How to plan your book: from idea to manuscript (Part 2)
Okay then, to the summary page (you can read Part 1 of this post here). After I'm done planning it all in the structure part, I move on to the summary part and start working my way through it from top to bottom, expanding from the title to the scene beat sheet, and filling it out. This time, because I don't have anything for Rosehead, I'll use TUBE as an example.
When you scan through this list, you will see abbreviations, and your eyes will probably cross from looking at them (I know mine did, when I got to looking at plotting terms used by other authors). Don't despair. What works for me might not work for you. Steal what you like, and get the rest elsewhere. There are as many ways to write a book as there are writers. I'm simply sharing with you what works for me NOW. Because a few years down the road this will change, and I'll be in some other place entirely.
So. here comes the skeletal outline of the Summary page:
NOVEL TITLE
LOGLINE: One sentence.
PITCH: ACT 1: Sentence 1: Limited awareness of the problem. Sentence 2: Increased awareness. Sentence 3: Reluctance to change. Sentence 4: Overcoming reluctance. ACT 2: Sentence 5: Committing to change. Sentence 6: Experimenting with first change. Sentence 7: Preparing for big change. Sentence 8: Attempting big change. Sentence 9: Consequences of the attempt (improvements and setbacks). ACT 3: Sentence 10: Rededication to change. Sentence 11: Final attempt at big change. Sentence 12: Final mastery of the problem.
SYNOPSIS: Chapter 1: one paragraph. Chapter 2: one paragraph. Chapter 3: one paragraph. Etc.
GENRE: One word.
CONVENTIONAL GENRE SCENES. For example, for a thriller there are:
- An inciting crime
- A MacGuffin
- Red herrings
- A speech in praise of the villain
- Stakes become personal—the hero is the victim
- Hero at the mercy of the villain
- False ending
- The clock
SCENE BEAT SHEET
ACT 1: BEGINNING HOOK
- INC (INCITING INCIDENT): ACT 1 Inciting Incident / opening hook / intro to hero / establish Global Story stakes (main plot)
- INC: Intro to other characters / establish stakes (subplot)
- COM (COMPLICATIONS): Foreshadowing Global Story Inciting Incident (12. INC/CLI)
- COM: Stakes get higher (main plot)
- COM: Stakes get higher (subplot)
- COM: Foreshadowing crisis
- CRI (CRISIS): Two bad choices / two irreconcilable goods
- CRI: Making a choice
- CRI: Acting on a choice
- CRI: Foreshadowing climax
- CRI: Lead to ACT 1 Climax (main plot, subplot)
- INC/CL (CLIMAX)I: ACT 1 Climax / Global Story Inciting Incident (main plot)
- CLI: Follow climax (main plot, subplot)
- RES (RESOLUTION): Resolution (subplot)
- RES: Resolution (main plot)
ACT 2: MIDDLE BUILD
- INC: Opening hook / intro to ACT 2 (main plot)
- INC: Intro to ACT 2 (subplot)
- COM: Foreshadowing Global Story Complications (24. COM/COM)
- COM: Stakes get higher (main plot)
- COM: Stakes get higher (subplot)
- COM: Foreshadow complications (main plot)
- COM: Foreshadow complications (subplot)
- COM: Lead to ACT 2 Complications
- COM/COM: ACT 2 Complications / Global Story Complications (main plot)
- COM: Complications (subplot)
- CRI: Lead to crisis (main plot)
- CRI: Lead to crisis (subplot)
- CRI: Two bad choices / two irreconcilable goods (main plot)
- CRI: Two bad choices / two irreconcilable good (subplot)
- CRI: Making a choice (subplot)
- CRI: Making a choice / Middle point of the book / Lowest point for the hero (main plot)
- CRI: Acting on a choice (main plot)
- CRI: Acting on a choice (subplot)
- CRI: Lead to climax (main plot)
- CRI: Lead to climax (subplot)
- CRI/CLI: ACT 2 Climax / Global Story Crisis (main plot)
- CLI: Follow climax (main plot)
- CLI: Follow climax (subplot)
- CLI: Foreshadow Global Story Climax (main plot)
- CLI: Foreshadow Global Story Climax (subplot)
- CLI: Lead to resolution (main plot)
- CLI: Lead to resolution (subplot)
- CLI: Foreshadow ACT 3 complications.
