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Contents Updated: Saturday, 9 August 2008

The Polti Plot Outline

If a computer could write you a story, then you as a storyteller are redundant. You know what you want to write. The outlines are to stimulate your thinking, and help you overcome writer’s block. The plot outliner simply juxtaposes, not in any logical way, some Polti categories to give you ideas for plots. Often a broad situation is given first, then a few plot outlines to use as a main and subplots—you decide which, or how you blend them with the story you already have. The logic of your own story is your’s.

A Son… is to be slain through the hatred of a villain. Economic migrants appeal to some authority for salvation from a persecutor who voluntarily oppresses them using the formidable might of contemporary powers. They implore for help to perform a duty which has been forbidden. The humble protagonist steps forward to appeal on their behalf in response to a request by his dearest friend. The power in authority, partial to the persecutor, and overcome by a Dostoevsky like conversion, judges them and his anger or pity will determine his course. Which it is explores the vicissitudes of power eventually overthrown and the psychology of doubt. An intercessor may intercede on behalf of the protagonist’s friends. In the end, the power yields to the appeal of the persecuted.

Curiosity, schemed by deception, brings about the protagonist’s dishonor The dishonor of the hero is of modesty. The catastrophe which ensues falls upon social wellbeing, by loss of property from the consequences for relatives. A goal has been set, and everything is at stake, so anger has to be transformed to benevolence, surprises and counter surprises have to be sprung, while the protagonists try to tempt the villain from his aim, or the villain tries to bewilder the protagonists to give up the secret revealing their aim.

The husband is slain by or for a paramour. The betrayed person is more sympathetic than the murderer. One or other of the adulterers might act out of an unresolved grudge towards the betrayed party, or even to their partner, such as pride of achievements. Or one partner is the instrument of the other and is rejected. The unawareness of the betrayed is total or fully revealed at some stage, by chance. Between the betrayed and the intruder there was a tie of duty to the woman through kinship. The blow might be struck by either adulterer or by a third party, by deception. Complicate the plot using a conspiracy,the method employed. and such. The denouement could be in the courtroom. Any situation can be combined with any other as this outliner does, in sub-plots, in a group, each one associated with a particular character, or characters or role.

The plot often benefits from the protagonist being closely associated with a questioner acting as the intelligence or Superego of someone inclined to follow their Id, their passions. Skully, in The X-files, is the questioner of Mulder.

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