This is early, but I figured getting it out there for people to read couldn't really be a bad thing. You are not required to have done the previous workshop to participate in this one. THEORY: WHAT IS PLOT? A plot arc is what defines a complete coherent story. Plot can also be referred to as dramatic structure: the shape of the story, from de-stabilizing initial incident, through rising action, to the climax and re-stabilizing resolution. A plot outline is thus like the architectural blueprint, anatomical diagram, or symphonic score for a novel. If you want to build or conduct your own novel (or weave it, there's another good metaphor) it's really helpful to understand what shape you are trying to make and create come sort of plan to guide you when your head is so full of details you start to lose track of where they are supposed to fit into the big picture. I've previously written rather a lot about plot structure, but the material is not directly relevant to this exercise so I won't paste or link it here as required reading. In the previous exercise we analytically created an outline of a novel plot. Now we want to reverse engineer that novel, while adding and substituting our own characters, worldbuilding, and specific events. To do this it may first be helpful to strip down our outline into a simpler version. _Pride and Prejudice_ has a plot which is both complicated and disorganized, so I'm going to start with something simpler, Jean M. Auel's _The Clan of the Cave Bear_. TCotCB is a also a milieu novel, specifically set in the neolithic age when Homo Sapiens coexisted with Neanderthals, and it also has a few fantasy elements blended in. It is a linear recounting of the life of one character from her early childhood adoption into the clan to her early adulthood expulsion from the clan. Here is a stripped-down outline: The Clan of the Cave Bear 1. An earthquake occurs (symbolizing large-scale problems which have been building under the surface for a long time). Ayla the 5 year old Homo Sapiens girl is orphaned, almost starves, and is almost killed by a lion. This neatly introduces one of the book's main themes: survival/evolutionary fitness vs. death/extinction. Then the girl is found and healed by the Neanderthal medicine woman Iza (whose clan is also homeless and wandering because of the earthquake, and who personally was emancipated by the earthquake from an abusive husband. Ayla represents 'something new'. The Neanderthal clan has a problem dealing with things which are new - usually it ignores them. (As opposed to we Homo Sapiens who have been characterized as being half xenophilic and half xenophobic but both sides of our nature fascinated and even obsessed by novelty.) Pp 1-50. 2. Ayla's wandering off from the group leads to the discovery of a cave which becomes the clan's new home. This introduces the conflict of the independent experimental Homo Sapiens personality vs. the rigidly compartmentalized, conservative Neanderthal personality. A hunt is held, and when it is successful a ceremony and feast are held. The lack of communication between the compartmentalized roles in clan life (male vs. female, political vs. religious) results in a mistake that triggers a lifelong antagonism between the protagonist Ayla and her antagonistic rival Broud. This mistake is that Broud's first hunt and manhood ritual, which are supposed to be a big deal people talk admiringly about for weeks, happens immediately before Ayla is shockingly declared to have the cave lion as her totem. Broud is bitterly jealous of Ayla stealing his spotlight. The second, men-only part of the ceremony taking place that evening introduces the final major theme, past/present/future, and also introduces the magical part of the worldbuilding by taking the clan men back in time through their racial memories. In the first 100 pages all the major themes, the major conflict, and almost all the major characters have been introduced. P 50-100 3. Ayla starts to learn the clan's sign-language, and gets lessons in the clan's basic religious beliefs about totems and babies, and is discovered to lack the racial memories the clan has but to be capable of learning Iza's medicine-woman knowledge despite this handicap. Iza has a baby and Ayla is intensely interested in being a big sister, and combines this with her interest in healing by adopting a wounded baby rabbit. Domesticating animals is another thing the Clan does not do, with the exception of raising a bear cub and then sacrificing it for religious reasons, but taking care of a rabbit seems harmless so it is permitted, although a line is drawn at predators. The problem is that Ayla can learn things the clan forbids to females, which normal clan women would never be interested in because they lack both the memories and the curious, experimental personality. Ayla witnesses Bround trying to boastfully teach sling lessons, being bad at using the sling, losing his temper, and getting severely reprimanded. In the chaos the sling is left behind and Ayla picks it up even though women are forbidden to touch weapons, wanting to see if she could be better than Broud at it. P 100-150 4. Ayla trains herself to use the sling well, and her new confident attitude insults Broud's machismo. Burning to make her act respectful and humble like clan women are supposed to, he begins a campaign of bullying, giving her inconsequential tasks and cuffing her when she is slow, and her resentment of him builds until one time she openly defies him, and he loses his temper and beats her unconscious and has to be dragged off of her by his father the clan leader. Broud has been