I think I've identified one of the fuzzy points in my stakes/setbacks notion: sometimes you end up winning and still suffering a loss. That is, Luke gets the Death Star blowed up real good, but also loses Biggs and (temporarily; one might argue it was just color) R2D2 in the process. A real setback would be *failing* to blow up the Death Star. The losses are instead sacrifices, made (one could successfully argue) in order to *ensure* the success. Once again, the real question in movie and book type fiction is never *truly* "will the main characters succeed" but "*how* will they succeed." You just have to make the latter suspense so convincing that your audience can successfully forget that it's not the former. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
