Comments on: Setting up the story question

By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:19:39 +0000

Okay, I’ll take that he’s trying to guide Bob. It’s just in the opposite direction from the adventure. (Mentors can be TGs, too.)

And I will concede that the new, unheeded information in the newspaper foreshadows that ultimate Call.

By: Iapetus999

Iapetus999 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:11:05 +0000

Okay. A) I’m not disagreeing just to disagree
B) Lucius is a mentor. He’s trying to guide Bob. He doesn’t need to be changed to allow the story to proceed. If anyone’s a Guardian it’s Helen.
C) It’s the fact that he can’t act that is the Call. He can’t act…because he’s stuck in the Ordinary World. That’s the Refusal. “Geez, I’d like to do something, but what can I do? Poor Gazerbeam.”

But anyways, to (hopefully) end this discussion, I will concede that Mirage’s message is a clear and unavoidable Call, that requires an immediate response. Where the newspaper is just a fluttering light in the distance, the message is a 747 landing on the interstate.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:39:05 +0000

I have a hard time taking your dissent seriously, Andrew, since I know you like to disagree just because other people agree.

I disagree that talking about an event constitutes engaging. He could talk about it forever, but there just isn’t anything for him to do. Also, he talks about it, is told to forget it, and it never comes up again. The Story Question (that the Call is supposed to pose) isn’t whether he can save Gazerbeam, or what happened to him, or really anything to do with that news story. (There are multiple possible story questions here, but I’d probably say the underlying one is whether Mr. Incredible can be super again.)

If we’re going to take multiple Calls, then there are a lot of hints of the adventure to come. The whole Ordinary World set up shows that there’s something wrong here. The whole Ordinary World has to hint at the coming adventure.

Thank you for recognizing Mirage’s message as a Call. I call define it as THE Call because it’s the one event that gives Bob a chance to act, gives him a choice to make.

These first foreshadowing calls don’t give the hero the opportunity make a choice. They give him a snippet of information, but that info isn’t enough to invite him on a quest. It just illustrates once again that the Ordinary World sucks.

I do agree that the calls you identify go unheeded. But I’d argue that’s because it’s hard to heed a call that doesn’t ask you to do anything. There is no way they could heed those calls. They take in that new information, their interest piqued, but even if they want to act, there’s no way for them to.

(Aside: I would classify Lucius as a threshold guardian. He discourages Bob from thinking about Gazerbeam. He wants to stop even their moonlighting hero work. And he’s not involved even tangentially in any of the events until the final confrontation. [If he knew about Mirage's final Call, he would probably discourage him there, too.])

By: Iapetus999

Iapetus999 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:21:51 +0000

I guess we’ll agree to disagree. Of course it gives him an opportunity to engage. He talks to Frozone about it even. He’s engaged whether he wants to be or not. By talking to Frozone, he’s already gathering his allies in preparation for the adventure. Not to mention the fact that he’s being followed immediately after he reads the news. The universe has shifted.
I think you’re reading too much into the Call. All it is is new knowledge that _hints_ of the adventure to come. And, of course, there are multiple Calls, basically growing in urgency until the Hero acts. I think what Kathleen and I are getting at is pointing to the _first_ incident that is out-of-the-ordinary. The initial Call that goes unheeded, but gives the readers an idea that something big is coming. Getting the message from Mirage is a much bigger Call. All these Journey pieces can overlap to some extent. I just like to think of the “Call to Adventure” as starting with the initial Call through the time the Hero begins to act on it, including whatever Calls come during that time.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:05:24 +0000

Look, I know that the Call can come from a thing or an event. But according to your definition from Vogler in Adnrew’s blog, the Call must give the hero an opportunity, a chance to engage or refuse.

Reading the newspaper doesn’t give Bob a chance to engage. Something happened to Gazerbeam. Darn. There’s nothing he can do about it. He’d like to do something. It piques his interest. It shows us once again that all is not well in the Ordinary World. But there just isn’t anything he can refuse. There’s no reading between the lines of the article to figure out how he can save his friend, there’s no research to figure out what happened to him—and what happened to Gazerbeam is obviously not the Story Question.

Yes, going to the island is obviously crossing the threshold. But Mirage’s message meets all the criteria for the Call: it gives him an opportunity to engage or refuse. It gives him something to DO, something he can act upon. Reading the newspaper doesn’t give him anything to do. He can’t engage with the information he has from the newspaper article. It foreshadows the Call, but it doesn’t issue it.

Same with Leia’s call to Obi-Wan that Luke happens to see. There’s no response possible—even if she’s in trouble, as he believes, he knows nothing about her. He doesn’t know how to help her, or how to begin looking for her, or even if she’s still alive anymore. It’s Obi-Wan’s call that enables Luke to engage or refuse, because he has now sufficient information and it’s addressed to him—he has an opportunity, and he can either engage or refuse.

The Call is supposed to change things in his world, make him see things in a new light. It gives him the chance to DO something. Neither reading about Gazerbeam nor seeing Leia does that.

But these definitions have drawn us away from Katie’s original question—can we wait 25% of the way in for the Call?

All of the plot methods that place events along the story course—Field’s 3 act structure, Freytag’s 5 act structure, Brooks’s story structure—put the big, story-changing moment around 25% of the way through (which, as I’ve argued, can be Crossing the Threshold or the Call). As I said before, even if you want to use Luke seeing Leia’s hologram as the Call, that’s like 25-30 minutes into the movie. We’ve already established some of the core conflicts—rebellion vs. Empire, Luke vs. boring life. We see that there’s something rotten in ~~Denmark~~ the galaxy. We don’t feel like nothing’s happening (even though Luke does, LOL).