“Our Default Story Structure is Literally Killing Us,” by Charlie Jane Anders:
The rising action of the story means that a problem slowly gets more and more dire, perhaps also spawning a host of associated smaller problems. At the start of the “third act,” things reach a crisis in which everything appears to be headed for irreparable harm. Then, by some combination of luck and courage, the good guys win and the day is saved…
I’m just not sure if this structure is good for us — because we really seem to believe that making things worse and worse will somehow result in a dramatic improvement, via some fantastic reversal. And meanwhile, we have a nasty habit of responding to trauma by inflicting more harm, and we somehow seem to believe that this will eventually make people happy.
I should probably spend some more time with this one. As you can imagine, Anders gives some examples of what she does to complicate this structure in her own fiction: “My own favorite way to mess with story structure is to build in a lot of anti-climaxes and false climaxes.”
It’s a helpful train of thought as I work through the penultimate book of Streets of Flame, with a view toward the finale. The partial skeleton of the plot I have in mind for Wildfire Riptide is very much in the problems-escalate/action-rises/plot-culminates-in-a-huge-moment-of-tension-and-catharsis kind of mold. It’s a helpful reminder that other things can, and maybe should, be done.
Currently listening: Doppelgänger, written and read by Naomi Klein.