How to plot a story

Way way passed my bedtime but you have given me a lot to work with, here. I will follow up on all these tomorrow, more and wanted to reply. The character portrait option sounds very interesting to me and that could work, here. I would need to look it up and do some research. How do you fill in blanks like for example, the scene when he's on the beach about to commit suicide and simultaneously Ben is unaware of what is happening but having an anxiety attack of sorts back home in the city? If this were being told by Benny but he wasn't there...

I also thought of using diaries and stuff for Christopher's voice. I've already done it in the form of letters.

As for plot and story, I am open to changing things, within reason of course, but need to work on the outline first to get a better idea where I stand.

Your considerations about the way the children perceive their parents is an interesting one, too. My bf already questioned how realistic it'd be that Christopher's daughter would share any personal interest in his causes that at 14, even if her father was dying from AIDS how much would she really care about being an activist? Ben's daughter could totally resent Chris for having come between her parents. But then I wouldn't have story- at least not the one I've got right now.

 

That reminds me a lot of Alex Shearer's This Is The Life. It's about the protagonist and his brother, who is dying from a brain tumour. The protagonist decides to stay and spend the last of his brother's days together, and in the end, he does die. Its told in a non-chronological order and its basically a few stories from the notable things that happened during their last time together. It doesn't fit into your standard dramatic structure, really. The characters don't even change. It's just a book on life, and its amazing. Now I want to read it all over again...

But there is one big difference, which is that the story is a true one taken straight out of the author's life. Really, it's more of a "biography" he promised to write for his brother after he died to "record" his life. This embeds an element of realism in the story, and people are much more likely to read it, knowing that its true. When a story is true, your mind takes a completely different approach to judging it.

You seem able to articulate so much about the world it takes place in, though, I have to say. I go to sleep and bang, so many messages the next day

Xoic is right though, even on the part about Chris. I initially thought that Chris had a more involving role even if you didn't include it in the synopsis but it turns out, there is a reason for everything.

You seem to like to talk about the human condition, emotions, psychology, details and things like that, which is why your story is more open-ended and about "life". That will fall into the categories of literary fiction for sure, but for this to happen, you need to have some sort of strong message that the events of your book support and work to ultimately build on.

Fahreinheit 451 is an example and one of my favourites. The book's intent is to clearly speak on censorship and the importance of literature, which the author always held dear in a time where "electronic entertainment" was rising. The book has argument, the characters take sides against and in favor of literature, each speaking on why or why not it should exist. It shows the results of a literature-free world, and honestly, for such an old book, it is terrifyingly accurate. Sure, we don't have firemen going around with super fast trucks burning books, but we have much of the problems and technology portrayed within it.

Here's a question for you: Do you have a rough length in mind? How many words do you think this whole thing will be?

 

I'm going to read this one, for sure. It sounds like it may have some overlapping stuff. The other book you referenced: Fahrenheit 451 reminds me in a way of Metropolis. Incredibly incredibly ahead of it's time. When was that book written? It has an undertone from what you described of when the Nazi's burned books.

It's a real world to me, something very precious and beautiful and highly emotional. I've half joked many times the inspiration comes from regressed past life memories and I lived it all- in another life. The oddest things trigger the most exquisitely detailed scenes in my head.
What I've got here now is a result of all the pressure inside building to get it out and share it, be a part of it, and make it real, somehow. Book... movie (that's my life dream, to bring this to life and see it). My recurring question is if this is story about real life, why can't that work? Real life is after all nothing more than a series of random events and our brains weave them into some sort of pattern.

I haven't really considered this and am actively working to take a step back and look at everything I've go as a whole and assess how true this is and decide whether or not that needs to be. Off the top of my head, even though he was main character from the beginning, the whole basis for the story, there must be seductive about more of that "character portrait" aspect to me - I can retrace my steps and see that both characters are written in a way that do this. It's a useful tool for talking about someone without having to necessarily know every single thing. If I was Chris, I would tell you which box of cereal I picked on the shelf at the food store and why. Ben would be able to speak on his predictability to eat the same thing for breakfast each day, buy only name brands/whatever is cheapest or fill his bowl to the perfect spot without fail. I'm really on a mission now to get back to writing for Chris. I started with Ben and that became my focus.

