Plot Structure Lessons From Real Life Chaos: How a Homicidal Pig, Musical Theater, and the Bills Mafia Taught Me Everything About Writing

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

(A Cautionary Tale in Three Acts and a Bathrobe: Unexpected plot structure lessons that every writer can learn from)

Introduction: In Which Everything Goes Spectacularly Wrong Before Noon (And That’s Actually Good)

Let’s talk about plot structure lessons—the kind you can’t get from writing books or MFA programs because those are written by people who shower before noon and have never experienced true chaos. Real plot structure lessons come from mornings when livestock declares war on Christianity, your wife accidentally purchases tickets to a theatrical atrocity, and the Buffalo Bills simultaneously save your marriage and your soul.

This is one of those mornings.

I’m writing this in my bathrobe at 12:17 PM. My beard is still missing (a separate catastrophe we’re not discussing), and I’m contemplating whether day-drinking is a symptom of the problem or the solution to it. 

Spoiler: it’s the solution. Obviously.

The thing about real plot structure lessons is they arrive without warning, usually carried by a pig with a grudge and a bladder full of theological commentary.

Act One, Scene One: The Protagonist Encounters an Antagonist (Who Happens to Be Swine)

Every story needs conflict, and my pig, Trouble McFussbucket, Esquire, understands this better than most novelists.

The morning began with reconnaissance. She was mad at the tree from the moment it went up last evening. Trouble circled the Christmas tree twice, counterclockwise, which I later learned from Google is how pigs indicate they’ve identified an enemy. She was assessing structural integrity. Calculating trajectory. Planning her assault with the cold precision of a general who’s read Sun Tzu and decided he was a pussy.

Then came the biological warfare.

She backed up to the tree, maintaining eye contact with me because she’s a goddamn psychopath, and peed. Not a quick nervous piddle. A statement. A full-volume, high-pressure stream of theological protest that said, “This Douglas fir represents the commercialization of a gentile holiday, and I, as an animal Jews refuse to eat because we’re considered unclean, find this deeply offensive.”

Or possibly she just hates Christmas. It’s hard to tell with pigs. In fairness, we should probably question why she is allowed in the house.

The papier-mache pig we’d placed on top of the tree as a topper—because we’re the kind of people who commit fully to a theme—looked down at her biological sister with what I swear was existential horror. Even the fake pig knew this was taking things too far.

But Trouble wasn’t done. Oh no. This was just the opening salvo in what would become a comprehensive military campaign against yuletide cheer.

Act One, Scene Two: In Which Things Escalate and Physics Gets Involved

After urinating on Christmas, Trouble decided to escalate to physical assault. She shoulder-checked the tree like she was trying out for the Buffalo Bills defensive line (more on them later too, and yes, it’s relevant to plot structure lessons).

The tree swayed. Ornaments rattled. Our Elf on the Shelf—perched on a branch in what had been a position of cheerful surveillance—suddenly found himself in what can only be described as an earthquake scenario. He teetered. He tilted. And then, in a moment of what I can only assume was self-preservation instinct, he apparently said “fuck this noise” and evacuated to the mantle across the room. Even the elf knew when to abandon ship.

I had visions of the entire thing crashing down, crushing our presents, our dignity, and possibly the cat who was watching from the couch with the detached amusement of someone who’d predicted this outcome.

Act One, Scene Three: In Which the Antagonist Discovers Electricity and Commits Fully to Chaos

Then Trouble discovered the lighting wires.

Now, here’s where we get into what you might call “the part where the universe reminds you it has a sense of humor and that sense of humor is dark.” Trouble began biting the electrical wires. Chewing them. Attempting either suicide-by-Christmas-lights or possibly trying to gain electrical superpowers. I’m not ruling out either scenario.

She yanked at the wires like she was trying to lasso the damn thing  (the papier-mache pig watching in horror). She pulled. She tugged. She thrashed. The tree tilted at angles that defied both physics and OSHA regulations. The elf, safely relocated to the mantle, observed from his new vantage point with what I swear was smug satisfaction at his tactical retreat.