intended since birth to be the next clan leader, but now his father tells him that self-control is essential to a leader, and if Broud ever loses his temper like that again he will be disinherited or even death-cursed. P 150-200 5. Now Broud is afraid to go anywhere near Ayla, but Ayla gets over her own fear of him and takes this opportunity to get revenge on him by being habitually insolent towards him. Finally he figures out that as long as he restricts himself to cuffs and insults this will be considered within the realm of how Clan men are supposed to discipline women. So he resumes his bullying of her, and she realizes no one will protect her from him, stops looking for outside help and tries to solve the problem by changing her attitude: trying to be more humble but also trying not to let it bother her. But the fact that she is ignoring him infuriates Broud more than ever. Meanwhile Ayla longs to put her sling skill to use by hunting, but is depressed by the realization that she can never bring her kills back to the clan. Then she hits on the idea of helping the clan indirectly by killing predators who compete with them for prey. Ayla finds a fossil rock which she decides is a sign from her totem that Broud is her test, and if she can endure him all winter she will be allowed to hunt predators with her sling. During the winter Ayla's healing lessons progress and she starts to be recognized by the clan as a medicine woman when she treats a scald on the clan leader's arm and it heals well. In spring she exuberantly hunts predators, but then had a scare when she misses a lynx and only by luck and quick reflexes avoids being killed by it. She tries to give up hunting and act more like an ideal clan woman, but is unhappy that way, and finally hits on the idea of developing a new sling technique such that she can rapid-fire a second stone in case her first one misses. Her unconscious attitude becomes more self-confident, and Broud vows to himself that when he is leader he will break her. P 150-210 6. This incident is non-essential to the plot and could have been left out, but it helps show the positive side of the Neanderthal personality and that Ayla's differentness is valuable to the clan's survival and Broud will be a bad leader because he short-sightedly refuses to recognize this. The clan goes to the ocean to hunt sturgeon. Ayla's weirdness shows in that she likes to swim, something the Neanderthal don't and can't do because they are less buoyant. During the hunting a young girl is swept away and Ayla swims after her and saves her life. The girl's parents are grateful to Ayla and the clan leader is also pleased. P 210-220 7. But now it all comes crashing down. Ayla goes along on a mammoth hunt to help prepare the meat and carry it home. While the meat is drying a hyena keeps stealing some – then it steals Brac, Broud's toddler son. Without thinking of the consequences Ayla take out her sling and kills the hyena, saving the boy's life. But, everyone knows women are forbidden to touch weapons and the punishment for doing so is the death curse. Broud is initially grateful his son's life was saved, but then he finds out Ayla saw him being reprimanded when she got her first sling and learned how to hut with it. Humiliated fury sweeps away the gratitude Broud should feel and he is the strongest proponent of her being death-cursed (showing that he would chose his revenge against her over his own son's life and the good of the clan as a whole). Some other men of the clan argue that Ayla should not be cursed but should even be allowed to hunt because it's always valuable to have another hunter helping fend off starvation. The opinion is evenly split, and the clan leader makes the decision that Ayla must be cursed with death, but the curse will last for one month, and if she survives she will be welcomed back into the clan and allowed to hunt. P 220-270 8. Ayla puts all the survival skills she has learned to the test and more importantly has to find her identity as an individual independent from the clan. The clan goes back in their racial memories to an ancient time before Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals became separate species, before the clan's gender specialization developed, when women often hunted for themselves and their children. Summoning these ancient spirits in a special ritual they make Ayla an official hunter of the clan, although the only weapon she may use is a sling. She begins hunting and bringing her kills back to the cave, and though the clan people are nervous and awkward about this at first they all get used to it except Broud. She also starts her menses and officially becomes a woman. P 270-310 9. In a murderous rage at seeing Ayla being given special treatment, permitted and even encouraged to be abnormal, composed in the face of his bullying, Broud searches for some way to break her composure and, remembering that she is now a woman, decides to try commanding her to have sex with him. She is a virgin and though she would probably always remain one since to Neanderthal tastes she is ugly and masculine, so she is shocked. She tries to submit like clan rules dictate she should (any woman is available to any man and may not refuse him) but she panics and starts fighting back, and to Broud's delight it turns into a rape. Ayla is depressed, spiritually wounded, and Broud keeps raping her. But then Ayla discovers she is pregnant – she has always longed to be pregnant. So she is deliriously happy and once again able to ignore Broud, so in dissatisfaction he leaves her alone. But Ayla is very young, has not been taking care of herself