Parts of Story: The Structure of Sequels

As Dwight V. Swain says in Techniques of the Selling Writer, sequels take the protagonist from the disaster of one scene to the goal of the next one. The protagonist reacts to the disaster, reviews the courses of action which are open to him and then picks one. This sets the goal for the next scene.

Here is the skeleton of a sequel:

a. Emotional reaction

b. Cognitive reaction

c. Anticipation

d. Choice/Decision

Those points more or less mirror Jim Butcher's categories:

a. Emotional reaction

b. Review, Logic & Reason

c. Anticipation

d. Choice

For good measure, here is how Dwight V. Swain saw the structure of sequels:

a. Reaction

b. Dilemma

c. Decision

As you can see, the basic structure is the same, Jim Butcher just makes explicit a stage--anticipation--that was implicit in Swain's list. 

Before we examine each of these points; each of the 'ribs' of the skeleton of a sequel; it will help to have an example. Let's create a character. I'll call her Sue Lynch. Sue is giving a talk at a computer security conference tomorrow. The talk will be about her research into developing a promising, though controversial, new encryption technology. Sue is on her way to the airport when she realizes she forgot to upload her powerpoint presentation. She would ask Tom, her husband, to bring the thumbdrive to her at the airport but he is out of town for the weekend on a business trip.

When Sue opens the door to the apartment she sees her husband lying on the floor surrounded by a pool of blood. One look tells her he's dead. The room is in shambles. Bookcases have been emptied, drawers pulled out, cushions slashed. 

a. Emotional reaction

The first thing Sue does is have an emotional reaction. She doesn't think anything, not right away. She just feels. But what does she feel?

Paul Ekman holds that the basic human emotions are excitement, tenderness, fear, anger, sadness and happiness. Depending on the kind of character Sue is, she might have any of these emotions. But keep in mind that the kind of reaction she has is going to tell readers a lot about her. 

Continuing my example: When Sue sees her husband's body she feels as though someone doused her with a bucket of cold water. She staggers and sits on the floor. A kind of static numbness drives her thoughts away. Then the grief hits and she's physically sick.

b. Cognitive reaction

At some point the emotional shock is going to begin to fade and the character is going to begin to think. Specifically, she is going to pick out what, to her, are the salient points of the situation and use logic and reason to figure out her options, look at different courses of action, and then reach a decision.

Let's unpack that.

i. Review what happened.

We've already discussed the character's emotional reaction. Now the character focuses on making sense of the disaster she suffered.  

The character starts to make sense of the disaster by reviewing what just happened. This shows the reader what sorts of things are important to her and, therefore, what kind of pseudo-person she is. It opens a window to her soul.

Let's unpack this. How does this work? Let's go back to my example. Let's say that the following are the salient features of the setting:

i.a) The bullet holes. There are two bullet holes in her late husband's chest but, otherwise, his body seems unmarked. 

i.b) Nearly all their valuables are accounted for. Sue does a quick search of the apartment. As far as she can tell, the only thing taken was her home laptop (she has her work one with her), her iPad and the thumb drives she kept in her desk.

i.c) Her husband wasn't supposed to be home, he was supposed to be in another city consulting on a case with a colleague. He is wearing his lucky tie and smells of his favorite cologne.

i.d) The murderer destroyed her late husband's collection of baseball cards. He ripped them from their plastic cases and tore them to bits.

i.e) A bottle of wine and what look like the remains of two glasses lie near an overturned table. 

First thing. What is going through Sue's mind?

As Sue searches the apartment she is reacting to her husband's death. What does she remember? What does she dwell on? This will tell us several things. First, it will tell us what kind of pseudo-person Sue is (does she concentrate on the bad times or the good?) as well as show us what kind of relationship they had. Had the love between them dimmed? Were they fighting? Was he resentful of her success? Or perhaps he wanted her to work less so they could spend more time together?

Let's give Sue another big emotional reaction. It would be natural for her to value something she kept in the apartment. As she surveys the devastation, it occurs to her that this thing--whatever it is--may have been stolen. As soon as this thought occurs to her she will run to wherever she kept it.

We're the storyteller, so let's have it that Sue and Tom store their valuables in a safe. This is where she runs. The safe contains the normal stuff--important papers, deeds, their marriage licence and so on--but there are two other things here that interest us. One is something of great emotional value but not much monetary value while the other is something of great monetary value but not much emotional value. Which will Sue be more concerned about? Which would she most grieve the loss of? Her choice will tell us about the kind of pseudo-person she is.

ii. The Possibilities + Logic

Given Sue's situation and the things she has noticed, what will she infer?

From (i.a) I would have Sue infer that there wasn't a struggle. Further, from the placement of the bullets, two to the heart, Sue would believe that the killer was a good shot.

From (i.b) I would have Sue infer that the burglar was after something tiny. Something about the size of a thumb drive. Or perhaps something that could be stored on a thumb drive, something like the latest version of her experimental encryption program.

From (i.c) and (i.e) I would have Sue infer that her husband was having an affair.

From (i.d) I would have Sue not infer anything in particular, though she might wonder whether the murderer was looking for an optical memory strip hidden within the cards.  After learning her husband was having an affair she might feel a twinge of glee at their destruction.

Taking all the evidence together, I would have Sue doubt that this was the work of a burglar. Perhaps someone who wanted access to her research had seduced Tom. Once in the apartment this mystery woman had killed him and done a thorough search.

iii. What now? Possible Courses Of Action

The protagonist, Sue, has suffered a crushing defeat (her husband's death), she has reviewed the situation, explored the possibilities and formed some conclusions. At this point the question is: What now? This defeat needs to be translated into a goal that the protagonist can pursue in the next scene. 

In our example, Sue could do any of the following:

iii.a) Sue could call the police and turn the matter over to them. 

If Tom surprised a burglar then time is of the essence and Sue should call the police. There is also the possibility that, if her husband was having an affair, whoever killed Tom abducted this girl. The killer could have wounded her, she could be dying. 

How Sue responds to this will show us her character. It would be natural for her to hate the other woman, but I would have Sue be compassionate. She may dislike the other woman on principle, but she doesn't want her to die.

iii.b)  If Tom's death wasn't the result of a burglary gone wrong then perhaps calling the police wouldn't be the best thing to do. The killer would soon discover that none of the data storage devises he'd taken contained her program. As it stood, he would think she was on an airplane heading to the conference. That's where he'd go to look for her. That could give her a head start. 

She could run away. Hide. If she called the police, he would know where she was. Yes, she could hide the program but that would just mean that instead of killing her he'd torture her for its location.

She could destroy the program. But that wouldn't solve anything. No one would believe her.

No. Her only hope was to remain hidden. She had enough money to leave the country and maintain a decent standard of living in a country which lacked an extradition treaty with the US.

iii.c) Sue could attempt to find out who killed her husband and why. 

If the intruder wasn't a random burglar, if he wanted her encryption program, then Sue would feel responsible for her husband's death. She would feel she owed it to him to make his killer pay. Also, she doesn't understand why anyone would want her encryption program badly enough to kill. Yes, she developed an encryption algorithm that is unbreakable, but why would anyone kill for that? Perhaps what they wanted was to prevent it from being used.