If I returned to the original plot of the story tracking his life from running away from home in the 60s and up until the climax when he goes into the hospital... Its far easier. But the current plot structure (and I don't know how to break myself of overuse of 'but') it what it is because I couldn't think of a way to incorporate the stuff that happens post-1981. As you all pointed out, it is two stories in one. Past and present. It was debated once if I write it in three separate books... Ben's Story, Christopher's Story, and Julia's Story. I didn't want the commitment to write three whole books, that's kind of what stage I fell out of writing many years ago.

I was trying to tie it together somehow and never worked through it; and then in the spring when I picked up on it again this was among the first debate sessions I had with my boyfriend I'm not trying to explain my various options and what I do- or how. And this was the plot we arrived at to find a way to incorporate everything without actually writing everything.

A lot of the details kind of fell into place on their own and I borrowed concepts from earlier scene ideas.

Yes. This is very interesting to me. I love the push and pull and delicious emotional highs and lows.

Well... I haven't worked all that out yet but currently contained in my one "master document" I created as a single place to start putting everything as I'm working.. it's about 350 pages' worth. And that's far from what I've actually got, either drafted ideas or in my head.

 

See, in a strange way, this is just as real as a 'real' event. Some kinds of fiction include deep human truths that are more true than mere facts or statistics. Especially in something as deep and heartfelt as literary fiction. And when stories are based on real events, there's always some level of fictionalizing going on. It's just that most people are very literal-minded and don't understand these things. They think there's a clear-cut distinction between 'Real events' and 'Fiction'. But really it's never that simple. What is the real, objective truth about anything, and are any of us fully capable of knowing it and separating it from our own ideas and feelings about the event? No, of course not. We only become aware of things through our senses, and everything is filtered through our own understanding of the world and our biases etc. We can only ever hope to approximate objectivity. That's why the scientific method was created, to try to filter out our subjectivity and biases as much as possible, but it isn't completely possible. We can't write absolute truth with no subjective element to it. And if we could, how boring would that be?

If you're writing from inspiration and intuition, you're in touch with the deep human truths to a large extent. The kind of truths that are far more true than facts and headlines, or chemical formulae or the gravity on Mars or the air-speed of an unladen swallow. Scientific facts have no real inner value to us, they don't mean anything in the deep human way. There's no moral or feeling-truth to them. No dramatic truth. A really good play or novel has far more deep meaningful truth than any scientific paper. Science only allows us to better control our environment, to use things better, and to create better technology. It has no moral or emotional value at all. Have you ever had a deep scientific or purely factual relationship with anyone? Drama and story, when they're written 'from the heart' are far more meaningful in our lives.

If you write it as literary fiction—as a pastoral character portrait, that would require the least amount of change. But still I think you've just got way more material figured out than can be contained in a single book. I think it'll be a matter of writing it and seeing which parts feel like they need to stay in and which start to feel somewhat extraneous, like the story could do without them, or they impede it in some way.

 

The good thing about having so much material figured out is that now you can trim some away and have only the best. It's the way movies are made—shoot more than you need, get several takes for some scenes, and in the cutting room select the ones that work together the best.

 

I can't find it right now (this thread is really moving!) but you asked how can you show what Chris is doing if you never use his POV.

Here's one way, that I think is very true-to-life. Instead of showing a scene from his POV, have Ben thinking about what Chris might have done. Not nesessarily at the same time, because he wouldn't know where Chris is or what he's doing, but after the fact, after they've gotten together and talked about it, and now Ben knows at least some of what happened. Like in the attempted suicide scene for instance. You're already jumping around in a time a bit, so why not have some parts written from a perspective farther ahead in time than the events of the story. Something like this—

We spoke about it many times afterwards. What was going through his head, why did he do it? I don't know. It's part of his deep abiding mystery, that ineffable thing he keeps hidden from me and from everybody, that makes him so uniquely him. I've played it over and over in my head like a filmstrip, only it's a little different each time, trying to figure out what actually happened on that beach. Sometimes he (does this), sometimes he (does that), but always some of that inner mystery remains. Ultimately I'll never know.​

 

It was published in 1953. I had to look that up, which also prompted me to find that the first edition was published with an asbestos binding to make it fire resistant.

