Emotion 1: Emotional cause and effect

Jade Dragon is offended

To practice applying what we've learned in this lesson, we're going to write a variation of a long passage from Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

We've chosen this passage because it has a fairytale feel, which means it quickly covers a lot of action.

Here it is in one big chunk. Can you see the main emotion-behaviour loops? And how many points of view do you think there are: one, two, or three?

Once when there were no rivers on the earth, the Jade Dragon was in charge of clouds. She decided when and where the clouds would rain upon the land and when they would stop. She was very proud of her power and of the reverence the people of earth paid her. Jade Dragon had four dragon children: Pearl, Yellow, Long, and Black. They were large and strong and good and kind. They helped Jade Dragon with her work and whenever they flew in the sky she was overwhelmed with love and pride.

However, one day, as Jade Dragon ended the rain and moved the clouds away from the land, she overheard some villagers’ conversation.

"Ah, thank goodness the rain is gone," one man said.

"Yes," another said, "I’m so tired of the rain. I’m glad the clouds are gone and the sun is finally shining."

Those words filled Jade Dragon with anger. Tired of rain! Glad the clouds were gone! Jade Dragon was indignant. How dare the villagers dishonor her that way!

Jade Dragon was so offended that she decided that she would never let it rain again. "The people can enjoy the sun forever," Jade Dragon thought resentfully.

Of course, that meant despair for the people on earth. As the sun beat overhead and the rain never came, drought and famine spread over the land. Animals and trees withered and died and the people begged for rain, but Jade Dragon ignored them.

But their suffering did not go unnoticed by Jade Dragon’s children. They were horrified at the anguish and misery on earth. One by one, they went to their mother and pleaded forgiveness for the humans — but even their words did not soften their mother’s cold heart. "We will never make it rain for the people again," Jade Dragon vowed.

Pearl, Yellow, Long, and Black met in secret.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

There are three basic loops.

You can see them by looking for triggers:

  • Loop 1: Jade Dragon overhears the people, feels offended, so she stops the rain.
  • Loop 2: The dragon children see the devastation, feel horrified, so they plead with Jade Dragon.
  • Loop 3: Jade Dragon refuses their request, so the children meet in secret.

There are two primary points of view: 

  • The first loop is Jade Dragon's point of view.
  • The second and third loops are the children's point of view.

You can tell because these are the characters who we 'see inside'.

You could argue that the people have a third point of view which we see during the drought in the middle of the snippet, but for the purposes of this project let's stick with saying it's all about the dragons.

Stories need to start somewhere, which is often at the end of some previous untold loop.

This snippet begins by establishing a kind 'baseline' of normal behaviours and emotions for the dragons.  

We've highlighted this section differently to separate it from where the story really 'begins', which is when Jade Dragon hears the people talking. 

(You could argue that there is a second baseline in the middle of the snippet, when the drought comes and a 'new normal' is established. If you're thinking this, it's true, but it overcomplicates the highlighting here—but we'll come back to this idea when we look at that section specifically.) 

  • We're going to rewrite this whole snippet, but we'll do it in chunks.
  • In each chunk, we will use the emotion-behaviour loop pattern to scaffold the rewrite.
  • At the end, we'll join all the chunks together and see what we've got, make any final tweaks and adjustments, and that's a checkpoint piece complete!

Let's get started!

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