This is the kind of escalating conflict that makes for good plot structure lessons: your antagonist can’t just threaten destruction. They have to commit. They have to show the audience they’re willing to electrocute themselves to achieve their goals. That’s character motivation, people.

Interlude: A Brief Philosophical Digression on Day-Drinking and Rational Responses to Livestock Terrorism

Let’s pause here to address something important, because this is where the real lessons in plot structure get interesting.

There’s a particular brand of morning (the kind that features a pig attempting to murder Christmas through a combination of bodily fluids and electrical suicide) that simply demands alcohol as a rational response. Not escapism. Not weakness. But a logical, measured acknowledgment that reality has become sufficiently absurd that sobriety is actually the irresponsible choice.

When you’re standing in your kitchen, still beardless, watching a pig wage theological warfare against a tree, while even your Elf on the Shelf has evacuated to safer ground and you’re engineering a protective fence like you’re building a DMZ around a conifer, you’re not “drinking too early.” You’re appropriately medicating against a world that has clearly gone off the rails.

This isn’t alcoholism. It’s harm reduction. It’s acknowledging that the social contract has been voided and we’re all just making it up as we go. It’s understanding that when people write about the universe being fundamentally absurd, they’re not being funny—they’re being diagnostic.

I don’t make these rules. The pig does, apparently. And the pig has declared that mimosas are not only acceptable but mandatory before noon when Christmas trees are under siege, and elves are fleeing for their lives.

This, friends, is what we call in the writing business “establishing stakes.” The audience needs to understand that the protagonist is in over his head and making rational decisions under irrational circumstances.

Act Two, Scene One: In Which Summer-Me Reveals Himself to Be an Idiot (A Villain Origin Story)

Just as I’m zip-tying together a fence around the Christmas tree like I’m protecting the President of Trees, my wife enters with Crisis Number Two.

“Can you check parking for Les Mis?”

Now, here’s where we need to discuss one of the most crucial lessons in plot structure: the concept of the past-self as an antagonist. Because every writer needs to understand that sometimes the villain of your story is you, specifically the version of you from six months ago who thought things like “Oh, it’s in the summer, surely I’ll want to see a musical in December.”

Summer-Me is an idiot.

Summer-Me makes promises without consulting Winter-Me. Summer-Me thinks “being nice” is a personality trait instead of a temporary state of delusion brought on by warm weather and vitamin D. Summer-Me doesn’t understand that Winter-Me is a completely different person with completely different priorities, chief among them: the Buffalo Bills.

Because here’s the thing… and this is crucial to understanding plot structure lessons about character motivation… I am a card-carrying member of the Bills Mafia. Not a casual fan. Not a “I watch when they’re good” fair-weather supporter. A member of the Mafia. By birth! And when you’re in the Mafia, even the Buffalo variety, you don’t abandon your family during football season.

Three weeks ago, the NFL moved our game to exactly when I’d be imprisoned in a theater watching people sing about bread theft for three hours.

I suffered with this knowledge.

For. 

Three. 

Weeks. 

I’ve been carrying this guilt around like Valjean carries those candlesticks, except my burden is way heavier because it involves actual stakes, not fictional French prison drama.

Act Two, Scene Two: On the Fundamental Inadequacy of Musical Theater (A Rant for the Ages)

Let me explain something about Les Misérables for those fortunate enough to have avoided it.

The plot, without music, goes like this:

Man steals bread. Gets caught. Goes to jail for 19 years because, apparently, France has harsh sentencing laws. Gets out. Steals candlesticks from a priest, who then gaslights the police into thinking he gave them as a gift. Man has an existential crisis about kindness. Becomes mayor somehow. His past catches up. Everyone sings about their feelings. People die on a barricade. Everyone has tuberculosis. The end.

Without the singing, fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty if you want to include the subplot about the little girl with the mean innkeeper parents and the tragic death of her mother, who also—you guessed it—has tuberculosis.

