Hypnos
Scene Planning Practice
I've been experimenting with some scene planning tricks based on the Story Grid Methodology. If you don't care about that, skip to the story at the bottom.
Story Grid has a comprehensive planning sheet called the 624 but I wanted something a little more basic for ideation using the five commandments of storytelling and protagonist's object of desire as a focal point. I came up with a synopsis format based a bit on the Pixar pitch, a bit on the Story Grid scene event synthesis but with comprehensive alignment to the five commandments and basic stakes. The goal here is to create a template for practice that allows me to plan and implement scenes relatively quickly. This scene from planning to execution with a little bit of rewriting only took a few hours. I found this synopsis format a great way to come up with ideas out of nowhere. I probably spent more time trying to get Midjourney to render me a corn dog and then giving up than I did on the actual writing.
The synopsis format:
[Protagonist] is [status quo activity/reaction to previous resolution], but then [unexpected event], which makes them want [desire in response to event] without [a governing constraint on he pursuit of their goal]. So they [apply an initial stategy to obtain desire] until [complication/unexpected event that forces a binary choice]. And, they [climax action - choice made] despite [tradeoff], which results in [response from the environment/other characters].
So, for this scene, I started with the following synopsis:
Julia is eating a corndog at the fair, waiting on her friends, but then a clown appears at her side with a strange purple flower, which which makes her want to get away from the clown without taking the flower. So she runs away from the clown until the clown corners her in the house of mirrors. And, she takes the flower despite her fear of what might happen. This results in the clown disappearing and the flower calling her name.
Then I broke it out into the following commandments:
Inciting Incident: Julia is at the fair eating a corndog while waiting for her friends, when she sees a clown staring at her while holding a purple flower.
Turning Point: After running around the fair trying to avoid the clown, the clown corners her in the house of mirrors, holding out the flower.
Crisis: Julia has a best bad choice, she can either try and push past the clown, or take the flower despite not knowing what will come next.
Climax: Julia takes the flower and looks into it.
Resolution: When she looks up, the clown is gone and the flower whispers her name
The obvious object of desire here being: Get away from the clown! With a setting: It's the Michigan state fair and Julia is waiting on her friends. She's hungry and she grabs a pronto pup from the booth since the line isn't long.
With that all setup and in mind, I drafted the following scene. The goal was flash fiction at less than 1000 words, but then I extended it a bit for the sake of possibly continuing the story. So it's under 1200 words.
!!!TRIGGER WARNING!!!
Here there be clowns.
Hypnos - Scene Render
They said they would be quick, but the line for the tilt-a-whirl was already a mile long when we got here. I don't want to be here but they insisted I come, to hang out, to meet other people.
"At the fair?" I asked, my focus on the strand of hair I was twirling and failing to braid into one of those cute mini plaits with the beads on the end that I saw on that TV show with the girls on the beach, you know the one.
"Sure, there's bound to be a dozen guys there you can ride the ferris wheel with." Nancy is a hopeless romantic, a huge fan of the meet-cute.
"Sounds lame."
Nancy rolled her eyes. "It's just one night of fun, come on, Julia. You've been in a funk since Mark. It'll be good for you. You always meet someone new at the fair."
"Will there be corn dogs?"
"It's Michigan, we call them Pronto Pups."
That's how I ended up here, alone, at a table, eating a Pronto Pup. It's good, but I can get a corn dog anywhere. What I want is to go home to Netflix and chill with edibles and salty carbs.
After picking the remaining morsels of cornmeal off the stick I turn to put my trash in the disposable cardboard bin and a flash of purple catches my eye. Glow bracelets and glow necklaces and glow stars are a popular accessory here in the dark summer night but this is huge and I stop slurping my soda dry when I see that it's a large funnel-shaped flower. But what really has me stuck is the clown who's holding it.
I don't mean the kind of clown that Nancy and James want me to meet-cute on the ferris wheel. No, an actual clown.