- RES: Resolution (subplot)
- RES: Resolution (main plot)
ACT 3: ENDING PAYOFF
- INC: Opening hook / intro to ACT 3 (main plot, subplot)
- INC: Foreshadow Global Story Climax
- COM/CLI: ACT 3 Complications / Global Story Climax (main plot)
- COM: Foreshadowing Global Story Resolution (main plot)
- COM: Stakes get higher (main plot)
- COM: Stakes get higher (subplot)
- CRI: Two bad choices / two irreconcilable goods
- CRI: Making a choice
- CRI: Acting on a choice
- CRI: Foreshadowing climax
- CRI: Lead to ACT 3 climax
- CLI: Climax (subplot)
- CLI: Climax (main plot)
- RES: Resolution (subplot)
- RES: ACT 3 Resolution / Global Story Resolution (main plot)
As you can see, the biggest turns in the book happen when the Global Story turning scenes collide with the Act turning scenes (and remember, this is a form, not a formula, so the main plot and subplot scenes are placed arbitrarily and can be shuffled around or nuked). These are majors stops between which you will string up your story. There are different metaphors people use for it, like the circus tent and such, but I just hold in my head the idea that there are 5 key points to any story bit, and they overlap simply because there are the main plot and the subplots, the rest I kind of feel by my gut. Those five, as you have seen are:
- INCITING INCIDENT: Shit happened!
- COMPLICATIONS: Shit is getting worse.
- CRISIS: Two shitty choices (either will fuck your character up).
- CLIMAX: Acting on the choice (your character getting majorly fucked up).
- RESOLUTION: Shit turning to gold (your character miraculously getting out alive).
With this in mind, just make sure that you have those five in every scene, every act, and in the story overall. The rest is filler, and the more you fill it up between the exciting points, the slower your book will be. Trust your gut when editing to cut out the filler, and to trim and clean and leave only pure story, nothing else. So here is what I did for TUBE (beware, I've been using the Hero's Journey lingo for it, whereas above I have cleaned it up to the 3-Act-5-Part thing).
TUBE: Trans-Urban Blitz-Express
LOGLINE: A Russian ballerina takes a train ride into her past to confront the ghost of her violent father and overcome her fear of intimacy.
PITCH
In the winter of 1989, Bolshoi Ballet soloist Olesya Belaya is on a train from Moscow to perform Swan Lake in Simferopol, the sea resort town where Papa, her late father and train conductor Grigory Vasilievich, raped her when she was five. Olesya’s memories of the trauma are blocked, and her world is crumbling: her boyfriend and dancing partner Dima Rumyantsev is drawn to her best friend Natasha Ryzhik whom choreographer Alla Borisovna threatens to promote in Olesya’s place if Olesya doesn’t improve her “wooden” stage presence. After yet another failure at sex with Dima, Olesya hides in the gangway between the cars where the impossible happens: she meets her five-year-old self who gives her TUBE: Trans-Urban Blitz-Express, the long-lost American toy train engine that came to symbolize Papa’s erection and is the key to her blocked memories. Denying the reality of TUBE, Olesya throws it in the trash, but after train conductor Yuri who resembles Papa finds it and wants to keep it for his daughter Lidochka, Olesya takes it back from him.
