Are peak experiences on sale at Wal-Mart?

Just as we do in real-time life, characters must arrive at work every day with expectations.  They may brown bag it to save money, they may dress casually on Friday, but they must have some goal driving them forth, some agenda beeping away like the monitors on hospital TV dramas that intensify to suggest crisis.  The agenda is many ways defines the character.  How could we not feel a measure of sympathy and identification for the parent who wanted children to advance according to their talents?  How could we fail to experience a squeeze of identification for the hard-working immigrant who wants to bring the rest of his family along?  Doesn't our heart go out to the young artist who seeks beyond fame and recognition the achievement of special, intense skills and the empathy with which to give those skills an entire perspective?

The roommate of expectation is reversal, an intimacy college dorm mates experience well into their post graduation years.  Expectation and reversal are borrowed like shirts, sweaters and dresses.  The relationship is intimate because one follows the other, in real-time life and in story.  It is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Burns had it right with "The best laid schemes of mice and men..."  They play off one another like the old vaudevillian teams, building plot twists via response at every turn.  Felix leaves a Post-it note on the refrigerator,signing it merely with his initials.  FU.  Felix Unger.  Oscar, big blustery sort that he is, sees the FU and explodes.

Persons who manage to achieve or seem to achieve everything they want are bigger than life and more boring than life.  It is not so much schadenfreude that makes us want some pigeon to come home to poop if not roost; we have all experienced loss and disappointment that wrenched from us something we thought we had or could have.  It is what we do in consequence of the reversal that sets us apart.  Similarly, it defines our characters.

If we had truly wanted what was denied us or taken from us, we would be making plans to get it back or replace it or go after something even more intense, leaving the door open for act two finale of regaining what was lost, then paving the way for act three, discovering that the goal wasn't worth the price paid for it.  Sound familiar?

According to

attribution--identification of who is saying, thinking, feeling something relevant to the story at hand; also a quality possessed by an animal, a person, place, or thing in a story; most common use, a direct distinction of who is saying what, perhaps even with the adverb or adverbial clause attachment of how the thing being said was spoken.

Even at the risk of repetition, the identity of the speaker or performer is uppermost, beginning with the reader knowing for a certainty who the narrator of a given scene is and at all times who the speaker is, who the listener is, who the one who acts is, who the one being acted upon is. This important standard prevents such awkward, difficult-to-unravel locutions as "She knew she would go with her no matter what she did or when she did it because it was her basic instinct to help her whenever she felt she needed help." The reader is literally so grateful as to forgive repetition of names, although this gratefulness does not extend across the board to careless, unintended repetitions, which do nothing but make the reader cringe (if the offense gets past the editor in the first place).

In the matter of attribution in dialogue, the verb "said" has demonstrated over a long history its neutrality, thus Jim said, John said, Fred said will not raise any reader hackles that might have been raised if Jim said but John remonstrated, and Fred averred. Thus do not keep at hand a list of synonyms for said, particularly avoiding expostulated, admonished, and uttered. Verbs that convey feeling are welcome in all other places than synonyms for said, accordingly do not let characters bark or growl; ululate is also a no-no, the main reason being that the word may appear to be an authorial judgment rather than from a character.

Unless the string of dialogue between two characters goes on for some time, it is not necessary to continue with the "said." If there are more than two characters on stage, the writer might consider burying the "said" in mid action or mid sentence: "This is not going to work," Fred said, standing, stretching. "We need another approach." In such scenarios, the writer will do well to pick a dramatic (suspense producing) place to break up the sentence. "This," Fred said, standing and stretching, "is not going to work. We need--" he looked about him as though tracking a fly unseen by the others, "--another approach." Yet another way to tack an attribution to a line of dialogue is with a sentence immediately following that contains action. "This is not going to work." Fred stood, spotted a roving waiter, and motioned him over to them.


formula--a recipe or pattern for a story; a means of linking reader expectations with a plausible outcome; a narrative device for producing accelerated risk and subsequent resolution.

Some examples of formula in story:

1. A sympathetic character struggles against great odds to achieve a worthwhile goal.

2. Sin, suffer, and repent.

3. Something happens and someone changes.

4. A journey and/or quest that produce unexpected results.

Often conflated with plot, formula is theme based, frequently traceable from culture to culture throughout human history, thus Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces but also the trickster, recurring in such diverse cultures as Native American and in the persona of Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx). Other widespread themes: Man against Nature, Man against machinery, Man against convention. The operating factor in formula is predictability; if you add element A, the reader will expect element B as a consequence, thus formula makes the reader vulnerable to the possibility of surprise.

A narrative spoken of as formulaic is likely to be predictable, suggesting the need somewhere in the process for the writer and characters to collude against the expectations of the reader; narratives that are considered non-formulaic are often those that end with a resolving force that veers sharply from expectations, as in Thomas Berger's Little Big Man.