At some point Sue will realize someone else is in danger. If she doesn't show up at the conference, the killer will target the only other person who worked on her encryption program: her assistant, Mark Fleming. If the killer searches Mark's room and he doesn't find the program, what then? Would he kill Mark? Torture him for information? How far would the killer go to possess her program? 

iv. Stakes + Anticipation

Each of these three courses of action has its own stakes. 

If Sue follows path (iii.a) then she will grieve the loss of her husband but, otherwise, her life will carry on as normal. Her job will remain unchanged, she will continue with her research and will give speeches at other conferences.

If Sue follows path (iii.b), though, her life will be radically changed. She will have to go into hiding, which would mean she couldn't work. She would lose her job and the security it provided. Also, if she disappeared after visiting the apartment the police are likely to think she killed her husband. If Sue makes it to another country and hides there for the rest of her life she would be safe. She would be alive and have enough money to live out her days with a reasonable standard of living. Who knows, one day she might even be able to move back to the US.

If Sue follows path (iii.c) her life will change most of all. She will have to face her fears and follow the killer to the conference. Taking this path would require that Sue take risks but she is naturally conservative. Careful. 

Sue phones her assistant and warn him of the danger he could be in but when she calls his cell he doesn't answer. She calls Mark's hotel--he was supposed to arrive a day early--and is told he hasn't checked in yet. Is Mark dead already? Or perhaps Mark is working with whoever broke into her apartment searching for the program.

Sue decides to attend the convention, but under another identity. She will hide in plain sight and try to find the killer who tearing her life apart.

By now the stakes of each path, each choice, are clear. Readers know not only what Sue's so-concrete-you-could-take-a-picture-of-it goal is, but what will happen if she fails to achieve it as well as what will happen if she does.

As the story progresses and Sue's goal becomes more difficult to attain, the pressure for the protagonist to quit increases. For her continued pursuit of her goal to remain plausible the stakes must increase over time, especially the negative stakes.

c. Anticipation

Sometimes I think of this step as part of a character's cognitive reaction, but Jim Butcher points out that in a horror story the anticipation aspect of the sequel is of primary importance.

In Joss Whedon's and Drew Goddard's movie The Cabin in the Woods there is a part where the characters have gathered in the basement of a cabin. One of the characters, Dana, has found an old journal and reads aloud from it. The group learns that a latin spell has been written in its pages, one that will restore--bring back from death--the family of the girl who wrote it.

The fool, who is really the only sane person here, says, "No! Don't read the spell."

A disembodied voice whispers: Read it, read it out loud.

At this point--even though I knew she was definitely going to read the spell--I was sitting on the edge of my seat screaming at the television: Don't read the spell!

Of course she read it, it's a horror movie after all! Still, there was anticipation. What would happen after she read the spell?

Notice that there isn't a lot of reasoning going on here, the sequel skips that part, but it draws out anticipation. This is typical of a horror movie since a big part of making a movie terrifying is anticipating the horrors to come.

d. Choice/Decision

Which course of action the character chooses has a lot to do with the kind of pseudo-person she is. Does she care about the welfare of others more than her own? Will she risk her own welfare to save others pain? Either answer, yes or no, shows us a lot about her.

In the end, Sue realizes she needs to find out who killed her husband and make them pay. She also needs to find out why her assistant, Mark, didn't check in. Is he dead? Is he in league with her husband's killer? She needs answers and the only place she's going to find them is at the convention.

Now we've got the general goal for the next scene (find out who killed her husband and why) as well as a specific one (get into the conference undetected). 

The character has made a choice, they know what to expect--or at least they think they do. Now it is time to act. This leads us into the next scene.

In this chapter I've looked at the structure of a sequel. In the next I'll examine why sequels lie at the heart of good storytelling.

Parts of Story: What Is A Scene? (Part 2 of 2)

This post concludes a series I began in my last post: What is a Scene? 

Conflict

E.M. Forster, in Aspects of the Novel, writes:

"Let us define a plot. We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. "The king died and then the queen died" is a story. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Or again: "The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king." This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development."[5]

Let's examine these two sentences.

a. The king died and then the queen died.

b. The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.

What does (b) have that (a) lacks? In a word: conflict. 

(a) is simply a statement of events. As Forster writes, all that a reader can ask--or wonder--in this case is "What happens next?" But, that said, I can't imagine that there could be any sort of genuine curiosity. One could continue by writing, "Then the page died and the cook died." And so on. One could relentlessly take out the entire royal court, but it wouldn't make an interesting story.

(b) is more than a simple statement of events. One can imagine that the queen had a goal: not dying. Something interfered with that goal. What was it? Her grief at the death of the king. (Here we have an antagonistic force--grief--rather than an antagonist.)

Conflict is what moves a story forward. If a story were a car then conflict would be its engine. 

There are various ways conflict can occur but any kind of conflict will involve someone or something who is being prevented from attaining what they desire. 

I think this is why some storytellers hold that the antagonist, rather than the protagonist, is the most important character in a story. But not to the reader. The reader is rooting for the protagonist (or should be). No, the antagonist is the most important person to the storyteller. Why? Because the antagonist is going to create the conflict that drives the story forward.

If nothing prevents the protagonist from getting what they want then all we have is a series of events. Alfred wants a piece of cake and gets it. Beth wants a cup of rich black coffee and gets it, and so on. Boring!

Without something to prevent the protagonist from getting what she wants a story would be about as interesting as watching paint dry.

The conflict should be unique.

Although we do want conflict--lots of it!--we don't want to go with easy conflict. We want conflict that is unique to our protagonist. 

For example, in every episode of the TV series, Monk, there was conflict. Lots of conflict. One of Monk's two main goals was to get back on the police force (the other was to find out who killed his wife, Trudy). Unfortunately, he was his own worst enemy. His obsessions, his compulsions, his multitude of fears and quirks would get in his way and prevent him from achieving his goal. 

One reason that television show worked so well was because the conflict was unique. It was a unique, believable, situation.

Internal Opposition

In order to have a conflict that is unique the opposition to the character's goals must be unique. In Monk's case, the unique opposition was internal. It came from his own limitations, his multitudinous compulsions and phobias. I mean, the man was scared of milk!

Monk was his own worst enemy. His catchphrase said it all: It's a gift and a curse. His uncanny abilities of observation were a direct result of his many phobias, his obsessions. If he lost them he would be normal, sure, but he would no longer excel at solving crime.

So if we see Monk's fears and compulsions as his internal opposition, we see that this did not change through the series. These were the same in every single episode.[6] That said, these fears, these compulsions, were challenged and explored in new ways each episode. The show was kept fresh and interesting because the external opposition Monk encountered varied from episode to episode.

External Opposition

Anything external--exterior--to the character, anything that stands between them and the acquisition of their goal, counts as external opposition. The man who gets punched by a boxer to prevent him flirting with the boxer's girlfriend has just encountered external opposition.

But this external, opposing, force doesn't have to take the form of a person. It could just as easily be a tornado or an illness. Or, as we saw in the beginning of this chapter, grief.

In a television show like Monk the external opposition usually came from two sources: the murderer and someone from within the police department who, for whatever reason, didn't want Monk on the case. These obstacles--both of which were strongly linked to the internal opposition Monk faced (his phobias and compulsions)--combined to form the storytelling engine that drove the episode forward.

Disaster

The overwhelming majority of scenes end in disaster. Given this, why do readers keep turning pages?

It may seem counterintuitive but, as I've said, readers are drawn through a story because their hopes for the protagonist are constantly thwarted by the antagonistic force. 