When Olesya fits TUBE into the gangway door, it opens into the adjoining empty car where each compartment contains one of her repressed memories. In the first compartment her Mama, schoolteacher Olga Afanasievna, throws away the box with the expensive American TUBE model train set on the day after Papa was crushed between cars while checking the coupling—the day Olesya turned ten. When Olesya exits the car Yuri forbids her to trespass it, at the station on the phone Mama denies Papa’s abuse, Natasha openly flirts with Dima during a snowball fight, and Olesya avoids Yuri and returns to the empty car where she uncovers the memory of Papa’s funeral in the second compartment and of her first ballet recital to which Papa never showed up in the third. Scared by Papa’s voice coming from compartment four, Olesya exits, bumps into Yuri who confiscates TUBE to complain to Alla Borisovna, and walks in on Natasha and Dima having sex in her compartment. Crushed, Olesya steals TUBE from Yuri, goes back to the car and in compartments four, five, six, and seven uncovers memories of Papa leaving for his last job, their trip to an amusement park where he forced her on a train ride, the birch grove where he began undressing her but she escaped and got nearly hit by a train, and her sixth birthday party where she drew Papa’s erection for the whole family to see. Wanting to get it over with, Olesya skips two more doors and opens the last one but it’s the conductor’s compartment and there sits Papa. He takes TUBE from Olesya, leads her off the train, shows her his grisly death then attempts to rape her, but Olesya breaks away from him. He runs after her through the train, and she hides in the engine where she sees Papa’s own repressed memory: as a little boy he was raped by his stepfather Semyon. Papa is stunned, and Olesya uses her chance to escape and grabs TUBE but back in her compartment Alla Borisovna tells her she replaced her with Natasha as she assumed Olesya left.
The train arrives in Simferopol, and Papa chases Olesya for TUBE to the house where the first rape happened, while Dima breaks up with Natasha and follows them. At the house Olesya uncovers the memory from compartment eight: Papa’s gift of TUBE to bribe her for his first rape. Before the memory continues, Papa catches up with Olesya and, knowing he won’t leave her alone until he heals from his own trauma, she gives herself up and he rapes her while reality and memory merge: Olesya relives her first rape as an adult and as a child. After it’s over TUBE breaks, little Olesya and Papa leave hand-in-hand, and Olesya finds a porcelain ballerina figurine she lost in this house years ago, then Dima comes in and asks for forgiveness. To make up as they dance alone in the dark theater when Alla Borisovna sees them and reinstates Olesya. The day of Swan Lake Natasha apologizes and Dima and Olesya give the performance of their lives, and in the audience Olesya sees Yuri and Lidochka, runs up to them and gives Lidochka the figurine: she wants to become a ballerina. On the train back to Moscow, Olesya tells Dima she suddenly remembered she found TUBE by the dumpster just before leaving for the tour: it was the memory from compartment nine. They make love.
SYNOPSIS
The book is set in the winter of 1989 in the Soviet Union and follows the storyline of Bolshoi Ballet soloist Olesya Belaya who is in danger of losing her boyfriend, dancer Dima Rumyantsev, as well as her job if she doesn’t find a way to unlock the memory of her childhood trauma and get rid of her emotional coldness.
While riding the train from Moscow to perform Swan Lake in Simferopol, Dima tries to make love to Olesya but she gets paralyzed like she has done for the last three years. Dima finally loses his patience and sets his eyes on Olesya’s best friend Natasha Ryzhik, a sensual, striking ballerina. Olesya gets off the train at the station to be alone but is accosted by Natasha who passionately berates her for denying Dima intimacy and warns her that she will lose him if she keeps acting like the porcelain ballerina figurine she always carries with her—frozen and stiff—and suggests Olesya faces her fear head-on.
Back on the train, attempting to hide from people in the adjoining empty car, Olesya meets conductor Yuri who reminds her of her dead Papa Grigory Vasilievich, also a conductor who was tragically crushed between two trains when Olesya was ten. Yuri tells Olesya about his fear of trains and how he overcame it by forcing himself to work on one. Risking his job, he unlocks the empty car and allows Olesya to enter in return for her promise to come back in an hour, before they stop at the next station.