Yeah... I collect old things. But I won't be collecting that! In defense to Bradbury, it wasn't known that asbestos caused cancer back then.

That's an excellent idea!!! Ben would be speculating through his POV, maybe he'll even find things that convince not only Ben but the readers themselves, and then what really happens is revealed at the end once he's in England.

You captured part of why I write in two paragraphs. I've been into computers and electronics since I was a kid. Networking and all those technologies are an amazing marvel and interesting, but beyond this, I didn't feel much meaning in them, and I began to realize this as an adult. I mean, the Networks I was doing in college where meaningful in the sense that they enabled so many devices to communicate across the globe, but other than this, there was nothing. It felt like it wouldn't matter in the end when I was dead.

Then during college, I also did some English classes, and that's where I picked up this hobby. It immediately resonated to me. The fact that I could talk about emotion, meaning and humans within story and explore complicated topics was phenomenal to me. It was one of those transformation moments that happen in your life and you're never the same after that. I basically immediately decided that I wanted to write a novel. We mostly analyzed and wrote short stories (or novel excerpts) in the class but I didn't care. I tried anyway and I succeeded.

Like damn, thanks for writing this. It was nice to remember why I started in the first place. Sometimes I forget between the endless effort of trying to improve.

 

Well, this is intersting. Sorry it's slightly off topic, but just quickly—I searched for "Is Farenheit 451 literary fiction?" because it seems surpising to me if it is, though I can see it might be. I know Bradbury isn't considered a typical science fiction writer, and is much closer to the literary traditions. I just ran across this, which seems highy relevant right here:

The Dark Side of Technology
Unlike many other works of science fiction, the society in Fahrenheit 451 is made worse by technology. In fact, all the technology described in the story is ultimately harmful to the people who interact with it. Montag’s flamethrower destroys knowledge and causes him to witness terrible things. The huge televisions hypnotize their viewers, resulting in parents with no emotional connection to their children and a population that cannot think for itself. Robotics are used to chase down and murder dissenters, and nuclear power ultimately destroys civilization itself.

In Fahrenheit 451, the only hope for the survival of the human race is a world without technology.​

 

Xoic raises a good point. If you take a look at "Wired for story" by Lisa Cron. It explains a lot of this. She examine the connection between story and cognitive science. Humans think in story where experience is concerned. Story allows us to examine experiences we have not had, and mentally developed strategies for dealing with new experiences. It is why we can get lost in a story. Our minds process stories like actual events,which makes that kind of Emersion possible.

I haven't commented much on this thread, because the premise in your summary didn't hook me. Simply not my cup of tea, as opposed to something wrong with the idea. The idea of summaries from the different POVs is a good one,it can help clarify your thoughts. I get the impression you are getting lost in the what now of the story, and losing sight of where it is going and how it will end. You need to keep that ending in sight of you will hit a wall with where it is going.

 

I wondered the same thing. It seems to be, I mean, it doesn't seem like your typical genre fiction book that focus solely on the plot and compelling plot twists to grip the reader's attention. Fahrenheit 451 carries a strong message, so really its not surprising to see that it kind of is. It is a sci-fi book though, so I can see why you would think that.

But I'm pretty sure that literary fiction and genre ficiton are marketing categories anyway. Literary fiction often speaks on things like the human condition, meanings, messages that kind of thing, while genre fiction books just have a compelling plot to get lost in. Really, the categories are there to help people find what they want. If you spent a long time at work or something and you're super tired, maybe you don't want to read something in the literary fiction category and tire yourself further. Maybe you just want to get lost in a world of space aliens and pew pew lasers. No brain needed.

This means that a book can lean into both categories, which Fahrenheit 451 seems to do. I'm not sure though, that's loosely based on some research I did on the subject of what is and isn't literary fiction a while back. I might be wrong.

