plot versus character by jeff gerke

Author:jeff gerke [gerke, jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, epub
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

THE DUEL

Let’s go all figurative for a moment. Your character has a knot that has caused him to live in a less than ideal way. The entire purpose of the story is to cause him to see that this old way is hurting him and that there is a new way he might try, and to make him choose. The inciting event is the first fusillade in the war that has been thrust upon him. Everything else between those first shots and the final showdown at the moment of truth is a duel between the old and new ways.

This duel is chiefly characterized by escalation. Hero wants to stay as he is. New way comes in and tries to knock him out of the old way. Hero fights back, digs in deeper to the old way, goes more extreme. That seems to solve the problem for the moment. But the new way strikes back, this time in a way that gets around his previous solution, so that won’t work anymore. Hero escalates, playing a card he hasn’t wanted to play. That gains him some relief, but it’s clear this challenger isn’t done either.

Sure enough, the new way comes back with an even stronger attack. Now he’s got to pull out all the stops to defeat it. He’s being pushed further and further into his dysfunction — all because he needs to protect himself from what he fears. The duel continues to escalate until our hero is broken. Either he’s exhausted his last resort and it has failed or he’s crossed a line that has shocked him. Finally, he understands what the new way is offering and how the old way is hurting him.

That’s his moment of truth, his opportunity to change. Before that, he was just trying to hold onto his previous solution. Along the way, he might’ve seen some things in the new way that were appealing, nevertheless he hasn’t let himself seriously consider it. But now he can. Now he must. And that is where you’ve been trying to get him from page 1.

None of it would’ve happened without the escalating arms race. If the inciting event had not been followed by an influx of enemy pressure, he could’ve gone back to his old way and tried to forget about that little interruption. The escalating duel is the vehicle that drives him from his dysfunction to his opportunity to change.

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