Try-Fail Cycles

That seems depressing and perhaps a wee bit fatalistic, doesn't it? If the protagonist is constantly thwarted, if he never gets what he's going for, if he never achieves his goal, why don't readers just write him off and give up? Why don't they close the book and stop reading?

Here's why:

1. The reader keeps turning pages because the stakes keep increasing. 

It's ghoulish, but when there's a wreck on the side of the road people slow down to look. Even if it's nothing but a crumpled fender people slow down. Remember in school, if a fight broke out there was no shortage of onlookers. Similarly, in the circus, why do you think some trapeze acts used to be done without a net? Because it upped the stakes and, in so doing, increased the level of excitement, of curiosity.

2. The protagonist only failed because the antagonist was so strong, so brilliant and, perhaps, because the antagonist wasn't playing fair. 

In other words, it's not the protagonist's fault. The deck was stacked against him. 

Which is not to say that the protagonist should ever make this excuse. He shouldn't. He mustn't. He needs to blame himself for the failure even if there was no way he could have avoided it. Only the antagonist is allowed to whimper and shake his fist, spluttering: It wasn't fair!

3. It isn't so much that the protagonist has failed, it's that he almost succeeded. 

I don't have the space to go into them here, but in another chapter I will give examples of try-fail cycles. But, briefly, think of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Lately I've been watching more contemporary movies, movies such as The Winter Soldier, in an effort to give you more up-to-date examples, but if there was one thing that Raiders excelled at, it was try-fail cycles.)

The hero doesn't fail dismally, he almost succeeds. He's so close to succeeding you could taste it. If it wasn't for something completely out of his control, if it wasn't for bad luck, he would have pulled it off.

4. Though the majority of scenes end in disaster and the major goal is never won before the end of the story, minor goals are achieved.

There's a sequence in the middle of Raiders that illustrates this nicely. Indy is trapped in the Well of Souls which has become a snake pit. There are a lot of snakes. Keep in mind that Indy is scared of snakes, that's his minor flaw, his comical--ironic--quirk. His goal in this sequence is to get out of the Well of Souls. 

That goal, to escape the Well of Souls, is what I'll call a sequence goal. A number of scenes and sequels are daisy-chained together, one flowing into the other, and his goal in all of them is to escape the Well of Souls. 

He does. (There was really no question that he wouldn't, it was only a question of how.) After Indy escapes--immediately after--he takes up pursuit of the story goal: finding the ark and bringing it back home.

Throughout the movie Indy achieves many of his sequence goals and he seems to get closer, at times tantalizingly close, to achieving his main goal. But he never does, not until the end.

As soon as the story question is answered, as soon as the protagonist saves the girl, finds the treasure, solves the mystery, that's it. The story is over. Done. Before that happens, though, the protagonist will have all kinds of mini-goals. He'll fail to achieve most of those as well, but he will succeed a few times. But only a few!

I'll talk more about try-fail cycles in another chapter and we'll look at a writer's tool I use often: Yes, BUT; No, AND. 

Thanks for reading! This post is a rough draft of one of the chapters in my upcoming book, Parts of Story. I welcome any and all questions and (constructive) comments. 

Links/References

5. P.D. James, in Talking About Detective Fiction, reproduces Forster's passage, above, and then comments:

"To that I would add, "Everyone thought that the queen had died of grief until they discovered the puncture mark in her throat." That is a murder mystery, and it too is capable of high development." 

P.D. James' comment has more to do with plot and the respectability of the murder mysteries--the genre--as literature, but the quotation was just too good not to include in a footnote!

6. That's not quite true. In at least one episode Monk lost his fears, his compulsions, due to medication he took. Also, in certain episodes his fears became very much worse. But for the most part, his fears and phobias--his psychological condition--did not change. 

Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel

Time and again folks have recommended Dwight V. Swain's books on writing to me but I put off reading his work. I told myself I didn't have time. Well, the past week as I've waited impatiently for my arm to heal I've had the time!

Yep, that's called hunting for a silver lining. But I have to say: Wow! What a lining. I wish I had discovered Mr. Swain's work years ago. His advice (I listened to his Master Writing Teacher CDs) is specific and concrete; it's the sort of thing that I feel will give me an immediate payoff in my own writing.

Today I'll talk a bit about what Mr. Swain has to say about how to build a story (the first 2 CDs) and tomorrow, or another day, I'll discuss his views on character development.

Casting Your Novel

Alfred Hitchcock once wrote, "First you decide what the characters are going to do then you provide them with enough characteristics to make it seem plausible that they should do it".

Writers are like gods; we set up ourr characters, decide what they need to do, then rationalize their behavior.

Cast for contrast: TAGS and TRAITS

Assign each of your main characters tags and traits and see to it that these tags and traits are different, each from the other.

Tags

Here are examples of tags:
- blond hair,
- long finger nails painted red to look like talons dipped in blood,
- a peg leg, etc.

Do not have three gorgeous blonds in the same story.

Do not have two characters with peg legs unless you have a very good story driven reason.

Do not have all of your characters blue eyed or black eyed.

You get the idea.

Traits & Dominant Impressions

Dwight Swain suggests you give each of your characters different manners of dealing with the world so that the reader can tell one character from another. Specifically, give each character a different dominant impression.

Impressions

An impression is made up of a NOUN OF VOCATION and an ADJECTIVE OF MANNER.

Noun of Vocation

Most of us are known according to our role, our vocation. For instance, we expect a carpenter will behave differently from a lawyer. A stay-at-home mom will behave differently than a longshoreman.

Mr. Swain holds that you need to give each of your (main) characters a vocation, a role in life; for example, carpenter, lawyer, stay-at-home parent, writer, and so on.

Adjective of Manner

Each of us behaves in a distinctive way. Most of the time it isn't anything we think about, it is automatic, habitual.

Dwight Swain admonishes us not to be subtle. Assign characters manners in such a way that your readers will be able to recognize that character instantly whenever they appear in your story.

Mr. Swain uses this example: Let's say a character's noun of vocation is "waitress" and her adjective of manner is "sloppy". The dominant impression would be "sloppy waitress". Once you know this, you know how she is going to behave. You have a picture of her you can write to.

Dominant Attitude

Assign each character a dominant attitude. This is "a way of looking at life, a way of dealing with the world".

Here's an example of a dominant attitude: Don't make waves. No matter what happens a character with this dominant attitude will manage to fade into the background. Why? Because they don't want to conflict with anyone. They deal with life by being self-effacing.

Here's another example: Might makes right. This character feels they can get their way by pushing people around. This is his attitude toward the world, toward your other characters.

Character And Situation

Let's go back to the beginning for a moment. What is a story all about? What lies at its core? It's this:

A character wants to change his unacceptable situation, a situation he just can't stand.

What you need to do as a writer is figure out why, objectively, this character wants to make this change. It will help us if we first know what kinds of things people want.

Things People Want

a) Possession of something

They want a girl, they want an alley cat, they want one million dollars. They want something, it doesn't matter what.

b) Relief from something

They want relief from a boss the character doesn't like, from a wife the character can't stand, from a climate that gives your character the most hideous allergies.

c) Revenge for something

Someone has done something to your character and he wants to get back at them.

