Part Two: References

Adams, C. (2000), ‘What are the seven basic literary plots?’ The Straight Dope, November 24 2000, [ONLINE] http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2366/what-are-the-seven-basic-literary-plots

Bennett, A. (1988) The History Boys. London: Faber & Faber Limited

Christie, A. (1954) The Mousetrap. London: Samuel French Ltd.

Dodd, N E. (2011) The Writer’s Compass: From Story to Map to Finished Draft in 7 Stages. Cincinnati, Writer’s Digest Books.

Forster, EM. (1927) Aspects of the Novel, 6 Edition.  London: Penguin Group

Gramlich, C. (2013) Fiction Techniques 3: The Twist Ending, Kindle version, accessed May 2013 from Amazon.com

Leebron, F. & Levy A. (1995) Creating Fiction: A Writer’s Companion. Orlando; Harcourt Brace & Company

Longacre, Robert E. 2010. An ancient love poem: the Book of Canticles. SIL e-Books, 19. Dallas: SIL International. [ONLINE]http://www.sil.org/silepubs/abstract.asp?id=52526

McKee, R. (1997) Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.

Nagy, P. (1999) The Talented Mr Ripley; based on the Novel by Highsmith, P. (1955). London: Methuen Publishing Limited

Noble, W. & Noble, J. (2011)  Steal This Plot: A Writer’s Guide to Story Structure and Lagiarism, Kindle Edition, accessed May 2013 from Amazon.com

Polti, G (1921 ). In The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situation . Trans. by Lucille Ray. Ohio : James Knapp Reeve.

Salinger, J, D. (1951) The Catcher in the Rye. Bantam Edition (1985). Boston: Little, Brown & Company, Inc.

Scott-Bell, J. (2004). Plot and Structure: techniques and exercises for crafting a plot that grips the readers from start to finish. Cincinnati, F+W Publications, Inc.

Williams, T. (1957) A Streetcar Named Desire. London: Penguin Group

Zucker-Scharff, A. (2011) Story vs Narrative vs Plot, Hack Text [Online].  Avaliable at http://hacktext.com/2011/09/story-vs-narrative-vs-plot-1205/.  Accessed on 19 April 2013.

Assignment Two

Below is my final draft of my outline before submission to my tutor.  This is followed by my reflective account of part two of this course.  

Sally Wenton (19) is studying classical Music at the University of Surrey. As a child, Sally was home-schooled by her father George (62), a retired history lecturer from Bristol, and her mother Velma (54), a semi-retired flautist from Italy. Sally spent her much of her childhood in adult company, with very little access to friends or popular culture. At this time, Britain is in economic decline causing a widespread feeling of distrust in the government.  A new, charming Prime Minister, Geoffrey Soillen, has just been elected. 

During the summer holidays, Sally returns home to a remote hamlet in Cornwall to attend a piano recital.  Sally notices that her parents are absent from the recital, and after waiting for a lift from her father, who doesn’t arrive – she is forced to take a bus home. When she arrives home she find her parents, deeply Catholic, hanging from the rafters of their cottage.  In frenzy, Sally receives a strange thumping tone from her landline and runs to the police station, screaming for help on the way, and is ignored by bystanders with iPods.  The police station is entirely manned by young staff, acting in the same manner. Sally questions whether something is affecting the young people. She stumbles upon a meeting in the woods where hundreds of young people listen, transfixed, to Pop songs and speeches made by cloaked individuals. Sally witnesses a young woman being dragged to the stage and is noticed by the group who chase her through the woods. Sally hides behind a tree before being drugged and snatched by an unknown figure. 

Sally finds herself in an abandoned building where she meets Tara (38) and Blaine (21). Initially uncharacteristically angry, she is eventually ‘talked down’ by the two individuals who have also lost their families and are seeking answers.  We learn a little about their past as they explain that Pop music contains subliminal messaging, rendering the younger generation into a state of subservient trance, and causing the older generation to commit suicide.  They watch the emergency broadcast of the Prime Minister and Sally is shown the decoded ‘subliminal message’, unsure of why they remain unaffected.  They kidnap one of the young people, Brandon (14), a boy from Sally’s village.  Convincing themselves that the headphones and technology manufacturer ‘PEAR’ are behind the attacks, Blaine kills the boy when he discovers Brandon was behind his parents murder and begins to show signs that he is ‘infected’ (unnoticed by Sally and Tara).