Olesya stands in the passageway looking out the window and dwelling on memories when a child taps on her shoulder: Olesya’s five-year-old self. Child Olesya gives adult Olesya the long-lost toy train engine from the set Papa gave her on her fifth birthday, modeled after the American train TUBE: Trans-Urban Blitz-Express. Papa got for a bribe from a colleague who traveled abroad. Olesya takes TUBE, unable to believe she forgot about it and is holding it in her hand. Child Olesya tells her it’s the key to unlock the memory of her childhood trauma. To remember it, she needs to visit the compartments of this car in the order of their numbers. Child Olesya skips away and steps into one of the last compartments, number eight or nine, from where Olesya hears Papa’s voice. Spooked, Olesya flees the car and finds she spent close to six hours there and went missing.
Choreographer Alla Borisovna has been looking for an excuse to fire Olesya for getting more and more “wooden” onstage in the last year, and at dinner in the restaurant car she tells Olesya she’ll replace her with Natasha if she vanishes like this again. While eating dinner at the same table with Natasha and Dima, Olesya tries to tell them about TUBE, but Dima tells her how he has found his dead mother after she hung herself and how he has overcome his own emotional coldness, and that until Olesya stops dwelling on her father’s death she won’t be able to open up emotinally. Natasha interprets this as an affair invitation and kisses Dima to show Olesya how to give him affection.
Olesya storms out and, denying the reality of TUBE, throws it in the trash, but conductor Yuri finds it and brings it back to her and tells her about his daughter Lidochka who wants to become a ballerina but has stage fright. Olesya explains she also had stage fright but overcame it by gradually exposing herself to being onstage, then realizes that’s why child Olesya gave her TUBE—to help her remember her trauma by gradually exposing herself to the forgotten memories leading up to it.
At night Olesya goes back to the empty car but it’s locked. She contemplates waking Yuri but then notices that TUBE’s coupling hook looks like the key Yuri used, fits it in the door and opens it. Olesya unlocks the first compartment and sees the forgotten memory of how her Mama, schoolteacher Olga Afanasievna, threw away the TUBE train set on the morning after they got the news of Papa’s death. Olesya can’t bring herself to enter the second compartment and leaves the car.
The next morning at the station Olesya calls Mama, but she denies the existence of TUBE and is unwilling to help Olesya remember. While Olesya ponders this, Natasha openly flirts with Dima during a snowball fight with the other dancers. Olesya declines their invitation to participate and returns to the empty car to unlock more compartments.
In the second compartment Olesya sees the memory of Papa’s funeral. While ten-year-old Olesya watches the casket being lowered into the hole, she fingers TUBE in her pocket, wanting to bury it together with Papa, but afraid Mama will find out she kept the engine and scold her. In the third compartment Olesya sees her first ballet recital to which Papa never showed up as he was killed while Olesya danced. Ten-year-old Olesya goes to sleep, gripping TUBE in her hand. Afraid of what that means, Olesya drops TUBE and runs out of the car.
In the vestibule Olesya bumps into Yuri who warns her that Alla Borisovna has gone berserk looking for her as she was missing again for hours. Olesya goes to Alla Borisovna’s compartment where Alla Borisovna tells her she replied her with Natasha: Natasha will dance her Swan Lake part with Dima. Crushed, Olesya looks for Dima and walks in on him and Natasha having sex in Natasha’s compartment.
Having lost her boyfriend and her job, Olesya knows she must remember her trauma so she won’t also lose her life—she’s tempted to take it. She goes to the empty car but can’t find TUBE anywhere and remembers she dropped it in compartment three.
Olesya wakes Yuri and, risking that he will think she’s crazy, confides in him the real reason she wants to visit the empty car—to unlock her forgotten memories to remember her trauma. Instead of thinking her crazy, Yuri encourages her to visit all compartments before the train arrives in Simferopol, opens the car and the compartment three. It’s empty, but TUBE is on the floor where Olesya dropped it. Yuri leaves.
