Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
You're quite welcome Gregg. I agree with you that the Criminal Minds idea is seen in a lot of dramatic story lines. Probably because as you noted it does work so well. I'd think that every storyteller from the days of Aristotle and Homer onward has used it.
I think if you go by the idea of 4ths you can't go very wrong. By 25% he's sure there is a problem at 50% he thinks he's well on the way to solving it but then something goes wrong and he has a big setback. By 75% he's rapidly approaching the showdown with the villain and then of course comes the final fight and the aftermath or resolution. In screen plays they map it out as six key points. It's also known as Aristotle's Incline.
1. Opening
2. Plot Point One -25%
3. Midpoint - 50%
4. Plot Point Two - 75%
5. Catharsis - the final showdown
6. Wrap-up (where everything is right with the world again)
|
That's just the sort of thing I'm looking for. (I copied and pasted it.) One final thing is bugging me.
So my protagonist is little by little becoming aware of what the antagonist is planning (the antagonist's dastardly deed). At the very beginning my protagonist knows something is going but isn't sure what. At 10% she's getting a rough idea of what's going on, but it's still very uncertain. At 25% it's substantially clearer. Then say at 50% she finds she wasn't quite right about her ideas about it. She has to re-adjust her thinking but now she's really pretty much on to the dastardly deed. And say at 75% she knows for
absolute sure what the planned dastardly deed is. And then the rest of the book is her frantic rush to stop it from happening.
Does that sound about right?
See, I'm just so used to other books that say, 'get the inciting incident out in front of the readers RIGHT AWAY or you'll lose them.')
Thanks again.