Because they have distinct personalities and talents, characters struggle in specific ways. • That’s called “characterization” • Because the challenges they confront don’t immediately restore stability, the story moves forward. • That’s called “rising action” • Because they persevere in fulfilling their motives, they eventually confront whatever opposes them. • That’s called “climax” • Because, because, because….

7. Climax and Confrontation • The climax is exciting because it epitomizes the “fight.” • The climax is a necessary scene – sometimes called “payoff.” • The issue must be in doubt with the antagonists each capable of victory, though one can be much an underdog. • If the issue is not in doubt, no drama is possible: Godzilla crushes Bambi and Bambi is a victim.

8. Retrograde Plotting • The writer turns the story upside down. • If I want my protagonist to leave the earth as North America splits in two, what will I need to invent to make my artistic vision plausible? • My protagonist will need certain cognitive characteristics • My protagonist will need a means to leave the planet • My protagonist will need certain physical characteristics to achieve that goal • I will need to invent a reason for North America to split.

9. A Final Thought • Your imagination supplies form. • N.A. is to split in two because • Terrorists are planting atomic weapons along a fault line: can they be stopped? • An evil wizard is casting a mighty spell, and so we must leave by winged dragon for a better, purer place from which to fight Evil • An evil Emperor has constructed a Death Star and so we must leave by our rickety spacecraft to organize the intergalactic resistance. • Natural causes hastened by poor ecology. No one heeds our heroine, an independent rocket scientist…(to be played by Jodie Foster) • Natural causes, but humankind’s only hope is the mysterious widower, handsome Nobel prize-winning physicist, Lance Recluse, who needs to be summoned from his grief over the death of his wife. The fate of the world is in the hands of star-journalist, the young Belle Innocente as she journeys to his private laboratory on an isolated tropical island…