Carolyn Nicita

GOTEM vs. the Try/Fail Cycle

 

Fiction teachers talk about the try/fail cycle to structure the drama in your story and keep it interesting.

Try/Fail reminds me of a little kid trying to hit a baseball.  She strikes out (yes, this is a childhood memory), cries, and then runs off the baseball field and refuses to play.

The GOTEM concept, on the other hand, gives me as an author a bit more to work with.

What is GOTEM, you ask?

I learned this from Dr. Nola Smith, PHD in Theater. Actors use it to enhance their performances to better grab their audiences.  

The acronym spells out to this:

Goal

Obstacle

Tactic

Effect

Modification

Actors use it to structure their presentation of material. They can GOTEM a complete act, a scene, and even a beat.

What’s a beat?  Here’s one:

Character One:  How are you?

Character Two: Fine.

It’s a complete cycle of an interchange, or in fiction, a paragraph. That beat is part of a common exercise in acting class.

Now you can apply different GOTEMs to it.

What if  (as I played it in an acting session) Character One was in love with Character Two? What would her GOTEM be?  What if Character Two were only hoping that Character One didn’t notice that he had body odor?  What would HIS Gotem be?

See?  All of a sudden these two lines, this beat, becomes more interesting.