Once upon a time there was ___. Everyday, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

This is Rule #4 from Emma Coats at Pixar.

If you’ve been following this series, you’ve probably figured out I’m analyzing Emma’s rules for good writing and applying them to rules for good living. The once-upon-a-time rule was a head-scratcher. How could I write a post about writing structure that was anything more than writing structure?

And then, like those hidden 3-D graphics that appear to you once you cross your eyes, the picture of what this article is about popped in my mind. It’s a description of a divided world. And to the chagrin of my darling wife, she again will be a character in her husband’s blog.

But first, a dissection of Writing Rule #4.

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 Once upon a time there was ___. This is the setup for your characters, place and time. This is your universe, the game board upon which you build your rules and moves.

Everyday, ___. At this point you set up the pattern of life and behavior that allows your hero, and his universe, to remain stable. Details continue to define your story, telling us what it’s about.

One day ___. In the traditional three-act structure, this is your first major plot point, the moment when something unexpected happens that disrupts the stability of your environment and your characters within it. The disturbance may be person, an army or Mother Nature. It doesn’t matter. Something happens that puts your protagonist(s) in jeopardy.

Because of that, ___. Ah! Repercussions – the domino effect from that first disturbance. Now come the twists and turns of the second act with our hero trying to keep balanced and return his life to stability and safety.

Because of that, ___. More of the cause and effect twisty stuff.

Until finally ___. This is the final plot point of the second act. Our hero, or tribe, or army, or nation, or planet either resolves the conflict or fails. Life returns to a desire outcome or it ends with something unwanted. If our heroes fail or die, a new NORMAL is established with another set of rules and moves. In either case life goes on, but changed, establishing…

The Third Act, which returns us to a redefined Once upon a time there was ___, setting a new beginning commonly called a sequel.

Okay, simple enough, but of course it isn’t. Within this structure are an infinite number of choices. It’s a complicated game, as is LIFE. Every tick-tock changes the recipe of Once upon a time. Every second gives us a new batch of What-If’s, dividing the world into two groups: Those who don’t like change and those who do.

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There’s a second big divider on the planet: Those who’ve read Lord of the Rings and those who haven’t.

Ahh… Not that one. This one: Those who worry about the future and those who don’t.

I have not read The Lord of the Rings but I do worry about the future. I’ve always worried about the future. I think that’s why I’m good at plotting stories. I imagine all kinds of sh*t waiting for me. My wife however, doesn’t dwell on anything more than five seconds away. She lives in the present and is happy there. I live five moves ahead preparing for trouble. I like to think it doesn’t come become I have multiple Plan B’s. My wife thinks pondering bad stuff makes me unhappy. She’s right, but couple-wise, it works for us.

My wife forges ahead taking on stuff as she meets it. I build roads around bad stuff before it attacks. My wife trusts the future. I don’t. I wish I were more like my wife. I also wish she were more like me.

But she’s not, and if she wrote a novel she would start with: Once upon a time, continuing with: Everyday, and skipping the second act, she’d head straight for Until finally. Actually, she wouldn’t even think about Until finally. She’d figure at some point Once upon a time would return. And she would be right…and still happy.

I’m not sure which living plan is best: dancing into the future or worrying about it before it happens. I suppose the best situation would be planning ahead and not fretting about it. Actually, I KNOW this is the best course. But as I’ve said in previous posts, it takes FAITH to believe it’s all gonna work out.

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I lied. There are more opposite divisions than three. Here’s another one.

Those who expect the sky to fall (i.e. somebody’s gonna screw up my life) and the ten people who feel safe.

Now there are lots of people who SAY they feel safe, but only because they’re sure God is on their side with His army of angels and a door for their enemies that reads: THIS WAY TO HELL.

I’ve blogged about faking faith. It can’t be done. And maybe that’s okay, because I’m realizing now, if we all believed everything will work out, there would be nothing to write about.

Dramatic tension is all about things NOT working out, at least in act two. But we all want triumphant heroes in act three. And when they are, as in legends from eons past, what those narratives tell us is this:

KEEP THE FAITH. Eventually Good overcomes Evil (except in world banking). By never giving up, by struggling to hold our balance through those second act ups and downs (life’s challenges), we grow as people and nations…supposedly.

By “growing”, I mean our weapons get meaner. We learn nothing from past conflicts, which is why the story of winning, losing and rebuilding continually gets rewritten.

If I do this, you’ll do that never sinks in. No matter how many times our stories reflect the futility of war on the field or in our homes, we continue to play out the dramas of  Because of that.

When you make a decision, when you take action, how many Because of that effects are you taking into account?

Whether it’s two or twenty, your world and the rest of us hobble along. The story never ends. Writers keep writing, readers keep reading and we all pretend it’s a fantasy about someone else…unless we’re scanning scary stuff on the internet and then we want another gun…or bomb…or prayer…or a higher wall.

For the record, with all my distrust of the future, I don’t own a gun, make bombs, pray for my enemy’s defeat or live behind high gates.

