A Different Plot Structure

Thanks for the encouragement.

>> This actually sounds like a particular form of draconic teaching-tale. The participants end up first in a situation where they have to learn something, then later in a challenge where their learning comes into question. Sometimes they learned the lesson and pass the challenge, sometimes they don't and end up paying consequences. <<

That sounds similar, yes.

>> It's also a common form of Trickster tale, and can be found as a storytelling structure in human faerie tales or folk tales where the protagonist engages in a prolonged travel adventure and accumulates companions or gifts to be used later when facing the primary antagonist. <<

I don't think that's as close, but the stair-step plot is well established.

>> Hmm. Not sure how seriously I take the original article, but I like the idea of the different plot structure you mention. <<

Yay!

>> When we were younger, we way more enjoyed romantic plots that involved the characters fighting their environment than fighting each other. <<

So do I.

>> Admittedly, part of that was really shitty ideas we had about conflict, but still, I think there was also a grain of truth to it. <<

That can happen. One reason I like this plot idea is to make stories that are challenging and interesting, but not full of negative examples of interpersonal relationships.

>> Spider Robinson sort of uses this plot in Callahan's Key. <<

Oh yes! Now that you mention it, I think this does fit the pattern.

That is an interesting structure.

>> I am trying to remember the exact names of the stories I've seen with this structure; I've read at least three to my daughter over the summer. <<

How awesome!

>> I'm pretty sure I've also seen episodes of children's TV that include this format, including Maurice Sendak's Little Bear animated show. <<

That's cool. Come to think of it, Sendak had a tendency toward uncommon plot structures. He did journey-stories quite well, and those often have the conflict up front followed by a long interlude and then the resolution.

>> Most of the social-skills stories just end at the end of the social skills lesson. I love the idea of taking them into another context. That is often so lacking! <<

I think it's what happens when people are more interested in presenting a lesson than telling a story. Or what happens when people are in a society that says "be good" but practices that so little that everyone has a hard time thinking up examples of how it actually works, and they don't have the imagination to go find a culture that's less fucked up and look at what they're doing. (That's my solution to writing about things I'm not terrific at myself.) It's too much tell and not enough show, and I can see how that would wind up with kids focused on the bad parts instead of the lesson.

I find it far more effective to get people deeply invested in some characters and maybe an unusual setting where they live, and then explore what kind of trouble those characters get into and how they work through the inevitable challenges. It also helps to have a mix of character types, because that always generates some friction as people want to do things in different ways.

No, we don't have television. But you're right, that does sound like a TV show I would at least want to watch the pilot of.

It's in the pronoun grid the same way gender is in English. I'm not sure if it's in the nouns and verbs; it may well not be, or not in all of them. So there are different words for ...

we (and you also)
we (but not you)
we (in accord with each other)
we (in opposition with each other)

it (inanimate, singular)
it (that unnatural perverted thing all alone by itself)

I had the grid written out at one point and there about about 16 pronouns in it.