Therefore... but

Practicing Outlining a Story

When outlining, Trey Parker and Matt Stone recommend using the conjunctions “therefore” and “but” to connect story beats. This gives a piece causality and connection that “and then” doesn’t give. “And then” reads like a kid summarizing their day. “Therefore” and “but” keep causality and consequence at the front of the story.

I tried this out:

• The old man shivered

• therefore

• He stoked the fire

• but

• A spark caught on a nearby newspaper

• therefore

• the house was all ablaze

• but

• the man and his dog escaped

• but

• the dog was yowling

• therefore

• his neighbor noticed

• therefore

• the neighbor called the authorities

• therefore 

• the authorities found the bodies the man had buried in the foundation.

Show, Don’t Tell

I then thought about good old “show, don’t tell” like so:

1. The poor, lonesome, proud, old man shivered

   1. show me he’s poor: his cramped house is filled with everything he’s ever owned

   2. show me he’s lonesome: his nights are always quiet, set by the fire stroking his dog

   3. “ proud: he lives alone even though he has trouble taking care of himself

      1. show me he has trouble taking care of himself: the house is cluttered, soot covers one wall, he’s eating an expired microwavable dinner that didn’t get hot enough on the stove

   4. show me he’s old: he has tremors, he has indigestion from the microwave meals, he’s wrapped in blankets, his name is George, his beard is long, he dislikes TV, his back hurts

therefore

1. He stoked the fire

   1. he struggled to get out from under the dog

   2. his recliner creaked and he had to really hump to get it to move

   3. the poker was heavy iron

   4. the door to the stove screeched

   5. smoke plumed out; the chimney is blocked up again

   6. sparks fly 

but

1. A spark caught on a nearby newspaper which he has disdain for, whose only use is as fire starter

   1. He still gets the local rag the libs bought it out, it’s full of PC crap about women’s sports, a Chinese principal at the school, and the editor’s got a Jewey name

therefore

1. the house caught on fire

   1. first the toppled pile of newspapers by the stove

   2. then the edge of one of the blankets George was burrowed under

   3. and the peeling wallpaper above the stack of papers

but

1. George Anderson didn’t notice at first

   1. because he was resting his eyes

   2. he hasn’t smelled well since his Parkinson’s set in

   3. he appreciated the heat

but

1. the man and his dog escaped

   1. because the dog jumped off his lap and cried by the door

therefore

1. it made a bunch of noise

   1. the dog scratches at the door, has a loud, obnoxious bark

   2. the neighbor lives very close, is nosey or annoying and always in George’s business anyway

therefore

1. his neighbor noticed

therefore

1. the neighbor called the authorities and banged on his door

therefore 

1. George opened his eyes and got out of the inferno in time

but

1. the authorities came and found the bodies the man had buried in the foundation

First Draft

and then I wrote a first go:

In the minutes before the authorities discovered his horrendous and lifelong secret, George Anderson could not get warm. He lived alone with his dog. They shared a run down double-wide in the Michigan Thumb. His wife and son had lived there with him before they abandoned him. But that was some time ago. No one else in the trailer park remembered the woman or the boy. He’d gotten old and even more bitter in the days since they had gone. His back bent like a fish hook. His face drooped and his speech came out like he was drunk, which he hardly was anymore on account of he couldn’t afford to be, and his left hand trembled constantly. The doctor in Medina said he had Parkinson’s. 

George ate in the precious Lay-Z-Boy he’d bought with part of the $200 sum his father-in-law had given him on his wedding day. The dog rested in his lap, a little Chihuahua mutt. He had to heat up the microwavable dinner he ate with the warmth of the little fire stove he had installed himself some twenty years ago. The potatoes were cold in the middle, and the droopy green beans all the way through. The laminate wall behind that damn stove was smeared black with soot and squirrels made nests in the chimney every summer and George had all but given up clearing them out; he let the first fire do that for him every autumn. He always laughed when he started it for the first time. “Bombs away fuckers,” he always said, and he imagined them gathering up as many little nuts and twigs as they could shove in their cheeks and scuttling out the chute.

Just then, George wished he could fit in that little chimney. February in Michigan was a son of a bitch. One whole wall creaked when the wind blew through. Snow crept in under the door. And George Anderson could not get warm. The dog lay on him. Between him and the dog was the fattest blanket George owned. Beneath that he wore long johns. His Lay-Z-Boy parked right up against the side of the black stove, practically singeing his right ear. And he still shivered.

He set down his lukewarm dinner on the stack of newspapers he kept right beside the stove. That Jewey rag’s best use was starting fires. He rocked back and then forward, back and then forward, until the damn dog hopped off his lap so he could swing himself up. The old Lay-Z-Boy screeched. He twisted the lever and finally the door of the stove wrenched loose. Black smoke belched out. The poker was heavy, black iron. It had come included with the purchase of the stove. George had to use both shaky arms to lift and jam it into the red-orange mess inside. The fire hacked and wheezed. Sparks spat up into the air. George left the stove door open for a few minutes. He stared into the fire, basked in the heat. The dog hopped up onto the bricks the oven rested on, sniffing the fire. Idiot thing. That was when George snapped the door shut.