Your Character's Subjective Reasons For Acting

Dwight Swain feels that, often, the subjective reasons for action are more important than the objective ones (for instance, he wants to win back the heart of the one he loves or he wants to find treasure, and so on).

a) We need to know what the character needs to feel happy.

This is likely going to be a little different for everyone. Some people need to have an active lifestyle filled with extreme sports to be happy while for others happiness is a good book and a warm fire. Tell us what your character needs to be happy.

b) We need to have some insight into what the character is scared of.

For instance, is she scared of the villain? Of old age? That she will be convicted of a crime committed in the past? That she will lose someone she loves?

A character is always scared of something and you need to know what that is, even though it may never happen.

c) What is your characters lifestyle?

Mr. Swain observes that most of us are impulse buyers in the supermarket of life. Most of us drift rather than go in a straight line. We think something is a good idea so we do it.

The 4 Wishes/Motives

When we talk about lifestyle there are 4 wishes that drive people. Know which of these is dominant in your character, as well as how they combine with others.

a) Adventure
The desire for new experience.

b) Security
A woman grew up dog poor on a farm. Now she's rich. But that need for a feeling of security is so important that she lives like she was still on that dirt farm.

c) Recognition
The drive to fame. This is the drive that Mr. Swain feels makes groupies. They want to associate themselves with something bigger than they are.

d) Response
Some folks crave being surrounded by people who demonstrate they think highly of you, that you are important to them.

Each of your main characters are going to have each of these desires to a certain extent. You need to decide what the main thing is that drives them.

Why doesn't your character quit?

When the going gets tough why doesn't your character throw in the towel and walk away? Why doesn't she go home, crack open a tub of Rocky Road ice cream, climb into sweats, and watch her favorite TV programs?

Yes, there's going to be an external goal, something out there in the world she wants. For instance, winning over the one they love, gaining their freedom, finding a treasure, and so on. But perhaps the most important reason for not quitting are the subjective reasons. For instance, maintaining ones self image.

Self-Image

We all have a self-image, we all have an idea--or think we do--of what we'll do and what we won't do. Pride and shame shape this. We'll do things we're proud of and we will avoid doing things we are ashamed of.

What is the self-image of your main characters? What is that the that is so important they can't let go of it even though it makes no sense in terms of logic.

Alfred Hitchcock once wrote:

Audiences want to identify with a hero who wants to do something and eventually succeeds in doing it even though they don't necessarily, morally, endorse his actions.

Villain/Antagonist

The strength of your villain is the strength of your story.

The key characteristic of villainy is RUTHLESSNESS. A villain is someone who wants something so much that they are perfectly willing to push other people around in order to get it.

For instance, the guy who wants the corner office with all the windows. He's willing to hurt others to get this.

Building Your Novel & Writing Your Novel

Dwight Swain notes that building a novel is a bit different than structuring your novel. When we talked about structuring a novel we were discussing the broad, general, outlines of the story. When we talk about building a novel we are talking about putting in item after item to make the whole thing make sense.

The Beginning

A good opening raises questions in your reader's mind. It carries the implied premise that something interesting is going to happen. That the first paragraph and those that follow have exciting consequences.

Consequences

Whatever happens in a novel should have consequences. That's the way the world works, that's the way we work. Whatever you start your book with is what is going to have this ripple effect, is going to send cause-and-effect ripples throughout your book, so you need something interesting to start everything off.

Mr. Swain writes that there are many ways to begin, but that he has found these to be the most effective: hooks and springboards

The Hook

The book is a "striking, self-explanatory scene that plunges some character into danger in a manner that intrigues readers".

Ordinarily it raises the fear that something will or won't happen. For example, the shark in Jaws was a hook. It instantly established fear and tension.

The Springboard

In its simplest, bluntest, form it will open with "he" or "she" or the character's name, and then will follow with motivated action. That is, the character has a purpose, whether it's related to the overall story or not, as long as it puts the character in a position to be in danger. Not necessarily in danger, but in a position where he could be in danger.

For instance, you could have a character that was going to the post office to mail a package and something happens which puts him in a position to be in danger.

In other words we are allowed to build the character without a lot of melodrama in the beginning but the important thing is that, in the beginning, you either put your character in danger or you put your character in a position where he will be in danger.

The Middle

A strong beginning is important but tension and interest are things that you capture and recapture. You need to hold, and build, your readers interest throughout the novel.

You leapfrog from one exciting moment to the next. Remember: Drama is life with the boring bits left out.

"When in doubt, drop a corpse through the roof"

That pearl of wisdom is from Ray Palmer. And it doesn't just apply to horror stories, this is true for mainstream as well. Or, rather, the idea behind it.

In mainstream fiction you still have to hold your readers interest. Yes, you go about it in a different way--it's probably not going to be raining corpses--but the essential idea is the same.

Chapters, Scenes & Sequels

You build your novel a step at a time and you build it in segments called chapters. A chapter is made up of a succession of new developments, of changes, presented in an interlocking series of SCENES and SEQUELS.

A scene is a time unified unit of conflict, of confrontation, and is made up of three elements:

a. Goal
b. Conflict (between two opposing forces)
c. Disaster

We use sequels to link scenes together.

Sequels have three parts:

a. Reaction
b. Dilemma
c. Decision

The function of a sequel is to give your story some logic, some plausibility and to enable you to get from one clash to the next.

For instance, you have a fight between two people. The fight is over and it ends on a note of disaster. This unanticipated development throws your character off. What is their reaction?

a. Reaction: Shock
b. Dilemma: What do I do now?
c. Decision. Eventually your character will reach a decision about what to do. This decision provides him with a GOAL, the purpose, the what-shall-I-do of the next scene.

This is your single most useful tool in putting together a story.

A scene is the place where you build the movement of your story and a sequel is a unit of transition that links two scenes.

Further, the proportion of SCENE to SEQUEL is what determines the pacing of your novel.

A scene puts emphasis on the struggle between your two forces, it builds action and excitement and speeds up your story.

A sequel gives you the logic and the believability of your story.

You will find, if you analyse books, that they are built of scenes and sequels. That's how you build a story.

(See also: Making A Scene: Using Conflicts And Setbacks To Create Narrative Drive for a discussion of the idea of Yes but .../No and ...)

Endings

Each time you introduce a new development--a complication--your characters situation changes. No state of affairs--no scene, no chapter--should end the same way it began.

Big Moments

Dwight Swain advises that writers devise three or four big moments for their story. Some highly dramatic scene disaster. A disaster is any unanticipated development that changes the course of things.

Maybe your MC is broke and finds he inherits a million dollars. That's a disaster in the sense it changes his situation and forces him to look at things in a new light.

Plants

In order for a Big Moment to work out a writer will have to include a PLANT where a plant is something one includes in a story just so something else will work out.

The End

There are two parts to the end:

a) The climax
b) The resolution

The Climax

This is the showdown. The final clash between whatever threatens the main character's happiness and the main character.

You need a clash that will force your character into some kind of decision about what his immediate actions are going to be. You want something that will set your readers up and tell them how they should feel about your main character and whatever else is going on.

Here's Dwight V. Swain's advice on how to do this: Provide your character with an easy way out, but don't take it.

This easy 'solution' should provide the hero with a way to solve his problem--it will fix things--but it will be morally unacceptable.

For instance, Ken (the MC) has money problems, he just needs to steal from the till at work--and he has a good scheme for doing it--and that will solve his problem.

