I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Anthony Reiner, and struggling to understand what makes him such a willing exponent of prohibition?
Within Carrion prohibition is the product of a totalitarian regime. Totalitarianism is “a political system where the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life whenever necessary”.
The question I’m really asking is, what attracts a person to totalitarianism?
To answer that question we need to understand, what allows totalitarianism to flourish? The short answer is uncertainty. In his paper “How to make enemies and influence people” Alfonso Montuori characterises the “totalitarian mindset” as a response to the stress of contemporary pluralism.
Living in complex times full of ambiguity and uncertainty, we feel threatened, and when we’re backed into a corner we have a tendency to succumb to “simplistic, black-and-white solutions”. Montuori goes on to note that “individuals all over the world have sought relief from the uncertainty of a pluralistic world in the arms of absolute belief systems of a religious fundamentalist and/or political/nationalistic nature”.
Within the world of Carrion, the threat posed by drugs is lightning rod, a life-threatening danger, that allows the government to “drastically reduce ambiguity and complexity”. The forces of authority instinctively “fall back on a form of very simplistic… totalitarian thinking”.
Just as the Nazi’s persecuted the Jews, so the prohibitionist persecutes the drug user.
(I realise that this is only half finished but I’ve taken this idea as far as I can for today. My thoughts need further clarification so will have to wait for another post.)
I’ve been reading a lot of dystopian fiction recently. I’m currently sixty percent through Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World. It’s another of those books I read a long time ago. In fact it was so long ago that it now feels like I’m reading the book for the first time. Anyway before I started Brave New World I ploughed through Yevgeny Zamyatin‘s 1921 novel We, George Orwell‘s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the 1908 novel The Iron Heel by Jack London.
While they are all very different, articulating various concerns the authors had about the time in which they were writing, they all share a similar plot device, the transgressive protagonist. Ernest Everhard, D-503, Bernard Marx and Winston Smith are all at odds with the orthodoxy of world they live in. Whether it’s socialist revolutionary Ernest Everhard attacking the capitalist oligarchy, or the thought-criminal Winstone Smith defying the totalitarian power of Big Brother, all four novels have a transgressive protagonists.
The other thing that I’m struck by, it might be the thing that makes all these novels dystopian fiction. All the protagonist’s eventually exceed to orthodoxy. They all transgress, and are violently punished for their offences.
This raises a question, is Carrion a dytopian fiction if Adam Leigh remains unpunished for his transgressions at the end? The plot of Carrion only really covers Adam’s transformation from prohibitionist to insurgent. Without the punishment at the end, is his challenge to orthodoxy complete? Perhaps Carrion is less dystopian than I thought? It could be that Carrion is actually just the beginning of Adam’s story, the first part of a much longer journey.
I recently re-read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I don’t think I’ve read this cornerstone of dystopian fiction since 1984. The thing I’m struck by now, twenty-something years later, is how much of an influence it’s had on me.
Two of the three screenplays I’ve written so far are dystopian in nature. Carrion is set in a society on the cusp of exceeding to totalitarian regime. The Singularity is essentially a vision of room 101. I can’t think of anything worse than being tapped on a spaceship with hoards of zombies.
I have another idea, something that’s been on the back-burner for a while now, that deals explicitly with surveillance. The story is still unformed but inhabits a world where surveillance is used as a substitute for morality. I don’t have much more than that notion and a few nebulous images, some of which were used in my short screenplay Phos/phate.
The thing that all these projects share with Nineteen Eighty-Four is an interests in the technologies of power. It’s a subject I come back to again and again. It comes I think from a feeling, rightly or wrongly, that I am being controlled in some way. I want to understand power, how it works, and how to survive it?
I’m not sure if anyone else views the world like this, but I often have the feeling that when the rulebook of existence was handed out, I wasn’t given a copy. It could just be that I’m just far too sceptical, too much of a heretic.
At the end of last week I resubmitted my logline for Carrion to Logline it!. If the first batch of replies helped fine-tune my initial submission this second round has focused it even more.
Darrin Nightingale says: RESUBMISSION: When the government embarks on a genocidal programme against junkies, a self-righteous policeman battles to save his drug using sister.
Lucius Paisley says: Is it possible to use a different word for “junkies”?
Then you won’t have to use the term “drug using”, since most people would correctly assume that she is a drug user.
For instance – “…genocidal programme against drug abusers, a self-righteous policeman battles to save his sister.”
