Yesterday, Colleen laid out these major plot points: The boat hits something. Radio dies. The storm. The boat sinks. A second storm hits the life raft. Sharks arrive. Container ships pass by. Our man sets fire to the raft and gets the attention of a fishing boat. He’s saved. That plays out to 9 plot points, and 8 sequences with each plot point serving as a Beginning-End point of each sequence. Notice the progression: With each sequence, Our Man progressively stripped of items in the physical world. So by the time the end of the story occurs, it is almost literally Our Man -- as a human being sans anything else -- human vs. presumed ill fate. And yet he survives... To be discussed in tomorrow's thread.

Hello Scott, This is my attempt at working through the sequences. Does that seem about right? Sequence 1 Beginning: The container hits the boat. Middle: Gets the boat repaired. End: The radio dies. Sequence 2 B: He spots the storm. M: Storm hits. E: Boat sinks Sequence 3 B: He figures out he is nowhere near the shipping lanes. M: Second Storm hits. E: Storm ends; he’s left with less than he had before. Sequence 4 B: He creates desalination contraption. M: He catches a fish. E: Container ship passes the raft. Sequence 5 B: Catches fish. M Sharks arrive and he discovers he’s far from the shipping lanes. E: He doesn’t notice a shark beside him. Sequence 6 B: He writes the letter. M: He starts the fire. E: He jumps into the water. Sequence 7 B: He comes to the water’s surface. M: He spots the dinghy. E: He grabs the hand of the young man.