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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.

To challenge a god, any higher power, requires prodigious confidence, or plain stupidity. Kinfolk are divided over the issue. Some hate the protagonist for fear of divine anger which will leave the protagonist rendered insane, massacring everyone he loves in a blind delerium. So they seek to stop him and punish for his crime while others sympathise with him, and wish to sacrifice themselves for him. Appeals to the god are rejected and his vengeance remain unmitigated. Escapees appeal to some authority for salvation from a group of persecutors who unknowingly oppresses them using the formidable might of contemporary powers. They implore for deliverance from their fate. The normally hedonistic protagonist steps forward to appeal on their behalf in response to a request by his father. The power in authority, surrounded by his own kindred who fear danger, and severely logical, judges them and his anger or pity will determine his course. Which it is explores the vicissitudes of arbitrary power and blasphemy. An intercessor may intercede on behalf of the protagonist’s kin. In the end, the power yields to the appeal of the persecuted.

Vary the plot by modifying the severity of the central act. A “murder” is a metaphor for a harm done, so the “murder” of a character could be the murder or violation of someone dear to them. It may be multiple and aggravated in some way. A murder in a Greek drama can become simply an abandonment in a film about a girl left in danger by a cowardly boyfriend. Fate catches up with us sooner or later. Nemesis! Casablanca, where Rick has what he wants but the woman he loves, and he gives up all he had despite himself, for her sake.

The avenger and their victim are linked together in their business ties. Think of the possible complications—the different ways an insult can take effect, the quality of relationships between avenger and criminal, the slow turns which punishment can take, the points at which it might aim in its deadly course. Every plot springs from a conflict between two principle directions of effort, explicit or concealed, a clash of interests or beliefs, one person wants to do one thing, another wants to stop them, explicitly or otherwise but both sides must be seen by readers to be, in some sense, justified for them to accept the situation.

One character can have different roles in different situations, behaving differently to one character from another, or differently at different times and so on.

You might also like…

• Last Year In Marienbad Never ending story. Keep refreshing or clicking the button to find out what happens year after year at Marienbad!
• Marienbad Muser: Plot generator Like Marienbad and Polti mixed! More Polti than Marienbad.
• Literary Criticism Self generating literary criticism
• Bishop Ecclesiasticus Christian-like babble generator
• FIBA (Frederick Ignatius Baines Archive) More Holy Bibble generated
• Impeach the war criminals, Bush and Blair—draft letter generator—for you to send
• Or go to the directory index for “The Great Critic Speaks”, Chomsky-like text generator, and more.