Also, who is the policeman battling against exactly? The government? His police force? Drug abusers? I think some clarity here may also help.
Darrin Nightingale says: I use the term junkies because it is more often than not it is used as a derogatory way to describe anyone who take illicit drugs. The government in the story views anyone who takes drugs as junkies. I use the term alternate “drug using” partly to make the point that not all drug users are junkies. But also to reiterate the point that you have a government agent, a prohibitionist, fighting to save a sister targeted for genocide. How about a logline that reads?
When the government targets junkies for genocide, a self-righteous policeman fights to save his drug using sister.
Thanks for your input.
cynosurer says: I still think the self righteousness works best as a part of the battle and not a character description.
When the government embarks on a genocidal program against junkies, a/an policeman must confront the system and his own self-righteousness to save his drug using sister.
insert: in your face, hard nosed, street hardened, crusty, old, jaded, tough as nails, washed up… I don’t know how you make it work with the sister. Siblings, having grown up together, aren’t usually very tolerant of the ‘choices’ their siblings make – hence the self righteous ‘you suffer the consequences of your choices’ attitude. It might work better to make it a niece or granddaughter. I would think the extra bit of seperation would actually aid in his conversion… or the widow of his OD’ed brother if you want her to be his contemporary. Just some thoughts. That I have these thought may just mean you need to add a description to the sister other than drug using as her being one is implied by the fact that she needs saving from this program (and ‘program’ would be the Hollywood/Yankee spelling).
cynosurer says: I had the word ‘insert’ bracketed by the less than greater than symbols between ‘a/an’ and policeman. The brackets must have ‘deleted’ that. So “insert” a description there or choose one of the cliches that I listed.
elizabethban says: I think it’s the genocidal program that’s unclear. How about,
‘When the government threatens to execute all junkies to stop a drug epidemic, a member of the arresting police force must battle his own self-righteousness in order to be able to save his sister.’
I think sister is spot on. And she should be a younger sister who disobeyed all her bother’s so called ‘advice’. Of course, he never asks why she is doing what she does, just assumes it’s to show him up and embarrass him. He is a pretty narcissistic character, unable to empathise – until this edict, of course. Anyway, just a suggestion.
Darrin Nightingale says: As I understand it, genocide means “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.” Perhaps a more concise articulation of the governments intention is to say that the government is targeting junkies for genocide. The genocidal programme is a programme to kill anyone who takes drugs. It starts when the govenment release swarms of drug eating insects that go on to attack users. The government then deny medical attention those users. As the programme progresses the government declares martial law, sweep the city, shooting users on sight. Fundamentally the government’s intention is genocide. They intend to kill all junkies/drug users. Your understanding of the brother/sister relationship is spot on. There’s a fifteen year age difference between the two of them. So when their parents are killed in a car crash and he has to take care of her, it creates all kinds of tensions. Tensions that come to a head when he arrests his sister for possession at the beginning of the story. With that in mind, what about a logline that reads.
When the government targets junkies for genocide, a self-righteous policeman fights to save his drug using sister.
Thanks for your input.
It interesting to see the huge difference between the logline I initially posted and the one that now seems the most concise telling of the story. Gone are any reference to drug eating insects. Something that seemed to be irreplaceable early in my attempts at a logline. Instead they’ve been replaced by the intention of the insects, genocide. Here’s first and final loglines side by side for you to compare.
When the government release swarms of drug eating insects to kill the junkie population a self-righteous policeman risks everything as he struggles to save his drug using sister from the tyrannical forces of prohibition.
When the government targets junkies for genocide, a self-righteous policeman fights to save his drug using sister.
A week ago I submitted a logline for Carrion to Logline It!. Overall it was pretty rewarding experience. I had some really positive responses. You can see how I got on in my previous post My experience with Logline It! I was going over some stuff today and came up with an even more accurate logline for Carrion.
When the government embarks on a genocidal programme against junkies, a self-righteous policeman battles to save his drug using sister.
I’m resubmiting it to Logline It!. Let’s see what they think.
While skipping through Anatomy of Story by John Truby, I landed on a section called The Iceberg Opponent.
Truby argues, to make your antagonist as dangerous as possible, you should create a hierarchy of opponents, and “hide the hierarchy from the hero and the audience”.
This worries me slightly because Adam’s opponents aren’t really hidden from him. The only element really hidden from him is the true nature of prohibition, and I’m not sure if that’s enough?
