This post is the seventh in the Story Course series. If you just subscribed or just discovered this post, please start with the first post.
In the previous Story Course post, I suggested we talk a bit about plot curves. When we’re conducting a close reading of a story — or, really, any time we’re talking about fiction — plot is one of what I call the “Big 4” elements of fiction, along with setting, character, and point of view. These are the elements that get most of the focus in writing workshops and book discussion groups.
A plot curve is a visual representation of the rising and falling action in a story, what’s also called dramatic structure. When you learned about plot and plot curves in middle school or high school, you most likely learned this one:
That’s Freytag’s Pyramid, the first plot curve most of us learned (and the last one that most people learn). There are others, but they’re mostly just variations of this one, with some peaks and valleys thrown in for minor climaxes and such.
It’s also worth mentioning that Freytag’s Pyramid is a model, it’s not an assembly manual to be followed rigidly. Any given story might diverge from this model in any number of ways: longer exposition, shorter rising action, multiple climaxes, in medias res openings, etc. In fact, you could make a strong case that most stories don’t follow Freytag’s Pyramid, and that’s okay. The model is still useful in understanding how a story does what it does, and it can be useful as a planning tool when you’re writing a story.
Let’s compare the action in Until This Is Over with the steps on this plot curve:
Exposition
A man is walking through a quiet neighborhood. He sees a moving truck in front of a house with all of its doors open. He crosses the street and calls out a greeting into the house.
Rising Action (aka Complication)
The man enters the house.* He looks around the house, fidgets with some keys and a box cutter. A woman comes in from the back yard and is startled to find the man in her house. They talk, she relaxes, they introduce themselves as Teresa and Scotty. She asks him to help her move furniture inside. She mentions something that happened to a family in the neighborhood. She notices he’s bleeding** and bandages the cut for him. They move the rest of the furniture. He locks the deadbolt on the front door. She notices the box cutter is missing.*** They start unpacking boxes.
Climax, Falling Action, Resolution
Not yet, but it feels like we’re getting close, doesn’t it?
Plot Curve Notes
* Note the dot in the plot curve graph that’s labeled “inciting incident.” This is the point at which something shifts in the action or the tone, launching the story from exposition into complication. I think the man entering the house is the inciting incident in this story. Would you agree?
** If we were using one of those fancier plot curves, one with multiple minor climaxes, the moment that Teresa realizes Scotty is bleeding might be one of those minor climaxes. It’s a change in the tone and energy of the story, and in this particular story it adds another spike of tension to the growing collection of knives, slashes, slices, and blood that we’ve encountered. In contrast to the main climax of a story, after which the energy of the story begins to dissipate (the falling action), this incident ramps up the energy, accelerates the tension.
*** Ditto. The box cutter vanishing is another minor climax, arguably an even bigger one than Scotty’s oozing cut.
Okay, that’s as far as we can go with our plot curve discussion until we read more of the story. Let’s keep our senses alert for the climax, falling action, and resolution, and we’ll check back in on plot curve as we encounter these moments in the story.
Here’s my inventory for the most recent bit of the story
Things I’m wondering about
Teresa asks Scotty “Did you know them?” This comes right after the revelation in the previous bit: “...two days after I close on this house, they find that family” and the earlier “Especially with what’s been going on around here.” The fact that Teresa uses the past tense “did you know them” seems to imply that the family in question is no more. Did they meet a violent end? Was it an accident? Or something more sinister?
Teresa asks “Are you scared?” and Scotty replies “Not really.” Is Scotty not scared because he did it (whatever it is)? Or is he not scared because it was a murder or a murder/suicide and the murderer has been apprehended or is dead?
Or is he not scared because there’s nothing to be afraid of? Maybe their house burned down. Maybe they lost their home to foreclosure. Maybe they died of a carbon monoxide leak, which would be tragic, but it wouldn’t imply an imminent threat to Teresa or Scotty.
Why is Scotty bleeding? He says it’s a scratch from trimming trees (remember “Everything in the desert has thorns”?). But Teresa has her doubts.
Where’s the box cutter? Well, where was the last place we saw it? Scotty set it back on the counter after fidgeting with it in the early scene, right? When Teresa notices it missing, Scotty asks “Did you take it in the bathroom when you were getting me gauze?” This is reasonable and plausible, or it could just be Scotty trying to deflect scrutiny from himself. Wherever the box cutter is now, we’re pretty sure that it’s still there, in the house, with Teresa and Scotty (and the blood and the slash and the wound).
