Story Grid Exercises
Hi Readers, I am submitting the following to keep you up with my progress in Story Grid Guild. I have been out of the guild for the past two years, working on my novels. They are done (you can find them on Amazon, Dr. Bob Newport and Flora VR are the authors for your search), so now it’s back to work, ‘leveling up my skill set’. We are enjoined from working on our main squeeses while focusing on the practice, so, not wanting to lose you all, here goes…
SGWk4.Exercises.Crisis
Scenaria
Crises must be Strong and Balanced.
Strong means with both positive and negative consequences, containing a level of irreversibility. + Can it be worse for the protagonist?
Action means, Character faces immediate threats to physical wellbeing.
Status means, Character’s choice will affect their place in community, society, or poses a threat to their own self-definition.
Balanced means
Pros and cons and equal in their consequences. (ties back to OOD)
Exercises, write scenes in which….
#1. A firefighter reaches the top floor of a burning building. There are two rooms---one has a young child, the other has vital research data that could cure a devastating disease.
+++
LAFD Captain, Randy Hall, left home with a heavy heart. His wife’s condition, ovarian cancer, was deteriorating. They had been fighting this now for the past three years, fighting a slowly losing battle. This morning she had taken a sudden turn for the worse. He was almost in tears when his cellphone notified him of a call from her doctor, Mary was eligible for a new trial. Osaka Research had just called him, they had gotten approval for a new protocol which, finally, had the chance of success. She might be able to start within days. Fearfully, he called Mary and told her the good news. For the first time in months, he heard hope in her voice.
He had just clocked in when the alarms went off in the fire house. I see I’m event manager today, where is this?
Bad news for Randy. It was the Osaka Research Lab south of Figueroa, his bailiwick. With his heart in his mouth, he led the three-engine team in his command car, arriving first on the scene.
Randy was efficient. It took just minutes to establish the extent of the fire, and of the threat to the neighborhood and to assign duties to his just as efficient team. Water was already streaming up onto the roof of Osaka’s lab, and action taken to prevent spread to the adjacent buildings, when…
A lab assistant came bursting out of the building, screaming,”my baby, my baby, she’s in the employee’s daycare lounge. It’s on the roof, next to the executive suite, where we were assembling the licenses for … Oh, Save her, please.” She threw herself at Randy’s feet, sobbing hysterically.
Randy, grabbing his breathing apparatus, pulled the woman off and headed into the burning building.
Smoke terrible in here…he radioed down to his second, “Bill, get those smoke exhaust fans working. It’s getting bad here. We’ve got people in danger.” And he kept on trudging on up to the roof. On the fourth floor, he encountered flames, they had melted the elevator doors and were progressing towards the stairwell where he was fighting the smoke. His asbestos suit was singed by the time he broke through to the fifth.
The entire hallway was engulfed, he stood for a moment, Screams were coming from behind the door marked employee lounge. The door, labeled Executive Suite, was ajar, flames were licking at the doorframe. Oh God, Mary’s chance at life is in that room. The screams coming from the lounge intensified. There’s a baby in that one. I’ve got to move, I’m going to burn out here!
###
#2. A lawyer discovers her client, a major corporate donor to her firm, is hiding data on cancer research trials.
Joanna Handly, shaking her father’s hand, had just been made partner in his firm, CTS.
He was happy to turn over his role as Lead attorney, in Osaka Pharmaceutical’s defense against a dozen lawsuits from cancer patients, claiming irreparable harm from Cliodizene, their premier Cytotoxin. The med, introduced just days after getting FDA approval, was now, allegedly, paralyzing two out of ten patients. The damage came on fast, within hours of ingestion. Of note, eight out of the ten patients were already experiencing amazing remissions, which also came on fast, with tumors dissolving within hours of ingestion.
This was big business. Osaka had gained two billion dollars in stock value, in just hours once the data had leaked to the press. Oncologist all over the country had been clamoring for the drugs release.
Her father, David, was being paid twenty million to defend, and should he (rather, should Joanna) lose this case, both Osaka and CTS would be ruined.
“Hal, have you reviewed the FDA application?”
Hal, Joanna’s investigator, answered with a brief, “Yep”
“Well, go on, what did you find?”
“Nothing, Joanna. It’s vanilla. Here, take a look yourself.”
Joanna looked at the file. It struck her as odd, most FDA applications which she had examined were two to three hundred pages. This one, a mere five.
“Vanilla, Hal? There’s not enough here to flavor a drugstore sundae. Where’s the rest of it?”
“Don’t know, Joanna. This is all I got.”
“Call your friend in the FDA. I don’t get it, at all.”
“What do you want me to ask him?”
“Where’s the rest of the application, that’s what! I’m going to Osaka to look at their files.”