But it would make your readers mad. Readers want a happy ending, they want to see the character in.

The Resolution

This is the wrap up, the pay off. Now you'll reward or punish your central character according to how he, or she, has behaved.

Mr. Swain notes that writers should keep in mind that books with moderately happy endings tend to sell best. Generally readers don't like a tragedy, although you would be able to get away with more if you were writing a horror than if you were writing, say, a romance. Readers tend to like to see the main character make the 'right' decision and be rewarded. But you're the writer so you're the god of the story and can do whatever you want. That's the bottom line. This is your story.

In Conclusion

Wow! This has been a long post. There's more, but I think I'll break off for now. Tomorrow I'll pick up where I left off and talk about what Dwight V. Swain has to say about emotional clocks and testing your novel to make sure it's got all the right bits.

Other articles you might like:

- Michael Hauge On How To Summarize Your Novel
- How To Succeed As A Writer: The Value Of Failure
- Six Things Writers Can Learn From Television

Photo credit: "Ivy and Sweetiepie" by thejbird under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How Plotting Can Build A Better Story

Why care about plot elements? Because if all the elements of plot are in place--if they are clear and concrete--then you'll have a stronger story. Why? It will be easier to spot holes in the story. Also, it will show whether a scene is necessary to advance the story. If it's not then cut it!

The Benefits Of Knowing Where You Want To Go

Janice Hardy's blog, The Other Side of the Story, is one of the best blogs on writing it has been my pleasure to read this past year.

And, of course, one of the reasons I love it is because she's a fellow plotter. Sure, the actual writing is done pantser style--whatever happens, happens, and I adjust my outline to reflect the story, not the other way around--but I like to know where I'm going, I like a roadmap, before I head out.

(Occasionally I wish I could be one of those types who can step outside, be inspired by the loveliness of the day--the sunlight, the warm fragrant breeze, the distant laughter of children--and decide to take a drive with no particular destination in mind. I had a friend who did this and it was splendid! But he always ended up somewhere interesting and there was always a gas station nearby. I don't have that kind of luck.)

So, there you are, at your desk. You have a scene to write, what do you do? How do you plan your scene? (What follows was inspired by Janice Hardy's excellent article: Four Ways to Pre-Write Your Scenes.)

Here's more or less what I do, or at least what I try to do!

1. Write a summary of the scene

If I'm writing a first draft I usually just write out what I know. For instance, if I'm sure my protagonist gets into a car accident and that she's saved from the twisted wreckage by a starving vampire then I'll write that down. At this stage I'm (for the most part) telling not showing. There will be minimal description of the setting and just raw dialog without any tags ('he said,' 'she said').

If I'm editing my first draft I'll take more time. Dialog tags will go in and, at the beginning of the scene, I'll type out the answers to a few questions (see below). If I don't know all the answers, that's perfectly fine, I'll just write in what I know now and fill the rest in later.

2. The Elements That Drive Your Plot

- What is your protagonist's goal in this scene?
- Why that goal? What's her motivation?
- What obstacle(s) prevent her from achieving her goal?

Answering these questions is important because it can help reveal whether this scene is necessary. For instance, if your protagonist's goal isn't tied in with the story goal--what your protagonist has to achieve by the end of the book in order to succeed in her quest--then the scene doesn't advance the story and should be either re-worked or cut.

By the time you're ready to send your baby, your manuscript, out to beta readers you should be able to answer all these questions:

POV

Whose point of view is the scene being told from?

Narrative point of view

First, second or third? If third, is it subjective, objective or omniscient? (Narrative point of view)

POV character's external goal

In each and every scene all your characters must want something, they must have goals. Even if your teenaged character just wants to be left alone in his bedroom to play video games and eat nacho chips, that's a goal. That said, many times your other character's goals will be determined by your POV character's goal.

Make sure the POV character's goal is both clear (no ambiguity) and concrete (something you can see and touch). You can have a more abstract goal, but there should be a way to cash it out in concrete terms.

POV character's internal goal

Internal goals can be tricky. Give me a nice clear concrete goal like, "Rescue the Ark from the Nazi's" and I'm happy. The goal is clear (get the ark) and it's clear whether the hero has succeeded (does Indiana Jones have the ark?).

But your characters have inner goals as well as outer. The example I always think of here is Mitch McDeere from The Firm, how his inner goal was to get as far away from the trailer park of his youth as he could. He was afraid, at least in part, that his wife, Abby, would leave him if he wasn't rich, if he couldn't provide her the kind of life she'd been used to. He was wrong about Abby, but this was his fear, his inner motivation for being a rich lawyer.

Your POV character will have an inner and outer motivation for each scene but I wouldn't worry if you don't have a clear idea what their inner motivation is on the second draft. That's the sort of thing that often emerges with the story, and the story often doesn't take its final form until you've gone through a few drafts.

External Complication

What is going to keep your character from achieving her goal? If your character were to achieve all her scene goals the story would be dull.

Similarly, if the POV character always flat-out failed to achieve the goal that wouldn't be interesting either. She needs to be frustrated in her attempts, she needs to be forced to modify her plans and adopt Plan B, another goal that will--they hope!--get them closer to achieving their final, ultimate, story goal. (See: Making A Scene: Using Conflicts And Setbacks To Create Narrative Drive)

Stakes

This is one of the most important aspects of any scene. What will happen if your POV character doesn't achieve her goal? What will happen if she does?

The stakes need to be, like the goal, both clear and concrete. (See: Revising Your Manuscript And Building Suspense: Making Your Character's Stakes Both Clear And High)

Climax

What happens? At the very end of the scene, after the POV character has dodged all the proverbial (or not so proverbial) bullets, what happens? Does she achieve the scene goal? Probably not. Not completely. Usually some new complication is introduced.

An Example

Summary

A young woman, let's call her Anne, suffering from haemophilia cuts herself and must drive to the nearest hospital and receive treatment. If she doesn't get treated she'll die. On the way to the hospital a drunk driver slams his car into hers turning them both into twisted hunks of metal. Anne receives many cuts and starts to bleed out.

A starving vampire finds Anne, drawn by the smell of blood. He extracts her from the wreck and enjoys a nice light snack. Something in his saliva, or perhaps a substance released from his fangs, causes her blood to coagulate.

At the end of the scene the vampire decides he likes the taste of her blood and considers whether he should drain her dry or leave her to find her own way home (and possibly turn into a vampire).

The Elements That Drive Your Plot

POV: The young woman, Anne.

Narrative point of view: Third person subjective, also called third person limited.

POV character's external goal: Get treatment at the nearest hospital --> Survive the car crash --> Survive the vampire's tender attentions.

POV character's internal goal: To be able to live without fear of cutting herself and dying because she can't get treatment. To be normal or at least to find someone who will love her even though she isn't.

Stakes: If our POV character doesn't get treatment she will die; if she does, she'll live. The POV character will also likely die if she doesn't get away from the vampire, if she does get away, though, she will be terrified that she'll change into a vampire.

Climax: Our POV character didn't get to the hospital for treatment, but she no longer needs it. The vampire's bite saved her from bleeding to death, but now she has a bigger problem: The vampire is looking at her and he still looks hungry.

Or something like that! That isn't the best example, I made it up on the fly. Hopefully it'll give you an idea of what I've been talking about.


Janice Hardy goes over much more in her article Four Ways to Pre-Write Your Scenes. It's well worth the read!