When he did so, he didn’t notice, a constellation of sparks shot up into the air and glided gently, gently down. He didn’t notice. Most fell where they had always fallen: on the blackened laminate floor or the already-charred wall. But a few fell on the newspaper. That surely had happened before. But the wind blew at the same instant, though the pathetic walls of Mr Anderson’s mobile home. The dry air shoved the sparks into the paper, like a schoolyard bully jams a fag into the mud, perhaps. 

The paper ignited. George Anderson didn’t notice. He didn’t notice because he was making all sorts of moans, his beloved chair a series of creaks and squeaks, as he reclined back down onto it. He couldn’t smell anymore. Parkinson’s does that to the brain, rots it away. (But it wasn’t the first thing to have rotted away in George.) He couldn’t smell the smoke of the Jew-rag igniting. He felt the heat. He picked up his plastic dish but leaned back into his chair, closed his eyes, and moaned again. The dog hopped back up into his lap, the lap of luxury.

But the fire kept burning as George and the dog sat, contented, into their wonted places. Soon the heap of newspapers, which had already toppled, been left unrighted, onto the floor, spread. The drab wallpaper Mary and he had once bickered over, which he had left up even after getting rid of her, maybe like a memorial, ignited. The glue behind it and the cheap particle board, too. George’s blanket caught. He was burrowed so deep under it that all he felt was the motion, the slight vibration of the flames disintegrating his best blanket, which he mistook for the dog chewing her foot. 

The dog noticed first; suddenly, the air got warm. It lobbed down onto the floor. Sniffed the black air. Trotted over to the drafty door. She yapped. The damn thing yapped more than Mary had.

“Oh shuddup,” George whimpered. He hadn’t even ever wanted a dog. But the doctor in Medina said it would be good for him, had a litter of puppies to get rid of. He’d been living all alone in for all these years. Since Mary and the kid disappeared. “Shuddup, would you?”

But the dog would not. The dog continued barking. And barking. The mobile home ballooned with smoke. George even coughed, but he didn’t open his contented eyes. “Shuddup,” he whimpered again. He fell asleep for a few minutes. The fire ballooned.

A fist came at the door. The fist of Eddie Rafferty, the world-class a-hole whole lived on the next lot. Christ was he a self-righteous asshole. Rafferty, whose attention the dog had drawn, had noticed the smoke, which was stampeding out the drafty window cracks. “Jesus, George,” he hollered. “You all right in there?”

It was an astonishingly stupid question to ask.

George finally opened his eyes when Rafferty tried to rip the door off its hinges. He wheezed and coughed and realized he’d been choking on smoke and that half his mobile home was on fire. He sprang like a younger man out of that Lay-Z-Boy just as flames, like locusts, descended on it. He tripped over his walker, and the iron poker, and hobbled over to the locked door, which Eddie Rafferty was on the verge of cracking in half he was pulling so hard. “George,” he screamed. “Help is coming. You in there? Charlene’s calling the fire department. You in there?”

George’s hands shook and they were clammy. He couldn’t get the latch to budge and Rafferty was pulling on it so hard it was stuck in place. “Stop, Eddie,” he hacked. His throat dried instantly in the black air of the blaze. “Stop.” He twisted the metal pylon and cracked his fingernail getting it to slide, but it slid. He fell into the door as it flung open. The dog scuttled out into the bitter wind, the biting, goddamn cold wind and George collapsed into the snowy dell between the two men’s mobile homes. 

“Jesus, George,” Rafferty said, slapping the old man’s legs. George had dragged the blanket, still aflame, with him through the house and Rafferty was burning his palms putting it out. George kicked at the man’s hands, which Rafferty mistook for him flailing in agony. “Tell ‘em to bring an ambulance, Charlene, Christ.” The reek of melted plastic boiled off of George Anderson.

“No,” George protested, but not because he wasn’t hurt. “Get me an extinguisher. I’ll put it out.” He wheezed. 

Eddie Rafferty would tell the news reporters later that night that he’d always thought his neighbor was a bit off, that the discovery of Mary and Ethan’s bodies beneath the old stove didn’t astonish him, and he’d only wished he’d realized it all sooner. Mr Anderson, he told Channel 11, had always made him uneasy—he kept to himself, was quiet, always frowning, irascible and surly and muttering and dour—but in reality Eddie had always liked George. Still, the whimper George emitted would ring in the younger man’s head for a long time. The sad, sick sound a shot deer made. George was gawking up at the mobile home, the melted-plastic pyre, and whimpering. The whole thing was a mush of ashes and noxious fumes a fire extinguisher could do very little against. Sirens raced toward them.