Events come in two parts:
1. an attempt by the protagonist to reach his or her goal and
2. the action the antagonist takes to prevent the protagonist from reaching his or her goal.
As the story progresses, each event should be more intense than the previous events. Thus, they are called escalating events.
For example, if we set up a little girl who is trying to keep her happiness despite some mean hearted actions by a little boy, the three escalating events will be the attempts the little boy makes on the little girl’s happiness and how she overcomes each of them.
So for the first event you could have something like; “The little boy knocks over her tower of blocks. She ignores him and makes a bigger tower.”
Then you would escalate the intensity of the boy’s attack in event #2 (we always have to escalate the action, otherwise we lose the audience’s attention). For example, he could kick dirt at her, which she could put to use in a sand castle.
The final event determines whether the story is a drama or a comedy.
If the story is a comedy the character makes no change but usually gets what he or she wants in an unexpected way. If it is a drama, the character changes even if he or she doesn’t get what he or she wants.
So the final event could be something like: “Little boy runs up to kick little girl. But he trips, falls and gets a bloody nose.”
At this point we could have either a comedy or a drama. If it were a comedy, the little girl could laugh. If she does this, she hasn’t changed, but she has achieved her goal of keeping her happiness. If it were a drama, the little girl would help the boy up and doctor his nose, showing that can rise above his petty attempts at saddening her.
To sum up:
Escalating event
1. An attempt by the protagonist to attain his/her goal, and the antagonist’s action to prevent the protagonist from gaining the goal.
2. Each event escalates in intensity.
3. The final event makes it clear whether the story is a comedy or a drama by whether the character changes or not.
