Rising Action and Complications Build Plots
Conflict, Cause and Effect in Slumdog Millionaire
In rising action, a story's inciting incident must be built upon with three key elements: conflict, cause and effect. Often, these elements intertwine. In other words, conflict is created by a cycle of cause and effect. However, for the purpose of this article, each element will be examined more closely in isolation through the rising action of the recent film Slumdog Millionaire.
(If you haven’t read about Slumdog Millionaire, check out the article, Hook Readers with Solid Inciting Incident. In that article, the inciting incident, or basic situation, is introduced.)
Simply put, Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of a young man named Jamal on the verge of twenty years old, who rises from the ghetto of his country to play for 20 million rupees on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
Viewers are asked at the beginning how he got there. Did he cheat? Is it just luck? Maybe he’s a genius? Or, perhaps, it is destiny? An interesting battle line between itself and audience attention, but little more than a cap gun compared to the heavy artillery of rising action.
The more you know how to create rising action the better you will be at building cause, effect, and conflict.
Cause
This one is self-explanatory. Without something causing characters to act, there is no rising action because there isn’t a viable point from which to start. So it follows the plot cannot advance without a healthy amount of causes.
In Slumdog Millionaire, Jamal is beaten and tortured by authorities, who refuse to believe he knows the answers to the questions he has been asked. They think he somehow cheated. This causes Jamal to share the experiences that led him to this moment. What do they find? Many more causes, many more…
Effects
The relationship between causes and effects is like that between good and evil. How can you define good if there is not some benchmark of evil with which to compare it? Likewise, a cause cannot be a cause if some effect, however small, doesn’t follow.
Jamal and his brother Salim have a strained relationship from a very young age. Why? One possible answer is that when a known national action movie star is coming to their village for a visit, Salim barricades Jamal in an outhouse while his little brother tries to use the bathroom. Jamal still gets the autograph, but only after taking his only escape route -- a headfirst dive into a cesspool of human waste. This rather nasty alternative to a clean exit from the outhouse door doesn’t seem to bother Jamal until Salim takes the autograph to a trader and sells it behind his little brother’s back for a few coins. As a result, Jamal confronts his brother and tension grows.
One thing to keep in mind regarding cause and effect: if you have two related statements, and you can stick the phrase, “as a result,” in between them, and it still makes sense, you’ve got a cause-and-effect scenario. String a bunch of these together, and a story takes shape. And in every good story, there exists…
Conflict
Two or more forces work in opposition of one another. This creates conflict. As in “Hook Readers with Solid Inciting Incident,” the conflict created will be either internal conflict or external conflict. Is the battle inside the character? Or is there an opposing force or antagonistic character out to get him?
Slumdog Millionaire, like most great storytelling, contains both forms. Jamal is torn between his sense of loyalty to Salim and his love for Latika. He struggles with escaping his “slumdog” lot in life and risking his own life to be with his love. Amid these struggles, he must also contend with the betrayal of Salim, a crazy pimp, and a crime lord, who basically makes Latika his own personal hostage. Not to mention, the powers that be are sure he’s cheated to make it so far, and they’ll prove it if they have to beat it out of him.
Final Thoughts
Slumdog Millionaire is rife with conflict. Stories should follow suit. A day without conflict is nice if you live in the real world. But a story without conflict is a story without an audience. To reap the rewards of rising action, one must know how to work with its three key elements. How else can you make it to the end?
For a review of Slumdog Millionaire, visit The Film Journals.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Indian-Style!
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