Other articles you might like:

- Building Character: The Importance Of Imperfection
- Ernest Hemingway And The Purpose Of Writing
- Revising Your Manuscript And Building Suspense: Making Your Character's Stakes Both Clear And High

Photo credit: "Geisha's taken my place in bed" by Dirigentens under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Revising Your Manuscript And Building Suspense: Making Your Character's Stakes Both Clear And High

I love it when someone gives advice about writing that not only makes sense to me, but that makes me want to stop reading and write.

Often that someone is Steven Pressfield.

Stories Are Lame When The Stakes Are Low

Today SP wrote about stakes, about what your protagonist stands to lose if she doesn't achieve her goal. SP writes:

My own rule of thumb: the stakes for the hero must always be life and death. If possible, they should be life and death for every character in the story.

When I first came out to Tinseltown, I was struggling with a spec script. I just couldn’t make it interesting. I told my friend, the late director Ernie Pintoff. He said, “Have a body hit the floor.”

What he meant was raise the stakes.

Stories are lame when the stakes are low.

(By the way, all quotations from Steven Pressfield have been taken from: Have A Body Hit The Floor.)

Make The Stakes Clear

Make sure the stakes for each of your characters are clear. If they are even a little vague write a scene that makes the stakes clear.

Be concrete. How, exactly, would your character's life change if he didn't achieve his goal?

Do One Draft Just For Stakes

SP advises us to devote an entire draft to examining the stakes of our characters.

This is what I mean by devoting one draft to this topic only. Go over the entire story, asking yourself, “Are the stakes high and clear for all characters from start to finish?”

When the stakes are high and clear, the reader/audience’s emotions become involved.

The Ultimate Stakes

SP focuses on upping the body count in one's story as a way of increasing the stakes. That works and has advantages. It's beautifully concrete and easy for the audience to understand. You don't have to explain why a character doesn't want to die! If they did, that would require explanation.

But there are stakes other than life or death. SP writes:

A final note about “life and death.” The stakes don’t have to be literally mortal. But they must feel like life and death to the specific character. If Faye Dunaway loses her daughter to John Huston’s incestuous depredations in Chinatown, she will not literally die. Her fate will be even worse.

Destruction of the soul. Those are the ultimate stakes.

Don't Flinch

Robert Wiersema talked about stakes at the Surrey International Writers' Conference in 2011. I try and practice this.

Stakes, consequences. You've created a situation with potentially tragic results. There will come a time when you will want to save your character, to protect them. Don't. Don't flinch.

This moment is terrifying. If we were decent people we would protect our characters. You want a happy ending, but you can't cheat to get it.

You've created characters with flaws and turned the monsters loose on them. You have to be brave and unflinching. You have to do horrible things to nice people.

You don't need to beat your reader over the head with gore and lots of ugly details. You can leave these implicit. Readers have great imaginations, they will fill in the details.

If you do it right then it will hurt. It hurts us to hurt our characters, it hurts us to manipulate the reader. One thing you must realize: we also manipulate ourselves. Ultimately, we do all this manipulation because we are building truth.

We must have courage and strength and you must realize that, yes, you are cruel but here's the real truth: truth hurts and it is crucial that you don't flinch. (SiWC 2011 Day One, Part Two: Don't Flinch: Robert Wiersema)

The Stakes: Scene Questions

This is going to be my assignment for the day, to think about my work in progress and, for each scene, as well as every character in that scene, ask:

a) What is this character's goal?

- Is this clear? Is it concrete?
- If this character is a POV character, is her goal in this scene related to her ultimate goal? For instance, if she doesn't achieve her goal in this scene, will that make it less lightly for her to achieve her ultimate goal?

b) What are the stakes?

- What will happen to this character if she doesn't achieve her goal? What will happen if she does?
- Are the stakes obvious? Make it obvious how achieving her goal, or not, will affect your character's life. What does she have to lose? What does she have to gain?
- Are the stakes concrete? "My character will lose faith in mankind" is not concrete. "My character will be shot to death by Johnny" is.

c) Are the stakes high enough? 

- Death and loss of soul, loss of self, that's about as extreme as it gets. Depending on the kind of story you're telling, I don't think the states are going to be this stark, this extreme, for all your characters in every scene. And there are other kinds of loss. Loss of friends, loss of one's position in society, loss of independence, loss of faith.

What is the worst thing you've ever done to a character? Was it worth it? Would you do it again?

Other links you might like:

- The Starburst Method: Summarizing Your Story In One Sentence
- F. Scott Fitzgerald On The Price Of Being A Great Writer
- Using Public Domain Characters In Your Stories

Photo credit: "Tragedy by the Sea" by cliff1066™ under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

This is the description of the photograph (see above) Tragedy by the Sea:

Tragedy by the Sea 1955 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, John L. Gaunt, Los Angeles Times April 2, J 954. Los Angeles Times photographer John Gaunt lounges in his front yard in Hermosa Beach, Calif., enjoying the sun. Suddenly, a neighbor calls out. "There was some excitement on the beach," says Gaunt. "I grabbed a RoIIeiflex camera and ran."

Down by the water, Gaunt finds a distraught young couple by the shoreline. Moments before, their 19-month-old son was playing happily in their yard. Somehow, he wandered down to the beach. He was swept away by the fierce tide.

The little boy is gone. There is nothing anyone can do. Gaunt, who has a daughter about the same age, takes four quick photographs of the grieving couple. "As I made the last exposure, they turned and walked away" he says. The little boys body is later recovered from the surf.

Scene Goals: What Do Your Characters Want, Why Do They Want It, How Do They Get it?

Merry (almost) New Year! Today I'm going to talk about scenes and how to make sure each one pulls its weight in your story. First, though, I would like to solicit ideas from you, the wonderful folks who read my blog.

What sort of topics interest you?

1) Writing
2) Editing
3) How to self publish
4) News about the book industry and where things are headed
5) The structure of stories
6) What editors/publisher are looking for and how to help your story get accepted
7) Time management: setting goals, scheduling to your time, etc.
8) Platform building: Do writers need to blog? Social media: Do we need it and, if so, how much?
9) How to grow your twitter following
10) Indie publishing: How to design a great cover
11) Programs and apps that help writers
12) [Insert your topic here]

What kind of articles about writing would you most like to read in 2013? Do you have a specific question you'd like answered? You can leave a comment on this post, or contact me directly through my contact page, here. I'm also on Twitter and Google+. I'd love to hear from you! :-)

Scenes: How To Write A Riveting Scene

Now that I've made my impassioned appeal for your feedback (grin) let's move on to something writing related: scenes and how to write a scene your readers won't be able to put down.

I'm working my way through the second draft of my NaNoWriMo manuscript and I'm thinking about things like:

- What should each scene accomplish? 
- What are the essential elements any scene has to have?

Fortunately for the writing world we have Larry Brooks and his marvelous site, StoryFix.com. Larry writes:

Have each scene CHANGE the story and the reader's experience of it, even just a little.

That's from the article, Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before You Write a Scene. Any Scene.

In other words: What do your characters DO in your story and what DRIVES them to do it?

What are their goals? Why do they want those goals? What are the stakes? What happens if they don't accomplish their goal? What happens if they do? Cash this out in concrete terms.

