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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 goal has been set, and everything is at stake, so anger has to be transformed to benevolence, obstacles have to be removed, while the protagonist’s advocate tries to tempt the adversary from his aim, or the villain tries to bewilder the protagonists to give up the secret revealing their aim. Powerlessness can be explored with the theme of the impending death or destruction of a loved one, such as learning of the ordered death of a kinsman or ally. The victim beseeches everyone, though they have no power to save, while someone else vainly appeals to the power, whose haughty, menacing figure dominates, intensifying the keenness of the grief by his pleasure in it.

The protagonist is driven to insane action by higher powers which can be real or imagined ghosts, through heredity, to give a psychological genre. The victim of a lunatic is missing and has to be found.

The audacious enterprise of a clear sighted adventurer, a battle, has to be undertaken including its preparation, to wrench some prize from an adversary. The objective might be the recapture of something important. Forces conspire for disaster, like the ways in which revolt may arise. Other situations can be grafted on. The object of the enterprise can be changed with ease. In fairy tales, the movement from an initial equilibrium to a final resolution is precipitated by a supernatural event. In science fiction, the imagined future and its amazing technology is also effectively supernatural, and often merges with fantasy. The story makes it seem natural.

A subtle third character after the two main antagonists (the hero and villain) makes one of the antagonists his instrument and changes the balance between them. As the perception of the used adversary diminishes so the power of the extra element increases. The third element might be sometimes beside the protagonist, sometimes, the antagonist, his part ranging from prophet to porter, and his part modifies powerfully the other parts.

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