Adam’s main opponent is Reiner, he wants to stop Adam achieving his desire, saving Christine. As the plot develops, Adam encounters ever more hostile forces, police, military, insects. These are less hidden opponents, and more a hierarchy of force.
Why would they hide?
As I’ve noted in an earlier post “prohibitionist’s aren’t shy about telling us they think users should be killed”. Truby urges you to “always look for the deepest conflict that your hero and opponent are fighting over”.
In “The antagonist’s antagonist” I note Adam and Reiner are actually fighting over the kind of society they live in. Which version will prosper? “Will it be a society of freedom ultimately chosen by Adam or will it be a society of security demanded by Reiner?”
So this is a fight for freedom or security.
If you dig even deeper security is actually an analogue of power. I often quip prohibition isn’t about public health, it’s about public control. It’s a aphoristic way of saying prohibition is a mechanism used to control the population.
Adam’s real opponent, the opponent hidden at the deepest part of the iceberg, is actually power. Not just any power, the power to destroy an entire class of people, because they don’t fit their view of how you should live in the world.
I recently came across a website dedicated to perfecting the art of the logline. Logline It! is a site that allows you to test your logline “before you send it into the world”.
I have a difficult relationship with loglines, they’re hard to write, requiring the kind of sparse clarity you won’t find anywhere else. I know Twitter limits you to 140 characters but Twitter is the shotgun compared to the precision of a logline’s sniper rifle.
As with all things to do with art of screenwriting, the logline has a history. The term goes back to the old days of the Hollywood studios. Stories and screenplays would be “logged” by the story department. The logline identifies projects throughout its life at the studios. A good logline is supposed to “convey the dramatic story of a screenplay in the most abbreviated manner possible”. It should tell us who the story is about, not his name but the essence of who he is, what he wants, his desire, and finally what stands in his way, his antagonist.
I write and rewrite mine until they stop making sense. Frankly it’s a little soul destroying. If I’m honest I don’t really finish one, it just gets to the point where I have to say that’s it. I make it as good as I can but always have this nagging doubt that I just haven’t nailed it.
So you can imagine the trepidation I felt when I posted a logline for Carrion on Logline It!. What follows is the conversation about my Carrion longline.
Darrin Nightingale posted: When the government release swarms of drug eating insects to kill the junkie population a self-righteous policeman risks everything as he struggles to save his drug using sister from the tyrannical forces of prohibition.
patrockd says: An interesting concept and logline – with protag, goal, obstacles and stakes! It can be trimmed down though. Howabout:
When the government releases a swarm of junkie killing insects, a self righteous policeman must save his addict sister.
Darrin Nightingale says: I thought I was being concise until I read your version. I like the sparseness. Part of me has been afraid to be that essential. But, as your version eloquently illustrates, sparseness is the name of the game with loglines. There is one thing I would change. I prefer the phrase “drug using sister” instead of “addict sister”. How does this sound?
When the government release swarms of junkie killing insects a self-righteous policeman struggles to save his drug using sister.
I know it’s pedantic but the distinction that not all drug users are addicts is really important to the story. I might be wrong. You tell me. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
toastman says: I suppose it depends on the drug. If it’s heroin, I’d say “heroin”. Unless she’s just a casual weed smoker, in which case this is a different film that what I’d be expecting.
toastman says: If it’s prescription pain-killers, that’s another story as well. I think I need to know what drug.
Darrin Nightingale says: The story deals specifically with illicit drugs. The insects are genetically engineered to eat drugs. A different insect for each drug. The pathology of the insects involve the drug users in their reproductive cycle. Basically the insects are released. Feed on the drugs. Then attack a user of that drug. The insects larva then use the host as food. Literally eating the user from the inside out. Killing the host when they mature and escape the body. The insects are manifestation of prohibition taken to its merciless unrelenting conclusion.
Kriss Tolliday says: I agree it does have all the relevant components for a log line so kudos my friend, however (always a but) I would lose the generic ‘risks everything’ and trim down some unnecessary parts like the ‘tyrannical forces of prohibition’. It is a good idea but just needs telling in fewer words. I wander if maybe to not include the insects and keep the way they kill them a mystery or be able to get what they are across in fewer words as the opening line takes a while to build momentum. Overall though a really interesting idea.
Darrin Nightingale says: I agree with everything you said but didn’t really see it so clearly until you pointed it out. The phrases “risks everything” and “tyrannical forces of prohibition” are, as you said, generic and unnecessary. Taking on board your advise to not include the insect and prompted by patrockd’s reply I offer this revision.
