{"id":20499,"date":"2025-02-21T20:18:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T01:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20499"},"modified":"2025-02-21T20:18:27","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T01:18:27","slug":"plotting-problem-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20499","title":{"rendered":"Plotting problem #2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Princess Bride (9\/12) Movie CLIP - If We Only Had a Wheelbarrow (1987) HD\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XeO3jMZphhs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A story is told of Wild Bill Hickok <\/strong>in his later, declining years. Wild Bill had given up on law enforcement after accidentally killing a friend while stopping a riot (it\u2019s believed his eyesight was failing). He\u2019d tried stage acting with Buffalo Bill Cody, but couldn\u2019t bear it. He was subsisting as a professional gambler, spending his days in saloons and (occasionally) his nights in jail for vagrancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Admirers surrounded him in the saloons, and he\u2019d regale them with stories. Tall tales about his days as an Indian scout. He\u2019d describe a situation where he was alone on a hill, wounded, his horse dead, nearly out of ammunition, surrounded by thousands of Indians charging on horseback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat did you do, Wild Bill?\u201d a wide-eyed audience member would ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI got killed,\u201d he would answer. And everyone would laugh and somebody would buy him a drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This illustrates <strong>Problem Number Two<\/strong> in story plotting, in my personal sequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think it was last week that I wrote here about plotting problems. I referred to a difficulty I&#8217;ve mentioned often \u2013 that of the author\u2019s (and by t<em>he author\u2019s<\/em> I mean mainly <em>my<\/em>) difficulty in testing our characters to the extremes. This is Problem Number One.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since then, Plotting Problem Number Two has occurred to me. It\u2019s the problem Wild Bill solved with his joke:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>You have succeeded in inventing a horrible problem for your hero to solve.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Now, how do you resolve it?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let me make a revelation \u2013 writers are not necessarily more resourceful in real life than the average member of the population. Indeed, I\u2019m not sure most of us are in the upper percentile. If I wanted a non-literary problem solved in real life, I think an author would be one of my last choices for a resource person. I suspect a successful businessman might be optimal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In general, however, as storytellers, what we do is cheat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fortunately, we have the advantage of being in control of time, in our small created worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI could get my hero out of this corner if he had a Swiss Army Knife,\u201d I decide after pondering the problem for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As the almighty author of the story, I can then go back a few pages and insert a scene to provide him with that Swiss Army Knife. I might show him putting on his coat and feeling its weight in his pocket. Perhaps he thinks then that he never uses the thing and it\u2019s wearing on the fabric. He ponders unburdening himself of it, but he\u2019s in a hurry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Voila! He now has the knife when he needs it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(The brilliant William Goldman has a laugh at such a situation in the clip from \u201cThe Princess Bride\u201d above.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But my Swiss Army Knife is a very simple example. Not very creative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The sneakier you can be, the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Suppose he doesn\u2019t need a pocket knife. Suppose he finds out he\u2019s been poisoned. He tries to induce vomiting with a finger down his throat, but he can\u2019t make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ah, but you, the sneaky author, can go back and add a scene in the first part of the story where the hero\u2019s landlady forces a Tupperware bowl of her onion soup on him. He throws it into the back seat of his car, meaning to discard it. Because she always does this, and he <em>hates <\/em>onion soup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But now he crawls to his car, finds the container of soup, and slurps it down. And it tastes so disgusting to him that he\u2019s enabled to empty his stomach, thus saving his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I remember a story I read years ago. I think it was one of Bill Pronzini\u2019s <em>Nameless Detective<\/em> stories. A couple characters in this particular story comment about how badly the detective hero dresses \u2013 they particularly criticize the cheap polyester ties he wears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later in the story, the detective discovers his girlfriend, who struggles with depression, has hanged herself with one of his ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The author inserts a break in the story at this point, to let us despair along with his character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then we have a scene (<strong>spoiler alert<\/strong>) where he\u2019s talking to the doctor who treated the woman. The doctor says what saved her life was the cheap polyester tie, which stretched so much that it slowed her asphyxiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nice trick, neatly executed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A story is told of Wild Bill Hickok in his later, declining years. Wild Bill had given up on law enforcement after accidentally killing a friend while stopping a riot (it\u2019s believed his eyesight was failing). He\u2019d tried stage acting with Buffalo Bill Cody, but couldn\u2019t bear it. He was subsisting as a professional gambler, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20499\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Plotting problem #2<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[2225,2995,5470,3359],"class_list":["post-20499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-plotting","tag-the-princess-bride","tag-wild-bill-hickok","tag-william-goldman"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20501,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20499\/revisions\/20501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}