The Great Gathering

Hours after returning home from Thrillerfest in NYC, I attended a weekend celebration of my high school class reunion.  It was a fun and exhausting weekend.  Before leaving on another adventure the next day, my husband and I tried to recover with a movie.  He choose the perfect reunion movie – Grosse Pointe Blank, a 1997 thriller/dark comedy.   Unfortunately, not long after the movie started, I started seeing them – plots points.  Soon after, I was reviewing my structure notes from Thrillerfest and outlining on my laptop.  Relaxing? Maybe not.  Fun? Oh, yeah.

The protagonist is Martin Blank, a disillusioned contract killer.  He botched a job and has to satisfy the client by killing someone in Detroit, his hometown on the weekend of his class reunion.  He returns and rekindles his romance with Debi, his high school sweetheart who he dumped on prom night. The antagonist, Grover, a competing assassin, follows him to Detroit, wanting to kill Martin and steal his contract.

2 subplots richen the main plot. First, Martin has never explained his abrupt departure from high school.  No one knew why he left or where he went.  Second, Grover, his competitor, wants Martin to join a killer’s union to prevent accidental contract cross-over.  Martin isn’t interested, and so Grover rats him out to the NSA, who also want to kill Martin.

After Debi sees Martin kill an unwelcome guest at the reunion, and everything unravels, Martin finally opens the contract  for which he was sent to Detroit and discovers that it’s Debi’s father.  As Martin says, “dumb f***ing luck.”

One of the first sessions I attended at Thrillerfest was Steve Berry’s The Six C’s of Story Structure.  As Berry says, story structure is everything.  After the crisis, the goal of Act III is to resolve the subplots and main plot  as close to the same time as possible, leading to the conclusion.  This makes sense as the subplots should be vital to the resolution of the main plot.  In Berry’s novels, such as The 14th Colony, this happens when all the characters get to the same place.

In Grosse Pointe Blank, after Martin has lost everything, the crisis occurs when he discovers Debi’s dad is his target.  In the rest of Act III, Martin goes to protect, instead of kill, his target, along with Debi.  Grover and the NSA team show up.  Like in Berry’s novels, all the characters are in one place.

As the killing ensues, the subplots are cleared up, leading to the conclusion.  Martin explains the reasoning for his departure on prom night, again declines Grover’s request for a union, kills Grover, and kills the NSA team.  He asks Debi to marry him and receives her father’s blessing.

So whether you’re at a reunion full of wonderful people, watching a movie, or plotting your novel’s Act III, think of the great gathering as the place to tie up loose ends.  Thanks to Steve Berry for an informative presentation and to my classmates for a most enjoyable reunion.