Twenty Questions (Part IV)
To Build an Obstacle Course
Welcome to part IV of what looks like it will be five parts total, with part V itself coming on Thursday, because I am traveling at that time, so I wrote it ahead. Doing things ahead of time is not easy for me because I am completely unable to sense urgency until it is right up in my face. I would be the absolute worst character in a disaster movie. I’d still be packing my suitcase when the natural disaster arrived. I really do have the best intentions, and a month ago I wrote down on a sheet of paper—that I have, right here!—to “get ahead on Shelf Life” because I knew I would be traveling. I am really good at writing notes to self and to-do lists. Less good at actually doing things ahead of time.
At least I figured out the twenty questions ahead of time so I wouldn’t forget them midway through the series, even though I almost did, thank goodness for version records. That is all I have to say on that topic.
Last Thursday’s Part III wrapped up the questions you can ask to find your antagonist and started in on the cast of supporting characters. This one wraps up supporting characters and winds around to the meat of the plot arc itself. This might be the one you’ve been waiting all this time for and read through several previous installments hoping to find. Today is your day.
13. Who, Among These Allies, Hides a Surprising Secret?
Or a dangerous one. Question 12, if you can remember all the way back to last Thursday (I cannot), asked “Who can the protagonist depend upon to help them reach their goals?” The characters who answer this question are the supporting cast. Of you supporting cast, once you know who they are, ask the above: Who among you is hiding a surprising, or even dangerous, secret?
I thought long and hard about this before including it in the questions. Twenty questions is not a whole lot to uncover an entire plot so I had to be judicious about what I picked, but I felt this was important. I think that, among the supporting cast, somebody should be hiding something from the protagonist that will shake everything up when it comes out. I just think stories are better for this. I asked myself: How often do I actually encounter this in fiction? And how does the presence of this “trope” (for lack of a better word) line up with how well I like the books I read? I started combing through my Goodreads list of books I have read, beginning with the books I have liked best (five stars), and this happens in many or most of them.
Someone in the cast of supporting characters is usually hiding a secret that affects the protagonist directly. This is Mr. Darcy knowing all about Wickham and not telling anybody till he’s run off with Lydia. Or Darth Vader dropping the parentage bomb on Luke. Or Professor Lupin keeping multiple important secrets from Harry, notably (A) that he is a werewolf, and (B) that escaped convict Sirius Black is an animagus.
As you may note from the examples above, sometimes this supporting character who is keeping back important information is the story’s antagonist, or an antagonist at least. Often it’s one of the protagonist’s allies. It could be anyone. The important thing is that the reveal of the information causes a paradigm shift for the protagonist (and perhaps for others around them): The new information completely disrupts their underlying assumptions about the world around them, their life, or the situation they’re in—and they must form a new understanding of whichever one (or ones) it was, on the fly, mid-story.
Could you write a story without this? Sure. But I don’t know why you would, given the choice.
14. What Does the Protagonist Try First to Reach Their Goal—And What Foils It?
The plot is an obstacle course. I talked about this quite a bit in Part II. With the next several questions we will get into the meat of that obstacle course. That is: What are the obstacles?
There may be many, big and small. There don’t need to be exactly three. However, in a traditional three-act plot (traditional in English, that is), act two contains your rising action which will contain a series of obstacles, hopefully interrupted by a serious twist (reference question thirteen above if you’re unsure about how to introduce a twist), followed by a disaster and crisis that usher in the protagonist’s nadir (more on that in a bit). While there may be other obstacles to the protagonist, there should be at least three major ones that characterize the rising action (including the disaster/crisis).
The protagonist is sprinting down a path: The path to their goal. That path is strewn with hurdles, which must be leapt. Imagine your protagonist leaping two hurdles cleanly, then failing to clear the third and tumbling tits-over-teakettle down the track—and then picking themself up in just the nick of time, as the other runners approach, and sprinting the rest of the way to victory. I don’t actually know how hurdles work, maybe knocking one over is disqualifying. Pretend you don’t know, either. Pretend my extended metaphor is solid.
So we’re Luke and Obi Wan in Star Wars and we’ve received Leia’s holographic distress call asking them to take the plans for the Death Star to the resistance on Alderaan. This is our goal: We’re going to take the plans to Alderaan. There’s a little matter of getting transport to Alderaan because it’s a whole other planet and we do not have a spaceship but that’s fine. We know a guy. So we’re on our merry way to Alderaan. What’s the obstacle that happens to stop us from reaching our goal of taking the plans to Alderaan? Alderaan got blown to smithereens before we got there. Oops.