Olesya unlocks compartments four, five, six, and seven, and sees memories of Papa leaving for his last job and reminding her to play with TUBE while he’s gone, their trip to an amusement park where he forces eight-year-old Olesya on a train ride despite her fear, the birch grove where he begins to act strange and Olesya, six at the time, runs away and gets nearly hit by a train, and then baba Zina’s birthday party in her house in Simferopol when Olesya was five and where in the game of Heads, Bodies, and Legs she drew TUBE coming out from between the legs. Papa left the table, Mama was shocked, and baba Zina scolded and punished Olesya by breaking her favorite porcelain ballerina figurine which Olesya glued back together later.
Sensing the memory of the trauma is close and wanting to get it over with, Olesya breaks the rule child Olesya gave her, skips two doors, and opens the last one—a big mistake. It’s not the compartment from which child Olesya came, it’s the conductor’s compartment, and there is Papa as he was when Olesya was five. Olesya gets paralized. Papa takes TUBE away from her, leads her off the train, and shows her his grisly death of being crushed between the trains when he was checking the coupling. Shocked, Olesya at first doesn’t understand that Papa has turned on her and aims to hurt her with TUBE. She snatches it from him, runs away, and gets back on the train.
Papa chases Olesya the length of the train until there is nowhere else to run but into the engine. Olesya unlocks the engine with TUBE, unlocks the engineer’s cab and there sees Papa’s forgotten memory of his own childhood trauma: eight-year-old Papa is raped in his mother’s—baba Zina’s—bedroom in their Simferopol house by his stepfather Semyon, baba Zina’s second husband whom she married after her first husband and Papa’s father died in the war. Papa catches up to Olesya but is paralized by the memory. Olesya uses her chance, escapes the empty car, and as she makes it to her compartment the train arrives in Simferopol.
Olesya has failed: she didn’t see her last forgotten memory in compartment eight and her trauma in compartment nine. While Yuri helps her off the train, he tells her he’s planning to take his daughter Lidochka to see Swan Lake, but Olesya tells him Alla Borisovna fired her and she won’t dance. As Yuri lives in Simferopol, he invites Olesya to have dinner with them and meet Lidochka. She agrees.
When Dima sees Olesya leave the station with a strange man, he is reminded of how before they were lovers he secretly followed her from Bolshoi Theater to her house to make sure she was safe and how once she was accosted by an alcoholic. He tells Natasha he will follow them just in case. Natasha makes a big scene, and he breaks up with her on the spot, realizing he loves Olesya and is willing to do what it takes to help her, sex or no sex.
On their way to Yuri’s house Olesya begins recognizing the streets that lead to baba Zina’s house where as a little girl she spent the summers—she had never visited the town in the winter and it looks different. Olesya tells Yuri that baba Zina died six months after Papa, in the summer, and that she wants to go see the house alone. They agree to meet at the theater at the performance the next day so Olesya can meet Lidochka, and Yuri leaves. Olesya finds the house: it’s boarded-up and locked. Breathless, she tries TUBE, and it unlocks the door. She enters the house.
The memory from compartment eight rushes at her, and she sees her five-year-old self. Then Papa enters the room and gives child Olesya TUBE set a gift, playing with her, sending TUBE into a tunnel, then undressing her and explaining that he will now send his “TUBE” into her “tunnel.” Reality and memory merge: Papa is about to rape both child Olesya and adult Olesya. Olesya understands that he must do it to heal himself from his own trauma and won’t leave her alone until he does, so instead of putting up a fight she gives herself to him. Papa rapes her and, free of his pain at last, leaves for good, holding hands with child Olesya. They leave TUBE behind.
After they’re gone, Olesya sees the bloody TUBE in her hand and realizes that her memory-visiting was happening in her head, and that she’s finally free of her past that was making her emotionally cold. She weeps, letting out the years of suppressed hurt, anger, grief, hate, forgiveness.
