Solution of Unproven?

writing
#1

Okay any help/thoughts welcome.

Here’s my story:

The characters work on what is supposed to be a research farm in a future dystopian society. However, in reality they spend most of their time paying tribute to the local land baron (Consequence of Being—this is a Steadfast/Stop story, so the consequence should already be in place…right?).

Some characters complain to the leader of the State security forces, but he is unwilling to listen to them, because their farm isn’t really getting results, unlike the land baron. So the characters are very driven to prove that their research has value —in fact that it’s the only thing that can save the country from starvation. (OS Problem of Proven).

In the end, however, in order to stop working for the land owner (Goal of Doing), the characters have to find some kind of solution related to Unproven.

For the life of me, I can’t wrap my head around this solution. There aren’t a lot of stories in the database with a solution of Unproven, either. So what would a solution of “Unproven” look like?

I could flip the appreciation and have the problem be “Unproven” and the solution be that they actually prove the value of the farm. But that feels like a different story and it messes up the development of my MC so far (and Signposts!)

Any thoughts on productive ways to think about this? Much appreciated…

#2

Can I ask how Proven is specifically problematic for these characters?

When I think of Proven in the context you’ve given (these characters say their research is the only thing that can save the country) I think of a group of characters saying something like ‘we have to do what we know works, it’s the only chance’ and then someone else says ‘we don’t have time to do what we know works so we have to try something else. Even though I haven’t proven it, I have every reason to believe this other method will work ten times faster. So really that is our only hope.’

But that doesn’t really sound like it fits what you were going for.

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#3

Do you have any ideas about how the end of the story might play out? I don’t mean Dramatica ideas, just story ideas. It would probably work best if we tried to come up with stuff that aligns with your subconscious ideas.

e.g. Do you like the idea of them proving the value of the farm? Is that important you, or just a quick thing you threw out because of how it could fit the flipped Problem/Solution storyform?

Note: don’t feel bad. I was in the same boat as you until a few days ago – and I have half my story written! Basically, my storyform seems to be firing on all cylinders so I’m pretty confident in it now, and the OS Problem of Help is very clear. But of the illustrations I had for the Solution of Hinder:

  • One is awesome, and ties in with the Change IC’s embracing of Hinder too. But for the OS that moment is only one step, there’s a lot more to be done to resolve things.
  • One was kind of meh, it works but seems kind of trite. “Hinder the badguys”, blocking or delaying their incoming attack ship/fleet. It seemed too much in line with the Problem of overzealous Help to be really interesting. I wanted something more at an angle and intersecting, if that makes sense.

But the other day two things happened. First was actually your doing @Lakis, I meant to thank you for it. It was after thinking about your Crucial Element question and my other story where Hinder was the Symptom & MC Crucial, I remembered how much that story made me grok the coolness of Hinder.
The second thing was, I was finally digging into some of my backstory, trying to answer an outstanding question: why were the “goodguys” (Firelion Club) so set on keeping the galactic war secret from the rest of humanity? And I wrote this:

Maybe the original Firelions on Earth (first recruitment) established a Pact, that their agents on Earth would uphold: never to burden the people of Earth with the truth of the Unworlded War.

When I wrote that word burden I got a chill up my spine – I realized that was where the OS Solution was hidden, like buried treasure. I can still do the “hindering the badguys’ fleet” if it makes sense in the story, but the real OS Solution is for the goodguys to change their ways, go against their Pact and finally be willing to burden the rest of humanity with the truth.

So all that to say, I think it’s okay to start writing without a full understanding of your OS Solution, maybe pencil something in that isn’t quite perfect, and trust that something great will come.

(Sorry for the huge divergence into my own story. I thought it might be useful, but it’s pretty long and self-focused. I should probably turn this response into a blog post!)

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#4

They come up with some other way to make money since that is all the land owner is providing, that security leader wants, not curing…? Ie, their talents pooled together produce some spectacular show like Chicago that people come in hordes to watch and pay for… also that way they also bring other people into the area that can contribute to their knowledge of the science they’re working on the same time?

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#5

So I notice your Goal isn’t saving the country from starvation, but not working for the land baron. So maybe the problem should be about how it’s been proven that the land baron can keep them under his thumb. Maybe unproven could be as simple as taking the complaint to the next person in the chain of command, something no one has ever done before .

#6

“Proven” actually was an “aha!” moment when I saw it because it seemed to fit with the broader “world” problems of the series that this novel is set in. But as @Gregolas pointed out, the actual goal of this story was to stop working for the land baron.

My working idea to solve the story was to have to protagonist strike some sort of bargain with State Security to bring down the land baron - but in exchange, the characters would lose the farm. (This is a success/bad story). But as you say there’s something “meh” about that idea.

You should! It’s really helpful to see someone else working through the process working like that. I really love your idea – you hit on an illustration that make sense but would not at all be the first illustration I would think of for hinder.

Oh, those are very cool ideas! Alas, I think I need something darker/more thrillerish (though maybe there’s idea there hm…I’ll have to think about this…)

Actually this is pretty close. Though as you say, the story goal is to stop working for the land baron (with the national starvation issue as a broader, multi-book/world context). At least how I have it now, the reason they can’t get the land baron off their back is because they can’t really prove that what they’re doing is a more useful way to produce food than the neo-feudal/slavery model that the land barron is implementing. So they’re stuck playing this role – actually putting on a front of being this progressive research farm when they’re actually supporting a tyrannical system.

