The Dramatistic Pentad Plotting Method

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 According to Kenneth Burke, human communication consists of answering six questions, to which, I suggest, a seventh should be added.

 

Burke's questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

The question I would add: How many? or How much?

Specifically, these questions seem to relate to

Who? = agent, agency

What? = act, force, object, incident

When? = duration, time

Where? = location

How? = method, process, technique

Why? = cause, motive, reason, purpose

How many? or How much? = quantity (in number or quantity, respectively)

To fully describe the basic plot of a short story, a novel, or a movie, each of these questions, as appropriate, should be answered:

Who? Norman Bates

What? murders Marion Crane and Detective Abogast

When?

Where? in the motel he manages and in the house in which he lives

How? by stabbing Marion and pushing Abogast down the stairs

Why? because the personality of his deceased mother orders him to do so

How man? two (murders)

By putting these answers together in a single sentence, an effective synopsis of Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho is obtained:

In response to the command of his deceased mother's internalized personality, Norman Bates, a motel manager, commits two murders, stabbing Marion Crane to death in her room's shower and pushing Detective Abogast down the stairs of the Victorian house in which Norman lives.

This method is not only useful in generating story synopses, but it can also be used to generate plot twists. A writer can introduce an innovation at any point (that is, for any question). For example, let's take an item from USA Today's “News from around the 50 states” column. The original item, concerning Montana, reads:

A federal judge has ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps. The Missoulian reports the lawsuit by WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity claimed the federal agency is failing to follow a treaty protecting endangered species and not doing enough to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal. Lynx are classified as a threatened species under the U. S. Endangered Species Act.

First, let's separate the information into our interrogative scheme:

Who? A federal judge

What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps

When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)

Where? in Montana

How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal

Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

Now, to introduce a plot twist, we can simply replace one phrase in the answer to a question with another phrase that mentions a bizarre or an unexpected substitution:

Who? A secret court

What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps

When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)

Where? in Montana

How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal

Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge

What? ruled that . . . U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel should shoot people who injure Yetis with bobcat traps.

When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)

Where? in Montana

How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal

Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge

What? will rule that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps

When? during a future meeting

Where? in Montana

How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal

Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge

What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps

When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)

Where? on Space Station Zebra

How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal

Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge

What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps

When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)

Where? in Montana

How? follow an intergalactic treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal

Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge

What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps

When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)

Where? in Montana

How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal

Why? because Lynx are classified as a human predators

Personally, I like the “Yetis” substitution the best, which implies not only that the creatures actually exist, but also that they are protected by the federal government because they represent an “endangered species,” a plot that could be developed humorously, perhaps as a satire.

Of course, another possibility also exists: change not just one, but several, of the answers to our questions. (Probably, this is the most effective approach.) Here's an example:

Who? Cryptozoologists

What? recommend that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service protect Yetis from hunters and trappers

When? recently

Where? throughout the United States and its territories

How? by allowing the creatures to roam free, rather than confining them to particular areas, or “reservations,”

Why? because, free to roam, Yetis, a threatened species, will be better able to defend themselves against human intruders

If, initially, the results of this process seem lame, choose a different news item and start fresh. Ultimately, the process can be rewarding!

Image and Imagination

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Like many who are interested in horror fiction, I occasionally indulge myself by perusing online images linked to such search terms as “horror,” “eerie,” “scary,” and so forth. For those of us who are twisted enough to enjoy such sights, viewing such images can be not only fun (I know, I know; I’ve already admitted I’m twisted!), but also informative, even educational.

One image is that of a young woman. She wears black (or, perhaps, she is naked--it’s hard to tell, because only her face, neck, and upper chest show; she is otherwise lost in, or swallowed up by, darkness--and her skin is not only pale, but also reflective: indeed, she seems to radiate the light that shines upon her, illuminating those portions of her body that I’ve mentioned, but leaving most of her figure invisible in the darkness.

Moreover, the flesh of her upper chest seems to be alive with internal light, as if she glows from within. Her eyes are dark, and she wears a slight, mysterious smile rather like that of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. A scar is etched down her forehead, from just above her eyebrow to midway down her cheek, but the scar is not red: it is black, like her hair, her eyes, and her dress (if, indeed, she is dressed), as if she bleeds black, rather than crimson, blood, a suggestion of her innate depravity, perhaps. She seems evil, despite her youth and beauty, as if she is inwardly corrupt. The image is suggestive, posing many questions that could lead to a plot, to other characters, to a conflict, to a setting, and to a theme--in short, to a story that is both horrible to read and to contemplate. The journalist’s questions should get the imaginative writer started: Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

The next image is full of eyes.  There are eleven of them, all feminine, with long, lustrous lashes and a glittering gaze, floating, as it seems, against a fiery background of yellow and orange, black and white. They stare, intensely, at the viewer, returning gaze for gaze. At the center of the picture, a pair of eyes, complete with the suggestion, at least, of knitted eyebrows, stares forth from the digital canvass, commanding the viewer’s attention; the presence of a strategically positioned diamond shape and of a ridge of material that resembles steel more than it does bone suggest the skeletal remnant of a nose. There is malevolence in her gaze. Filaments of light float and twist in the air, unifying the floating eyes, but there is no context for the vision, so that, collectively, the eyes seem to suggest madness. 

