Vogler's next lesson on form(ula) is reaching the middle of the story, which is called the ordeal. The ordeal in his simple example is that the villain of the story captures/kidnaps our previously mentioned lovers .
So let me use his example to flesh out my previous exercises, but before I do that let me just ponder on kidnapping people in love. Why is that such a universally recognised theme/cliche in stories? That almost hardly ever happens. I've known plenty of people who have fallen in love and I don't think any of them have ever been kidnapped and had their love challenged by someone who may or may not be wearing a cape and/or a mask.
Makes me want to kidnap a couple in love and challenge their love. For research purposes only.
1. Our young man of lost faith finds himself in debt to a drug dealing pimp because this is the natural progression of anyone who ever leaves the church and loses faith. It happens all the time. The pimp dealer makes the former altar boy turn tricks for him to pay off his debts and at his lowest point he blows his former priest who doesn't recognise him because of the hard life he's lived in what feels like a short amount of story time.
2. Our young traveller & his crew of merry entertainers find themselves low on funds and having to set up business in a trolls mining village (this story gets pretty damn fantastical). The young man accidentally offends a drunken troll and is taken captive. The troll says that the young man is to be eaten in an upcoming festival. He finds himself trapped with a young woman (did I mention she was hot?).
3. The sheriffs daughter goes missing after a couple of more murders that make everyone suspect the writer is the killer.
Even though I was just messing around in their own ways I felt like each of those story ideas started off kind of interestingly enough but the introduction of this ordeal half-way marker has already started reducing them to very familiar trite story ideas.
Is it possible to write an interesting fresh novel that is in no way headed towards a conflict?
I'm racking my brain trying to think of a novel I've read that doesn't center around some kind of conflict in some way or another. Is that because there's no real interest from either author or reader for stories with no form of conflict? Or because no realistic storyline could avoid conflict completely? Conflict exists everywhere in every day life so perhaps it's not about avoiding it entirely but presenting it in an innovative way.
ReplyDeleteIt would probably be ultimately really boring to read a conflict free novel.
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