That's off-topic though and I don't want to derail OP's thread

 

I bought the Kindle version and have started reading it. I do think Bradbury at least leans pretty far toward being a literary fiction writer, if he isn't exactly that. Maybe he actually did write litfic, I'm not quite sure. But at any rate, he's good! Farenheit came at a time when science fiction was turning serious and very near literary with a small group of authors.

And I don't think there's really a hard line between litfic and genre fic. It's a porous boundary. A lot of stories are genre that leans into litfic, or litfic that leans into genre.

 

Sorry for going MIA between Valentine's Day and crazy busy with school and preparing for two exams back to back in the morning I purposely avoided storyland all day lolol I have a lot of catch-up to do! In any spare time though my creative mind has been busy thinking about all this stuff in the background. Story is much more satisfying and enjoyable than learning about the principles of photoemissions and cineradiography (yucky).

 

Damn. This is just good stuff and it's been very much on my mind all day. I lament often that I have not yet won a large jackpot so that I can just hire a ghostwriter. I would never have thought of saying something like that- and so well. It has really kicked my mind into gear. I have been exploring different/new approaches in my head. I honestly love where you were going with this idea... accept as of right now, at least, Ben does not know what happened on the beach. Christopher's friend Paul was the one who was there and Chris asks him to never mention it to anyone. Chris bails from the island and heads back to NYC in a hurry to try and see Ben while he's at his apartment still. Ben knows something is up immediately because he wouldn't leave Fire Island early unless something was wrong but Chris evades the real reason, in his flippant way telling him it was boring so he couldn't wait to get back to the city (which would be a lie because everyone is out at the island so there isn't much going on in town).

Later, Paul doesn't say anything to Ben, exactly, but he makes a very vague passing comment to Ben as he's leaving (following a related philosophical conversation they were having as a group) warning him how Chris is just a little boy inside who wants to be held and loved and protected and tucked in safe in his bed at night knowing mom and dad are just a holler away if he gets scared. Ben is really confused about why he says this and I could see actually piggybacking on the example you gave here and maybe they don't talk about what happened, but maybe Ben tries to talk about what happened many times. I was freewriting from what you wrote and it went on for pages and I started writing in first person from both characters' perspective. I am learning a large theme in the plot is Ben's being there to help Chris even though Chris doesn't ask for help. Maybe he thinks it's a futile effort because no one can help him? Is desperate to impress Ben and doesn't want him to see his dark side? I wrote a scene using talk to text that ties that idea in, of how we go from Ben feeling out of the loop and frustrated that Chris suffers in silence when he could be there for him, to listen, and over time Chris entrusts him with these vulnerabilities. It's already a scene when he comes to his apartment in a heightened state of emotion but never says why. He needed someone and went to Ben. It was enough just to let out his feelings in front of someone and be comforted without explaining. hat is the irst time in the story Ben sees his emotional side and begins to become emotionally involved with him. He grabs a bottle of vodka from his hiding place in the kitchen when he first sees he's upset about something and leads him up to the roof where they will be alone and Chris loses it.

Either subconsciously or not, he starts popping pills from his pocket, washes them down with vodka, not long after does it again and when the does it a third time, chugging like it's water Ben intervenes like wtf are you doing??? So this mystery surrounding his torment and why he does the crazy shit he does that Ben never really understands like you described here is already in the story. It really works as theme honestly. You ask about moving a story forward...in a way mine does backwards. The unfolding of their relationship, their connection and love for each other like parallels rescuing him or wanting to help him. But at the same time, as time goes on he spirals further and further down and largely because of how he feels for Ben and how devastated he is over his fantasy he can't have. I don't know that I necessarily need to change the way the story is told in terms of structure. I don't need to know specifically what event end the story, but the really about Ben reconciling his feelings and finding closure. He had this huge secret life in his past he never was able to share with anyone. He suffered through a massive loss and heartbreak and had to endure alone and vice versa. For his daughter, it actually brings peace in a way to her because she never really understood why they, eventually, broke up (her parents) and as kids blamed themselves and to learn of her father's selflessness, the sacrifice, the pain he internalized at the time.. .it gives her a new perspective.