He's dressed all in black. Black frill collar, black floppy shoes and a black derby on his head. His face is painted white with black diamonds around his eyes and a jagged black muzzle. He's standing in the strip of field between the food trucks and the attraction tent where the light fades and few people pass through.
I drop my cup into the bin and stare at him as I step away from the table. He stares back. I get all tingly then when he holds out the flower towards me and I backpedal into the crowd, turn, and head towards the tilt-a-whirl line.
"Freak." I mutter to myself. The fair crowd can be unusual, but the creepy clown cosplay is a bit too much for my nerves tonight.
I can't find Nancy or James in line and assume they must be up there tilting and whirling. Or they ditched me. I wouldn't blame them. I wait around at the exit gate anyway.
In the corner of my eye I see purple.
Again, just outside the throw of the ride lights is that clown, his big purple flower held out, its glow outlining strange patterns on his cuffs.
The tilt-a-riders flow out of the exit gate around me and I flow with them. Nancy and James aren't among them and so I make my way into the well lit arcade.
I stop at that game where you win a fish by tossing coins into fishbowls and exchange five bucks for a handful of pennies. Inflation sucks.
I miss every one.
I turn and the clown is ten feet behind me in the middle of the arcade. His white paint gleams under the harsh yellow lights and that flower still glows despite the brightness. People just walk past him as if he isn't a creepy guy in a clown suit.
I've had enough. Nancy and James ditched me, and this asshole is following me and Mark didn't even have the decency to tell me to my face that he booty swapped for Lisa Matthews. I wade through the crowd and jab my finger at the clown, my breath heavy and sweat pooling behind my ears as blood rushes to my face.
"Why the fuck are you following me?"
I must be pretty loud because the otherwise oblivious crowd glances at me and opens a circle as if I'm the freak and the clown is just this guy.
The clown simply holds out the flower, his head tilted, his painted smile a black laceration across his face.
My rage deflates and I drop my hand. "Just... stop following me. I'll get the cops."
I leave him there in the crowd and jog to where the arcade ends at a funhouse. I can still see him over my shoulder. He's closer now but not moving, the flower out in front of him. I hand over another fiver and they let me into the funhouse. Beyond the entrance is a corridor of warping light. My waist is narrow and my ass huge, my neck long and my face flat. When I enter the hall of mirrors I'm alone and my sour face bounces left and right, pouting back at me and into infinity.
Except for the one rectangle of glass that frames the dark clown with his flower in hand.
I panic. I shout for help and I stumble through the hall, bouncing from mirror to mirror, lost. The clown shifts from one panel to another, the flower's violet light gleaming in each frame defying the reflected whiteness.
Surrounded by glass with no exit, I collapse to the floor. I'm crying now, in fear and in betrayal. My friends, Mark, all of them left, none of them are here. Those floppy black shoes are on the floor in front of me now and I look up, sliding my way up the glass to standing.
"I don't know what you want, but please, just leave me alone."
The clown holds out the flower, pressing it closer. His eyes are dark and empty and his painted smile a mask over dead lips. I could wail on this guy, get around him and run, but I don't know the way out.
He pushes the flower closer until its soft petals brush my nose, its long stem dangling at my knees with slender leaves.
I take the flower in my hand, shuddering, unsure what comes next. I peer into that deep purple funnel where the glow flows out over each petal. It's beautiful. So beautiful that I'm crying again.
"Thank you." But when I look up, the clown is gone.
Julia. A voice from the flower.
Ju-lee-aahhh.
"Julia!" Nancy is shaking me at the folding table by the food truck. "Were you crying? Oh baby..."
"No... no, its fine. Weird dream, that's all."
"Hey, where'd you get this?" James is spinning the purple flower in his hand.
"That..."
"It's glowing... wait is this one of those bio-glow-enessing gene spliced things from the Internet?"
"No... I-"
Julia is practically singing. "Ohhhh and here's a card from... Hypnos? Ooh mystee-ree-us! Is he like a magician?"
"But that's..."
"See, what did I say, you always meet someone new at the fair."
"Yeah," I say. "You never know who you might run into."