From Chaos to Clarity: Structuring Your Life Story

Flight School Podcast

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From Chaos to Clarity: Structuring Your Life Story

Navigating the Narrative ~ From Inciting Incident to First Plot Point to the Midpoint

Jennifer Lauck

Sep 04, 2024

Transcript

Welcome into Flight School:

On a structure chart The Summer of ‘72 has passed the inciting incident or the moment when the hero’s journey changes due to a shocking incident that creates chaos: Attack on Rick after he made Josephine throw up. We’ve also hopped the first plot point when the hero makes a decision: After the car wreck, Jennifer resolves to go it alone and fix something within herself that is broken.

Summer now moves into First Level Response which shows the hero using the same strategies, in different forms, from Part One.

In Part One it was calling on her former husband for help despite their unresolved past, leaning into Fran, seeing a nutty couples therapist, and stress-knitting.

In the First Level Response, Jennifer now lets go of her belief in her former husband’s support (after the power is shut off by Rick), she ignores debilitating pain from the car accident that takes away her knitting habit, continues her reliance on Fran who is clearly pulling away, maintains old routines like keeping Rick’s manic chickens, and hires a flip-flopping attorney.

First Level Response is a short but necessary part of all story and should be a swinging pendulum of tension. When Jennifer steps into Abrams office, doing the opposite of what she claimed she would ever do, things change once again.

The Power of the Midpoint

All midpoints are about the same thing: The hero is leveled by the antagonistic forces and must learn new skills in order to overcome those forces in the climatic action.

The reader now learns the story behind the story and gets necessary context for the hero’s unnerving and perplexing behavior.
The reader realizes the story is not about a marriage on the rocks, or bad decisions a particular type of woman makes, but about the very foundations of our protagonist who has a big, unsolved problem: Complex PTSD (coming next week).
The reader is gifted with a fuller sense of the ominous dark forces at work and shows you the actual battle the hero faces.

New tools are also given to our hero. This is why I have the chicken whisperer (Trish) and Gus Abrams join the story. They replace former and ineffective allies: Fran, Steve, and Rick.

Gus Abrams also enables Jennifer to expand her greatest (but latent) superpower shown at Plot Point One, her foundational relationship with a higher divine power. She admits to Abrams she’s given up on the God of her childhood despite being baptized, confirmed, married and then given an annulment in that tradition. But has she given up?

Maybe not!

Character Archetypes

As I was editing for publication this week, I thought a lot about Fran who might come off like a bad person for this act of betrayal, but in truth, she’s playing a vital role as light alter-ego/friend/companion to Jennifer.

“…these types are always characters of roughly similar age or status to the hero or heroine who stands as the light equivalents of the Dark Rivals or the Dark Alter Ego. They’re not rivals, but friends and allies who help the hero or heroine toward their goal. The real point of these allies is that they act to reinforce the hero’s own powers and qualities. The role in the story is to act as an extension of the hero himself.”
~ Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots
🐦‍⬛ Other character archetypes are here if you want to check them out and I hope you will because they are amazing.

Fran’s decision to tell the truth about the beer…

Reinforces the hero's powers and qualities (Jennifer didn’t want to lie, as you might recall).
Holds Jennifer to a higher moral standard.
Ultimately pushes Jennifer to find more effective allies.

Look, in real life, Fran did pull this flip, and yes, you can bet I was hurt, and bitter, but now I understand the inner workings of story, I am so grateful she did that. It makes the story so much better and I didn’t have to invent or massage anything! It happened. Plus, Fran’s withdrawal now frees Jennifer to rise above being a victim and be truly heroic which is the whole point.