Something like this might be it (or close). Would that work as “unproven”? Maybe that’s my problem – I’m having a little trouble grokking the meaning of the term in this context. (It’s easier to see as a problem than as a solution…).

Thanks everyone!

#7

Why can’t they do this? what is stopping them?

Also, are you more interested in finding a storyform for your idea or finding an idea for the storyform you already have?

#8

That’s an excellent question. I guess the exercise for this book (that I’m going to call “post-Nano”) was to see how fast I could develop something from a mostly random storyform (I did make a couple of basic choices) inspired by gists (but not taking them literally). With some tweaks, the story I came up with fit in as a prequel to my series, which is perfect. So I do want to stay true to that world. But I do not want to get into the trap of endlessly tweaking the storyform – if possible I’d rather keep what I have now.

Well, the characters each have their own issues. The head scientist is a depressed alcoholic who used to be a star, but has lately lost faith that anything can save humanity. His research assistant is just trying to hold things together. The young woman/student (the IC) basically boycotts any work when she finds out how the land baron has been abusing his own underaged workers. And the MC is an army vet who was brought on as security. He wants to help but has no real expectations for anything. Etc.

The more I explain this, the more it makes me think that their problem might be unproven. So much for not tweaking the storyform.

#9

I think so, but my track record is…less than a hundred percent. :smile:
The fuller picture I had in mind would be like the highest in command has an open door policy. “Feel free to come to me with any problem you have and we’ll fix it together” he says with a warm smile. But in practice this guy is a jerk and a real hard ass so no one has ever gone to him with a problem because they’re all afraid he’s going to say “Why are you bringing this to me? Don’t you know I have more important things to do? Somebody make an example of this guy! Throw him off the roof!” So they know they have an invitation to take complaints, but no one has ever tested it.

Of course, that was just an example. Having your characters go to the hard ass boss, make a complaint, and then have him be like, Oh yeah, I can fix that for you, isn’t going to make for a very interesting ending.

I asked because " the reason they can’t get the land baron off their back is because they can’t really prove that what they’re doing is a more useful way to produce food" sounds, to me, less like a problem of Proven and more like a problem of Theory. Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe that’s the focus/symptom.

Anyway, If solving the starvation problem is part of a different storyform for the overall series, then the way I’d go with it might be something like this.
A group of scientists works a farm where they are treated like slaves by the land baron who takes a majority of the crops for himself as a tribute. The scientists want to stop working for the land baron but the leader of the State Security Forces won’t give them their own land because the land baron has proven himself to be effective in his position in the eyes of the SSF (Proven, here, is a problem for everyone because the Proven land baron keeps the scientists stuck under his authority and effectively prevents them from solving the country’s starvation problem). When MC, the army vet who works security, shows up and offers the scientists a way to take down the land baron, he seems to have a good plan (although it will mean giving up their plot of land), but no one is sure they can trust him. In order to take down the land baron and stop working for him, they must embrace the unproven soldiers plan to help.

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#10

I thought of that after I posted and plugged it in. I could go with that, I would just need to figure out what a Problem/Solution of Accurate/Non-Accurate would mean for my MC.

That’s… awesome!

Wow. I feel like you nailed it. The “they’re not sure if they can trust him” was already being worked into my synopses but for some reason I just hadn’t made the connection. I can see that the illustration for “unproven” might be a little different than what I had in mind for trust, but I think this works.

Thank you!

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#11

No, Dramatica nailed it. LOL
…thanks

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#12

Awesome work guys!

@Lakis, now that you can see how Proven & Unproven are working in the story, I think you’ll find your mind will align more and more to that storyform. Then it will start to become natural that anytime something regarding proof or having to prove something comes up, it will cause problems (but since everyone is driven in some way regarding Proven, they’ll keep doing it).

Good luck!

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#13

You don’t have to think of Unproven in regards to trust here. You can move it around. Say the vet works for SSF and it’s unproven that he’s really on the side of the scientists–as opposed to being on the side of SSF and is trying to entrap the scientists in a scheme to bring down the land owner–then the scientists don’t trust him because the vet(or at least his loyalties) remain unproven.

If you don’t like that, then maybe they’re fine with the vet but it’s the plan that’s unproven. In theory, it’s a good plan, but nobody has ever tried it so there’s no evidence it will work.

Or maybe the scientists have their own plan and know the vet is on their side and they trust him. The problem is, in order to execute the plan properly they need someone to do X and only a person who has trained and is skilled can really do X, someone like a scientist. But none of the scientists have access to the location where they need to do X. Only the vet has access to it. The good news is he’s studied X theoretically, but the bad news is he’s never trained in it practically, so his ability to do it remains unproven.

Really, the important thing isn’t that the scientists themselves embrace a solution of Unproven, but that the Storymind does. You should be able to lay the characteristic of Unproven on top of any part of the story you want as long as the internal logic of the story makes sense when using that to solve problems of Proven.

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#14

These are all awesome ideas.

That’s a great formulation I hadn’t thought of before. “In order to solve the overall problem of something or someone proven, in what way does the story embrace or reject something or someone unproven?” Or something like that.

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