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Intrigue (any kind, really, but royal courts were particularly known for it) is a series of setups that lead to a pay-off. For example, a handkerchief moved from one room to another, a word whisper...
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:29Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39555 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T09:59:49Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39555 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Intrigue (any kind, really, but royal courts were particularly known for it) is a series of setups that lead to a pay-off. For example, a handkerchief moved from one room to another, a word whispered, a letter falsified, are setups that lead to, for example, one dead Desdemona. When one is a plotter of stories, every step of the intrigue is laid out before one starts writing. **But what if one is rather a discovery writer, and the story is not told from the POV of the main plotter?** That is, what if a character is supposed to observe certain occurrences, the meaning of which is only revealed later? Does one write setups, and find out later what the pay-off is (and clean up those that do not pay off), or does one write first the pay-off, and then go back and set it up? Both approaches seem confusing: if a character does something (setup), shouldn't I, the writer, know why (pay-off)? Or if I start with the pay-off of, for example, my MC being manipulated into killing his wife, shouldn't I have already written him being manipulated there? It feels like chicken and egg to me, I'm not sure how to solve it.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-10-20T21:47:18Z (about 6 years ago)
Original score: 5