Draw lines.
- Principle
- Draw lines.
- Type
- Cyclic Principle
- Stage
- Introduction, Childhood
This principle asks us to find the dividing lines in the tale and highlight them — the lines that divide our community from its neighbors (human or otherwise), that divide those neighbors against one another, that divide the community against itself, that divide persons within the community against one another, or that even divide people within themselves. Look for the divisions and highlight them. Usually, creating tension, controversy, or antagonism doesn’t appear on our list of agenda or principles, but here it does. We create tension by highlighting divisions all around us.
These lines can make great looming questions, and perhaps you already got started on this with the one you asked about your community when the tale began. But you can keep adding more (and, if appropriate, you can add more looming questions, too). This principle also directs you to make the line matter. Don’t make one choice obviously right or the other obviously wrong, or you haven’t drawn much of a line. Provide reasons for both sides, make them both seem like decent enough ideas. This goes along well with recognizing relatable motivations, since no one would join a side that doesn’t have anything to make it seem like a good idea.
#Examples
- Tell us about a conflict brewing in the community. What lies at the heart of the argument? What sides have begun to form? Ask each of the main characters which side hen has taken, or if hen has tried to remain neutral.
- Tell us about a division separating our community from a neighboring one. What has divided us? How tense has it gotten? How much worse could it get? How does our community see it? How do we see the other community?
- Tell us about a division separating our community and one of the other-than-human communities upon which we depend. You might introduce symptoms of this division, like a blight spreading among trees in a given area, or the boars seeming to disappear. Such ecological problems always point to some sort of division. Our community will have to discover the nature of that rift and figure out how to heal it.
- Pick at an old wound. Find an old feud or rivalry, and incite it again. What might set it off? Who might want to set it off again?
- Look for the dividing lines within a single person, the moral dilemmas, the divided psyche, the person of two minds, the one struggling to decide which way to go. Bring those divisions to light.