When the government start to kill the junkie population, a self-righteous policeman fights to save his drug using sister.
How does that sound? This has been really interesting for me. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
cynosurer says: Not sure I like the phrase ‘self righteous’. With it’s negative connotation you could be starting off with a hero nobody likes. That’s okay in a script but in a logline it can be troublesome. It almost makes me want the sister to be the protag. Also you might want to give the guy more of a connection to the program: When the government’s secret plan to kill junkies with mutant insects projects a DEA administrator’s ‘casual use’ sister as ‘acceptable collateral damage’ he takes on a swarm of self righteous DEA agents. Suggested titles: Buzz Kill CounteRAID (winner of the product placement award) Swarm to Protect
cynosurer says: Oops! A slight fix to get it to 30 words: A secret plan to kill junkies with mutant insects projects a DEA agents’s ‘casual use’ sister as ‘acceptable collateral damage’. He takes on a swarm of self-righteous administrators and bugs.
Darrin Nightingale says: Thanks for your input but your ideas take the story in a completely different direction. My story basically forces a prohibitionist to experience the cruelty of prohibition and deals with the outcome of that experience. The protagonist’s self-righteousness is a manifestation of his beliefs as a prohibitionist. By the end of the story he is the polar opposite but self-righteous really is the only way to describe his moral and psychological weakness at the beginning of the story. I’m not too worried about describing a hero nobody likes. I hope he is someone people empathise with. For me his self-righteousness raises a moral dilemma that is interesting. He’s a prohibitionist with a drug using sister. When the prohibitionists start to kill the junkie population. What does he do? Does he remain a prohibitionist and let his sister be killed? Or does he take action and risk everything to save her? It forces him into a corner and asks him to make a compelling choice. Your logline hints at a secret plan. This is interesting because early in the development of the story the drug eating insects were part of a coup d’etat. The crisis caused by the insects was a stepping stone that allowed a military dictatorship to take power. I abandoned the idea because I was unable to reconcile the general hostility prohibitionist have towards users and the inherent secrecy of a plan. Prohibitionist’s aren’t shy about tell us they think users should be killed. It seemed more compelling for the protagonist to go up against the whole of society, rather than have him uncover a plot to kill a class of people society vilifies. Thanks for taking the time to reply. It’s allowed me to clarify my idea and steer my logline to be that bit better.
cynosurer says: Thanks for the explanation. With that in mind you might consider making it more a part of the conflict than character description… in the logline A crusading policeman must reassess his self-righteous nature when a government plan to use mutant insects to kill junkies indiscriminately targets his drug using sister.
If I had to pick one logline I’d have to go with patrockd’s version. It really is the essence of the story told in as few words as possible. Interestingly cynosurer’s comments highlighted for me the moral dilemma at the core of the story. I hadn’t realised how much I’d invested in the protagonists self-righteousness, closing the gap between that weakness and his sister is the essence of the story.
The strategy increases the depth of a story, by increasing the number of opponents the protagonist has to deal with. It makes all the characters more rounded, because he’s forced to deal with the central problem of the story, from at least three other points of view.
For Carrion I’ve designed a four cornered opposition which places Adam in conflict with Reiner. They’re the mirror of each other, similar in many ways, but because Adam decides to save Christine they become mortal enemies.
Reiner is the prototypical prohibitionist fighting with Adam over the kind of society they live in, which version of society will prosper? Will it be a society of freedom ultimately chosen by Adam, or a society of security demanded by Reiner?
Adam’s second opponent is Christine. Although she’s his sister and it’s his attempts to save her that put him conflict with Reiner, they’re still in conflict with each other. While she articulates the point of view of the drug user in the story, deep down their opposition is about how he treats his younger sibling. Is he able to respect her point of view, treat her as an equal, behave more compassionately, less patriarchally towards her?
The final character in this four cornered opposition is Sexton. He’s not only in opposition with Adam and Christine but also Reiner. He is the binary opposite to Reiner, the antagonist’s antagonist, articulating the dealer’s point of view in the story, I think? When I fist envisioned Sexton he was the stereotypical drug dealer. I had in my head the many incarnation of drug dealers in cinema, the hapless career criminal of Henry Hill in Goodfellas. He get’s high on his own supply, and drops himself straight into witness protection. I thought of the accent wielding, coke snorting, gun touting nihilist Tony Montana in Scarface. Before considering the calculating, ruthless, out for profit businesspersons of Carlos and Helena Ayala portrayed in Traffic.
