Building a Narrative

Now that I had my characters, it was time to construct the narrative. Now that I had dumped Taiko out of the equation, and I knew Alyssa didn't really need an arc in the movie, the three sub-plots were motivated by the three remaining leads, with the main plot affected by the developments in the sub-plots. I never really developed the arc of the story beyond the plot beats, as I was under time constraints and knew developing the details of the story beyond the first ten pages wouldn't really be needed. All I needed was to know where each of the plots were going and how they interacted.


A very vital tip on plot structure I picked up on the internet one day came from the writers of South Park. It consisted of a litmus test you can apply to a script during the structuring phase to make sure events are connected and motivated by character actions and interactions, instead of just being a story consisting of a bunch of 'stuff that happened'. You can see the video embedded in this article. In essence, the test consists of putting your plot beats in order, and if the words "and then" belongs between the beats, you're doing it wrong; what should go between the beats is "therefore" or "but". It should be noted that when they say this, they're referring to the general turning points and important moments in the plot. They don't mean absolutely every detail has to be caused by the action or dialogue before it, that would be ridiculous. Important details like moments to establish and develop characters, jumping between different developing sub-plots that weave in and out of one another and other quiet moments to build atmosphere aren't included in this equation, it's exclusively about the general outline of the narrative. Ideally you want to serve both the plot and characters at the same time, such as making an establishing character moment a plot point, but it isn't required 100% of the time.

Although it's a first draft and thus would be retuned and refined throughout subsequent drafts, you can already see how this works if you skip ahead to the next post containing the structure diagrams:

Nina gets thrown out of the bar for misconduct
therefore
they find the robot
therefore
Jon agrees to help for now
but
they reactivate it
therefore
revealing the invasion
but
the robot doesn't sabotage an important defence mechanism when given the opportunity
therefore
they try to find out why

...and so on. It isn't perfect at this stage, as I said a first draft is always ill-refined in details like these, but as much as the plot as possible is structured like this.

As for the actual content of the structure, I set up the story thus:

- The main plot is the discovery and repelling of the alien invasion
- The robot's subplot has it learn human values such as friendship, trust, autonomy, free thought, and in the end, sacrifice
- Nina's subplot involves her regaining her ability and confidence to lead others
- Jon's subplot revolves around his inability to trust others, and while he may not totally overcome it by the end, it is undermined quite a bit

The theme of the story, as I tried to find a 'through-line' to inspire the above plotlines, was that of not judging based on appearances. Not only is the main plot and principle sub-plot about a character who was created to be evil changing their ways, while the other two sub-plots have their individual characters pegged as a useless drunk at the outset yet becomes a capable leader by the end and an unlikable asshole realising that the robot he thought was just a two-faced spy just sacrificed itself to protect him respectively, but the character who doesn't get an arc follows the theme too. She's blind, and thus expected to be a burden on others, weaker and far less independent than the rest of the team. Instead, not only does her psychic powers give her a different kind of vision allowing her to see in a manner similar enough to eyesight that she's fully self-reliant, but she's also a powerful telekinetic as well. All from someone most people would sum up as "that blind girl".

As I developed each plotline, I got a vague idea of how they interacted with each other, plotting them out on a diagram to see what went where in relation to one another. For ease of posting, these diagrams have been placed in their own post.