because of her depression, and her body is under additional strain from carrying a half-Neanderthal child so the pregnancy is a hard one, and so is the labor. P 310-330 10. Because the skull of Ayla's son is shaped halfway like that of a Homo Sapiens and halfway like that of a Neanderthal, and his neck is weak like that of Homo Sapiens babies, he is judged to be deformed. In such a case the child is supposed to be left out in the woods to die. But there is also the tradition that if a baby survives until its naming day the clan leader has to accept the child into the clan. So Ayla runs away with her baby. But what Ayla doesn't know is that a woman who forces a man against his will makes him lose face, and that if she forces the leader to accept her child he will curse them both to death, permanently this time. But she returns early, is contrite that she ran away, and begs for her son's life, and the clan leader is placated and accepts the child, although forbidding Ayla to hunt or go anywhere alone for several months. P 330-370 11. Now the whole clan except the members too old to travel goes to the clan gathering held once every 7 years. The underlying purpose of this is to encourage intermarriage between the clans and allow them to even out their population – 2 large clans can let their excess population leave to form a new clan, or 2 small clans can combine. Also they exchange hunting, healing, toolmaking, and cooking techniques. Overtly it is a religious festival where a cave-bear who has been raised in captivity for 3 years is sacrificed, and also it is a social competition to determine each clan's rank within the hierarchy. The rank is determined by races and competitions between the hunters, the relative skill of the clan's medicine woman and shaman, the cooking skill of the women, and the general obedience and good manners of all the clan members. It is a close struggle, but Ayla's clan comes in first, and she is asked to make a special drug for a ritual for the shamans of all the clans. Making the potion involves chewing roots, which gave Ayla a dose of the drug and confused her; also she made the potion a little too strong and there was some left over, and knowing it was too sacred to be thrown away she drank it to hide the evidence of her error. In her drugged confusion she wanders near the forbidden area where the shamans are having their ceremony and gets drawn into it, which because she is a woman is extremely forbidden, and could doom all the clans at the gathering. (Only Creb knows she is there, however, and keeps it a secret). The ceremony is a trip into racial memory, showing the path along which the clan has evolved. It normally stops at the present but the forward-thinking configuration of Ayla's mind allows a confusing glimpse into the future – a future without Neanderthals. P 370-430 12. Time continues to play an important role as the story ends. Ayla's adoptive mother Iza dies (her last words urging Ayla to leave and find her own people and a mate among them), and in her grief over Iza's death Alya loses her milk and has to let other women in the clan nurse her son. Ayla's younger adoptive sister Uba marries and moves in with her husband. Her adoptive father Creb is also feeling his age particularly in light of his knowledge that there is no future for the clan, and he retires, although his feeling of doom is mollified when he thinks that a part of the clan will live on in babies like Ayla's son and his promised future mate, a female halfblood baby. The clan leader too retires, making Broud leader; and Broud seizes the chance and takes his revenge. He finds a flimsy excuse and has Ayla cursed with death. Almost immediately there is an earthquake, bringing the book full-circle, and Creb dies. Now Ayla's every link to the clan except her son has been severed, even that has been weakened by her inability to nurse him, and she knows that the clan can provide for him and train him much better than she could do alone. So Ayla leaves her son there and sets off into the wilderness, intending to find her own people. P 430-495 Comments: TCotCB is a bit slow-paced, but (with the possible exception of the fishing episode) it has a nice tight plot. The outline above could be written in an even more compact form if intended for use by someone familiar with the book who didn't need explanations of the relationships between the characters, the worldbuilding, and the characters motives. The one-sentence logline for this novel would be, “An orphaned Homo Sapiens girl grows up among Neanderthals, becoming a hunter, a healer, and a mother while contending with a bitter rival, until she has finally learned all she can from this restrictive society and has to set off on her own to find her future.” The moral premise could be stated as, “Rigidly expecting people to fill specific roles makes the individuals unhappy and the community as a whole unadaptable and less likely to survive and prosper.” The themes associated with this premise are : past vs. future, tradition vs. creative experimentation, prejudice and machismo vs. acceptance and equality, reproduction vs. extinction, and individual vs. society. METHOD: WHAT IS YOUR PLOT? So, perhaps what I would like you all to do is self-explanatory: 1. Simplify your example outline down to the bare bones and identify a logline and premise for it. 2. Attempt a logline, premise, themes, and outline for your own novel. I do not expect you will be able to successfully decide on these yet, but I'd like you to think about the problem and write some experimental ones. [Edited by - sunandshadow on August 17, 2007 12:35:34 AM]