I am still working on the plotting itself... as I said I have been so busy and should e spending less time doing this and more on school but... I can't seem to stop thinking about the story. I could sit here day and night right now... BUT in experimenting with writing from first person POV, I am quickly regaining my voice for Chris. I had switched to third person omniscient years ago but I can express way more it feels by doing it this way, instead.

 

I am, as you can see, currently very engrossed in this project. At clinical, techs often keep their latest books around to read to pass the time when it is slow. There were two books sitting on the desk a couple weeks ago, today there was only one. It was pretty slow and being that I was so tired and didn't feel like studying, I decided to pick up the other book. Very quickly I established that 1: not only is this a story with a character named Ben 2: when I read the synopsis on the back it describes a story told between two characters tracking the experiences of their parallel lives together over the course of however long 3: They did it the way I have often thought I could do mine- breaking the story up by date of occurrences and told in separate accounts by each of the two characters. I was like OMG! And I have said it a million times- all Bennies are alike lol. They just tend to have that certain... omph. Very bold. cute and lovable and silly but they mean business. And, as it were, the author explained a sexy scene between these two characters that mirrored one I wrote a few weeks ago, so much. It is uncanny. Suffice to say, I was engrossed in this book and ordered it. I am interested to take more time to read through and outline how they structured it. I LOVE that it skips over time and lands at specific dates!

 

I supposed it may be a rather large ask but I am hoping in some way my time spent here on the forum might lead to that, or help in that process, anyway. I wish I could like tell everything there is to know about the story and from that someone help me figure out the "where it is going" and "how it will end" parts. Last night over a bottle of champagne my boyfriend and I were discussing all this. Sometimes he's very grumpy and disinterested whenever I bring up my story but last night for whatever reason he was back to being very conversational about it. Anyway, I was lamenting over this hurdle I seem to be caught in and he seemed very firm in his feeling that I should stop worrying about it and that I don't need to have an ending, yet. He does agree (as do I) I need some sort of point A to point B plan though and he's commented that right now I mainly have tons of separate unrelated specific scenes. He's not entirely correct on this point.

 

Some thoughts.

If you do it as a picaresque character portrait you probably don't need much of an A to B. I feel weird talking about this, because all I know about it is basically what I read the other day in the article I linked here. Paging @Seven Crowns

I did read Don Quixote, but it's been a long time, and I don't remember it that well. I remember mostly liking some of the prose. More specifically I don't remember if there was really an A to B story, where he had a character arc and accomplished anything. I don't think he did.

My understanding of how a picaresque character portrait can work (and this is where I'm asking Seven Crowns for help)—is that there doesn't have to be a character arc or a plot or any progress made. It's just a series of incidents, each of which serve I think to shed some light on the character (or on something, but we're talking specifically about a character portrait).

I believe Chris would have a flat arc. He doesn't change. He's an enigma and a mystery, he's eternal. But you've got a second story, about Ben. The main POV character. He might have an arc. I could see maybe he learns something through the entire story. I don't know what, but just as an example,.maybe by the end he's learned that Chris is Chris and will never change, and that he (Ben) will never fully understand him, and he's now cool with that. Like accepting that we'll never fully understand the mystery of how life came into being. It's maybe more powerful as a mystery than as a fully explained thing. It would lose some of it's majesty that way. And he likes that he's leaving Chris with all his majesty intact.

Maybe he's also settled in the fact that he got no closure on the relationship. His life intersected with Chris' many years ago, and he fell in love. Chris didn't reciprocate (?) I'm not sure, I can't keep it all straight in my head, sorry. He either didn't reciprocate, or due to situations and circumstances they never got together (in a relationship way). And as always when talking about this story (which is an abiding mystery to me), tack on my caveat—I might be completely wrong. Do I remember right, did Chris die in the end? There are so many scattered entries and it would take forever to search through them and try to find that one. But for whatever reason, their lives are separate now, Ben has been hugely impacted by Chris and apparently Chris remained Chris the entire time, unfazed. Like two planets passing by each other and one got pulled into orbit around the other, rather than both going into a mutual orbit.

