In fiction or
memoir, the story needs to be about the protagonist taking the reader through
an arc of change and letting the reader feel that experience, feel that change
within the protagonist. Writers need to remember that the internal story arc of
change for the protagonist, the transformational arc, needs to unfold slowly,
scene by scene, and it needs to be interpreted for the reader through the
protagonist’s thoughts.
But in order for
the writer to construct a story to change the protagonist, the writer needs to
understand how the protagonist interprets her story world. That’s where the origin
scene comes in. Remember the origin scene from a prior blog post? The origin scene is where the protagonist’s misbelief about the world is born.
This is a misbelief about how the world works according to the protagonist.
This guides the protagonist’s life from the moment it happens—the actual origin
scene—according to Lisa Cron in her Story Genius course.
In memoir,
the protagonist is you the writer. You need to think:
How am I going to show one explicit arc of change in the protagonist’s
memoir story?
Think what particularly is Victoria’s arc of change in her college
memoir?
Victoria begins the
memoir believing that if you struggled in school, you’re not smart enough for
college because her father said as much in the origin scene when she attempted
to sign up for college prep courses in high school.
As a writer, I need to show the
protagonist’s change from someone who doesn’t believe that she can handle
college—because she’s unprepared and inadequate—to someone who does in fact
graduate from an Ivy League university. I need to show the daily struggles with
fear and doubt—and what they mean to the protagonist—through scenes in the
memoir.
In order to
do this, writers need to set the place, the time, and the context of each scene
moving forward. Scenes need to be specific. Writers can’t simply focus on what
happens externally in the story. We’ve got to let the reader know what our
protagonist is thinking as she reacts, internally, to everything that happens
in the story according to Cron. And we need to help the reader understand why
our characters are thinking and believing what they do. We need to put the
character’s inner struggle right on the page so readers can experience her
internal conflict themselves.
The misbelief
needs to be at the forefront of the internal struggle in the story. Backstory scenes
need to reinforce Victoria’s misbelief; scenes that show her feelings of fear
and doubt and inadequacy that if she went to college she would surely fail. My
blogpost about backstory can be found here.
A
few backstory scenes to reinforce Victoria’s misbelief could be:
A scene with
a college-bound high school friend where the friend tries to explain her
science classwork to Victoria and Victoria is completely lost, believing her
father correct. She could never understand the subject material.
Note:
Victoria comes to realize, as she struggles through college herself, that she
needs to be taught the subject matter visually to be able to understand.
After the
birth of her first baby, Victoria discovers that a fellow secretarial student friend
from high school graduates from community college. Victoria interprets this as
her friend probably didn’t struggle in school. She was simply smarter than
Victoria.
Victoria fails
the math portion of the College Entrance Exam.
However, to
chip away at her struggle to believe she can succeed at college, Victoria
learns that the college offers basic skills math courses to help her build a
math foundation.
Another scene that chips
away at Victoria’s misbelief is when the Phi Theta Kappa advisor informs her
that she should apply for All U.S.A. and All New Jersey Community and Junior
College Academic Team awards. The professor believes in Victoria, but Victoria
is more worried about what would happen if she won the awards.
Fear, doubt, and inadequacy in my
particular memoir story can manifest themselves as inferiority or even feeling
like an imposter. When I attended the University of Pennsylvania, I didn’t feel
like a real Ivy Leaguer. I felt like I didn’t belong.
*As before,
please offer any insight or comments you may have about my college memoir.
Thank you! *
Lisa Cron states that the
protagonist’s “aha moment” comes near the end of the novel. It is when she finally
overcomes her misbelief. This is where your novel makes its point. I’ll talk
about the “aha moment” in the next post.
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