On Christmas day I watched all three original Star Wars movies, so I'll use Luke Skywalker as my example. If Luke failed to destroy the Death Star in A New Hope then the Empire would have crushed the resistance movement and taken control of the galaxy. If he does, then the Rebel alliance has a chance.

But that example didn't have to do with scene goals, it had to do with story goals. Remember the scene where we meet Luke and his uncle for the first time? What is Luke's goal? To help his uncle find two droids to help out with farm duties. Luke is hoping that if the droids work out well that he can leave the farm and go to school. C-3PO, on the other hand, simply wants to escape his captors and not be separated from R2-D2 while R2-D2 wants to continue the quest Princess Leia gave him.

My point is that all the principle characters in the scene want something. Something tangible. Something that is easy to state in a few words.

The Kinds Of Things Characters Want

K.M. Weiland from WORDplay talks about the kind of things your character might want in a scene:

1. Something concrete (an object, a person, etc.).
2. Something incorporeal (admiration, information, etc.)
3. Escape from something physical (imprisonment, pain, etc.).
4. Escape from something mental (worry, suspicion, fear, etc.).
5. Escape from something emotional (grief, depression, etc.).

Those 5 points are from Structuring Your Story's Scenes, Pt. 3: Options for Goals in a Scene. It's a terrific article. If you haven't already, I recommend subscribing to her blog feed, she writes many articles about writing and every one I've read has helped me.

Evaluate Your Scene Goals

Another thing Weiland mentions is testing your goals. She writes:

1. Does the goal make sense within the overall plot?
2. Is the goal inherent to the overall plot?
3. Will the goal’s complication/resolution lead to a new goal/conflict/disaster?
4. If the goal is mental or emotional (e.g., be happy today), does it have a physical manifestation (e.g, smile at everyone)? (This one isn’t always necessary, but allowing characters to outwardly show their goals offers a stronger presentation than mere telling, via internal narrative.)
5. Does the success or failure of the goal directly affect the scene narrator? (If not, his POV probably isn’t the right choice.)

I'm going to try and keep these points in mind as I continue editing my manuscript today.

Talk to you again tomorrow!

Please do think about the questions I asked, above:

What sort of articles about writing would you most like to read in 2013? Or do you have a specific question you'd like answered? 

I'm going to leave you with this quotation from Stephen King. It doesn't have any direct bearing on what I've been talking about, but I thought it was great advice and wanted to share:

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing . . . . It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor. (The Real Importance of Reading, AdviceToWriters.com)

Talk to you again in the New Year! (wave)

Other articles you might like:

- How To Sell Books Without Using Amazon KDP Select
- Edward Robinson And How To Sell Books Using Amazon KDP Select
- The Magic Of Stephen King: How To Write Compelling Characters & Great Openings

Photo credit: "PopStar" by Wolfgang Staudt under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

More Writing Advice From Jim Butcher

Serack from over at Jim Butcher's Forums emailed me with a couple of great links I'd omitted from my Jim Butcher On Writing compendium post. Thanks Serack!

Jim Butcher's Interview With The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop

I bring this up because one of the links Sarack shared with me was to an interview conducted by the fine folks over at Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop and is one of the best interviews on the fine art of writing I've read.

This being NaNoWriMo, and this being a blog about (at least in part) how to write well--or at least how to write better--I wanted to post two of Jim Butcher's answers:

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword

Do you have a particular method for creating characters? Or do they just spring into your head fully formed and take over from there?

It varies based on the character. Dresden himself was created really, really artificially. When I was putting the character together, I was doing so based on a worksheet in a class I was taking at University of Oklahoma called “Writing the Genre Fiction Novel.” I had been disagreeing with my teacher for a long time about how good books were put together. I’d taken her courses for several years, and finally one semester I just said, “I’m just gonna be your good little writer-zombie, and you’re going to see what terrible things happen.” That was the semester I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.

Dresden himself was put together from Sherlock Holmes and Gandalf and others; I listed the sort of things that could be expected from Merlin, Gandalf, various wizard figures in various books. I did the same thing with the hard-boiled private-eye recurring characters and tried to draw the traits that I saw most frequently in those characters.

One of the most interesting things I realized along the way: the private eye and the wizard almost always serve the exact same purpose in the story. They’re not so much there to lay into the action scenes left and right; what really makes them vital to the story’s progress is what they can learn, and the kind of places they wind up going, whether they’re going into a metaphorical underworld like the undertown of Chicago’s mob scene, or whether they’re going into the literal underworld like Moria. The wizard/private eye characters go into these dark places to find out what they need to know. Gandalf wasn’t devastating to the Dark Lord because he showed up and beat up his minions. What made him dangerous was that he was riding around to talk to people and researching in all the libraries and finding out that the trinket that his buddy had was the One Ring.

With Harry Dresden being put together from the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Gandalf, how could we not love him? I'm guessing I'm not the only person who wants to take that course, Writing the Genre Fiction Novel!

I had an "ah-ha!" moment when I read Jim Butcher's answer. The hero, even kick-ass heroes like Gandalf and Harry Dresden, take the chances they do, explore the various 'underbellies of society', NOT primarily to get into fights and show everyone how tough they are, they go into these dark, dangerous, places because they need information. They need to find out "what they need to know". That's how, ultimately, the hero gets the upper hand.

Cause And Reaction, Reaction And Response

You wrote four unpublished novels before the first Dresden book, and they’ve remained unpublished. Where do you think those early works went astray?

“Where didn’t they go astray?” is the better question. [...]

[. . . .]

One of the very basic building blocks of writing a good story, an action scene, or a paragraph is you have to show cause and reaction, reaction and response. That’s a kind of a process that doesn’t just exist on a sentence to sentence level and a paragraph to paragraph level, but happens within the greater structure of the story. One of the things that permeates writing completely.

When a character does something in one book and it has an effect that comes out later, that’s one of the things that creates a greater sense of verisimilitude in your fantasy world. Plus, it’s great to not see characters acting in a vacuum. When they make a choice, it has an effect that comes back to haunt hem later on, and that’s one of those things that lends a greater sense of purpose to your storytelling. The reader goes, “Oh my gosh, this is an actual world,” and now they have to wonder about every choice a character makes and how that will also come into play. [Emphasis mine]

"Cause and reaction, reaction and response." I talked about that in detail in the post:  Making A Scene: Using Conflicts And Setbacks To Create Narrative Drive.

Sequels

One thing I haven't blogged about yet (but should) is sequels. I think the topic deserves a post of it's own, but, briefly, Jim Butcher teaches it's the SEQUEL that that helps endear your characters to your readers. Jim writes:

[Y]ou've got to win them [your readers] over to your character's point of view. You've got to establish some kind of basic emotional connection, an empathy for your character. It needn't be deep seated agreement with everything the character says and does--but they DO need to be able to UNDERSTAND what your character is thinking and feeling, and to understand WHY they are doing whatever (probably outrageous) thing you've got them doing.

Great article! You can read the rest of Jim's advice here: Sequels.

Best of luck with NaNo! :-)

Other articles you might like:
- NaNoWriMo: A Survival Guide
- How To Write 10,000 Words A Day
- Amazon Reviews Are Disappearing

Photo credit: "Arches National Park, Moab Utah" by ianmalcm under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Making A Scene: Using Conflicts And Setbacks To Create Narrative Drive

Yesterday I promised to write an article about the last tool Mary Robinette Kowal introduced in her (terrific!) workshop at SiWC last weekend, The Mysteries of Outlining. Namely: "Yes, BUT ... / No, AND ..." Another name for this might be "How to write a scene: conflicts and setbacks".