Terrified that something bad happened to Olesya, Dima finally locates the house, breaks in, and finds her naked and bleeding on the mattress on the floor, but happy. Olesya explains that she has remembered how Papa raped her in baba Zina’s house when she was five, and that by reliving it she has freed herself from its hold. Dima comforts her, admits he allowed himself to be seduced but broke up with Natasha and wants to be together regardless of Olesya’s fears. He tells Olesya the story of how his neighbor Yulia took his virginity against his will and laughed at him, and how it made him afraid of women laughing at him if he refused. They agree to give their relationship one more try.
Olesya leaves TUBE at the house, the place where Papa gave it to her for the first time. On their way to the hotel she tells Dima it was because she saw Swan Lake performed in Simferopol that she decided to become a ballerina, and that she always wanted to dance on that little stage. They sneak in the closed theater and dance without music. Alla Borisovna comes in to check the stage before the performance and sees Olesya dance like never before. She decides to reinstate her and tells her she will dance Swan Lake instead of Natasha.
At the theater, before the performance, Natasha comes clean to Olesya and explains she was afraid of loneliness and seduced Dima to be with someone, not because she loves him. Olesya tells her how she got rid of her coldness like Natasha suggested, by facing it. Their friendship is restored. After getting dressed and waiting for performance to start, Olesya calls Mama and tells her she remembered what Papa did, and that she forgave him for doing it and Mama for hiding it from her. Mama breaks down and admits to the truth, telling Olesya about her fear of Papa, how they met and how gradually he came to convince her that what he did with Olesya wasn’t wrong. Olesya ends the conversation: it’s performance time.
Swan Lake is a huge success: Dima and Olesya dance majestically—Olesya’s woodenness is gone. After the ballet Olesya finds Yuri and gives little Lidochka her glued-together ballerina figurine, telling her that if stage fright breaks her, she can put herself back together and try again until she overcomes her fear. Lidochka is happy, and to Olesya Yuri and his daughter look like Papa and her child-self, the way she has never experienced, without any secrets or pain. She promises to tutor Lidochka when she makes it to Moscow to study ballet.
On the train back to Moscow Olesya and Dima look forward to making love when the wounds she inflicted on herself with TUBE will heal. Olesya tells Dima about baba Zina and the summers she spent at her house, and how sad she was returning from baba Zina’s funeral, when she sees the memory from compartment nine: it was on that train that she has hidden TUBE under the berth in her compartment, wanting to get rid of it. The empty car she visited was the same car she rode eight years ago from Simferopol to Moscow.
SCENE BEAT SHEET
- HOOK: Intro hero, ally: Olesya and Dima in compartment one on the train, about to make love; Olesya sees Dima’s penis as TUBE, can’t remember what it means, gets paralyzed; Dima leaves, upset.
- Intro trickster, hero’s stakes: At the station Olesya sees familiar empty car; Natasha warns she’ll lose Dima without sex like “porcelain figurine”; they talk about Natasha’s happy parents versus Olesya’s unhappy.
- MENTOR: Intro mentor, foreshadowing: In car vestibule conductor Yuri stops Olesya; she says she remembers nothing before Papa’s death, is afraid of trains; he tells how he overcame his fear of trains, opens empty car.
- CALL: Intro herald, special world: In passageway child Olesya gives Olesya TUBE, says it’s her long-lost toy train engine, key to compartments with memories, to visit in order; from last compartment comes Papa’s voice.
- REFUSAL: Hero refuses special world: In vestibule Yuri says Olesya was gone for three hours, Alla Borisovna was looking for her; Olesya asks him to lock the car so she can’t go back, throws TUBE in trash.
- Intro shapeshifter, hero warned, rising stakes: Alla Borisovna, Natasha, Olesya have dinner, A.B. warns Olesya she’ll replace her with Natasha if she keeps dancing without emotion; Olesya argues she has emotion; Alla Borisovna suggests sex to unlock it, speculates if she’s a virgin.
- Hero rebuffed by ally, rival: At another table Olesya asks Dima to have sex; he declines, wants emotion, says his mother committed suicide after failing to unlock her emotions; wonders if Olesya loves him; Natasha joins them, kisses Dima.