Arriving at the heavily guarded PEAR HQ, they find a way into the building, only to find it entirely empty. Feelings between Blaine and Sally begin to appear.  Confused, they return to find their hideout surrounded by a violent mob of ‘youths’.  At this stage we see the uniformity start to appear with all ‘youths’ dressed identically. The three manage to escape and as they look for somewhere else to hide, the sense of widespread destruction dawns on the characters as they see bodies littering the streets, fires burning and hear Pop music pumping from every window. Each character begins to shows slightly uncharacteristic traits.   In an abandoned library they find a safe shelter and Sally begins obsessively researching PEAR.  Sally continues to question why she remains unaffected, who is controlling this change, and what for?  Sally and Blaine are left researching and spend the night together in the library.  The next morning Tara disappears, leading Sally to the realisation that Blaine has ‘turned’. A violent fight breaks out between Blaine and Sally, who shows a darker and more ferocious side, seemingly desperate to ‘restore’ the country.  Sally kills Blaine and returns to her research, seemingly unaffected by the trauma. 

Sally finds an old film and makes a link between the current Prime Minister and PEAR, uncovering the story that the PM was previously an unstable genetic scientist called Peter Ellison.   His theories of Audio Re-Animation, aimed at creating a uniform dictatorship and controlling the world population crisis, had been discounted by Geneva as ‘against human rights’, causing him to create a new identify in order to complete his work.

Outside No.10, as the PM delivers a speech to a group of people, Sally is armed and prepared to kill him.  She notices Tara amongst the crowd who smiles knowingly at her as she listens to the PM.  As Sally listens to a little of the speech, we move to the moment of realisation, in a sequence of projected montage events, when it dawns on Sally that all along, she has been ‘infected’, and her research and change in character traits are symptomatic of the infection.  As tears stream down her face, she sings the words of a Pop song, puts the gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger.

Whilst thoroughly enjoying the content of this course, I did find quite a number of the tasks in this section quite challenging and took me quite a while to fully understand and absorb the information.  The course material's introduction into narrative, story and plot seemed quite confusing and I spent a lot of time researching different texts, including E.M. Forster (1927) and Scott-Bell (2004) and online articles such as Zucker-Schraff (2011).  These various texts really helped me to gain a firm understanding of the difference between these three terms and need for each. 

The subsequent exercises, based around writing a simple story, gave me a good insight into how to successfully structure of a piece, and lead me to the works of Aristotle Poetics (335BC) and Freytag’s triangle.  The ideas of both of these men gave me both great inspiration and a tangible way to compare my own story to a proven, successful structure pattern as set out by Aristotle and further developed by Freytag.

I found the section on ‘obstacles’ particularly interesting and useful and used a childhood favourite film, Labyrinth (1986), as a vehicle to study the different forms of obstacles present throughout the story.  My findings were very interesting and I discovered that there was a range of barriers present including personal, physical, psychological and social.  I believe that it is this varied use of obstacles that helps to keep the film interesting whilst also giving the audience a deeper insight into the characters.    

As I began plotting my own outline, I spend some time looking at McKee’s (1997:215) chapter on complexity.  I found large portions of this book extremely helpful in terms of story structure, but McKee’s thoughts of conflict were particularly interesting, describing the use of the ‘inner conflict’, ‘personal conflict’ and ‘extra-personal conflict’.  As my story contains largely references to the emotional and psychological state of Sally, I aimed to ensure that these ideas of conflict were used to ensure a believable and relatable character. 

In my story outline, I wanted to explore the growing uniformity of youth through Pop Culture and secondly, following the death of Margaret Thatcher, I wanted to incorporate the themes of patriotism, possibly taking it a step further into the realms of xenophobia.  In addition to this, I want this piece to reflect the potential threat of the world’s growing population and the possible future threat of the effects of over-population.   

Whilst working on my outline I referred to a wide range of texts, which can be seen on my blog, in order to give me some tips and insight into creating a good set-up, inciting incident, progressive developments and the ending.   As advised by my tutor, I wrote a brief ‘CV’ for each of my main characters.  Although I was initially unsure of the outcome of this exercise, once I began writing I soon found that new facts and traits were being ‘unveiled’ from each character, which greatly influenced the composition of the final outline.  In addition, these brief ‘CV’s’ have given me countless ideas when working with my treatment. 

