Scott, This is highly relevant to my process right now: "Where to find those significant moments? Zero in on the major Plotline points. That’s a good start. Since a Plotline point is an important event that hooks into the plot and spins it in another direction, chances are quite good there will be some sort of concomitant emotional or psychological ‘thing’ going on." (From your 'Surfacing moments' post). Reverse engineering this, for me it's a clue to what should really be happening at these plot points, and the connections between plot, emotional arc development, and theme as it's worked out in the emotional drama among characters. You see lots of structure and rising/falling action charts. Going beyond your "hope, despair, faith" paradigm, has anyone ever seen the flow of major emotions of an entire movie graphed?

Per your question, that's a tough one, Steven. You might check out this post featuring Kurt Vonnegut complete with his charts. The problem is stories are organic and any move to chart them in a sort of universal way (i.e., looking for a formula or paradigm) is inherently false. Stories can be ANYTHING. That's why, for example, when people refer to The Hero's Journey, I tend to veer toward the three big movements -- Separation, Initiation, Return -- and not so much the 17 or 12 'stages' often associated with it. For whatever reason, I find people tend to try to use those to structure their story and while that can be helpful, again stories are organic. They need to have room to breathe and emerge. Now in terms of the emotional flow of a story, again I feel more comfortable looking at things in the broad strokes. Most mainstream commercial Hollywood movies feature one protagonist who goes through a positive metamorphosis. Not all, but most. One way I have found to look at that metamorphosis arc is four movements: Disunity. Deconstruction. Reconstruction. Unity. Each of those can have a different feel, tone, pace and so forth, but like those three movements of the Hero's Journey noted above, this seems to fit metamorphosis. I guess I would say the important thing to remember is these charts or paradigms or movements or what have you are tools to help us find the story, not to shove the story into a formula -- I'm not suggesting you're saying that, by the way -- but to use them to surface the story.

"tools to help us find the story" Yes I like that! It seems the more tools I have in my box, the more choices I'm conscious of making, so I can use broad strokes or fine strokes. I understand that you're not suggesting that I want to shove the story into a formula, and I say without defensiveness that the more examples I see of any particular paradigm the more creative I seem to get. Your lecture notes on "Time" and the focus on moments really has got me back on track. I guess there are different degrees of emotionality or psychological experience: expectation, anticipation, surprise, etc. compared to more visceral hope, fear, despair, joy, fulfillment etc. Once we identify with the protagonist we feel those emotions with her or him, or we feel a removed response like pity or admiration if there is irony, or distance in the case of an anti-hero. Anyhoo, your stuff is productively thought provoking, as usual. Thanks! Vonnegut's chart of Kafka is so true!