Forgive me, this is my way of trying to figure out some way to contextualize what I think I know about the story. I'm trying to find a way to come up with an ending. I see Ben driving away from the life with Chris (as if it's a movie). It's over now, but he'll probably spend the rest of his life thinking about it, trying to understand some parts of it, etc. But now that part of his life is closed—he won't be meeting Chris again. Now he doesn't know where he's headed, the highway ahead is wide open, for once the gravity is no longer pulling him inexorably back to Chris. He doesn't know where he's going exactly, but he's headed east (or whatever) and isn't sure what his life is going to be like now.

To me that feels like an ending for an open-ended story. It's kind of like the end of the Terminator, with Sarah driving off into the gathering storm in the Jeep. It feels like the closing of one big chapter (or a lot of them) and a new one is coming, but we don't get to see that. We're not concerned with Ben's life now that Chris is no longer a part of it. The story was about Ben's life with Chris, the parts where they intersected.

 

Check the end of Stand By Me:



The boys just went through some harrowing experiences together and came of age along the way. He says something like "We'd never be the same," or was it that they went home but home would never be the same? (It was "Castle Rock somehow seemed smaller.") Either way, it's because they've changed because of the experiences they had. I know, the last line or two is messed up, about his friend getting stabbed in the throat, but ignore that. It was a movie about boys coming to terms with the reality of death, and it was written by Stephen King. But note the tone of it and the way it closes out. End of a big chapter in their lives, a new one coming in, but they have no idea what it holds.

I think your story could end on a similar kind of note. The experience of Chris being in his life has changed Ben, and he'll never be the same. And there's no big resolution or typical ending—no closure. More like just an awareness that things will never be the same, and a sort of lingering nostalgia for that time and place and the things they did together, while understanding their lives are going to be different now. That's something like the kind of end I'd look for in your story.

And here's the end of the Terminator. I know, a very different kind of story, but I do think the ending is appropriate:



This is mostly to explain why I picture Ben driving into his unknown new life at the end of your story. It makes a good metaphor.

 

This is alot. I'm sorry but I had a lot to say and I am only hoping to help clarify!!

Correct, it is about his past, his life with Chris as a young dude. Yes, I see it right now as kind of an open ended thing. The closure for Ben, also, is in finally getting it this thing off his chest and finally being able to share about it and talk about it and how he felt about him. Chris and Ben don't get it together for a few reasons, they have parallel lives and their friendship is what intersects the two. During that time, Chris is still living his life and Ben is living his. They both want the same thing but neither believes the other does and no one makes a real move. There is a lot of flirtation and tetering on crossing a line. Their sexual status is left a bit ambiguous on purpose. They come very close to giving into temptation several times and Ben finally crosses the line unplanned one night with him when he's completely out of it, high. He doesn't rape him.. but he takes full advantage. It's amazing, its everything he expected and lots of built up anticipation and then it's over and Chris kinda missed it because he's so high. He's very guilty after because he's got a girlfriend and kids at home so he backs off after that. Chris wakes up the next day and tries to piece together what he thinks might have happened but he cant remember but he's almost certain it happened and queu up another crying jag when he confides in Paul (who already knew there was something more happening between them).

Chris absolutely loves Benjamin and the day of their big fight outside Ben's apartment, he is the one to finally confess his feelings but the timing is really bad and it catches him off guard. His kids are watching their fight from the window and so are all the neighborhood people on his block. He doesn't want to say he doesn't love him back, because that wouldn't be true, but he knows he can't do anything about it. After the fight when Christopher doesn't come back to the apartment and the police come to the door and he inititally expects worse news but they tell him he's at the hospital- he realizes he just has to see him and tell him how he feels. He realizes that in his entire life Chris is the first/only person to ever tell him they love him. He assumed Chris just needed him because he is always the one there to help back him out of a mess and then it ends the way it ends, hurting him even more than he is already hurting. But then he never gets to see him again, just when he was on a mission to tell him.