Things I noticed
Scotty has an “...oozing slash…”. It’s another cutting image to add to our list.
Teresa noticing and bandaging Scotty’s cut is a sudden shift from an external issue/crisis — the (presumably) dead neighbors — to an immediate internal one.
Scotty rolls down the door on the truck, Teresa closes the garage door, Scotty deadbolts the front door. In direct contrast to its initial state, the house is now sealed and locked down.
When Teresa asks Scotty to stay for lunch, he says “…I’m not expected anywhere.” Why not? Does he live alone? Could the dead family be his family? If so, he’s alarmingly composed. Or a psychopath.
Referring to the missing box cutter, Scotty says “No place to hide in here.” But we recognize, with a little shiver along our spines, that the same is true for Teresa. And for Scotty. They’ve locked themselves inside the mostly empty house. But is that better or worse? Is it keeping trouble out, or in?
What I’m feeling
My anxiety is increasing.
My suspicion is increasing.
Which of these things seem most significant to you? What else did you put in your mental inventory of the story that I didn’t mention?
Okay, onward we go. Here’s the seventh bit of Until This Is Over:
By 11 they’d unpacked every box in the kitchen. They sat at the kitchen island, drinking from cans of beer. She’d carried a small portable television from the bedroom and plugged it in on the kitchen counter, and a football game was playing with the sound turned most of the way down.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Mmm. Four years, I guess.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah, it’s quiet. Maybe a little boring. It’s kind of hard to get to know anybody.”
She smiled. “Unless you just walk into their house when they’re not looking.”
He raised his brows and shrugged. She leaned over and punched at his ribs lightly, playfully. He twisted quickly in his chair to avoid her touch, grabbed her wrist and squeezed — hard — then slowly released her.
“Christ, you’re strong,” she said, rubbing her wrist. “I mean, not that you wouldn’t be, but...”
“Did I hurt you?”
“A little, I guess. But I started it.”
He took a long drink of his beer, draining it, then set the empty back on the counter. “Yeah, you’re kind of looking for trouble.” He smiled at her.
Out from the direction of the main highway they heard a siren spiral up, then another. They sat and listened as the sirens grew louder, moving toward them then past them and up the street behind her house, where they abruptly stopped.
“Is that your street?” she asked.
He turned his head as if to listen for the location of the now silent sirens. “I don’t think so. I’m a couple of streets farther.”
“Oh. I thought you said you were on the next street over.”
“No.”
She cocked her head, furrowed her brow. “I swear you did.”
“No. I’m on Acacia. It’s farther.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t know the streets yet.” She got up from her chair and went to the refrigerator, looked inside. “Are you hungry? I don’t want to go out there, but I could order something if you know a good place that delivers.”
“No, I should get out of here.”
“Really? I’d like to do something to thank you for carrying all my crap.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He got up, looked quickly around the room, patted his pockets.
The percussive beating of an approaching helicopter thumped into the room. As it passed overhead, she walked to the back patio door and pulled the curtains aside. “I can’t tell if it’s police or news.” The helicopter sound tailed away from behind the house, then they could hear it grow louder as it circled back again.
“This is freaky,” she said, still watching out the window. “Let’s see if there’s anything on the news.” She turned back and he was gone.
I predicted at the end of the last post that the story was going to get freaky. Maybe when I wrote that post I had in my head Teresa’s words from the end of this bit, but if I did, it was subconscious; I wasn’t reading ahead.
What are you feeling now? How have your feelings changed since the last bit? What did you notice? What are you wondering about? What do you think will happen next? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
When you’re ready, here’s the link to the next post in this Story Course.
Feeling now? Convinced that something is going on outside the house--a police search, and the man did tell her before that he lived just behind her. If that was true, it seems likely that the police are searching for him as at least someone under suspicion. But then he was "gone." So is he hiding, or did he leave the house? More suspense.
Wondering: Still finding this woman unlikely to have asked a stranger to help her unpack every single box in the house? Who would do that?
Why did he react in that phobic/physical way when she tried to playfully punch him, which also seems unlikely? Are they both playing some kind of role? Or only one of them?
He says she's "looking for trouble," which sounds menacing, but then smiles, and from her behavior she doesn't feel threatened by him.
Why did he lie about where he lived? Did he pat his pockets like someone checking they brought their keys with them? So, i haven't committed to any theory and can't predict what will happen!