The hero’s journey can’t go smoothly or the story is boring. So ask yourself: What is the first hurdle here, the first serious obstacle my protagonist encounters on the way to their goal? What happens to make reaching the goal—in the original way we planned to—impossible.
The protagonist should have to change their approach or plan at this point; the obstacle, again it’s like a hurdle, you can’t just smash right through it. You have to go over or around somehow—to find another, different way to reach your goal. In Luke’s and Obi Wan’s case, they have to come up with a whole new goal—can’t take the plans to Alderaan if Alderaan doesn’t exist, can you?
With the original path to their blocked, what does your protagonist do to get moving in the right direction again?
15. When the Protagonist Surpasses That First Foil, What Derails Them Next?
Three things is always the right number of things. Don’t go straight from your protagonist’s triumph over their first obstacle to their disaster/crisis point. Throw another major obstacle in there.
At this juncture, the protagonist may feel shaken by having encountered trouble on their journey or they may feel empowered and confident having conquered the first obstacle in their path. Either way, they’re probably feeling relieved to be out of immediate danger and back on track to achieve their goal. You are Frodo and, although you’d rather be headed back to the Shire after almost dying trying to get the One Ring to Rivendell, you’re on your way forward with the Ring again. The plan was always to take it to be destroyed; unfortunately you couldn’t do that at Rivendell so you have to go a little farther. Whatever, you have your good buddy Gandalf with you to make sure everything goes alright.
The second obstacle that Frodo encounters during his journey to destroy the One Ring (as told in The Fellowship of the Ring, I’m not mapping the whole trilogy) is a nasty snowstorm in a high pass that reroutes his party underground through the ruined city of Moria, pits them against a balrog, and causes the death of Gandalf.
I’m using this example because you can draw an exact parallel to Star Wars: We wanted to go to Alderaan but we couldn’t, and now we’re on the Death Star, the most dangerous place we could be, having a scary but grand adventure, and it’s all fun and games until our wise and elderly guide, our surrogate dad figure and the only guy on the team who had a passing chance of making all this work out, has sacrificed himself so the rest of us could get away.
The second obstacle that derails and reroutes your protagonist and company should be even more ground shaking than the first one. It’s the rising action, after all. Whatever happens at this point should have the magnitude to shake the protagonist to the core, but it’s not something they can’t move on from. Usually at this point there’s going to be some downtime, a little reprieve, so they can lick their wounds and refocus on continuing the journey.
16. What Is the Protagonist’s Nadir?
Nadir means the lowest point in someone’s fortunes. The opposite of nadir is the word zenith, the highest point in someone’s fortunes. Just before the climactic encounter of protagonist and antagonist, we should see the protagonist at their nadir and the antagonist at their zenith. Like a seesaw on a playground, when one is up the other is down and vice versa.
You’d think, after Gandalf buys the farm, that would be it and Frodo would be at his lowest point but he’s not yet. He still has his buddies from home and the rest of the Fellowship, including Aragorn who has good leadership skills and might be able to see the venture through even without Gandalf. All hope is not yet stamped out. They might still be able to take the Ring to Mordor and get a refund for it or whatever they’re trying to do.
Frodo’s lowest point actually comes when Boromir tries to take the Ring from him by force. This is a serious betrayal, but further, he realizes that anyone who travels with him is susceptible to the Ring’s influence and will eventually succumb, and try to take it for themself. This is Frodo’s nadir because he has felt all along that he could do this heroic task as long as he had a lot of help, and this is the moment when he realizes he actually has to do it without help. He’s all alone.
The third “obstacle” (or a subsequent one, if you’re an overachiever) the protagonist faces should be a disaster for them and force a crisis of faith in themself and their ability to reach their goal. This is the point where they are ready to give up, even though they know by now they cannot turn around and return to home and the status quo.
So ask yourself: What is the worst thing that could happen to my protagonist? What could happen that could cause them to completely lose hope in seeing this journey through? Whatever it is—that’s what you should throw at them here.
I’m planning to wrap up with Part V on Thursday but I might still surprise you with something else. Probably not, but I might!
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.