The Irony Finder

Hello! It's been a while again! But, oh boy, do I have a doozy of a post for you special chums today!

If we return our attention to the Alex Method, the next step in our journey is to mine the nugget until we have a more concrete idea for our project. And one way I've discovered of doing this is something I've dubbed 'The Irony Finder.'

The Irony Finder is inspired by Blake Snyder in his scriptwriting book 'Save the Cat.' It involves picking out your main protagonist, describing them using one or two defining adjectives, and pitting them against what would be an enemy tailor-made for them. For example:

Often, this usually looks like picking out an obstacle or conflict which is the exact opposite of your protagonist's defining characteristic. This is how you can almost guarantee the most mileage and drama out of your story and it also means you’re picking out the exact protagonist that’s perfect for the story you’re trying to tell. Some more examples:

As you can see from the examples above, your antagonist can either be a specific person or a setting or even a theme! All that is important here is that it's something your protagonist is going to struggle against -- to the point where it might cost them everything.

Now, personally, I like to take the Irony Finder one step further and do as Snyder suggests: write a logline. A logline can be your candlestick in the darkness when it comes to tackling big projects like writing a whole novel. It can give you direction when you get writer's block and can also help keep your story and character arcs as focused as possible so they have the greatest impact on the reader.

The Irony Finder is designed to make writing a logline a lot easier. A couple of working formulas could look like:

At the end of the day, you don't have to show anyone this rough logline so you can have as much fun with it as you like! But this is something I personally use and find very helpful so I wanted to pass this knowledge on to you!

Feel free to write some of your own loglines in the new comments section under this post! I'd love to read them and know what people are working on. :D

Otherwise, I hope you're all having an inspired day!