Characters need setbacks

If your main character got everything she wanted right away then your story would be as entertaining as watching paint dry. The solution: be mean. Give your main character setbacks, lots of them.

Conflicts & Setbacks

Your main character has goals, he wants things. In Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones goes on a quest to find and bring back the lost Ark of the Covenant. About halfway through the movie he finds the ark but is captured and, along with Marion, sealed inside an ancient burial vault and left to die.

What follows is one of the BEST sequences of conflicts and setbacks I've come across. Let's start after Indie finds the ark.

Conflict: Does Indie find the ark?
Setback: Yes, BUT he is captured, thrown into a pit of snakes, and the antagonist takes the ark.

Remember that it is established early on in the movie that Indiana hates snakes. Spiders and all manner of creepy-crawlies he's fine with, just don't bring him near a snake! (And, yes, I know that there's no logical reason why there would be THAT many snakes in an ancient burial vault, but the scene still works.)

Conflict: Do Indie and Marion survive the pit of snakes?
Setback: Yes, they use torches to keep the snakes at bay BUT the torches are about to burn out.

Conflict: Do Indie and Marion escape the pit of snakes before their torches burn out?
Setback: Yes, Indie crashes a pillar through a wall providing them a way to escape BUT the room they enter is filled with skeletons that--for Marion at least--seem to come alive.

Conflict: Will Indie and Marion escape from the ancient burial vault they've been entombed in?
Setback: Yes, BUT the bad guys have the ark and Indie needs to get it back.

After every goal Indie achieves there is a setback. I just noticed we didn't come across a "No, AND ..." so lets keep going.

Another FABULOUS sequence in the first Indiana Jones movie--especially from the perspective of what we're talking about here--pulling the reader through a scene, creating conflict and using setbacks to create narrative drive--occurs at around 01:16:33 where Indie decides he's going to commandeer a plane. He fails in the end and it blows up but the sequence of goals/conflicts and setbacks is memorable.

Conflict: Will Indie commandeer the plane?
Setback: No, AND Indie is spotted crawling up the plane, toward the pilot.

Conflict: Indie and a bad guy fight. Will Indie win?
Setback: Yes, BUT a much bigger man starts a fight with Indie (AND the pilot sees indie and knows he's trying to commandeer the plane).

Conflict: The pilot starts to take pot shots at Indie. Will Indie escape being hit?
Setback: Yes, Indie dodges the pilot's bullets BUT the pilot keeps shooting.

Conflict: Indie is fighting a huge bad guy. It looks like he has no chance of winning. Will Indie, against all odds, win the fight against the Man-Mountain?
Setback: No, Indie is not going to win a fist-fight with the Man-Mountain AND the pilot is still shooting at him.

Conflict: The pilot takes aim at Indie, from this angle he can't miss. Will Indie survive?
Setback: Yes, indie survives. Marion hits the pilot over the head and knocks him unconscious BUT as the pilot slumps over in the cockpit he hits some levers and starts the plane rolling forward while Indie fights the Man-Mountain on the ground below.

Conflict: Marion climbs into the cockpit to remove the pilot and stop the plane from moving. Does she succeed?
Setback: No, AND she gets locked inside the cockpit.

You get the idea. The entire scene is well worth watching.

One thing I want to point out before I go on to the next section and talk about scenes is that the stakes for our hero gradually escalate throughout the scene. At first Indie just wants the plane and gets into a fist fight, then there's an impossibly huge guy he has to fight, then someone starts shooting at him, then the plane begins to move, then there's a truckload of German soldiers who see him, then Marion explodes gasoline containers, then there's gasoline on the ground running toward the fire.

At the end of the scene an ocean of gasoline is rushing toward the burning remains of the gas canisters while the Man-Mountain continues to beat Indie to a pulp and, of course, the whole camp has noticed the gasoline barrels explode and is rushing to investigate. It's really quite something.

Scenes & Sequals

To flesh out this discussion let's talk about the larger picture. Conflicts and setbacks are parts of scenes and a novel is made up of scenes and sequels.

Scenes are where the action takes place, where your character has conflicts and setbacks until the end of the scene and he or she attains their goal, or not, as the case may be.  

Sequels are where your character reacts emotionally to what's happened, where he or she reviews the facts of their situation and perhaps wonders if their plan is working or whether it needs to be changed. Basically a sequel sets your character(s) up for the next scene and gives your readers a bit of a break from the fast pace.

I'm not going to talk about sequels here, except to point you to Jim Butcher's post on the subject.

Scenes

Here, according to Jim Butcher, is the basic format of a scene:

Point of view character: _______________________
Goal: ______________________________________
Conflict (scene question): ______________________
Setback (scene answer): _______________________

POV (Point Of View) Character

Both Mary and Jim say the same thing:

Make your POV character the one who has the most at stake. 

Jim Butcher qualifies this by saying it should be the character who has the most at stake emotionally. If one character may lose his cousin who he never liked and doesn't care about and another may lose his cat who is their best friend then make Cat Guy your POV character.

Keep in mind that, like all writing rules, if you know what you're doing you can break them.

Goal

The goal needs to be ACTIVE and it needs to be SPECIFIC. Michael Hauge advises writers to think of it in movie terms. How could you show the character's goal on the screen? It should be something concrete such as (these are Jim Butcher's examples) "Get out of the room alive" not "Do something to save the day".

Conflict: Will your character succeed? WHICH character will succeed? Your hero or the antagonist?

Conflict is whatever will make your character fail in reaching his or her goal.

Between characters. Conflict happens between characters, not between a character and the environment. In the second Indiana Jones scene the plane--specifically its propeller--acted as a threat to Indie, he could have been killed by being forced into its blades, but it was used as a prop, the conflict came from the Man-Mountain trying to force him into the blades.

Conflicting goals. Conflict happens between characters trying to achieve different goals. Antagonists have goals too, ones that, if fulfilled, would prevent the hero from reaching his or her goal. Jim Butcher writes:

All this really means is that you need an antagonist with the same specific, attainable goal, the same kinds of emotional stakes, as your protagonist. Once you've got the right kind of set up, the scene almost writes itself. (Scenes)

If only!

Setbacks

For every conflict that comes up, a question can be asked: Will our hero succeed? There are four answers:

1) Yes
2) Yes, BUT
3) No
4) No, AND

We've covered this, above. Briefly, "Yes" won't get us anywhere. The hero needs setbacks because if his goal were just handed to him that would be very dull. The hero doesn't get everything he wants until the end of the book--and sometimes not even then!

"No" can work but it can be frustrating and cast your hero in a bad light. Use sparingly.

The other two, "Yes, BUT" and "No, AND" we've covered, above.

So, what are you waiting for! Go write a killer scene. :-)

Update (April 28, 2014): I go into this topic in more detail in Parts of Story: Try-Fail Cycles.

Other articles in this series:
- Orson Scott Card & The MICE Quotient: How To Structure Your Story
- Mary Robinette Kowal and The Mysteries of Outlining
- The Mysteries of Outlining and Nesting MICE: Creating Killer Stories

Other articles you might like:
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- NaNoWriMo: How To Reach Your Daily Wordcount
- Book Review Blogs That Accept Self-Published Work