As I was still somewhat unsure of how to compose a successful plot, when I finished writing my plot, I compared the story against Freytag’s triangle (seen below) and used the guidance of Aristotle and Polti’s (1921) thirty-six dramatic situations to ensure that my story is relatable and interesting to the audience. 

Overall I feel as though my work throughout this section has really helped me to gain a greater understanding of a number of elements, including structure and outline.  There appears to be a wide range of conflicting information available based around the subject of a ‘good outline’. However, I found the writings of wide range of writers helped me to really understand the need for each element of a good story.  I must admit, I am still unsure of the content of my outline, but I am looking forward to receiving feedback from tutor on this.  

A comparison with Aristotle and Freytag

I wanted to revisit my earlier studies of Aristotle and Freytag in order to compare their ideas of ‘good storytelling’ with the developments of my own story. 

Aristotle

Firstly, I feel that this story fits well with Aristotle’s ideas surrounding a clear, yet seamlessly blending beginning, middle and end section.  In my story, the beginning is when we first learn about Sally and the ‘inciting incident’ occurs with her parents' suicide.  The set-up section continues to give the audience some idea of what is happening when Sally stumbles across the meeting in the woods.  The beginning of the story is abruptly ended by the abduction of Sally by a masked figure. 

The middle section then continues when Sally meets Tara and Blaine, and develops until Sally has committed the brutal murder of Blaine.  The end section begins by reflecting Sally’s sense of loneliness as she works alone, researching PEAR.  She then moves towards the steps of Number 10, where the story comes to a close. 

Freytag

Below is my story events plotted against the original ideas in Freytag’s Triangle:

Exercise: Revisit your Draft Outline

Exercise: Revisit Your Draft Outline

Having spent some time away from my original draft and research, I have now returned with fresh eyes, keen to perfect my outline for submission for Assignment Two.  Having looked at my outline again as a whole, I am not sure it quite captures some of the complexities of the story.  I will therefore attempt to ‘unpack’ the story and subtext and compare them with the thoughts of Aristotle, Freytag, Polti and McKee.  My tutor also suggested that I should write a ‘C.V.’ for each character to enable to me to gain a further insight into how to draw them into the story.  The C.V.s of the leading characters can be found below: 

Sally Wenton

Born in Cornwall, Sally was home-schooled by her parents and received very little access to people outside her family of three.   Although extremely nurturing and caring, Sally’s parents very extremely overprotective and their Catholic values lead them to believe the world is full of sin and that their daughter should be kept away from temptation.   Passionately taught music by her mother, Sally eventually gained her exams and left to study at the University of Surrey.  Having very little access to youth culture, Sally initially found the stark change of physical and social environment very challenging, but eventually settled into a quiet and studious group on campus.  Sally thrived away from her parents and had her first opportunities to experiment with alcohol, sex and drugs.  However, Sally’s reserved and old-fashioned nature always prevented her from ‘going too far’.  Sally’s independence from her parents gave her a sense of freedom and opportunity and returning home for the long holidays filled her with dread. 

Blaine Peters

Born in Cornwall, Blaine lived with his parents and attended the local schools.  Blaine’s family life was very difficult when his mother left, causing his father to turn to alcohol.  Left as the sole carer of his brother at the age of 11, and often subject drunken abuse, Blaine began to seek help for his father and after family therapy, Blaine’s father quit alcohol and bought a small dairy farm as a ‘second chance’

A low achiever in his class at secondary school, Blaine left school at 16 with two GCSEs and worked with on his father’s dairy farm.  Despite his low achievement at school, Blaine is actually very intelligent, takes great interest in politics and has a great passion for popular music, mixing a range of songs and DJ-ing at local nightclubs.

Tara Michaels

Born in Denmark, mother of two Tara was born into an Army family, following her father to various places around the world in his role as a high-ranking officer in the Forsvaret.  Tara was a very intelligent child and took a keen interest in science, often teaching herself many complex theories.  Exposed to many horrific sights as a child, Tara had become accustomed to war and had ‘hardened’ in order to accustom herself to her surroundings, always emerging herself in education.  At the age of 17, Tara joined the Royal Danish Navy working in the Logistics Support Unit and worked her way up to a position of Commanding Officer on foreign aid missions.  On a mission to Cambodia, Tara witnessed a series of brutal murders which had unlocked many memories of her childhood, causing her to have a breakdown aged 25.  Whilst rehabilitating in London, Tara met her future husband, Dr Alan Michaels.  Later they had two children, Clasis and Benvist and lived in a large house in suburbs of London. 

