Rising Star Adventures and Beyond

Rising action

Plot: Rising Action (How does the story get there?)

Review your notes from the ""Premise"" and ""Beginning"" plot exercises, and tweak the conflict(s) and inciting incident as needed before proceeding with the ""Rising Action"" plot exercise, as follows:

(1) Describe any initial refusals on the part of your protagonist(s) to face the conflict.
(2) Describe the moment when your protagonist(s) makes the choice to face the conflict.
(3) Describe the moment when your protagonist(s) crosses the point of no return and cannot change their mind.
(4) Fill in some of the blanks: How will your characters get from the point of no return to the climax?

I am thinking my story has several conflicts. The primary conflict is learning how to live life without the husband and processing the grief. My idea is to have several related conflicts throughout the story. I want to have my protagonist go through the stages of grief in the story. I also want her to face and resolve conflicts that arise after her husband dies. She has to figure out what to do with the properties her husband managed because he flipped houses for a living. Then she also finds out he had secretly taken a loan out on their house and the bank is demanding payments. She has to get a job to make money to make the payments and pay the bills. I could also have little conflicts with maintaining her house and property. For example, the lawn mower could stop working. The roof could develop a leak. The air conditioning could go out. Life has a way of throwing little frustrations at us like salt in a wound. I am hoping that through her struggles in the book, it will help real people through some of their own struggles. I want this story to be so good that it touches and leaves an imprint on my readers soul.

Ruth will need to go through each of the 5 stages of grief; denial/shock, bargaining, anger, sadness/depression, and finally acceptance. (not necessarily in that order) so her initial refusal to face the conflict would be during the denial phase. Also she can go though a period of feeling if they had only caught the cancer sooner, maybe the doctors could have saved his life. If they she had cooked healthier meals, maybe he would not have gotten sick. (bargaining phase)

I am thinking she will go back and forth between anger and depression. This is when she finally starts coming out of the shock and facing life as she needs to. I think I will have her yelling, tearing up paper, throwing things, and crying when the realization hits her that she is on her own. This is where all the drama will really start to unfold and the majority of her story will take place. I will need to bring Ruth through some day-to-day living. She works with teenage girls at church, and will also be helping a couple of them through their issues. She will be volunteering at a homeless shelter and helping people there. She will be getting a job at the local grocery store as a cashier. Ruth will have to figure out what to do with a couple of properties her husband was working on before he died.

Ruth will discover a mortgage on the house she is currently living in, and will have to figure out how to pay it. Her husband had been the breadwinner and flipped houses for a living. She hadn't had to work. He took care of her and the finances. Now she has to support herself and figure it all out.

I am thinking that toward the end of the story, the small town decides to throw a surprise birthday party for her where the town works together to raise funds for her to help her because she and her husband had helped so many people. This is how the mortgage gets paid off and the physical conflict is solved. Later, as she sits on a park bench she reaches the point of acceptance in her grief and this is where the inner conflict is resolved.