Ep. 2. Illusion (January)
In this episode I discuss:
🪞 Why the opening of a story is exemplified by Illusion.
☯️ How to combine seemingly oppositional writing advice about how to open a story.
🌱 The questions to ask at the very beginning of a project.
❄️ What January can teach us about storytelling.
Transcript:
Today, I will be talking about January, the time of Illusion, and and how to use incident to intensify a current problem for your characters.
This is episode 1 of 12. I will be sharing bite-size episodes about each of the 12 sections over the next several weeks.
If you haven’t yet listened to the introductory episode, you might find it helpful for context. There I explain how I understand a story as being broken into four acts, which each correspond to a season.
I will go a little deeper, week-by-week, to explain how within those acts, there are three sections which each roughly correspond to a single month.
Today, I am exploring month one, January, the month that initiates meteorological winter.
This episode is about the very beginning of the story, but it might be better to imagine this moment as the beginning of an initiation into a cycle in your characters’ lives.
This is where so many writers can fall foul of existing – sometimes contradictory – advice. This advice can be about showing a character in their natural environment so that the reader can get a baseline sense of what they are like and what they are doing to contrast with what happens later. But there is also the seemingly opposite advice of opening with incident.
I think that the very opening chapter or scenes or section of a story can be a combination of both of these elements. I have described this as Illusion.
Illusion relates to the sense that this is a time of fallow earth. However, the seeds of the whole story are already present.
Or, to put it another way, the present problem that your characters have might appear to be changed through some kind of incident, but this incident actually intensifies the baseline issue that the character has instead of resolving it. The resolution will come much later.
In other story models January or Illusion might correspond to the set-up, the opening scene, the ordinary world, the theme stated. Illusion relates to all of these elements to some degree, but the focus is slightly different.
If you’ve ever wondered how to marry these different elements (creating a clear relatable world, making something unusual happen, giving your characters the seeds of the bad decision they are about to make, reminding them – and the reader – of what their core problem is) but also, somehow, giving them the seeds for the actual resolution to their larger problem, then perhaps Illusion can provide some insight.
January is a time of darkness; the lights from Yule are no longer twinkling and the approach of spring feels a long way off. There is some light from the moon but it doesn’t illuminate the whole situation; it gives a partial view.
January is the time of earth and Capricorn. Capricorn is the sign of stability and grounding. It wants to build something lasting. It doesn’t want to solve something quickly.
There is no way to know what the finished story will look like. All you can do in January – the time of hidden potential – is dig. The earth is chilly but not barren. What will grow from the seeds below is not yet clear.
The resolution of the story is here, but in a hidden, illusory form.
What is an example of an illusion section? How can you combine relatable world-building, baseline characterisation, and incident? How can you make a case for starting exactly at this moment in time?
Once I have outlined the model I will analyse narrative projects to show examples of how the whole thing works. For now, I will leave you with some questions and an example for the illusion section.
When you open the book, what do your character(s) believe about themselves, the world, and those around them?
What is their most pressing problem that has become crystallised over time?
What is their baseline reality? How can you show this?
What incident might show them moving deeper into their current worldview or problem while giving them the illusion of acting, changing course, or resolving their problem?
How can you marry their everyday world to an incident which intensifies their current problems while offering apparent relief?
If you can answer these questions, you will be able to initiate the character(s) into the world of your story.
I will leave you with an example of illusion.
What if a lonely person who craves deep human contact but does not trust other people decides to begin online dating.
Because they haven’t changed their inner world and understanding of relationships, this action, which seems to be a big change, has the potential to intensify their sense of disconnection.
On the next episode, I will talk about February, the time of Invocation.
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