Peter Ellison

Born in London, to Lord and Lady Ellison, Peter was raised by a series of ‘staff’ rarely seeing his parents, except for the occasion obligatory sightings at parties and functions.  As a child, Peter proved to be a savant, and had mastered four languages, learnt to play seven orchestral instrument to an expert level and memorised over 100 medical and scientific journals by his 8^th birthday.  Following a private education at the UK’s top schools and universities, Peter graduated with a Master in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and was inundated with many lucrative job offers by the world top scientific organisations.  Peter began his own experimental sciences company, AdZishna Corporation, and began experimenting, in conjunction with military forces, the potential non-violent alternatives to weaponry, namely the experimentation in audio re-animation, causing all humans to be effectively frozen, but unharmed, upon hearing a given frequency progression.  At this time, studies into population growth across the world revealed some alarming realities about the future of mankind, sending Ellison into a downward spiral of depression.   Peter developed theories of mass genocide to ‘save the world’, causing the UN and the science community to distance themselves from him, deeming him a madman. 

Closing down all traces of AdZishna Corporation, Peter secretly kept his Audio-Reanimation research department open and developed an ‘off the grid’ space in which to continue his work.    Effectively disappearing from public eyes for 20 years, Peter reinvented his identity and took the name Geoffrey Soillen, beginning a career in the Conservative Party, working his way up the ranks until he was eventually elected as the Prime Minister in 2014.

Writing these brief descriptions of my main characters' pasts have really enabled me to further understand their personality, and therefore to reflect them within my story.  There are a number of stark contrasts within my characters, which I hope will provide a nice dramatic balance throughout the piece. 

Having gained this new information about my characters, I wanted to now explore the real basics of the overall theme, main story and underlying story.

The Overall Theme – Uniformity

I wanted the overall theme of this story to reflect the lack of individually in Pop Culture.  To highlight this I chose to narrow this down a little into the area of ‘pop’ music, especially focusing on the current ‘pop icons’ manufactured by large studios.  Of course, these studios are often run by the older generations, thus giving them the overall power to dictate what the younger generations trends and in turn, overall moral beliefs.  

For dramatic effect, my story goes to the extreme possibilities of this situation, but simplistically I want this piece to highlight “the power that pop music has over the influence of social and moral beliefs and the dangers of a society with no individuality.”

The Main Story

The main character of this story provides a stark contrast to the overall theme, being a young woman who is not influenced by popular culture due to her upbringing.  Her own individuality highlights those who do not let others influence their own opinions and beliefs. However, many characters that provide the contrast of uniformity largely outweigh her.

In its simplest terms the main story is:

Sally’s parents commit suicide and she discovers that people are being brainwashed by music, so she joins a resistance group who are searching for the truth.  Sally meets a young man called Blaine, for whom she develops feelings, which are eventually shared by Blaine.  After following a number of leads the resistance uncover the Prime Minister as the cause of the infection in a effort to control the population. Following a violent outburst within the resistance, Sally kills Blaine and, as the only remaining ‘resistor’, plans to assassinate the Prime Minister.  However, at the last second she realises that she has been infected throughout.

The Underlying Story

Peter Ellison is a former well-respected scientist who developed the Audio Re-Animation programme in the late 70’s in an effort to control the country's population growth.  Disregarded by the UN as ‘too dangerous’, Ellison’s career was left in pieces and he became a recluse, continuing his work into audio-reanimation.  Years later, using the powerful connections of his father, Lord Ellison, Peter reinvents his identity, and under the name Geoffrey Soillen, Ellison is elected as Prime Minister.  Having developed a way to use music to control people and cause fatal symptoms in some, Ellison begins manufacturing ‘PopBots’, who, masked as Pop stars, begin spreading the message of Ellison’s work.  Those who hear the tones of the re-animation software automatically become ‘infected’ and a brainwashing programme begins in the brain.  Within the older generation this causes fatalities, and the younger generation effectively become subservient.