When's the deadline? Also, could you sticky the current workshop so that it doesn't get buried by other threads? May attract more attention as a sticky as well. Thanks!

Deadline will be friday august 31st. I didn't sticky them because the number of stickies per forum is limited, I would have to un-stick one of the current ones in order to stick this one.

The decriptions below are short because I haven't thought it through. The events of the plot require world building. I will think more as I write and I want some inputs and identify the main arguments. Right now I have an outline of the related themes.


The Road to Paradise

logline:
A terminally ill patient brought to future free of suffering ponders how the future comes to be.

premise:
The road to paradise begins in the mind.

themes:
01 to 12 below


outline:
00)
A patient enters a surgery room, rejuvenates many years in the future.

01) Possession
The main character is in the home of his healer. He notices that the house has no locks, and pondered how the community can become crime-free by examining the lives in the new world, starting at the healer's household.

02) Privacy
The MC describes the world he lived, and feels ashamed and defensive about the old world. Out of insecurity, he feels the need to distance himself. He ponders about the role of identity in the new world.

03) Pride
The healer leads the MC to see other parts of the city. In the overwhelming sense of unity, he ponders the factors in his old world that might have prevented it from happening.

04) Perfection
The MC come to realize the driving forces behind progress and perfection, a factor that the old world lacks.

05) Privilege
The MC takes on responsibilities and tries to integrate into the society. He tries to identify what he could do to contribute, and how the paradigm differs from the world he knew.

06) Professions
The MC learns about the demographic and equility among the professions in the society and compares them to the old world. He discovers how people come to their professions.

07) Protection
The MC explores the perimeter of the city, examines how it sustains itself and protects itself from external threats. The MC revisits the site where he was found, trying to understand the changes in humanity that has led to the present.

08) Peace
The MC sees how the society makes decisions and settle conflicts. The MC ponders the factors that allows the future to resolve different objectives.

09) Penitence
The MC sees how the society views failures and deals with setbacks.

10) Presence
The MC discovers an absence of history and its role in sustaining the society. The MC observes the way the society deals with death. But it troubles him.

11) Patience
The MC is freed from the pondering how the future comes to be.

12) Pleasure
The MC sees the arts, entertainment, and the role of frestival and celebration that binds the society.

13)
Years later, the MC reflects on his understanding of the future.

Hi. I didn't participate in the last workshop but Ive been thinking of writing a novel so I'll participate. I'm not really a writer... or a reader for that matter but I'm trying to change that so... here goes. (BTW I don't have reference novels or anything, this is just a story Ive been thinking of lately)

1. The story starts with the prelude. Some time in the distant future all earth's countries are united under the rule of the Global Church and earth becomes a peaceful place. No more wars. A Utopian society. Then eventually the earth becomes drastically overpopulated. The only option for survival was to send a fourth of the population to a nearby planet which has been prepared for human life. People who volunteered to become "Colonist" were promised money, land, adventure, and free trips back to earth every now and then to visit family. They were also going to be self governed to an extent. Didn't take long to fill the openings. About 20 or so years later everything is going as promised. The Colonist have money, land, adventure and get to come back to brag to their family and friends every now and then. All the earthlings envied them. Untill... Colonist started bickering about political matters on their home planet (haven't decided what the arguments were about but they were extremely heated). The opposing groups of colonist would send videos to their families and Church officials complaining and asking earth to support them and oppose the others. Of course all the earthlings sided with their Colonist family/friends causing great division and threatening the Utopian society. There was only one thing the Church could do. They cut all communication and transportation between earth and the new planet. They claimed "A supernova, or passing comet knocked out the communications and transport was no longer safe" or somtehing like that. Earth was outraged at first. But over the years the protests died down. Eventually generation after generation passed and all but few forgot the colonist. Of those that remembered most thought the colonist died off immediately, without support from earth they thought there was no way they could have survived: they hadn't been there near long enough to become self supporting. Others thought that the colonist survived and are still fighting the same war to this day. They even think that after 100s and 100s of years of war the colonist evolved. They became inhuman.... superhuman.