But do we get a tight, efficient fifteen-minute play? No. No we do not. Because somebody decided that what this story really needed was for second-hand Broadway actors—touring-production hacks who couldn’t make it in New York—to belt out already-annoying songs about social injustice and romantic yearning.

Three. 

Hours.

I’ve read the Victor Hugo book. All 1,400 pages of it, during a particularly dark winter when I apparently hated myself. I’ve seen the movie, the one where Russell Crowe proves that being a good actor doesn’t mean you can sing, and Anne Hathaway proves that crying can win you an Oscar. I don’t need to complete this half-assed trifecta of French misery.

You know what happens in three hours with the Bills Mafia? Everything that matters. Drama. Triumph. Devastating failure. Brotherhood. The full spectrum of human experience while watching grown men achieve glory or destruction on frozen grass—or in a bar with my people, surrounded by wings and beer and the kind of tribal solidarity that makes you believe in humanity again. It’s Greek tragedy with surprisingly few Greeks and better tailgating.

It’s real.

But Summer-Me had committed us to the musical, and Winter-Me was trapped.

Act Two, Scene Three: The Ticking Clock and the Weight of Mafia Obligations (Or: Why Bad Things Happen When You Miss the Game)

This is where plot structure lessons get serious, because every good story needs a ticking clock and genuine stakes.

The Bills Mafia isn’t just fandom. It’s identity. It’s tribe. And when you’re part of a tribe, you don’t just bail because you made a stupid promise to your summer-self about watching theatrical bread crimes.

There’s this old Bruce Smith Nike commercial. You remember it. It’s the one where Dennis Hopper, as a referee, looks at the camera and basically implies that if you’re not all-in, bad things happen. Not to you, necessarily, but to the team. To the cause.

It’s superstition raised to religious doctrine. It’s chaos theory applied to football: if I’m not there—whether in my seat at the stadium or at the bar with my brothers in arms, wearing my lucky shirt, drinking the exact right amount of beer at the exact right pace—the Bills could lose. A butterfly flaps its wings in Virginia, and suddenly, we’re out of playoff contention.

For three weeks I’d been carrying this guilt. This weight. The knowledge that I’d chosen Summer-Me’s promise over Winter-Me’s tribe. That I was going to miss the game. That my absence from the bar, from the brotherhood, from the collective energy of the Mafia might tip the cosmic scales toward defeat.

You can’t explain this to people who aren’t in a Mafia… any mafia. They think it’s about football. It’s not about football. It’s about showing up. It’s about being part of something bigger than yourself, even when that something is objectively ridiculous and involves grown men painting their chests in freezing weather or screaming at TVs in dive bars at noon.

This is character motivation at its finest. The protagonist is torn between competing obligations, both of which feel absolutely critical, neither of which makes sense to anyone outside his head.

Act Three, Scene One: The Plot Twist That Changes Everything (Or: Divine Intervention Wears Blue and Red)

So when I innocently asked my wife, “Did you know the show is at 1 PM and not 2?” I watched her face cycle through all five stages of grief in approximately four seconds.

Denial: “No, it’s at 2.” 

Anger: checks phone “Shit.” 

Bargaining: “Maybe we can make it?” 

Depression: realizes what day it is 

Acceptance: “Oh my God, it’s TODAY.”

The tickets were for THIS AFTERNOON. Right now. Immediately. The same afternoon, when certain family members (people my wife isn’t currently speaking to because of the Great Thanksgiving Green Bean Casserole Incident of 2024 (we’re not discussing this, but trust me, it was justified)) were already attending.

This is what we call in the writing business “the complication that becomes the solution.”

Act Three, Scene One (Continued): In Which Ticketmaster Becomes an Instrument of Divine Will and Mathematics Saves a Marriage

Here’s what happened next, and this is where plot structure lessons get beautiful:

I went online. Mistyped my way through Ticketmaster’s hostage negotiation of a process. Put the original tickets up for sale—let some other poor bastard deal with today’s family drama. ( I actually sold two of them! Apparently, I am now also a ticket scalper. Will add that to LinkedIn later.)

