Setting, Situation, Scene, Story (Part Two)

Today’s entry will make more sense if you’ve read Part One, which should still be available for review. Fair warning, and all.

So we have lots of samples of settings and situations, and even the start of a scene, but no story. But these are elements used in stories – so can we make a viable story from them?

I’d start with the scene because it has a pair of characters in it. Stories always involve characters. Always. Sure, I could tell the story of Olympic National Park, and I could tell it with conflict and excitement, but only if I can make you care about the park.  Make its successes and failures important to you.  At which point, it is a character. Never said they had to be human.

Our two characters from the previous blog are Frank and Angie. They’ve only just met, but she is madly in love with him. Awkward.  I need a place (possibly more, but let’s start with one) for their scene, and ultimately their story, to take place. Looking at the various settings I proposed before, I think I’ll take the weird office with the clones in the Mail Room.

I note that the reception staff are telepathic. So if I make Angie a receptionist, it starts to explain her falling for Frank before being introduced. But I also want something else going on, so they can explore their one-sided relationship in the midst of dealing with the crisis du jour.  From my list of situations, I choose the intriguing Charlie Brown lunch box on Mars.

But that’s a mystery, not a conflict. I need something that involves the characters and impels them into action.

How’s this? The weird office – let’s call it Mad Science Inc. – found the lunch box while doing commission work for NASA, processing Mars Rover data. Unfortunately, the lunch box got there due to an illegal and dangerous time/space distortion experiment conducted by, you guessed it, Mad Science Inc.

Frank is a low pay scale data guy who notices that the info being fed to NASA has been tinkered with. He gets to discover what’s going on, become involved in a cover up, and make a moral choice whether to risk his job by blowing the whistle (or maybe risk his life – there’s some strange and scary stuff behind the doors of our Mad Science company), and he gets to do it all while being trailed by a love-sick, telepathic receptionist.

That’s better. Conflict, character, moral decisions, action. Much better. Still not a story, though. We’ve got all the pieces, we’ve started assembling the puzzle, what’s still missing?

Join us next time for part three, the conclusion.