Story Assembly II - another embroidery thread (post-apocalypse!)

writing
#44

Yup. we can go on to me. I nipped up what Greg had and put it in the signpost.

REQUIREMENT: Having Something’s Freedoms Progressively Restricted - Body autonomy is a thing of the past the fertile women and men with extremely low sperm counts, like five swimmers in a million, are forced to bed whether they “want to” or not. LOVE, CHOICE, FREEDOM, HONOR, ATTRACTION are deemed unimportant in the scheme of “saving” humanity. The same is true for Clay, and he is told do your duty or else.

Does that work?

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#45

Had a surprise trip to the zoo today so haven’t been able to chime in much. Mike, I’m good with leaving the SP1 as is for now and maybe coming back to make it more specific when more of the story is filled in.

Diane, who’s forcing the men and women together? Is it the women who are desperate to get pregnant now?

#46

I’m digging those Requirements, but just want to ask how you see it working in a Success/Good story? (I guess this is kind of related to Greg’s question) … Is it like, in order to achieve the Goal of getting pregnant NOW, some people have to progressively restrict their body autonomy and lose their freedoms around sex & relationships … yet somehow in the end they feel it was all worth it?

#47

Well it definitely affects success. Being okay, at some point, with a restricted body autonomy and getting someone or being gotten pregnant meets the success portion.

The good portion is not necessarily an outlook on the OS, but on the outcome for the main character. I’d say that depends on what Lawanda’s personal concern/goal is. Which in this case, is “coming up with a high concept”, if the audience is good with peeps getting preggers and the “high concept” we should have a win, win. Right?

Question though, Lawanda as a protagonist change character is originally against the impregnations (story goal), is she not? And Lena (Antag) and Tam guardian/IC would be for them?

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#48

good explanation. I wasn’t really thinking along these lines so i’m glad that’s how you explained it. I’ve seen plenty of movies that wanted the audience to have the idea that it was a success/good ending but that didn’t really feel like a success/good ending, or that left you feeling a little dirty for thinking it was success/good.

I can’t think of many examples off the top of my head, but it seems like maybe 1984 was kind of this way. I haven’t seen the movie and I have no idea what the actual storyform would be, but the book ends with the MC being brainwashed by Big Brother or whatever and he knows that they are going to come and kill him. And if I remember, he’s pretty okay with it. Again, i don’t know what the storyform is, but if the goal were Big Brother keeping everyone in line, then it’s Success, and the MC being okay with what’s happening to him is Good, but it leaves you with a sticky feeling.

Seems like a perfect technique for a post-apocalypse, apocalypse, or horror.

#49

No. Lawanda is Protagonist in the OS, so in her OS role she is for the Story Goal. The Change Resolve only has to do with her personal worldview in the Main Character throughline that she changes her perspective on (adopting the influence character Tam’s way of seeing things).

Lena (Antagonist) should be against the Story Goal from the beginning (at least, sometime in Act 1).

Tam as IC is challenging Lawanda’s perspective on her personal issues, and as Guardian in the OS is helping Lawanda towards the Goal. Often in a Change/Success these two things will seem to go hand-in-hand (like Obi-Wan getting Luke to change and trust in the Force so that the rebels can defeat the Death Star, or Morpheus getting Neo to believe he’s the One). But they don’t have to, it can be more tangential.

Now, note that the characters may not necessarily be aware of the Goal at the beginning, so being for or against it in early Acts may not be clear from the audience or character’s perspective, only from the Author’s.

I went on a tangent about something related to this but decided to post it as another thread:

Characters contradicting themselves between throughlines
#50

@mlucas, @Gregolas, @prish are y’all happy with that requirement if so Mike you’re up. If you think it doesn’t fit, let me know and I’ll adjust it.

I mean I could flip it, if you have a women are repressed and controlled society and men who are infertile have access to the fertile women for sex…we could change it so that those who had access no longer do. Would that be better for the success good ending?

#51

I’m just trying to work it out in my mind to see if it works here.

  1. We have a group of women who need to get pregnant now.
  2. Before this goal can be achieved, someone will have to lose body autonomy (the women from 1? Clay? both?)
  3. Lawanda is the protagonist and she will be the one trying to bring the goal about. She is also a change character, which means that she will stop disagreeing with someone and start giving consent.

So, just an example, don’t put any of this in the storyform, but IF she is for these women getting pregnant now and achieves that, the end should be success.

Her personal issues might be about forcing people to reproduce, or it might be about something else. IF her personal issues are about forcing others together, she could be the UNWILLING (tendency) protagonist who is trying to achieve the goal in the beginning, disagreeing with what is being done but going along with it only to change in the end by giving consent to a particular group to continue forcing people together.

I think that works. I imagine some German in 1930’s Germany being forced to run a concentration camp and find an efficient way to torture people. In the beginning he’s completely against it but does it because he will die if he doesn’t. But by the end of the war, he totally agrees with Hitler and what he is doing. (Sorry for the dark example, but we are dealing with a dark subject! ) I’ll leave it up to the others to decide if it works for them. I’m okay with Mike taking his turn unless he or Prish jump in with something else.