- Mentor helps hero commit: Olesya looks for TUBE but it’s gone; Yuri says he found it, returns it; Olesya remembers Papa gave it to her on her fifth birthday, but can’t remember where and why she’s afraid of it.
- CROSSING: Shadow upon hero: Olesya unlocks empty car with TUBE, in first compartment sees first forgotten memory of how Mama threw away TUBE set, child Olesya hid TUBE engine.
- Guardian warns hero to stay away: In the morning Olesya calls Mama; she denies existence of TUBE; they argue; Mama hangs up the phone.
- Trickster tests hero: At the station Natasha flirts with Dima during a snowball fight with other dancers; Olesya coldly beats Natasha who dissolves in tears; Dima comforts Natasha.
- Hero seeks shadow: In empty car in compartment two Olesya sees Papa’s funeral; child Olesya wants to bury TUBE with Papa, but is afraid of Mama and keeps it in her pocket.
- Shadow incapacitates hero: In third compartment Olesya sees her first ballet recital to which Papa never came; Mama brings the news Papa was crushed between trains on the job; Olesya is shocked by how Papa died, drops TUBE on her way out.
- Trickster betrays hero: In passageway Natasha tells Olesya Alla Borisovna wants to talk to her; Olesya asks if she was fired; Natasha assures her she wasn’t.
- Shapeshifter strikes: Alla Borisovna tells Olesya she replaced her, Natasha will dance Swan Lake with Dima; Olesya says Alla Borisovna has no emotion, like a “porcelain figurine,” they argue; Olesya quits Bolshoi Ballet.
- Hero defaces trickster: Olesya walks in on Dima and Natasha having sex; tells them they can dance and be together now, she’s leaving them for good.
- Foreshadowing ordeal: Olesya opens the car door to jump out, remembers she almost jumped out when she was five, only it was summer.
- Mentor help: Olesya asks Yuri to open the empty car to retrieve TUBE; he lets her in, tells her she can’t stay there for more than two hours as the train arrives soon.
- Approaching shadow: Olesya finds TUBE on the floor, in compartment four sees Papa leaving for his last job, reminding her to play with TUBE while he’s gone; she opens next door.
- Approach: In compartment five Olesya sees their trip to an amusement park where Papa forces eight-year-old Olesya on a train ride despite her fear; Olesya opens the next door.
- Approach: In compartment six in the birch grove by the railroad tracks Papa begins undressing Olesya, six at the time; she runs away, gets nearly hit by a train; Olesya opens the next door.
- Approach: In compartment seven it’s baba Zina’s birthday party in her Simferopol house; in the game of Heads, Bodies, and Legs Olesya, five, draws TUBE coming out from between the legs; Papa leaves table, Mama is shocked, baba Zina punishes Olesya by breaking her porcelain ballerina figurine.
- Intro shadow: Olesya breaks the rule, skips two doors, opens the last one; it’s the conductor’s compartment and there sits Papa; he takes TUBE from Olesya.
- Confrontation: Papa and Olesya have tea; Olesya asks Papa what he did to her, he says he saved her life.
- Ordeal foreshadowing: Off the train Papa shows Olesya his death of being crushed between trains—what he saved her from—aims to hurt her with TUBE; Olesya grabs it from him.
- Attempt to win: Olesya gets back on the train; Papa chases her the length of the train to the engine; Olesya opens engine with TUBE, locks it.
- ORDEAL: In the engineer’s cab Olesya sees Papa’s forgotten memory: he is eight, baba Zina’s second husband Semyon is raping him in Simferopol house; Olesya opens the door for Papa, they watch together: baba Zina comes home, uncle Semyon lies to her, she punishes child Papa, takes away his ballet figurine.
- Hero’s failure: Olesya comforts Papa, gives him her glued-back ballet figurine; he hits her, she escapes, forgets to lock the empty car; train arrives in Simferopol.
- Ally’s attempt to win: Dima finds Olesya, says Yuri wouldn’t let him in the empty car to see her; Olesya brushes him off.