+++
“Yes, Ms. Handly. Of course, our records librarian, Ms. Pennyworth, can show you whatever you need to see.” And with that, Joanna was led through a labyrinthine building behind the oh-so-efficient Ms. Pennyworth.
The records library was in the basement. It was all computerized. “The stored data is on microchips. They’re stored in these locked boxes. The files you’ll want are labeled Cytotox. They are all current and on the mainframe. The password is FDA#1-278,29-2022-25. Can I leave you with this, are you at all computer savvy?”
Joanna detected a hint of sarcasm, “I’m fine with computer’, beauty doesn’t preclude brains, you know.”
Ms. Pennyworth, scowling, left, and Joanna went to work. What she found under FDA#1-278,29-2022-25 was confusing. The actual files, in the folder contained only FDA#1-5.
+++
There was a crowd at the courthouse. Media impeded her access, and she needed a police escort to get into the courtroom.
The room was jammed. She saw her father in the front row, along with the CEO and the CFO of Osaka. Occupying the front row on the opposing side, she was looking at a line of wheelchairs and one gurney---very sick people.
What was she going to do? The microchips, which she had pilfered from their locked storage boxes, had the remaining FDA#s5-278 files. Damning evidence, Osaka knew what they were doing. Their Cytotox was irreversibly paralyzing twenty percent of patients. They had withheld the evidence from the FDA, should she put it forth at trial, they would be done, their three-thousand employees would be looking for work, jail awaited the exec’s.
Worse, for her, both she and her father, would be disgraced.
“All stand for the Honorable Walter Reed, Judge of the Superior Court.”
Joanna stood….
###
Getting the Message Scene. Exercises.
Initial State: Show your protagonist attempting to use second-order coping mechanisms—conscious strategies that emerged from their initial security breach experience. Let them actively try to maintain control through deliberate choices rather than pure instinct.
“Flora, Flora. Help me! I’m under attack! Our house has been hit. I’m going down. Quickly, do something! “Inciting Incident
Flora froze. Oh my god! I’m screaming for help from him and he’s doing the same, what the hell.
But she didn’t have time to think more about it. The Demon horde was almost upon her. Progressive Complication#1. Act Flora! Girl, act! And she did. She knew how her magic worked, and now was the time, she imagined herself home with Stan, visualizing the magnificent structure in the Venusian clouds, and ‘pop’, the onrushing demons, anticipating blood, found--- empty space.
Flora found another chaotic realm. Their beloved home was burning. Stan was injured, down, trying to claw his way out of the flames, the house was falling, falling towards certain doom. Progressive Complication#2
Flora, screaming, threw herself on her host, her lover, “Stan, oh my god, what has happened?”
“No time, Flora, do something, quick, my love. Act.”
Flora, did, “House! Extinguish these flames. Now!
She got no answer. Progressive Complication#3
Again, using simple magic, she visualized the house as it was the last time she had been in it with Stan, floating serenely on its foundation of clouds above Venus.
Nothing was happening Progressive Complication#4.
“Stan, lover, help me now. Focus. Visualize. Put your love into it. Feel your love, for me, for KK, for our lives here in Wonderland. Now, Stan. Do it.”
Still nothing. Progressive Complication#5
House alarms were now screaming, AI had turned all of the interior lights full on red.
Flora could see the surface of Venus, they were headed down into a boiling sea of sulfuric acid.
“STAN!” she screamed. “We’re going to crash! Help me here! I don’t know what to do!”
The house took a sudden lurch and turned on its side, throwing the two of them into a wall, along with splintering furniture and art pieces. She was holding Stan’s unconscious body; he was bleeding from the mouth. Turning point:
Crisis: Action is required, or destruction ensues. Status, a comfortable helpless female cared for by her host, must change.
Partly in terror, partly in desperation, but mostly out of love for Stan, Flora acted. She put her lips on his and began kissing. She put her hands on his privates and stroked, murmuring, caressing, and feeling him respond, spoke, “Darling, remember. Focus on our love. Picture our lives here. Do it. Now, darling!” Climax
Exercise #1. So What. The inciting incident changed Flora’s relationship to her host. And the result is, Flora initiates tantric magic.
Exercise #2. Cause and Effect Chain. Because Stan asks for help, Flora must devise a helping behaviour. Her first several tries fail and she is forced to be the initiator of her own tantric magic.
‘Pop’
They found themselves in the bath, their beautiful blue-tiled Mikvah, naked, embracing. Glowing with purple-gold light. Resolution.
“Well done, Flor. You’ve well-earned your degree. Now get back to Safe Haven and do what you have to.”
“Wait. This was some kind of test?”
“Yes, darling. I felt your grief and saw what it was doing to you. I didn’t believe you could let it keep you from helping me, and you didn’t. Now go. Take some of this love and light with you. You’ll be fine.“