#52

Big Brother found out his fear and threatened to do that to him, and the only way to avoid it was to toss the girl into it instead, which he did and it put a clamp on any future with that relationship, so when they met at the end they just kind of grunted and moved on knowing that the other had had something similar done too, and neither caring much. Definitely mc change with big bro Ic imho

#53

Well, it sounds like a comedy…in real life these women would get things done efficiently, like the big family reunions and meals I went to in South Dakota farm country in the early 1950,s.

#54

I think the Requirements will work well. I was probably over-thinking; we have to remember that as long as we meet the underlying story point (Progress in this case – the freedoms are progressively restricted) Dramatica will ensure everything works out.

As for the MC throughline and what her change is about, I think that will work itself out as we address that throughline – again, the reason this whole Embroidery thing works is because we have a storyform backing us up.

Next story point…

First Story Driver (an Action): Lawanda discovers that the “powers that be” * know about a cryogenically frozen man who is believed to be both fertile and capable of surviving the revivification process. Aghast that they have been sitting on their hands about this, she is forced to befriend a doctor, Olivia. She never really liked Olivia but needs her help to revive the man (Clay).

* “Powers that be” is pretty vague, do we want to define the organization of this community yet? Is there a government, or rulers, or warlords, or ???

I originally was going to pick either Tam or Hawk as this doctor; @jassnip gave the idea of the Skeptic below.

(Note that “she is forced to befriend” is the decision/choice that the action forces. It’s not something she would have done without the Action [discovery] forcing it.)

#55

I like it. You can determine the powers that be now and who the Dr is, or you can LSD (:slight_smile:).

I don’t think so. Finding things like that and figuring out what to do with them are what i see as the point of an exercise like this.

#56

It’s fine the way it is as far as I’m concerned

#57

Ummm. Hmm. My mind went for the skeptic Olivia for the Dr. the whole it’ll never work thing…would seem a reason to not wake the chap up. @prish and @Gregolas, what say y’all?

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have a world building discussion about what kind of community this is.

So we have a few things to figure out off the bat.

The following concepts are from Holly Lisle’s Create a Culture Clinic.

What is their common ground, ie. they all survived the apocalypse (anything else?)
What philosophy do they share? (We can make humanity worthy of surviving? We’re the last of humans, let’s party? Science got us into this only God can get us out?)
What specific goals do they have as a group/community? Security, Food…the bottom of maslow’s,
What differences must they set aside in order to meet those goals?
What personal sacrifices of time, effort and resources are demanded of each member?
How do they work for the good of the group?
So it may survive and grow.

What resources are scarce? (Food? Water? Electricity? Men? Fertile women?)

To some extent…I think that’s partially what this story seems to be about. How do you recreate a culture/community after it/one has been destroyed.

#58

There would be a no compromise on something being more important than continuing the human race person, for sure. Then there is a let me make a buck person, for sure. Too few people for a religious dominance thing, unless they happened to have the same going into the story. Probably is a mixed bag of beliefs would make a more fun story.

Food, shelter, pets

There would have to be water or it would be too severe for a practical come back.

#59

Riffing off of @Gregolas’s Signpost 1 idea:

Because there are so few fertile women (and no fertile men), it makes sense that the people in charge would be Infertiles, at least mostly. Maybe the fertile women do have a special place in society – some people adore them, think they are special, touched by God or whatever. And the Infertiles in charge see that as a threat to their power so they keep Clay on ice (until some point in the story someone revives him).

I’m starting to feel like Antagonist Lena is a higher-up, maybe the leader of the community, and an Infertile.

Maybe there’s a small community of people that survived, and they’re subsisting on canned food etc. (like Walking Dead but without any zombies). They think they may be the only humans left in the world, but they’re not certain.

@jassnip, I’m fine with using the Skeptic Olivia for the Doctor, good way to bring in OS conflict there. Maybe her skepticism is what makes it necessary for Guardian Tam to step in and Help? An idea for later anyway.
I’ll edit my post.

#60

It’s been nipped up on placed in the Doc. @Prish, You seem to be up.

#61

Would this be OS Concern?

The infertiles want to use all the resources to strike out and look for other possible groups of human survivors, now, while the fertiles want to use the resources to begin repopulation with reproduction, now.

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#62

It’s a good start. Since the gist is “being focused on a particular groups concern” can you expand a bit? My questions are:

  1. The infertiles that want to look for other survivors-are they focused on their own immediate concerns, or the concerns of the possible survivors, and what specific concerns are they focused on?
    (Edit: I’m wondering if the infertiles are concerned with how they will use resources or how they will find survivors, or are they more concerned with finding survivors before fertiles find them or something?)
  2. The fertiles-I’m reading it as they are focused on their own concerns with reproduction. Is that correct?
  3. What problems does this cause. I’m extrapolating a bit, but it seems like your going for an argument over the use of resources. Is that correct? (2nd Edit: if there’s an argument over resources, that might be a particular groups concern, took me a minute to catch that).
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#63

I was thinking something simple like that. Do you want me to expand on it now?