The subject, about whom nothing is knowable but that she is female and apparently beautiful, strikes one as mad; perhaps the multiplicity of eyes implies a fragmented consciousness, shattered perceptions of reality, and a distorted view of the world. If so, the true source of her horror is internal, not external (except insofar as she may confuse the objective with her own subjectivity). Again, this image raises more questions than it supplies answers, producing a wealth--or, at least, a welter--of possibilities for exploration and explication, and, as before, the journalist’s questions may lead the imaginative writer to a story based upon the ideas and feelings that this image may inspire.

Not all images are created equal, of course, and one must exercise discrimination in his or her perusal of the many pictures of horror that are available online. One, for example, although interesting in itself, perhaps, is too puerile to be suggestive of a situation greater than itself--and, therefore, great enough, it may be, for a story.  It shows a skull flanked by jack-o-lanterns; the eye sockets of the death’s-head glow red, as do the mesh strands that serve as the image’s backdrop. There is the suggestion that the skull and the pumpkins are caught in a web of some kind and that along may come a spider, but such intimations are not enough for a horror story and do not raise possibilities for anyone to pursue in fiction or otherwise; they are, at best, merely decorative.

The problem of the skull and pumpkins raises an important question: what must an image accomplish in order to be useful to a writer of horror fiction? What quality or qualities must it possess? What must it evoke in the writer’s imagination?

The journalist’s questions are clues. Who? refers to an agent (if an individual) or to an agency (if an institution), and, of course, to the agent’s or agency’s motive and, probably, to his, her, or its values, feelings, thoughts, and even world view. What? alludes to the situation and the series of incidents or events that have brought the agent or the agency to this point of the action and to the series of events or incidents that are likely to result from both this initial situation and the agent’s or the agency’s actions in response to it. When? and Where? point to time and place, or setting--the story’s physical location and its cultural milieu. How? addresses the behavior of the characters, especially insofar as they are the causes and effects of various situations, actions, and reactions. Why? relates to both the characters’ motives and to the story’s theme. These are the elements common to all fiction, horror stories included, and it is these, therefore, that a truly inspirational image of horror will pose to the thoughtful and imaginative viewer, especially if he or she is--or hopes to be--a writer of imaginative fiction, of the horror genre or otherwise. An image that is capable of suggesting such elements is an evocative--and useful--one, indeed.

Quality Television--It’s Back!

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Occasionally, television transcends itself and offers a series that is worth watching, even in the conglomerate science fiction-fantasy-horror genre: Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville. Lately, the Syfy Channel has done it again, with not one, but two, series: Eureka and Warehouse 13.


Created by Andrew Cosby and Jamie Pagli, Eureka premiered on July 18, 2006, and focuses upon its setting, the small town of Eureka, Oregon. The town (like Mercury, Nevada) is owned and operated by the U. S. Government, as a combination home, laboratory, and think tank for its residents, most of whom are geniuses and scientists who work for Global Dynamics, a research facility that has invented, discovered, or engineered most of the cutting-edge technological marvels released and distributed to the public over the past half century.

The plotlines for the episodes are much the same: use or abuse of experimental research causes a catastrophe that is remedied by the town’s scientists and its sheriff, Jack Carter. The lawman stumbled upon Eureka as he was transporting his runaway daughter Zoe back home to her mother’s residence in Los Angeles and, when one of the town’s many mysterious accidents injured the sheriff, Carter was chosen as his replacement. The show is filmed mostly in Canada’s British Columbia, although its city hall is Ashland, Oregon’s, city hall and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the source of Global Dynamic’s exterior shots.


Warehouse 13 was created by Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran and executive Battlestar Galactica co-producer Jane Espenson and D. Brent Mote. Two U. S. Secret Service agents, Myka Bering and Peter Lattimer, chase down supernatural artifacts, collect them, and deposit them in a secret government warehouse (the Warehouse 13 of the series’ title) for safekeeping. The agents are supervised by Arthur Nielsen, whose nemesis is James McPherson, a former Warehouse 13 agent who now seems to be freelancing. Twelve similar warehouses preceded Warehouse 13, each of which was located, in its day, in the world’s most powerful nation. Designed by Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and M. C. Escher, Warehouse 13 is located in South Dakota.

