Pipe Smoke, Torrential Rain, and the Secret of Every Great Story
An Examination of Story Plot, within a story plot, about a story plot
Throughout the past three months, while still in the throes of demotivation, I’ve made an effort to wrestle down the cloud of ideas relating to what story really is, and what it accomplishes.
Occasionally I lose motivation to get any extra work done for a month or two. I’ll stare into the ceiling for hours dreaming about these ideas but not knowing quite how to act on them, my thought process going around and around indefinitely, with no end in sight.
I’ve accepted at this point that this journey—writing articles and literary works—must be pursued. I need a clear goal: what exact piece of writing needs to be created, what type of story really needs to be told?
I want to have a series of works out in the world, successful works I might add, although not for the sake of success. The literary work I dream of will be revolutionary and touch humanity’s soul in such a way that will merit success for the work. I don’t dream of success; however, I do dream of touching another’s soul through my writing. How do I touch humanity’s soul is one of my biggest questions.
In an effort to keep insanity at bay, I started taking long walks from my house, down through the nearby neighborhoods. I naturally walk very fast, so in order to slow down, I started smoking a pipe as I walked. It’s a wonderful ritual not many people agree with, but having a well-lit pipe is a great way to slow the walk down and allow the soul to reach out, examine the trees, the houses, the freshly mown lawns, and really hush all the swirling noise going on inside our heads.
As I tend to do on many such nights, I had set out from home around 10:30 at night, with a certain destination in mind, and had paused to light, char, tamp, and relight my pipe. With the pipe successfully lit, I continued on my way, down the driveway, and into the surrounding neighborhoods. A couple blocks away, I realized my mouth was completely dry and considered going back home for something to drink before continuing. After thinking for a moment, I decided to continue. If I hadn’t decided to continue right then, the crazy events that ended up happening would have never come to pass.
Pipes are something I’ve really come to enjoy the past couple months. When you have a nightly routine of smoking a pipe, it means you have a reason, or context if you will, to do something besides work. Pipes allow you to consider whether your efforts are going to the right place, a chance to appreciate that exact moment in your life. I don’t tend to get that anywhere else.
I referred to context as the reason you leave your regular daily activities and do something more meaningful. There’s likely many examples of this in your daily life, like the one I gave with smoking pipes, but it’s even more important within the context of a story. Setting a well-thought-out context in which characters are moved away from their regular life is one of the core aspects of storytelling.
The force that moves the character away from their established baseline is likely relating to many things: the character’s physical attributes, life circumstance, the people they interact with—all are part of the Context.
Kurt Vonnegut described plot as the change of a character’s Fortune, good or ill. The character’s fortune can start or end wherever the author wants; however, the context in which the established character’s fortune changes is what makes up the main plot of the story. As an example, he often makes this graph:
Each different colored line represents a different type of story. You can see the stories can start in any manner possible to dream up by the author, but they all fit within this framework, where outside things are happening to the established characters that change their fortune for the better, for the worse, and everything in between.
I bring this up to make the very pointed claim that all real stories are written about this context/force that moves the conscious being from an established baseline of good or ill Fortune. This theory covers every story I’ve written; every time we read a story, we’re watching the character as they’re moved from their established baseline at the beginning of the story, how they react, how they feel, and how they resolve or deal with the situation.
Back to my walk, I had been thinking along these lines for a while at this point, specifically how they relate to one of my larger literary undertakings. Walking away from my house, I began to look at the puddles on the side of the road, considering drinking from them just a little bit to moisten dry mouth, but knowing how terrible of an idea it was. After a couple more blocks, habitually squeezing my tongue on the pipe stem to bring more moisture, I began to relax. Having abandoned my original destination, I walked down a random side road full of nice houses, deliberately slowing my natural fast pace and taking time to examine the trees and houses as I walked past. This was quite a long road, and I enjoyed being out by myself, interrupted by the occasional family visiting on their porches.
After coming to the end of this side road, I began to walk back, my pipe about half smoked; it was a perfect time to make my way home. As I began walking again, a light rain started, and I covered the top of my pipe with two fingers to keep the water out as I continued smoking. Light rain is common where I live and it didn’t bother me, all the more reason to head back home...
At this point, when the context setting is complete, the author (God) can make almost anything happen to the established character (me), but what I have written so far is not currently a story. It’s a lot closer to a factual series of events, i.e., young man goes on walk to escape mental torment, walk successful thus far. The context setting is not unimportant, however; there are many things I will highlight after the story is over that will be key to understanding what makes this brief story something worth reading. Every little detail in the context setting is going to be important.
As I walked, smoking the pipe, I began to notice the rain slowly pick up, and in a matter of moments the night had turned from a nice stroll into a full-on downpour, and I began to pick up my pace. There was still about 10 minutes of walking to go, and I figured there was no way it could get any worse. All the families had gone in to get away from the rain, and it was just me walking home by myself, and the rain was getting even worse. I began to notice streams of water running down the sidewalks and road, and walking through them made my shoes completely soaked. The rain got even stronger, and my attempts to keep my pipe lit failed as water was streaming through my hands.
The world was completely different. It had gone from a nice night out to a torrential downpour, and I was still blocks away from home. However, as I was hurrying back, I noticed a stand of three large trees, all with thick foliage. Stepping off the road and under the trees, suddenly I was out of the rain.
I looked down at my pipe, now put out by the rain, and slowly relit it, the white tobacco smoke curling up through the branches. This was just like the moments of rest we get during the rising action in a story, where the character can pause to view their surroundings and get some rest before the climax. It was really quite something, and I drew the distinction while standing below the trees, with the pounding rain on all sides, and it was really quite something.
As in every story, the character must move on, and so I did, back into the downpour, keeping a tighter seal over the top of my relit pipe and walking the last couple of blocks toward my driveway. While walking, I realized a few key things: first, that I never would have had this experience if I didn’t have a context that necessitated taking walks, and second, that I really got my wish for a glass of water.
Turning onto my driveway, the thought came to me that someone caught in the rain is only ever thinking about getting to someplace warm and dry. This was exactly what I was doing at that moment, and spontaneously I stopped halfway up the driveway, the rain pounding on my shoulders, and just stood there, watching the water stream down the driveway, watching the sidewalk drain, just watching. After a moment, I continued to the house.
It was a great time to celebrate life, coming home out of the torrential downpour, realizing I had been in the midst of a story this entire time, and I spent some more time on the porch, still completely wet, but enjoying a bottle of water and finishing the last of my pipe. It really was at that point walking up the driveway that I realized I was in the midst of a story myself, and suddenly everything began to come together.
While this was just a few paragraphs, we can all agree that there was a story behind the very wet walk I took, and the moment it became a story was when something actually happened that moved the character’s established state to something less than it was previously. As the story progressed, we see the character’s state ended somewhat higher than when the story started. This happened to also be a real event; however, the context was set for this story to happen: the pipe smoking, the need for long walks, the conveniently placed tree, and the rainstorm that hit during the middle of the walk. The context is really what makes the story unique and interesting and adds imagery for the reader to understand the reasons for the character change that occurred.
Thus is the nature of storytelling: how a well-set context (Setting, Scenes, Imagery) interacts with the story plot (Character Change) to create a story worth reading.
It’s really quite something to see come together, also surreal that this just happened to me, yet wonderful at the same time.
Holy lord this needs a lot of editing haha, I’m posting anyways