Then came the scramble for tomorrow. Searched. Clicked. Refreshed. Searched again. Found only TWO tickets. Just two. For my wife and her son. Not three. Not enough for me even if I’d wanted to go, which—let’s be honest—I absolutely did not.

The universe was being weirdly specific about this whole thing, almost like it knew.

And then I said the words that would free me from three weeks of guilt (quietly, out of spousal earshot): “I can actually make the Bills game now.”

Act Three, Scene Two: On the Nature of Divine Intervention and Football-Based Salvation

Now, in most stories, this would be considered deus ex machina—the lazy writer’s way out. God descends from the machine (literally, in Greek theater) and solves everything.

But here’s the thing about plot structure lessons from real life: sometimes divine intervention is the answer, and the universe has a better sense of timing than most novelists.

The ticket screw-up didn’t just solve my immediate problem (wife’s family drama). It didn’t just get her better seats for tomorrow (my wife’s happy). It absolved me of guilt.

I wasn’t choosing the Bills over my wife. I wasn’t prioritizing football over marriage. I wasn’t breaking Summer-Me’s promise because I’m a selfish asshole.

The universe chose for me.

Act Three, Scene Two (Continued): On the Sacred Mathematics of Two Tickets and Divine Intervention Through Scarcity

The family drama had made attendance today impossible. The NFL had already moved the game three weeks ago. And most importantly… MOST importantly, there were only TWO tickets available for tomorrow. 

Not three. 

Just two. 

Exactly enough for my wife and her son.

It’s like the universe looked at this situation and said, “You know what? This guy’s been carrying guilt for three weeks. Let’s help him out. Let’s make it physically impossible for him to attend the musical even if he wanted to.”

I wasn’t even choosing this point. I was accepting mathematical reality. Destiny. Fate. The clear and obvious will of a benevolent cosmos that understands the sacred bond between a man and his Mafia.

The Bills Mafia doesn’t just give you an excuse. It gives you an identity, a code, a perfectly valid reason that no spouse can argue with because it’s wrapped in tribal loyalty and tradition. And now I wasn’t even choosing it. I was simply accepting divine will as expressed through Ticketmaster’s inventory system.

This is character arc, people. The protagonist goes from guilt-ridden promise-keeper to liberated truth-teller, not through his own scheming but through the benevolent chaos of the universe itself.

Writers everywhere talk about the improbability of plot conveniences, but here’s the thing: the probability of all these events aligning perfectly is roughly 1 in 8,764,321, unless you account for the improbability drive of human desire, in which case it becomes virtually certain.

Act Three, Scene Three: Resolution and Fence-Building (A Surprisingly Literal Denouement)

By the time we returned to Crisis Number One, the pig’s jihad against Christmas, the solution was obvious. We built a fence.

Not a metaphorical fence. An actual, physical fence constructed from wire panels and zip ties, creating a demilitarized zone around the Christmas tree, like we’re protecting UN peacekeepers from a hostile insurgency.

Trouble paced outside her newly erected barrier, testing for weaknesses, occasionally glaring at me with the cold fury of a general who’s been tactically outmaneuvered. The papier-mache pig on top of the tree finally relaxed, its painted face suggesting relief that its biological counterpart had been contained. The Elf on the Shelf, still safely positioned on the mantle, seemed to nod approvingly at the new security measures from his refuge.

The tree survived. The lighting wires survived (mostly). My marriage survived. And most importantly, my standing with the Bills Mafia remained intact.

My wife and her son will see Les Misérables tomorrow, sitting in the only two seats available, without the complication of her estranged relatives three rows over reminding everyone about the casserole incident.

I will be with my people tomorrow, at the bar, watching the Bills, free from guilt, absolved by circumstance and inventory limitations, drinking beer at the precisely correct pace to maintain cosmic balance.

Everything worked out not because I planned it brilliantly, but because I let chaos do what chaos does best: create opportunities for those willing to recognize them.