Among the artifacts that Bering and Lattimer have recovered are a stone that controls those whose blood touches it (“Aztec Bloodstone”), an electronic stun gun (“Tesla Gun”), a boomerang football (“Rugby Football”), a mask that allows its user to breathe underwater (“Underwater Breathing Mask”), a self-propelled vehicle (“Bio-Energy Vehicle”), an aircraft lost in the Bermuda Triangle (“Training Flight 22”), a billfold that can transport dead souls (“Harry Houdini’s Wallet”), a kettle that can grant some wishes but not others (“Wishing Kettle”), a clock-stopping calendar (“Mayan Calendar”), a song that creates a sense of euphoria (“Euphoria Record”), an Alice in Wonderland-style looking-glass (“Lewis Carroll's Mirror”), a camera that transforms its subject into a still, two-dimensional, black-and-white photograph (“Still Camera”), and a host of other objects. Although the artifacts are not all as imaginative or ingenious as one might wish, enough of them remain at large, one may presume, to fuel many future installments of the inventive series.

More information about both shows is available at Syfy’s official website.

Learning from the Masters: Dean Koontz’s Tips for Plotting the Best-Seller

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

 

In 1981, when Writer’s Digest Books published his How to Write Best-Selling Fiction, Dean Koontz had 25,000,000 copies of his books in print and had earned several million dollars as a writer. Today, he has sixteen times that number of copies in print, or a whopping 400,000,000 --a copy for every man, woman, and child in the United States, with some left over. It’s safe to assume that his fortune has enjoyed a corresponding increase. Koontz is nothing if not (a) prolific and (2) commercially successful. It should go without saying that, when he counsels aspiring writers as to what and how they should write for publication, others should pay attention. Among other topics (or tips) that he supplies in How to Write Best-Selling Fiction, prolific, best-selling author Dean Koontz insists upon the importance of the narrative hook (an opening to the story that captivates readers and makes them want to read further) and plot. He supplies numerous examples of the former and a formula for the latter (although he prefers to call the formula a “pattern”). His example of the narrative hook is the beginning of his own novel The Voice in the Night, in which the antagonist asks the protagonist (both of whom are adolescents), “You ever killed anything?”

This question, asked of Colin by Roy, leads the boys to discuss the killing of “bugs” (Roy admits he likes the way bugs “squish” when he kills them and enjoys watching praying mantises “try to walk” after he has ripped “the legs off” them. Finally, Roy asks, “Ever kill anything bigger than bugs?” and admits that he has done so, “lots of times,” which prompts Colin to ask, “What’d you kill?” (67-68) One must admit that this opening is captivating! Koontz defines the “classic plot” for fiction of all types as being comprised of “four steps”:

1. The author introduces a hero (or heroine) who has just been or is about to be plunged into terrible trouble.
2. The hero attempts to solve his problem but only slips into deeper trouble.
3. As the hero works to climb out of the hole he’s in, complications arise, each more terrible than the one before, until it seems that his situation could not be blacker or more hopeless than it is--and then one final, unthinkable complication makes matters worse. In most cases, these complications arise from mistakes or misjudgments the hero makes while struggling to solve his problems. Mistakes and misjudgments which result from the interaction of the faults and virtues that make him a unique character.
4. At last, deeply affected and changed by his intolerable circumstances, the hero learns something about himself or about the human condition in general, a Truth about which he was ignorant, and, having learned this lesson, he understands what he must do to get out of the dangerous situation in which he has wound up. He takes the necessary action and succeeds or fails, though he succeeds more often than not, for readers tend to greatly prefer fiction that has an uplifting conclusion (74-75).

Coming from one of the world’s most prolific and best-selling authors, these tips are ignored only at one’s own peril, especially since, according to Koontz virtually every successful writer, from Robert Ludlum to Ernest Hemingway, himself and Stephen King included, employs them (75). Koontz also identifies the five goals he has in mind for “the first scene,” or opening, of “every novel” he writes:

1. I wanted to grip the reader immediately.
2. I wanted to introduce the lead character.
3. I wanted to plunge the lead character into terrible trouble.
4. I wanted to let the reader know that this was going to be a fast-paced story with lots of suspense. . . .
5. I wanted to create a strong sense of reality. . . . (84-88).

Koontz also recommends that aspiring writers try to break into the market with a novel, as opposed to short stories; find an agent to represent him or her; write for a mainstream, rather than a genre market; include lots of action in the story; and disbelieve all the rumors about publishers who are no longer seeking quality writing from first-time writers or who refuse to consider anything sent to them over the transom. Of course, How to Write Best-Selling Fiction is almost 30 years old, and a good many things are apt to have changed since those days, but one thing seems to remain clear: if one doesn’t write at least a synopsis and the first three chapters of a novel, one will have nothing to sell, regardless of the vagaries of the marketplace and the economy.