Heads-up: everything gets revealed here, down to the name on the gravestone. In fairness, half the planet has known since 1843, and the other half saw it with Muppets.
Dickens published A Christmas Carol in December 1843. It’s short: five chapters he called “staves,” as if the whole thing were a song, and under thirty thousand words. Almost two centuries later, it’s still the example everyone reaches for when they talk about a character who really, truly changes.
The premise in one sentence
When the ghost of his old partner warns him one Christmas Eve that three spirits are coming, Ebenezer Scrooge, a tight-fisted businessman who hates Christmas, has a single night to face his past, his present and his future, and change before he dies alone with no one to mourn him.
A very short deadline, and stakes anyone gets: dying with nobody caring is scarier than any chain.
Scrooge’s three drawers
- He wants to be left alone with his money. No spending, no giving, no celebrating.
- He needs to open his heart to other people while there’s still time.
- He believes money is the only thing that keeps you safe, and everything else is an expense.
The lie has its reasons, and the first ghost shows him. A boy alone at boarding school at Christmas. A little sister who comes to fetch him and mentions that Father is much kinder now, which tells you plenty about before. A fiancée, Belle, who lets him go because she can see his fear of being poor has eaten him whole. Scrooge’s greed didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a kid’s armor that never came off.
The best part is how the lie walks onstage. In Stave One, two gentlemen ask him for money for the poor, and Scrooge asks whether the prisons and workhouses are still open. If the poor would rather die, he says, they’d better do it and “decrease the surplus population.” Those exact words come back for him twice: at the Cratchits’ table, when he asks about Tiny Tim, and under the second ghost’s robe, where two starving children are hiding. The book hands him his own line right when it hurts most.
The pieces, one by one
Wake the Dragon fits it like a glove. It’s the textbook case: nearly every piece fits, and several land exactly where they should.
- Nothing to See Here (Yet): a freezing counting-house, Scrooge counting coins and Bob, his clerk, warming his hands at a candle. The lie, running at full capacity.
- All Hell Breaks Loose: Marley, weighed down with chains, warns him that three spirits are coming.
- Somebody Else’s Job: “Are there no prisons?” Here the doubt is the lie itself: the poor are someone else’s problem. Then, alone again, he wonders whether he dreamed it.
- That Wasn’t in the Plan: Tiny Tim, riding on his father’s shoulders. Scrooge never saw him coming, and he changes him.
- Upside Down: Scrooge asks whether Tiny Tim will live, and the ghost throws his own words back at him. It’s the first time in the whole book he cares about anyone.
- I Smell Smoke: in the future there’s a dead man nobody mourns. What’s about to blow up is who he is, and the ghost who knows won’t say a word.
- Rock Bottom: a dead man alone under a sheet, and a crutch with no owner at the Cratchits’. He loses exactly what he’d started to care about in “Upside Down.”
- Now It All Makes Sense: a neglected grave with his name on it. Is this what Will be, or only what May be? And he sees it himself: the ghost only points.
- Go Big or Go Home: he wakes up hugging his own bedpost. It’s Christmas, and he hasn’t missed it. The turkey for the Cratchits, the donation with back payments included, dinner at Fred’s.
- Happily Ever After (or Not): the man who begrudged every lump of coal tells Bob to go buy another coal-scuttle. Ever after, with turkey.
The pairs are easy to spot. The first piece and the last are the same photo with a different man in it: he wouldn’t burn coal; now he lights fires. And the man who asked about prisons in “Somebody Else’s Job” is the one who pays up in “Go Big or Go Home.” He wanted somebody else to fix it, and he fixes it himself.
Now, honestly, the parts that don’t fit:
- He doesn’t choose “No Turning Back.” The first ghost takes his hand and they go out through the wall together. It’s a flexible piece, and here someone else takes it. The change shows up later: the first night he goes under protest; with the second ghost, he asks to be taken.
- “On the Offensive” doesn’t amount to much. Scrooge begs to stay at Fred’s party and plays Yes and No, but he spends most of the book watching. It works because every visit strips away one more excuse.
- There’s no antagonist. Scrooge’s opponent is his own greed. “Someone Has Other Plans” works sideways: Belle leaves because he already has another idol, a golden one, and her plans don’t fit with his lie. In the novel taken apart, the antagonist slot stays empty, and that’s fine.
- In the cast, the B story role goes to Tiny Tim, even though it’s Fred who stands up for Christmas out loud.
Who tells it
An external narrator with a huge personality. It opens with an argument about just how dead Marley was (“Marley was dead: to begin with”) and dips into every head, yet it hardly ever leaves Scrooge’s side.
In Sunday Plot it’s a novel with an external narrator. Even so, the “Narrator” field on every scene says Scrooge, because he’s the focal character. And a fun detail: Checks flags Marley, a dead character who shows up seven years later. Sunday Plot doesn’t believe in ghosts; Dickens does. Just this once, Dickens wins.
One scene, taken apart
“Will Tiny Tim live?”, in Stave Three:
- Goal: to hear the ghost say the boy will be spared.
- Conflict: the ghost sees an empty seat and throws his own words from the afternoon before right back at him.
- Outcome: Scrooge hangs his head. And right then Bob raises a toast to him, and the party goes cold for five minutes.
The charge swings from positive to negative. No battles, no chases, just one question. But once he’s asked it, Scrooge can’t go back.
What you can take from it
- “Upside Down” can be small. All it takes is the character doing something they never would have before, even if it’s just asking a question.
- Make your last piece a mirror of your first. Here, the mirror is coal.
- If your protagonist watches more than they act, have every scene take away one excuse.
For today
Find the line your protagonist uses to defend their lie. Just one, said out loud to another character. Jot it in the Notes of a scene in Part I, and think about which scene in Part II will hand it back to them.
See A Christmas Carol taken apart in full: characters, beats and all 30 scenes