2. Ok this is were the story really starts. The colonist after many years of war decide to team up and return to earth. A small wave of heavily armed cyberneticly enhanced colonist, from every corner of the new planet, is sent to earth. They land and war ensues. The group of a couple hundred colonist were able to take down many many Church soldiers but were eventually defeated. The survivors took refuge among the earthlings while waiting for the next, much larger, wave to arrive. The main character is a guy named Syrus, a soldier from a relatively peaceful district of the new planet. He’s an average guy so he is easily related to. He winds up living in a hideout with Gene and his sidekick Shella. Gene and Shella are from one of the most violent and inhumane districts. Gene is a soldier but also somewhat of a philosopher and the themes of the story revolve around his weird way of thinking. and Shella is a young girl (13 or 14) who acts as his personal medic. She custom made and installed most of his cybernetic hardware and repairs it when needed. Anyway like the few other surviving colonist our three have to steal to survive. Eventually they get caught and jailed.

3. Next our three colonist receive an offer from a Church official leading a rebellion against the corrupt Church leader. After the attack on earth the truth about the past was revealed and remembered by all. The rebellion wanted to talk to the rest of the colonist and invite them to live peacefully on earth to atone for their sins. But the current church leader and most of the church refused to let the colonist back on earth and would rather try to fight them off. Our heroes are told if they agree to assassinate the current Church leader and all of his immediate family that they will be released and then made citizens once the job is done. They except the job and, along with the rebellion leader’s son, join the Church leader’s family’s personal bodyguards. They wait for the an annul ceremony, when all the Church leader’s family will be gathered together.

4. Well After that I don’t know. Can’t come up with anything else.

Well anyway the story revolves more around the characters than the events in the plot. (Is that ok?)

Since the theme revolves around Gene’s messed up mind I’ll explain it a little more. Gene thinks life is meaningless and is just kind of along for the ride. He is the kind of guy who will do something regardless of its social acceptability if it makes logical sense to him. This includes dismembering his enemies or allies in war to find useful cybernetic hardware, Cannibalism, and sex with his 13 year old sidekick. Gene also has a disregard for human life and believes ideas like honor, dignity, and religion and such are brainwashing tools. This bothers Syrus and he confronts Gene about these things throughout the story. Gene is rather good at supporting his views and as the story progresses his way of thinking starts to make sense to Syrus (and to the reader hopefully).

The rebellion leader and his son are considered good guys. They stay true to the concepts of their religion and even though they planned an assassination the current Church leader is the one who is corrupt. The son is of course deadset against Genes views. He tries to ignore him most of the time but occasionally he can’t help but to interject with stern preaching.

Shella is great at computer engineering and is quite the surgeon. She has a fascination of the human body and doesn’t mind taking it apart. Syrus finds her creepy but wouldn’t mind letting her work on his internal hardware if it were to break. Shella becomes friends with the priest and even starts reading his religious book.

So at the end of the story some how Gene is in the position where he’s about to die and there’s nothing he can do about it. Then is when he finds the meaning of life and manages to have what he believed was a ‘meaningful death’.
Tag Line: “Amidst assassinations, religious rebellion, and all out war, a group of vastly different people discuss the meaning of life and ultimately they arrive at an agreement only after one of them faces tragic end.”

So the themes are: Meaning/value of life, and conformity vs. nonconformity.

I Hope that’s good.

Disclaimer: all my comments in this thread are suggestions, not orders or anything. It's your story to develop as you see fit, I'm just trying to be helpful, maybe lend some insight on the type or structure of story you have describes and point out common problems so you can avoid them if you want.




Wai - nice to see you participating. [smile] Hmm, what you have outlined is a Utopian novel. It reminds me a lot of Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backwards_. This type of novel tends to have one common flaw, which seems also to be present in your outline: they tend to lack conflict and thus be boring (and probably preachy too). Your logline has no action verbs in it. Would you really want to read or write a whole novel where nothing more exciting that 'pondering happens'?