The thing is, none of these interpretation of a drug dealers represent my understanding of who Sexton is in Carrion. It wasn’t until I realised Sexton has to be more optimistic that I started to get a handle on who he really is. A large part of that realisation came while reading Jack London’s “The Iron Heel”. A dystopian fiction about the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. Completed in 1908 London’s novel is based on the fictional “Everhard Manuscript” written by Avis Everhard, hidden and subsequently found centuries later. Added to this manuscript are a series of footnotes written by fictional scholar Anthony Meredith around 2600 AD. It’s a Marxist interpretation of capital told as a love story between Avis and Ernest Everhard. Avis is the middle class daughter of an academic whose eyes are opened to the plight of the proletariat at the hands of the plutocracy. Ernest Everhard is a hero of the working man who is martyred by the oligarchy as he attempts to progress the revolution and progress society to a socialist future. He’s a smart character with a clear view of the world and what he is fighting for.
Reading The Iron Heel made me realise that Sexton needs to have something of the Ernest Everhard’s about him. Adam’s not going to respond to the hapless actions of a character like Henry Hill. He’s not going to listen to the nihilistic rants of a Tony Montana. The ruthless logic of a businessman like Carlos Ayala won’t persuade him to see the world differently. Adam’s only going to respond to someone who is able to see what’s happening and articulate enough to communicate it. He has to be intelligent, articulate, and willing to take direct action.
I’m a little worried that he might come across as unbelievable, somewhat fanciful, an idealist. I know it’s a risk, but take solace in having encountered one or two character who are evangelical about drugs, who take pride in proselytising the grace offered by psychotropic substances.
Carrion needs Sexton, it needs him to show Adam how to live in the world.
Recently I plotted Carrion using a variation of “The Board” described by Blake Snyder in his book Save the Cat.
Working the board has thrown up several issues relating to Adam’s opponents. One of the key problems I realise needs pinning down is Adam’s conflict with prohibition, how does a prohibitionist find himself on the wrong side of prohibition?
To understand this more fully I find myself going back to reaffirm what I think Carrion is about. I take the view, expressed by John Truby in his book Anatomy of Story, that a story is a moral argument. “Whenever you present a character using means to reach an end, you are presenting a moral predicament, exploring the question of right action, and making a moral argument about how best to live.” To make this argument the hero needs a collection of opponents (and allies) who force him to deal with the central moral problem.
To find the best opponents for Adam I first need to recognise the question at the heart of Carrion, why are drugs prohibited? The usual reason given for drug prohibition is public health. Drugs are dangerous, they cause harm, so should be banned. For me this throws up at least one glaring hypocrisy, why aren’t drugs like cigarettes and alcohol subject to the same prohibitions as MDMA? Both cigarettes and alcohol have significant health risks associated with their use, yet they are both freely available.
For me the distinction between drugs that are banned and those that are not is arbitrary, and because it arbitrary, it’s inevitably motivated by something else, something entirely political. Prohibition isn’t about public health, it’s about public control. Boiled down to its essence, prohibition is a form of oppression. An oppression that is inherently cruel, and demands the destruction of anyone who opposes it.
Faced with this insight it seems to me Adam’s only moral action in the story is to resist prohibition. This leads him to become an insurgent in ensuing civil war. For his arc to be fulfilled his opponents need to articulate the conflicting points of view present in the war on drugs.
Adam’s opponent is prohibition, but prohibition is too nebulous a concept on its own. We need to see it as something concrete, both as an institution and as a character. Actually it needs to be seen through a number of characters on all sides of the issue.
Prohibition organises society against those who take drugs. It’s the laws prohibiting use. The “Code 10” laws that stop convicted users from getting the medical attention. Sanctions imposed on those who help users. Social pressure best described by the maxim, if you’re not with us you’re against us.
The institution of prohibition are only the backdrop to Carrion, what Truby describes as the story world. Its unrelenting cruelty is personified by the drug eating insects that attack users. They are the ever-present sanction prohibition imposes on the citizenry, they can’t be argued with, articulating prohibitions intransigence, you take drugs you die.
As an opponent, the insects attack Adam indirectly through Christine. While they force him to take specific actions that contributes to the moral argument of Carrion, Adam’s real opponent, the opponent who challenges him directly, is Reiner. He’s the “character who wants to keep the hero from achieving his desire”. He’s the one who tries to stop Adam saving Christine. As Truby points out “a true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving his desire but is competing with the hero for the same goal”.
