The External Plot and the Internal Struggle 14) He’s catapulted into action (hiking 200 miles to find Pax) and he’s experiencing inner turmoil (denying his anger). Immediately afterward, though, he feels miserable and anxious-sure that something bad is going to happen because he’s not where he should be. In other words, because he’s convinced that it’s wrong to feel angry, he fails to do the right thing for Pax. Peter’s own fists had come up, and the rage he’d felt at his father had scared him more than the threat itself. I won’t do it.” But his father’s eyes had flared with that flash-fire anger, and his fist had jerked up, stopping only at the last split second to knuckle Peter’s cheek in a gesture that carried enough threat to set Pax on growling alert. When his father had first dropped the order about Pax, Peter had steeled himself and said, “No. The reason, as we learn later, relates to his misbelief that he must not get angry: He tricks Pax into leaving the car by throwing the toy soldier for him to fetch. His father is the one who insists on leaving Pax in the woods, but Peter is complicit. ![]() 8)įor Peter, that moment is abandoning Pax. This event also needs to trigger an internal struggle for your protagonist. That revelation comes just as Peter is preparing to confront his misbelief head on.Ĭron argues that a novel should begin with the event that “catapults your protagonist into unavoidable action.” ( Story Genius, p. The reader can finally understand how young Peter concluded that anger was an emotion that was off limits for him. Don’t be like him.” Her bloodied fingers, picking the blue glass from her white roses. Her tears-“You’ve got to tame that temper. His mother’s blue gazing globe, batted off its pedestal into a million shards. The exhilarating fright of that wildness. Vola carves a baseball bat for him, prompting an unwelcome memory: Three quarters of the way through the book, Pennypacker reveals the details of the origin scene. 71) When she remarks that he needs a bat, he flashes back to the morning of his mother’s death: “If he owned his own bat again, every time he picked it up, he would see that shattered blue glass over those white roses. Later in story, Vola, the wounded veteran who helps him after he breaks his ankle, notices that he has a baseball glove but no bat. Although he never returned to therapy, he wondered: “Had the nice therapist known all along he’d been angry that last day, that he’d done something terrible? That as punishment, his mother hadn’t taken him to the store?” (p. 47-49) When the therapist asked him if he felt angry, he lied and denied ever feeling angry. 13) Through Peter’s memories of the therapist he saw after her death, we learn how she died and get a hint at the origin of Peter’s misbelief. We learn early on that Peter’s mother has died. Pennypacker reveals Peter’s backstory gradually. Then, she was killed in a car accident and never returned. She told him that he must not have a bad temper like his father, and she left him at home while she went for groceries. ![]() He threw a tantrum and smashed his mother’s blue glass globe with his baseball bat. 6).įor Peter, that moment came when he was seven years old. Pennypacker expertly reveals the origin of this misbelief through backstory and ties her external plot to Peter’s inner struggle.Ĭron describes the origin scene as “the moment in your protagonist’s life when his misbelief took root,” the time when “life just taught him an important lesson when it comes to navigating the world.” ( Story Genius, pp. He thinks that he’s inherited his father’s and grandfather’s explosive temper, so he cannot ever let himself get angry. Peter’s misbelief is that anger is wrong (and even dangerous) for him. Peter soon regrets allowing himself to be separated from his fox and sets out to find him. His father decides to join the military and sends Peter to live with his grandfather, leaving Pax in the wild. Now, war is coming, and Peter’s town is being evacuated. ![]() Peter rescued Pax as a motherless kit five years earlier, just after the death of his own mother. It’s the story of twelve-year-old Peter and his pet fox, Pax, told through the viewpoints of both boy and fox. Sara Pennypacker ’s Pax is a book with a clear third rail. As I read MG books, I ask myself: What is the protagonist’s misbelief? What is the origin of that misbelief? How does the plot force him to confront and overcome his misbelief? What is his “aha!” moment? And when I find a book with a compelling third rail, I ask myself: How did the author do that? Lately, I’ve been preoccupied by Lisa Cron ’s concept of a novel’s “third rail,” the protagonist’s inner struggle that propels the story (see my craft review of Cron’s Story Genius ).
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