Hello, Readers,
I’m back in class with Scott Driscoll and two of his writerly friends. The first evening’s topic was “Inciting Incident”, that event in the narrative that disturbs the protagonist’s world and from which all action ensues. My story, Evil Empire, which I referenced in my last post was now in its 4th iteration. I thought it was pretty good, about ready for publishing. I have copies out to be read by other people who were on the trip.
What slammed me against the wall was this: an inciting incident has to show up in the world of the protagonist that the reader can recognize as sudden, different and disturbing. That means that the “world” has to be described sufficiently to contrast the “new” thing that introduces the disturbance. I hadn’t done that at all in my story.
Stewing around with the problem of painting the life of Betsy Bell at the time of the trip to the Soviet Union in 1983, I came to an amazing realization. I have not owned my character in this or any of my stories. I have painted my character, my historical self, as meek, subservient, timid and deferential. Not who I was at all. ;
My personal narrative has painted me in reference to the dominant people in my life, my parents, my husband, my bosses. I have failed to “see” and claim the adventurous, challenging person I have been at every step of my life.
Back to the drawing board. Dare greatly.
Here are the new opening paragraphs:
Preparing for our departure for Moscow added layers of details to my usual bustle of work as adult education director for Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle. I had articles to write for the Rubric, our monthly newsletter, classes to arrange for the youth, and adult forums on the church’s response to government war mongering. I’d arranged for a performance of 4 Minutes to Midnight. The actors skulked in white masks and skeletal costumes pantomiming the horrors of nuclear war. The show brought the reality of Seattle’s nuclear submarine base and our surrounding area getting wiped out by a nuclear bomb into my gut, eighteen inches below my head where I lived ninety percent of the time.
My husband, Aldon Bell, known as Don, had added chairing a ten day series of events called Target Seattle to his teaching and administrative duties at the University of Washington. The noon-day lectures in the Methodist Church in center city and the evening programs in Kane Hall on the University’s campus demanded so much of his time, we’d wave goodbye in the morning with a cheery “See you between the sheets!”
I knew he was working with a big committee including lawyers, doctors–members of Physicians for Social Responsibility, former Peace Corps volunteers, executives from the YMCA, teachers, citizen activists like Kay Bullitt and Ann Stadler, other faculty and people from King TV’s channel 5.
The academic year had been a blur of anti-nuclear activity and now it was spring break, March 1983, and we were off to Moscow, Tashkent, Samarkand, and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). We were traveling as tourists with the specific intent of re-affirming our strong ties with our Sister City in Uzbekistan, Tashkent. Each of the thirty-three travelers carried a packet of one hundred plus letters of peace signed by 30,000 people during the Target Seattle events. All over town suitcases were being zipped with the packets on top.
Now the reader has a picture of the life of these two people, Betsy and Don Bell. In the fifth paragraph, the inciting incident shows up.
Stay tuned.
Betsy