This point throws up a question, what are Adam and Reiner really competing over? Adam’s desire is to save Christine, Reiner wants to see Christine dead, but he knows the insects will do that for him, he could just wait, let them do their job.
If Adam and Reiner aren’t competing for Christine’s life, what are they fighting over? Adam’s desire represents a threat to Reiner, it confirms his fear, there’s someone out there willing to challenge prohibition. At the core of the conflict is a fight over the the kind of world they live in. They’re fighting to have either a free society or a secure society.
One of the primary arguments for prohibition is that drugs represent a threat, not just to public health but to our security. Users are dangerous, dealers are criminals, drugs tear at the very fabric of society, and prohibition is the tool that keeps us safe.
The irony is, prohibition is more of a threat to our public safety than drug use.
What if prohibition doesn’t protect public health, what if it’s a form of oppression? The choice to take drugs amounts to demand for freedom over security. Deep down they’re fighting for a world of freedom or oppression.
Another of Adam’s opponents is his sister Christine. If Reiner articulates the voice of prohibition Christine gives us the users point of view. Her strength in the story is her ability to attack Adam’s prejudices. Without her Adam would not begin to see the dangers of prohibition, he would not see the oppression. His desire to save his sister is his call to arms. Whatever he may think of drugs and those who take them, Christine makes him see prohibition as something that need to be challenged.
The final opponent to challenge Adam is Sexton, prohibition as seen by the dealer. In an earlier post “Adam’s immoral action” I contemplated another of Truby’s tenants. “In the early part of the story the hero is losing to the opponent. He becomes desperate. As a result he starts taking immoral actions to win.”
In trying to answer this problem I asked myself the question, what kind of immoral actions does Adam take? The answer can best be summed up as “not fighting back”. Only through his conflicts with Sexton does Adam start to behave in a moral way. Structurally Sexton enters the story half way through. Adam has gone as far as he can with his initial course of action, and has failed to save Christine. Then he meets Sexton, an unrepentant drug dealer who is willing to challenge prohibition by taking the fight to them. Sexton’s actions challenge Adam’s immoral action, forces him to realise the only moral action to take against prohibition is to fight it.
Structurally this collection of characters is what Truby calls a four cornered opposition. The system not only allows the moral argument to be fully explored, each character articulating a different set of values, attacking Adam’s great weakness in a different way. By pushing each of their values to the extremities of the four cornered opposition they all become as different as possible from the others.
According to Robert McKee “the inciting incident radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life”. Brian McDonald in “Invisible Ink” describes the inciting incident as a curtain moment, a theatrical term denoting the point at which the curtain is dropped between acts. In theatre you have to get the audience back after the intermission “so acts end on the highest point, when the stakes are at their most desperate”.
While both descriptions tell us that something needs to happen at this point, neither give you any real insight into what needs to happen.
Personally I lean towards John Truby’s interpretation. He calls it the inciting event and describes it as a small step that “connects need and desire”. At the beginning of the story “when weakness and need are being established, the hero is paralysed in some way. You need some kind of event to jump-start the hero out of his paralysis and force him to act”.
Since starting the redraft of Carrion I’ve struggled to pin down the event that metaphorically takes Adam out of the frying pan and drops him in the fire. I had a whole slew of things going on in the fifteen minutes that lead up to this event.
Adam discovers Reiner murdered his daughter, prompting him to take action. Reiner making a direct attack on Christine, forcing Adam to step in to protect her. I’ve explored an infinite number of permutations based on this scenario ending with Christine attacked, forcing Adam to step in and save her.
In the end it all seemed too complicated, demanding of too much exposition. It wasn’t until I started to think about this section, and where it fits into the story, that I started to get a handle on what the inciting event should be.
Adam needs to see the kind of attack society is making on drug users, see what’s going to happen to Christine if he does nothing. Once I’d realised this, things started to fall into place. Adam and Reiner are part of the squad that is tasked with picking up drug users. When Reiner is particularly vicious in his treatment, Adam gets his first glimpse of the coming storm.
The actual event alluded me until the phrase “Adam has to choose Christine” came to me. The more I thought about it, the more I realise it’s the thing that connects Adam’s need and desire, the thing that takes him out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He’s given a choice, prohibition or Christine.
If he chooses prohibition he’s allowing her to die. From that point, Adam’s desire to save Christine kicks in, and the story is under way.
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