Articles
AMANDA, THE PYTHON AND THE PET SHOP ROBBER
An elementary look at story structure
My 10-year-old niece has decided to
write a play, inspired by a section of her social studies book that used a
play to illustrate life in the early days of the American colonies. As I
am the resident author in our family, she came to me for advice. She had
an idea--she wanted to write about a pet shop. But that was all she knew.
It occurred to me that, sometimes, all that any writer knows about her
stories is that it's about a pet shop. Or a cowboy. Or a murder. We've all
started with that one little nugget of something--a place, a situation, a
character--and had to build the story from there.
But how do you explain that process to a 10-year-old?
I started with the obvious. "What happens at the pet shop?"
She thought a moment, and finally said, "A mean girl comes in and
opens all the cages, letting the animals out."
I asked her why the mean girl did that. We thought about it, and we
finally came up with the idea that she wasn't really mean. She just
thought animals shouldn't be in cages. She was an activist, and she opened
the cages as a protest. So, now we had our story problem. But we didn't
really have our who.
Whom does the story problem most affect? Every story needs a protagonist,
right? My niece, Ashlee, decided that the pet shop manager, Amanda, had
the most to lose. The activist released the pets on her watch. It was her
job to gather them back up.
So we had our who. And by virtue of our story problem, we also had a
what--our protagonist's goal. Clearly, Amanda wants to gather the animals
and return them to their cages. We even had a tacit "why"--it
was her job. But, as I explained to my niece, "it was her job"
isn't a compelling motivation for our purposes. Stories need to transcend
the mundanity of real life. Motivations need layers. Sure, a sense of
responsibility would lead Amanda to round up the animals. But a true
consequence of her actions would make the story seem more urgent to the
reader.
We decided that the store owner was scheduled to come in to inspect the
store that afternoon at four. The store had to be spotless, all the
animals accounted for, by the time he arrived. Now our motivation had a
strong sense of urgency and a personal consequence for Amanda if she was
unable to achieve her goal.
So, we had our who, our what, our why--Ashlee was ready to get to work.
But I explained that we weren't quite there--because the most important
element of all was missing.
The why not.
Conflict drives story. No matter how beautiful your prose, you're not a
storyteller until you can come up with believable, sustainable conflict.
I explained to Ashlee that if Amanda gathered up the animals in time to
impress the big boss, without anything standing in her way, we wouldn't
have much of a story. So something had to happen that threw a wrench in
her plans.
Ashlee's first suggestion was that Amanda was able to get all the animals
but one--a python. I thought that was a good start, but a more intense
complication might be to have TWO animals missing after all the others
were rounded up: the python...and an expensive angora rabbit, which just
happens to be the python's favorite kind of snack. Now, you had two
animals out, and one of those animals posed a grave danger to the other.
The plot thickens!
But is that really enough conflict to sustain a story? You're still
looking at an anecdote, not a story. You need an adversary. Someone or
something that poses a true obstacle to the protagonist achieving her
goal.
Because even if the python is hungry, and the rabbit is vulnerable, you're
still looking at a situation that's part of Amanda's goal, not a true
conflict.
There needs to be a reason why she might not be able to catch the python
and rabbit on time. Something that stands in her way.
"Something like a robbery!" my niece piped up.
A child after my own heart.
A robbery was a great idea. As the pet shop people are frantically trying
to catch the python before he catches the rabbit, in comes a robber,
holding up the store. The longer he holds them at gun point, the harder it
is to reach their goal. We finally have a true conflict.
So we had our story basics: Who, what, why, why not. We had a
complication--the python and rabbit sideshow--and we had a ticking clock.
But did we have a story?
Not completely. Story also involves characters--who they are, where
they've been, what they know, what they don't know. Story includes
exposition, dialogue, action, reaction. My niece and I talked about ways
we could use the complication to help resolve the conflict--perhaps upon
learning the store employees can't access the safe, the robber spots the
runaway rabbit and demands to take him as payment. And the second he grabs
the rabbit, the python, which was lurking in the ceiling tiles, drops down
on the robber in an attempt to grab the rabbit. The python ties up the
robber, saving the day. And the rabbit gets away with his life, quickly
caught by one of the employees and returned to his cage. The employees get
the store cleaned up in time for the big boss to arrive, and Amanda gets
her promotion and her raise.
Yay for happy endings!
I have no idea if my niece will ever get around to writing her play. But I
think she has a little clearer idea of the elements that go into telling a
story effectively. I have to admit, I learned a little something myself by
breaking story structure down to its most basic elements in a way even a
10-year-old--or a multi-published author--could see how everything fits
together.
Maybe the next time you're sitting at the computer, with just one little
speck of an idea rattling around in your brain, you'll think of Amanda,
the python and the pet store robber, and it'll be a little bit easier to
turn that snippet of an idea into a story.
Copyright © 2010 by Paula
Graves
