The MICE Quotient

[windjamm]

 Lately I have been trying to work with the MICE Quotient as opposed to the 3 or 5 act structures. 

 

The MICE Quotient is a tool Mary Robinette credits to Orson Scott Card, which essentially boils down to finding the kind of story you are telling and then answering the archetypal question of it. 

 

They define four types:

 

M - Milieu

Driven by Place

Enter New Place -> Struggle to Exit, Try to Survive In, Attempts to Navigate -> Character exits space

 

I - Inquiry

Driven by Questions

Ask a Question -> Is lied to, can't understand, dead end answers -> Character answers question

 

C - Character

Driven by Angst

Character is unhappy with an aspect of self -> tries to change their ways, attempts to break out of role, experiences self-loathing -> they have a new understanding of self

 

E - Event

Driven by Action

Something disrupts status quo -> Tries to set things right, fights, chases, explodes, builds -> Status Quo Solidified, old or new

 

Supplemental to this is the try-fail cycle, which is are two pairs of consequences characters may receive while attempting to deal with the story they're in. The set to work from depends on where the character is in the story (walking into the problem or working their way out of it)

 

Establishing:

yes, but...

no, and...

 

Resolving:

no, but...

yes, and...

 

These are also colored by the type of story they're in. On the arrow paths for each type, the middle section relates what questions the try-fail cycles will answer.

 

For example:

 

In a milieu story, once entering a new place, a character might try to find their bearings so they do not feel so lost. To do so, they may try to study a map, which raises the question: Does it work? And if we're still in the first half of the story, establishing, the answer will either be "yes, but..." or "no, and..." For instance, yes, they are able to study the map, but they realize it hasn't been updated in a year so their data isn't reliable. Or perhaps, no their phone dies and, when they try to charge it, the power to their house goes out and they have to find the circuit breaker to deal with it. 

 

And my final point on this for now is that a story may contain multiple types of stories within it. In a novel, they often will. However, they must observe a hierarchy and be nested within one another. 

 

For example:

The Wizard of Oz

<C> Dorothy is dissatisfied with life at the farm

<E> A tornado comes to the farm

<M> Dorothy arrives in Oz

<I>What do the ruby slippers do?

</I> They carry you home

</M> Dorothy leaves Oz

</E> Kansas once more, status quo restored

</C> Didn't need to go any farther than my own backyard

 

For those unfamiliar with programming notation, <></> is the declaration of a block of code and to contain it within another is called nesting. <a><b></b></a> The innermost portion of a nest is resolved as soon as it comes up, but to exit a nested block you must close it in the order from smallest to greatest. 

 

The main thrust is that the Wizard of Oz is a character story, driven by Dorothy's angst. Then a tornado comes and whisks her away to Oz, which disrupts the status quo. Oz is somewhere Dorothy knows nothing about, which means her journey also becomes driven by place, trying to navigate and explore. And then we have the question of the Ruby Slippers she was given? What do they do?

 

Each subsequent piece is a smaller and smaller focus of the overall, for even as Dorothy is removed from her home, even as she finds herself in a strange new place, and even though she has a strange, presumably magical item, all the while she is processing her feelings about herself and about home. In fact, each of these things act in the service of her understanding of herself and home. 

 

And then things rapidly resolve because the resolution side of the try-fail cycle works in double time. Rather than one step forward, one step back you're at two steps forward. The slippers take her home and so she leaves Oz and insodoing restores the status quo and, newly returned from her adventure, feels at peace with herself and her place in the world. 

 

This is the strength of the MICE Quotient, the knitting together of parts to create a coherent through line so that writers may avoid getting lost in the weeds. And there may be moments where the focus shifts, where you realize that your story was a character story but you're more interested in the Event or Inquiry nested inside, at which point it may be useful to consider whether shifting those around and restructuring would serve your story better.