My suggestion would be, if you want to show the past as bad, make things left-over from the past be what causes problems. Internally, that could be the main character's own habits and cultural conditioning, while externally it could be other people from the past, weapons, diseases, or ideas such as religion, greed, urge to dominate, etc. Then make the climax show that the future is strong and flexible enough to overcome these relics of the past, just like it overcame them in the past and will overcome any new problems in the future. Personally I'd put a romance in there too, but that's just me. I think that if you concentrate on showing through conflict between the future and the past that the future is better, you will succeed at making your point without being boring or preachy. [smile]




ForeverNoobie - Ah, reminds me of a futuristic version of the Zabuza and Haku plot arc of Naruto, and also the similar Raiga and Ranmaru plot arc of the same series. Since you know more or less how you want your story to end I would focus on developing it from there. You want Gene to die meaningfully. What meaning should his death have, exactly? Who else dies and who is alive at the end? Who is politically in charge, and are the earth and the colonists reunited or not?

My other suggestion is that in several places you talk about the earth and the colonists as if these two factions were monolithic, but all factions are composed of individuals with their own ambitions and political disagreements. Is there some leader who unites the colonists and leads them to attack Earth? Why? Is Gene pressured or trapped into being a soldier somehow, or does he agree for reasons of greed or boredom, or is every colonist part of the army and his group is ordered to go? How did he acquire a 13-year old sidekick? Is she an Earther fascinated by the colonists' cybernetics, or if a colonist, why would they send a child into a war?

This is a good type of story to handle from a mystery angle - first you show Gene and Shella fighting on the losing side of a war, the military organization and motivational rhetoric that started the war having been mostly forgotten. Start with a plot event which shows them both in their characteristic roles, Gene fighting, Shella repairing him, the two of them having sex and securing food/shelter/clothing in some socially unacceptable way; have someone criticize them for this social unacceptability and Gene think how ridiculous such criticism is in light of the destruction all around and daily kill-or-be-killed existence.

Then after this mini-plot event introduce the main goal of assassinating the religious leader and his family, and the dubiousness of whether this will actually solve any problems.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on August 23, 2007 9:47:12 PM]

The word 'utopia' often gives me a connotation of laziness. In Paradise there are a lot of cleaning and healing to do. Life in paradise is disciplined but dynamic.

When the main character is introduced to the paradise, he was skeptical. There must be some victims somewhere, since a society cannot be entirely good. What did paradise do to them to maintain its peace? As the main character tries to piece back the history together, he becomes paranoided by his thoughts of conspiracy and a darker truth beneath.

I would think that romance is required in depicting the paradise.

I am still digesting this statement: "I think that if you concentrate on showing through conflict between the future and the past that the future is better, you will succeed at making your point without being boring or preachy."

While the future can be seen to be better, the story doesn't have a notion to compare the two. In fact, I think comparing the future and the past directly would lead to a psychological trap. It makes the reader cynical or critical. The story doesn't have that mood. It is not about what the others do or what the society does, it is about one's mind and paradigm only.

So the moral is not "the future's philosophy is superior to the past's philosophy", the moral is "its all in your mind" or something like that? Something like _Pincher Martin_ where all the conflict takes place in the narrator's mind as he is trapped alone on a desert island? At any rate, to not be boring a novel needs to have some sort of conflict, which is resolved by a climax, which demonstrates how/why one way of thinking is preferable to another.

It is hard to explain why there is a climax. If the workshops allows it to continue we might see why and arrive at better ways to describe it.

I find that oftentimes, it is easier if the writer discloses what bothers him the most. What bothers me the most is that the main character is not going back and forth between the paradise and the old world. So now I am going to allow the main character go back and forth.

Each chapter, the main character would observe something about the paradise world, then he would come back and compare it to the real world (pondering why the paradise way won't work in our world, and the fundamental differences between the paradise and our world that makes paradise possible). The main character tries to spread the idea and mimic the way of the paradise, but fails because there is such a big gap in how the world runs that it is not possible.

Paradise used to be a peaceful place to him, but the fact that he couldn't bridge between the two worlds was unsettling to him. There is a rising tension between understand paradise and the feeling that it cannot be implemented. Near the climax, the main character starts to hate the paradise as he tried to find faults about it (when you think that something is too good to be true, you try to find its flaws).

The solution to this climax, is that the main character (and his romantic partner from paradise) figured out what the problem was, and that enlightenment brings back the inner peace to them. With that enlightenment, our world doesn't seem that bad. At the end of the story, that revelation is understood as the first step to paradise.

What do you think about this layout ?