Hello, writers, it’s good to be back! Many thanks to strawbale, clio2, bonetti, dconrad, and Leo Orionis for writing excellent WO! diaries and hosting over the last five weeks.
This was my first trip overseas in decades, and I was hoping to find places and ideas for stories and some space to figure out what’s not working in my current work-in-progress. And I did find these things, sometimes in unexpected places. One unexpected place was the South Kensington tube station.
The station has a history of its own. It also has an escalator, which I went up and down at least 16 times during my week in London. And the escalator wall was lined with adverts (so to speak) for The Book of Mormon. The musical, that is; not the actual Book of Mormon.
This stuck in my head enough that when I got home, I listened to the first few songs on youtube. And I was impressed by how quickly the premise of the story was set up, and how basic and effective it was.
Within the first three songs we see that a Callow Youth and his Stout Companion are about to set out on a quest. We also see that the Callow Youth needs to be taken down a peg or six. And that neither of the two adventurers really understands what they’re getting into.
And there you have it. We’re off. Adventure awaits, but that’s not what draws us in. What draws us in is that disaster awaits. We’re ready to see a train wreck, and we’re also ready to see that taking-down-a-peg happen.
I think the most helpful thing that happens to the story structure in this opening is that we meet a protagonist who has to change. Character growth is urgently needed, and it’s probably going to be painful (for the Callow Youth) and maybe also funny (for us).
This, I realized, is something that’s lacking in my current work-in-progress, now in its sixth revision. There’s no clear delineation of how the character changes. I think he does change, but it’s a bit fuzzy and blurred. I couldn’t tell you, right now, in a sentence, how he changes. It’s the sort of thing one might call “subtle” but what one would actually mean is “indiscernible”.
It’s not good enough.
So now I need to figure out where my protagonist is developmentally at the beginning, where he needs to get to at the end, and how he’s going to make each step of the way.
And to avoid fuzziness, I need to make a pretty clear statement at the beginning, telling the reader where he is, so that the reader will know what to expect and what to look for.
Tonight’s challenge:
A Callow Youth and his or her Stout Companion are about to set out on a quest. They’re in Honest Sal’s Quest Emporium, buying a few supplies; a duffel bag, a transom periscope, things of this sort. Show them buying what they need, and in the course of the scene, show us something about the Callow Youth that needs to change by the end of the story.
Don’t be subtle.
Try to limit yourself to 150 words.
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