Relationship Throughline snapshot moments

analysis
#1

Hi, everyone!

If you saw my Steadfast Circle post, you’ll recall I mentioned wanting to try and craft a Relationship Throughline circle. (As well as an Overall Throughline circle, but that one’s already done–and it’s reversible!) And if you saw my post about creating story premises, you’ll also have seen that I admit a blind spot towards Relationship Throughlines. They’re no doubt the squirreliest of the four, and the most variable.

Here’s where you come in. I’d like for you to share some of your favorite, most resonant Relationship Throughline moments in stories you’ve enjoyed. If you could also give me an approximate location of where it takes place, whether via percent or by Act, that would also be helpful. At best, this will give me the material I need to devise the circle I’m working on; at worst, we get to share some great RS moments, and it might help us understand the main beats of the RS Throughline a little better.

Like, here’s an example from one of my favorite movies, WALL-E. Some of the major Relationship moments in the movie are:

  1. WALL-E and EVE (hereon Wally and Eve, because I’m lazy) meet for the first time. Wally falls hopelessly in love. (Basically the start of Act 1)
  2. Wally introduces Eve to his home, showing her his tape of Hello, Dolly! (Midway through Act 1)
  3. The montage of Wally defending and “romancing” Eve’s closed form. (Act 1 to early Act 2)
  4. Wally’s antics get Eve in trouble with her superiors. (Most of Act 2)
  5. For a moment, Eve believes Wally is destroyed. Afterwards, they dance outside. (Act 2 to Act 3)
  6. Wally continues to follow and defend Eve, even after she brushes him off. (Act 3)
  7. Eve watches the tape of #3, beginning to understand Wally’s love for her… and maybe reciprocating it? (Act 3)
  8. Wally suffers multiple injuries in attempting to protect her and the plant. (Act 3 to Act 4)
  9. Eve resuscitates Wally with a “kiss,” affirming her love for him. (Basically the end of Act 4)

You don’t have to list all of them like I did, just your favorites.

EDIT: There are a few particular arcs I’d like to look at, so if you have examples of these, I’d be super grateful.

  1. Non-romantic Relationships.
  2. Adversarial Relationships vs. non-adversarial Relationships.
  3. Relationships in which the characters already know each other before the Throughline starts.
  4. Imbalanced Relationships, e.g. a Relationship where the Main Character and Influence Character never personally meet.
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#2

WARNING SPOILERS for The Lives of Others

The absolute best example of this has got to be The Lives of Others, one of my all-time favorite films. The final sequence has them piecing together together what their relationship really was (RS Signpost 4 of Conceptualizing, with a strong Conceiving flavour as that’s the overarching RS Concern). You can watch the entire 4-minute sequence on Youtube here. The strong RS moments from this are:

  • Dreyman, the writer IC, figures out that the Stasi Agent in charge of his surveillance (MC Wiesler) was actually protecting him. You can literally feel their connection in the timestamped logs Dreyman reads, months after the fact.
  • Dreyman goes to meet Wiesler, to talk to him, but something keeps him away. You can almost feel the connection that is their relationship keeping them apart in this scene; they’re not meant to meet.
  • 2 years later, Wiesler sees Dreyman’s recently published novel displayed at a bookstore and finds that it’s dedicated to him (actually his codename HGW XX/7) “in gratitude”.

A perfect ending to a perfect film.

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#3

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

I just literally screamed out loud. I hope I didn’t wake up my wife!

(Warning MORE SPOILERS FOR The Lives of Others)

Honest to God, I wrote the above post with no knowledge of The Lives Of Others’ PSR. But after writing those three bullets, I wondered if the RS Signpost 4 PSR Items formed the usual Z-pattern and if they’d fit what I’d wrote. So I plugged the official storyform into Dramatica…

And the middle two PSR Variations are Attraction and Repulsion! I mean, seriously, I wrote:

How much more perfectly can you fit Repulsion in a relationship without knowing? Meanwhile, Work fits the first one with the work he does to get the logs and go through them and sees that there was this whole relationship he had with this other person whose job was to watch him. And the Attraction is felt at the end of that scene once he realizes what happened, he feels a pull to meet the Stasi agent who saved him. Finally, Attempt is so, so cool – the book dedication is an attempt to reach out and honour this relationship that exists between two people who’ve never met, an attempt to touch the other’s life…

Man, Dramatica is so awesome sometimes. (@jhull I’m sure you’ll like this…)

4 Likes
#4

Would the scene where Sam says to Frodo that he can’t carry the ring, but he can carry him be an RS moment? I imagine it’s at least partially, or even mostly OS, but seems like it could be RS too.

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#5

Sure, that works! I don’t recall what the Relationship Throughline in Lord of the Rings is about, but I imagine that scene in particular is pretty important to their dynamic.

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#6

And I’m thinking maybe the ‘get busy livin or get busy dyin’ scene in The Shawshank Redemption.