Still, I do pretend. I pretend that if I write enough about finding faith, I just might reach the Until finally part of my life and trust my own advice.

Wow! A new beginning, even for ME! Humm… Once upon a time there was ___.

Originally published on Curiosityquills.com.

That’s what’s printed on the back cover of the book I’m about to close.

I’m fascinated with the complexities of the Universe. I’ve been following theoretical physics and parapsychology since the early seventies and much of what was speculated then is now mainstream science.

So, as I was saying, another famous physicist published another famous tome and I’m two pages from the end, still scratching my head. I’ve been turning these pages for weeks. It’s a hard read. It’s also a New York Times best seller repurposed last year as a documentary. I wish I had seen the TV version because I’m disappointed with this book. Why? Because I struggled to understand it. Only half was clear, and I think in really abstract ways.

Here’s the paragraph where I stopped. If you can follow this, PLEASE explain it to me ‘cause I don’t want to be overwhelmed with this concept if you’re not.

Page 179 of 181

One requirement any law of nature must satisfy is that it dictates that the energy of an isolated body surrounded by empty space is positive, which means that one has to do work to assemble the body. That’s because if the energy of an isolated body were negative, it could be created in a state of motion so that its negative energy was exactly balance by the positive energy due to its motion. If that were true, there would be no reason that bodies could not appear anywhere and everywhere. Empty space would therefore be unstable. But if it costs energy to create an isolated body, such instability cannot happen, because, as we’ve said, the energy of the universe must remain constant. That is what it takes to make the universe locally stable – to make it so that things don’t just appear everywhere from nothing.

Now bear in mind I’ve read everything leading up to this conclusion at least once and sometimes twice and I’m still clueless!

But ya know, it’s probably me. Lots of people, probably smarter than me, read this book, or claimed they did, and the following is what they said on the back cover.

“The authors bring to the field an anecdotal clarity that is something of a first for this genre…Making science like this interesting is not all that hard: making it accessible is the real trick.” – Time

“Provocative…an exploration of the latest thinking about the origins of our universe.” – The New York Times

“Introduces the reader to topics at the frontier of theoretical physics…more clearly for general readers than I have seen before.” – Steven Weinberg, The New York Review of Books

“Groundbreaking” – The Washington Post

Groundbreaking? Not if it’s a cloud in a fog. Guess I’m dense.

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Last year I read another groundbreaking national best seller physics book. Again, I’ll keep it nameless for this post. As before, a reviewer from The New York Times had this to say on the front cover.

“(Famous Scientist’s Name) has a gift for elucidating big ideas…Captures and engages the imagination. It’s rewarding to read him.”

For laughs I went back to page 179 and picked the paragraph below.

Second, the original metaphor envisioned the base of the mountain, where the inflation finally comes to rest, as being at “sea level,” altitude zero, meaning the inflation has shed all it’s energy (and pressure). But with our revised metaphor, the height of the mountain’s base should represent the combined energy suffusing space from all sources after inflation has drawn to a close. This is another name for that bubble universe’s cosmological constant. The mystery in explaining our cosmological constant thus translates into the mystery of explaining the altitude of our mountain’s base – why is it so close to, but not exactly at, sea level?

I don’t know. I recognize all those words but when you put them together like this I can’t make it up that mountain…whatever it is. And he never did explain the sea level part! And I’m losing sleep over this!

And yes, I finished the book ‘cause if I learned anything in college, I perfected completing boring homework…then forgetting everything about it.

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Look, I give scientists heaps of credit for trying to explain concepts they alone grasp. They are not writers per se. They try and we try and sometimes we meet in the middle. But reviewers? Come on! Are they really more intelligent than you and me?

Here’s what I have to say about the people critiquing books like these.

Famous scientists talk about lots of smart sh*t. No reviewer wants to insult the most famous brains in the world by admitting they couldn’t follow their logic.

And no reviewer will reveal another secret: that a New York Times best seller is based on bookstore ORDERS, not SALES. Bookstores can return unsold books, called remainders, at no charge. So the publishers send tons of pages to stores that have no obligation to buy them. This means Bantam Books or Random House can brag about a Best Seller before it actually becomes one, if it ever does.

But nobody cares what the real sales are because PERCEPTION is all that matters and the perception of popularity begets TV series. And TV series beget more book sales.

See how it works? I too got tricked into buying this book!

This is why I would LOVE to get picked up by a big publisher and let them make me an author star. For that they’ll take 95% of the royalty profits and I’ll happily give it to them. Why? Because I just might get a movie or TV deal and THAT’S where the payoff comes back. And don’t forget the sales from Irv Podolsky T-shirts and man purses!

So boys and girls, no matter what it takes, get institutionally famous! ‘Cause the Big Guns don’t play fair and cheaters DO finish first.

AND…they go to Heaven! I read that in those physics books…if I understood them correctly.

Originally published on Curiosityquills.com.