Chris reunites with his mother (who he hasn't seen since he was 15, when his wife reaches out to her) and agrees to leave NY and go back home to England (the family estate is his by this point but he never went back). He doesn't really bounce back, everything that happened leaves him so badly hurt and wounded he just kinda goes off the deep end living out the rest of his days slightly unhinged and cynical and no longer the cheery sweet innocent person he was at the beginning when he and Ben meet. He has AIDS and finds that out soon enough after moving back to England. After he returns to England and while he's dying is the first time he really gets to know he and Missy's daughter, Julia, their love child from the 60s. She's really young but he confides in her a lot of things and they become very close for the short time they have as father and daughter. He realizes he fucked up and is damaged and hopes like hell she doesn't end up like him. In the end she does alright, shes very much like him, but the good parts. he leaves a lasting legacy because he uses his time and money involved in supporting the AIDS crisis and support groups for gay youth and stuff like that. Even in his madness he finally finds some purpose to his life that is meaningful, and focused, to help others in ways he could have used.

In the meantime, Ben somehow pushes through the heartbreak of their unofficial breakup and what happened. Not long after he comes clean to his girlfriend about the fact that he had been with Chris when he's reading what's happening in the city to gay men and worried about the possibility that he could have it and have spread it to she and the kids. Ben leaves Brooklyn finally in 1993. If you know anything about the city at that time, it was the time of the highest unemployment in the city's history. He moves to the country- Lancaster, Pennsylvania to be exact, where a lot of new industry was being built and with that job opportunities. He totally derails from his old life and strikes out for himself for the first time ever. He spends his entire adult life looking after other people. His mother, his younger siblings, his neighbours, Chris, Marcy, their kids. He is a highschool drop out but he gets his GED and starts working toward advancing himself professionally. Chris had gotten him a job years ago that laid the foundation for a lot of good experience and he builds on that. When the story opens in 2002, like I said he's middle aged, he's a NYC transplant living in Amish country and running the food service department at a hospital. He has a very good jpb, he's well liked and respected, he's very firm but fair and he's relatable to his lower end employees, most of whom also have roots back to the hoody hood. Lancaster City is amazingly predominated by people who transplanted there from the NYC boroughs. But he's got his own nice little house in the country with a pond out back that he's been working on renovating himself. At the beginning when his now grown oldest child (Tatiana) is coming with her husband and their kids to visit popop she comments in their dialogue on his progress since her last visit and that how he needs a nice woman now to take care of him and give his home the woman's touch.

That is her mission, to find her dad a woman. His notable last bastion (whatever you would call it, there must be a better term) of his old life before we go back in time and see just where, exactly, this guy who lives in the country and has his shit together came from- is his old Chevy van his daughter refers to as the "free candy van" that he bought to make the move from NYC to PA 11 years earlier, now sitting and rusting away in his yard but quite in Benny style, covered in random graffiti and bullet holes because that is the kind of world he was leaving behind. Complete desperate poverty and crime and garbage. Things like his old POS van he can't seem to part with that seem out of place at first explain themselves later as we go through the past. The unattended garden he laments about makes more sense, any of the things he hasn't quite finished or gotten to are the things both he and Chris saw in their corny fantasy of running away together and watching the sunset on summer evenings from the back porch, things like that. He goes out and gets the life Chris knew he deserved, that he was too good and too smart and skilled to be stuck living in the ghetto for the rest of his life. Like Chris, he never really got over it and never stopped being in love but it's a painful memory and he spends years running away trying to get away but still it's there. The title I had selected for this story is based on a song that they two characters love and relate to and dance together by Ashford and Simpson called "It Seems to Hang On". The lyrics are highly appropriate in explaining how they both feel.

So when Christopher's daughter tracks Ben down via the internet, having known about this guy her father was clearly insane over and wants to carry out a dying wish of his bestowed upon her years earlier to give him a letter he wrote to Ben when he knew he was dying (Chris ultimately refuses to go out that way and ends his battle early while he still has some pride and dignity left and commits suicide). So she carries out this mission and contacts Ben through email. Ben has a whole "holy shit" epiphany moment putting two and two together, remembering when Chris had babysat Tatiana for them and came home ranting and raving about who he assumed to be a make pretend friend- named Julia. Turns out Julia wasn't a make believe friend and not only did he apparently have a wife- as he found out that day at the hospital- but a child. Another Christopher. Someone of direct blood relation to his good old partner in crime. He isn't sure he can handle reopening that door and that is where the story starts. Tatiana finds the emails and the old photograph and assorted letters and things he had ransacked the house for and when she confronts him he eventually decides to sit down with her and tell her about it "Your old man owes you a story."