- REWARD: Mentor helps hero: Yuri helps Olesya off the train, says he’s taking daughter Lidochka to Swan Lake; Olesya says she got fired; he invites her to dinner to meet Lidochka; they leave (it looks like she walks with Papa).
- Ally, inner struggle: Dima sees Olesya leave with Yuri, remembers how he secretly followed her from Bolshoi to her house to make sure she was safe, and how she was accosted by an alcoholic.
- Ally, commitment to hero: Dima tells Natasha he will follow Olesya; Natasha makes a big scene; Dima breaks up with her on the spot.
- Hero prepares for road back: On their way to Yuri’s house Olesya recognizes baba Zina’s street; her house is boarded up; she tells Yuri she has to go there alone.
- ROAD BACK: Olesya opens the door with TUBE; in the room she just saw child Papa getting raped she sees the memory from compartment eight: she is five, Papa enters the room, gives her a gift of TUBE set.
- RESURRECTION: Papa and Olesya play with TUBE, the says his “TUBE” will enter her “tunnel”; his penis becomes TUBE; Reality and memory merge: Papa rapes both child Olesya and adult Olesya—adult Olesya sacrifices herself to heal him from his trauma.
- Resurrection of shadow: Papa is finally free of his pain; he and child Olesya leave holding hands, happy; TUBE is left behind.
- Redemption: Olesya sees bloody TUBE in her hand, realizes it all happened in her head—she freed herself from her trauma and fear; she weeps, letting out years of suppressed emotions; hears someone come in.
- Reconciliation: Dima comes in, finds Olesya bleeding but happy; she says she remembered Papa raped her when she was five, reenacted it with TUBE; Dima comforts her, says he broke up with Natasha, asks for forgiveness.
- Ally’s ordeal: Olesya forgives Dima; he explains how his neighbor Yulia took his virginity, laughed at him—it made him afraid of laughter if he didn’t perform sexually; Natasha laughed at him, Olesya never did.
- Preparing for return: They leave the house—Olesya leaves TUBE behind; walk by the theater; Olesya tells Dima when she was five she saw Swan Lake performed here, decided to become a ballerina, always wanted to dance on this stage; they sneak in the closed theater, dance without music;
- Shapeshifter changes to ally: Alla Borisovna checks the stage before the performance, sees Olesya dance, is stunned; asks her to dance Swan Lake instead of Natasha.
- Trickster changes to ally: Before the performance Natasha explains to Olesya she was afraid of loneliness, seduced Dima to be with someone; Olesya tells her what she remembered; Natasha decides to face her fear too.
- Guardian surrenders: Olesya calls Mama, says she remembered what Papa did, forgave him; Mama breaks down, admits to the truth, tells Olesya of her own fear of Papa.
- RETURN: Dima and Olesya dance Swan Lake majestically—Olesya’s woodenness is gone; in the audience she thinks she sees Papa and herself.
- Hero is redeemed: It’s Yuri and Lidochka whom Olesya sees; she gives Lidochka her ballerina figurine to prove nothing can break her; Yuri tells Lidochka he’s taking her to Moscow to study ballet.
- Foreshadowing closure: Yuri, Lidochka, Olesya, Dima board the train to Moscow; Yuri and Lidochka get compartment one, Olesya and Dima get compartment nine; Olesya experiences a deja vu.
- Closure: Olesya tells Dima about her summers at baba Zina’s house, the last time she saw her alive, her death after Papa’s death, Olesya’s return train trip from baba Zina’s funeral.
- Ending and beginning of story loop: Olesya sees memory from compartment nine: on the trip back she hid TUBE under the berth, wanting to get rid of it—the empty car she visited was the same car she rode eight years ago from Simferopol to Moscow.
Can you believe this long post is over?? Nope. It's not. Part 3 is next (that will be the last one for sure, and it will have the finished Scrivener template). On Style and Characters. And you get a cookie when I see you, for reading this far.