Thinking last night about how perfectly constructed James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is, I’m like how he do that? Practice probably? And I can’t write anything save I’m given a lot of time, have to construct it perfectly, leave wide open gaps until pieces come to me that would be perfect, years after beginning the project and putting it on the backburner. In real life there are deadlines, and you have to construct your whatever under time constraint. So I made it a goal to outline, at least, a whole script of some kind of 45-minute-length dramatic work. That’s the only constraint. I am of course also going to build constraints for myself otherwise I’m just paralyzed with option.
- It’s going to be an episode of some sort of Other//half show.
- There’s going to be something juggled around in it, the way that Baby Groot gets juggled around and interacts with everyone throughout the movie.
- There’s going to be a rough three-act structure, and each of the acts is going to be based off of one of Georges Polti’s 36 dramatic situations. I’ve created an excel file that should randomize them for me. Maybe one day I’ll balance between the situations and the sub-situations (the way I’ve got it set up now is this: it chooses one of the 36 situations and then it chooses a subcategory of that situation, and then maybe a subsubsection if there are more than one. Perhaps it should choose from the subsubsections directly? No matter.) Here’s what popped out:
- Act 1: SELF-Sacrificing For An Ideal: 20D, The Ideal of 'Honor' Sacrificed to the Ideal of 'Faith' (Elements: the Hero; the Ideal; the 'Creditor' or the Person or Thing Sacrificed);
- Act 2: FALLING PREY To Cruelty Or Misfortune : 7A, The Innocent Made the Victim of Ambitious Intrigue (Elements: an Unfortunate; a Master or a Misfortune);
- Act 3: DISCOVERY Of The Dishonor Of A Loved One 27A(1), Discovery of a Mother’s Shame (Elements: the Discoverer; the Guilty One). Such situations end in situation 36, remorse (Elements: the Culprit; the Victim or the Sin; the Interrogator)
Going off of, what a three-act structure is, get a character up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him out of the tree, I’m not sure if each act corresponding to a dramatic situation would work, like, at all, but here’s how I’d imagine it would happen: honor is sacrificed for faith, which sets things in motion. Complications arise, ensue, are overcome when the innocent party (the protagonist, at the wrong end of “honor” which is being sacrificed) is made the victim of ambition in the intrigue. Resolution of plot when the protag discovers why they’re being targeted, because of the mother’s shame?? It’s coming out like a conspiracy thriller, so let’s structure it that way: it’s halfway through wherein the protagonist discovers the plot and commences to protag.
Maybe sacrificing honor would be what the mother figure does, obviously, which leaves the child to discover it. The drama would come from irony rather than suspense. She gives up honor in order to serve faith- that reminds me of the sci-fi standby of man’s hubris. The day is saved by giving into faith, after man’s reason overstretched. She gives up her honor by admitting her hubris, but the public’s opinion is against her- they think she’s turned radical for suddenly renouncing her position. Somehow that leads to her child getting targeted? Heck, let’s throw that juggle target in here. Track down, what’s the deal with the macguffin?, or no let’s not have that be the ball, I don’t know, but heck this isn’t really working.
What do the characters want? As long as the characters are believable none of this will seem too formulaic. Even though this is being based entirely off of formula.
Actually none of the elements are sacred, it’s all just a springboard. As intriguing it would be to have a story fit this formula exactly...
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