Plot structure

I wrote That Which Binds Us up to the first Urball T match. It was at this point that I took time away from the book to focus on the launch of The Shadow Spinner. But I needed to take a break from TWBU – I could tell something was wrong. Below is my the history of what I originally wrote, my analysis, and my decision on how to move forward.

Original Urball T scene

I wrote the first Urball T match and the Dragon crew lost horrifically. This is a literal interpretation – they didn’t just lose, but horrifically so. There was much more explicit violence and an intense element of suffocation and pain from Mei. It mirrored the fire scene of the school, but I felt like the tone was all wrong. Whereas the fire was meant to be horrific, the first Urball T match was meant to be illustrative.

I took a week off and in that time I had the realization that my book was following the trope laid out in The Breakfast Club. A bunch of young adults thrown together in school. I took the time to study The Breakfast Club and use the character dynamics to inspire the crew’s development.

The Breakfast Club – story structure

In the beginning, each of the kids are shown interacting with their parents for a few seconds giving the viewer a brief, but very illuminating, glance at their problematic dynamic. Since TWBU is from Mei’s perspective, I omitted this portion.

Instead, I jumped straight into the next two parts: formal introduction of each character followed immediately by some catalyst event. The catalyst event is a pressure cooker – it exposes not only who each of the characters are, but also their weakness. With this in mind, I knew I had to rewrite the Urball T match!

Urball T match rewrite

The original match focused exclusively on Mei with a little bit of Devi. It almost completely excluded Ailani and Taz – crazy, in hindsight! I knew I had to come up with weakness for each of my characters. Devi would be impulsive and fool-hardy, Ailani a goofy pacifist (see earlier posts – this was a huge character change for him), and Taz became a coward. With all these qualities in mind, it became straightforward to rewrite the scene with a small interaction between each character and Mei that illustrated this essential weakness.

Aftermath

After the loss, the character’s discuss their problems. In The Breakfast Club, a very important detail is that each of the characters explain their problem as external to themselves. That is, the problem is happening to them and they hold no responsibility. The unifying theme is their crappy parents. While in real life, this can easily be the case, in a story, ultimately, the characters must assume some responsibility for their problems so that they can change from reactive to proactive.

In TWBU, each of the characters start out without the ability to adequately use their strength. They avoid confronting their own failures, listing a more superficial reason for their failure in Urball T. Below is their superficial reason [with the deeper reason in brackets].

Mei: she lacks the center line. [Fear and lack of confidence limits her]

Devi: she lacks combat training. [Guilt and inability to trust limit her]

Ailani: he’s a pacifist. [Guilt limits him]

Taz: he has performance anxiety. [Fear limits him]

Training arc – fun and games

The crew commits to help each other. They do this in the most superficial way, in that they agree to help each other with training. They don’t know each other well enough yet to realize that the real reason they are all limited is due to a deep emotional scar.

Still, this is the fun part of the book! They all start getting along and become best friends. Training goes well and they get stronger, both individually and as a group.

Ghost reveal

In The Breakfast Club, eventually the kids all reveal the real reason they have problems in their life with an admittance of personal responsibility. This deep level of intimacy allows true bonds to form and the group helps each other evolve.

In That Which Binds Us, I teased this out throughout the latter half of the book instead of taking place in a single conversation. Mei has experiences with each of her roommates where she learns of their ‘ghost’. With each reveal, she (and the reader) come to understand her roommate’s true weakness and the hurtful belief they have about themselves. She and her crew take steps to truly help each other overcome this deep hurt. A miniature of this evolution is shown in the Final T match.

Mei: she successfully protects using her strength

Devi: she is in danger and Mei comes and saves her. She quells her own violent instincts to protect Jaela from Mei and Mei from herself.

Taz: he risks his own safety to help others (his crew) despite his fear

Ailani: he stops being a bystander, breaking his own moral code of non-involvement, to save Mei

Full evolution

Of course, the miniature of the Final T match is just for a grade in their General Physical Preparation course. The stakes are, in the grand scheme of things, not truly that high. When the crew goes to help during the tsunami, the stakes skyrocket to life-or-death. I won’t spoil the ending, but the crew is truly put to the test to see if what they displayed in a simple game of Urball T will withstand the onslaught of deadly pressure.

So go ahead! If you haven’t read the book, find out for yourself. If you have read the book, go back and look for the parallels layered throughout the structure!