The story flashes back up to 1981 then returns to present day and he's talked into taking the trip to England. When he arrives at the home and he's greeted by a stately gate bearing a family crest of the same design as one of the tattoos Christopher had, it starts to come together real fast. He finds out a lot of things about him during his stay and he's treated like family. He gets to stay in what had been his room and explore his things. Julia knows how much it would mean to him and he can't be with Christopher, but it's like hugging the shirt that belonged to a loved one sort of thing. He visits his grave and has a long heartfelt chat, apologizing for the things that happened, scolding him for making him come all the way there and not even be there when he arrives as usual. For the first time he gets to truly be a part of his life, even though he's gone. And that's really as far as I thought.

I always wondered if it would be weird if Ben and Julia somehow ended up together like yeah didn't work out for Chris but in his own machiavellian way getting them together like knowing his daughter will be taken care of having Ben in her life and should have Ben in her life- knowing what an amazing provider and partner Ben is. There is a romantic feeling to it but still maybe a little weird. But if she's just like him and they look alike... ?? Maybe they end up just good friends or he becomes a father figure to her since after all, he was gonna be her daddy if Chris had any say so in it. Julia lost her father, Ben lost his Chris. They both get to miss him together.

 

I saw Terminator a long time ago and forgot about this scene. There is a lot of overlap. There is similar symbolism in that (explained in my previous post) Ben leaves the city behind, he doesn't entirely forget where he comes from. His old van is his reminder of that old life, that life Chris was a part of and everything about that life was a reminder. And at the same time. Christopher wraps up his life in a similar way to her dictating her thoughts into the tape recorder- but he does it through writing one last final letter to Ben that he leaves for his daughter with the task of finding Ben and giving to him.

 

Ok, I'm starting to get the feel of what kind of story it is I think. At least parts of it. It seems like each time one is ready and makes a push the timing isn't right for the other one. This might be true in several different ways, not just romantically. Getting a handle on something like this can definitely help you figure out the general shape of the story. It also sounds like the time period and settings might play important roles. You might think of it as "Two men—one gay, the other straight—have an intense romance but never manage to develop a relationship, against the backdrop of several decades starting in the revolutionary sixties." There's a one-sentence summary. It might not be the one you would create, but it can give you something to modify and work with.

Another thing that struck me reading that (I've made it about halfway through that mega-post now) is that it uses what I've seen called 'Story-telling language.' Let me re-post this to explain what I mean:

Words and phrases like the ones I underlined, and especially the ones I bolded, create a sense of story in an outline or a synopsis. 'This happened, and as a result, this followed, but there was a probem.' This is story. I mean it's a dynamic unit of story, string a bunch of them together and you've got a story. There's cause and effect implied by these kinds of words and phrases. 'He was hoping' or 'He was expecting ______, but insted he got ______. But he kept persevering, and finally this occurred."

 

With the unconnected scenes you mentioned, I suggest the free cocktail board software available from Save the cat. Each scene gets it's own 3x5 card on the board. You can easily move their order around, and possible find places for connecting scenes. It can also give you that 10,000 foot view it sounds like you need.

 

Lol my bad! I meant picaresque, but several times above I said pastoral instead. Sorry if I confused anybody. I just decided to look it up, and all I could find were references to stories about shepherds tending the flocks out in the countryside. I had to backtrack to the previous page where I found it's actually picaresque.

I think I've corrected all my mistakes now.

 

Well here you go—maybe instead of closing on Ben driving off to his unknown new life, you could close on the letter. Chris is already dead, but Ben's daughter has given him the letter, and as a coda to the story print the letter right at the end, a final communication from him from beyond the grave. That might be the only time we get to see Chris' actual POV briefly, in what he wrote.

Or maybe Ben is driving off, pulls over in a park or a rest stop or something, and digs out the letter and reads it. Then he drives off.

 

This is new to me! Looking it up now and so far looks pretty interesting, thank you for sharing! I was literally Googling plot generators last night/this morning.