Epilogue: The Writing Lessons We Learned (Or: What the Hell Was This All About, Anyway?)

So what are the actual plot structure lessons here? What can we extract from a morning of pig terrorism, ticket disasters, and football-based salvation?

Lesson One: Good plots require multiple simultaneous crises. Don’t give your protagonist just one problem. Give them three. Give them a pig attacking Christmas with urine and teeth. Give them family drama involving green bean casserole. Give them competing tribal obligations that feel spiritually incompatible. Give them an Elf on the Shelf evacuating to safer ground because even the decorations know when shit’s gotten real. Layer that chaos like a lasagna made by someone who’s already day-drinking.

Lesson Two: Your antagonist should be committed. Trouble didn’t just pee on the tree and call it a day. She escalated. She diversified her attack strategy. She was willing to risk electrocution to achieve her goals. That’s character motivation. That’s someone (or some pig) who wants something badly enough to take genuine risks.

Lesson Three: Past-self makes an excellent villain. Summer-Me created this whole mess. Summer-Me is the real antagonist. Every writer should understand that character consistency doesn’t mean your protagonist makes the same decisions under different circumstances—it means they have to live with the consequences of their past selves’ stupidity.

Lesson Four: Divine intervention is only lazy writing if it’s not earned. The Bills game had been moved three weeks ago. The family drama existed independent of my needs. The ticket mix-up was genuine chaos. And the fact that only TWO tickets were available for tomorrow? That’s the universe telling you something. All I did was recognize that the cosmos was offering me an out, and I took it. That’s being alert to narrative opportunities.

Lesson Five: The stakes have to be real. The Bills Mafia loyalty isn’t a joke to me. The guilt was genuine. The conflict between honoring a promise and honoring my tribe was real. Whether we watch at the stadium or packed into a bar with wings and beer and brotherhood, it matters. If your characters don’t feel their stakes in their bones, neither will your readers.

Lesson Six: Sometimes the best plot structure lessons come from accepting chaos. I didn’t solve this crisis through brilliant planning. I solved it by building a fence around a Christmas tree and acknowledging that the universe was permitting me to watch football with my people. That’s not laziness, that’s wisdom.

Real writing advice has taken its course.

I’m still in my bathrobe. It’s 1:07 PM now, and yet it feels like I’ve lived an entire Greek tragedy… also with surprisingly few Greeks. Actually, there were no Greeks.

The drinks I mentioned earlier have happened thricely. Because the pig is still glaring at the fence and occasionally ramming it like she’s testing for structural weaknesses, the elf is side-eyeing the whole operation from his exile on the mantle. When livestock declares war on your Christmas decorations before lunch, you get to make confident lifestyle choices without judgment.

I’m still beardless, which I maintain is responsible for approximately 60% of today’s events. The universe recognizes beards as symbols of authority and wisdom, and without mine, I’m just a guy in a bathrobe trying to explain theology to a pig.

The rules no longer apply. If they ever did.

If your writing day doesn’t feel like this… like everything’s on fire, and you’re somehow making it work through spite, ingenuity, and the scheduling conflicts of professional football… you’re not doing it right. Real plot structure lessons don’t come from books about three-act structure or Save the Cat methodology. They come from mornings when chaos descends, multiple crises converge, and you have to choose between a touring production of Les Misérables and your spiritual family waiting at the bar.

Choose the family. Always choose the family.

Unless they’re the ones you’re not speaking to because of the green bean casserole incident. Then take the musical.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to explain to a pig that her theological protest of Christmas is valid and vital, but perhaps we could explore alternative forms of expression that don’t involve bodily fluids, attempted arson via lighting wires, or structural engineering challenges that force elves to relocate.

She’s not listening. She never does.

That’s character consistency.

You’re welcome.

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Related Links

• Buffalo Bill’s Sopa De Mariscos
• My Covid Diary: March 19, 2021
• Five for the Famous: Bill Griffith
• Privacy Policy
• A Little Bit of Prologue and a Sprinkling of Chapter One