A Yawn, in Three Acts

he last thing I need to do is find another vehicle to reinforce my excuses for what I’m not writing. That’s not stopping me from exploring the cause and effect, here. I’m all hung up about the 3-Act format. I just don’t have the sort of contiguous mental processes that submit to a rigid structure. I am much happier just letting it fly and seeing if I can bring it in for a safe and satisfying landing. I can’t schedule the orderly flow of the story because I have only bits and pieces of knowing the personalities of my characters and only vague notions of an average day in their world.

y own story isn’t helping, either. I am dead smack in the middle of my own monotonous 3-Acts in real life. Well, not so much real as it is my life. I’m all about dreams and visions for select and specific details but I’m not the sort of person that daydreams about the happy world I’d like to find myself. I should have all the fodder I need if my motivation was to imagine an escape from my day-to-day. Many great stories have been birthed from that impetus. I just am not one to look back and wonder what-if I had taken another course. I know me too well. I took the course I would have taken nearly every time. I’m not a person that makes coin toss decisions. I assess the risk and go ahead and stomach the consequences. Then I whine about it ever after.

o I have a fundamental theme as far as a plot convention for my tale. I have given the nod to at least three characters as being caught up in the story. All of them are just too resigned to, more than content and accepting of, their circumstances. I think they’re behaving too much like me. I’m not getting a handle on two very critical elements. I am able to introduce the cast without any problem. Their basic drives and lifestyles are easy enough to present. I do not have a significant cause for them to champion. I don’t have any great challenge for them to surmount. They are all going about their business in the same clueless condition as me. That does not make for good reading. I don’t need a model of futility. This is unfortunate since the antagonist of my story is supposed to be so ordinary as to blend into the background but he is more dynamic than any of the other players. This wasn’t set out to be a clichéd accolade of the disturbed mind. Instead it’s becoming a loosely assembled map to my disturbed mind.