Nested Loops

A Must to Get Right

Here’s the Go-To Guy for “Nested Loops”

Much of what we do here is recognize a language for what we already do as storytellers. Once we share terms for what we do on an intuitive “gut” level, we can do those things with greater intention. And to better effect.

One aspect of storytelling … Well, I’ll give you a couple examples so you can get the feel. First, let’s look at “taking the pill” in The Matrix. Compare this to the “Drink me” scene from Alice in Wonderland. Compare that to the “Mezzanine” scene in Being John Malkovich. Now, check out the “Unlock this Door” sequence from The Twilight Zone. Finally, compare that to the “Guided Meditation” scene in Fight Club. In all of them a character is prompted to enter a portal of sorts. The pill or drink or doorway allows the character into a new reality. In classic meditation or hypnosis scripts this portal is a “loop” and you can put them together into “nested loops.”

For example, “You’re walking along a sandy beach. You’re barefoot, and you feel the grains, soft and gritty, between your toes as you approach a doorway that stands at the edge of the waves. Grasp the doorknob and turn it. Swing the door open and step through, into a snowy meadow. Trudge heavy, deep footprints through the snow until you come across a gate of stout timber banded with strips of iron. Grasp the latch and lift it. Open the gate and step through, into a steaming garden of roses. There, smell the heavy red perfume …”

“Nested Loops” are stories within stories. With each layer you gain greater authority — unless you screw up. They’re called “loops” because you go somewhere and you return. A loop.

By coaxing your reader — in effect your hypnotic subject — through successive portals you’re drawing them deeper into your dreamed, fictional world. Sometimes the portal is a window, sometimes a door, sometimes a pill or potion to consume. The point is to give them a process to envision. This makes the vague “once upon a time” process into something concrete. It gives the reader a series of specific tasks that allow for a greater and greater suspension of belief. In ways it’s like the medieval stained-glass window trick — putting the small, realistic details (the snakes, the sandals) at eye level — then putting more incredible elements higher and higher in the window, farther from the person who stands below it all.

Which brings us to Adam Cox, a hypnotist from London who’s made a study of “nested loops,” and presented his know-how at HypnoThoughts in July. Adam is something of a wonder, very relatable, and someone I’d urge you to check out. Start with his breakdown of the film Inception. The story is almost entirely nested loops. The train is a portal. The large room is a portal. Each is prompting you to create specific details in your mind. Opening the briefcase is a portal. Yes, the sample is thirty minutes long, but it’s an excellent example of how to draw your reader into a storytelling world. The more portals you can pass through — make your reader/character pass through — the more authority you achieve, thus the more incredible you can make your plot.

Per Adam Cox, the biggest rule of “nested loops” is that the subject/reader/character must retreat back through all of the portals through which they’ve passed. They’re loops, after all. Until Adam defined this, I’d always sensed it was vital to good plotting. To me, the narrator in Fight Club absolutely had to return to the support groups where he was guided into the “cave of his power animal.” The narrator had to return back out through those portals, even if in an abbreviated way. This will sound woo-woo, but I’ve always sensed that good plotting had to be “symmetrical.” A character had to return along the pathway by which they’d gone. While filming Choke, I’d had this conversation with the director Clark Gregg. That plot symmetry seems to be baked into Minimalism. In effect, once you reach the halfway point of your plot, the second half is dictated by the first. The second half must revisit the portals of the first half, but with a new knowledge. Ideally, in reverse order.

In Galaxy Quest we MUST return to the type of Comic-Con where the story begins. Romy and Michelle go through the portal of their high school yearbook and revisit their prom, so they must return to their peer group at the reunion. As I tell writing students, “If you don’t know what comes last, go back and review what came first.”

In Choke the narrator gets to escape through the security door, leaving the madhouse and his dead mother. But his newfound love can’t go with him, because she’s actually insane, not a doctor. It’s not a perfect retreat back through the story’s portals, but it adds symmetry.

There’s more to it, and Adam Cox helped me recognize what those important bits are.