Creating Effective Transitions

Transitions are tricky. In a scene you write in the moment, recording your character's thoughts, feelings, actions and—most important of all—desires. In those times when you're immersed in the scene writing can seem effortless.

Transitions, not so much.

I'm not saying it's unclear what I need to do in a transition. At least, speaking generally. I know where I need to start (the disaster that ended the previous scene) and where I need to end (the viewpoint character's new goal) and what I need to do in between these two points (emotion --> thought --> decision --> action). But, still, these are general guidelines that allow for a LOT of flexibility.

Today I'm going to talk about how to create effective transitions between scenes.

(BTW, if you’re wondering what a sequel is I talk about them in Scenes, Sequels, Sequences and Acts.  For more about scenes and sequels I also recommend Dwight V. Swain's book, Techniques of the Selling Writer and Jack Bickham's Scene & Structure.)

Simple Transitions and Sequels

Jack Bickham tells us there are two kinds of transitions: simple transitions and sequels.

I talk more about simple transitions, below, but basically simple transitions are what they sound like, one or two lines that takes you from one place/time to another place/time. For example, "At 10:30 Sarah was eating ice cream, three hours later she was dead."

Sequels are longer more complex transitions that link scenes together. At the beginning of a sequel the protagonist has been humiliated and defeated. Not only has he NOT achieved his goal, he has lost whatever progress he made. The question is: What does he do now? What is his next goal?

Transitions are about emotion.

All transitions should show the viewpoint character's emotion. (Scenes, on the other hand, are about CONFLICT.) Dwight V. Swain in Techniques of the Selling Writer states that emotion “unifies sequel and holds it together.”

During a sequel your protagonist is preoccupied with the emotional and physical aftermath of whatever disaster ended the previous sequel. Swain writes that for a character to be preoccupied in this way is “actually to be preoccupied with a particular set of feelings. If your girl runs out on you ... you feel hurt and angry. If your boss fires you, you feel angry and panicky. If your friend betrays you, you feel grieved and confused.”

“... until you decide what to do about the situation, your feelings can’t help but be the thing uppermost in your mind.”

In a transition you summarize, skipping anything that doesn't help communicate the viewpoint character's dominant emotion, that doesn't help show his or her reaction to the disaster at the end of the preceding scene.

The Dominant Feeling

Let's talk a bit more about that last point. Think about the particular transition you’re writing. What is your character’s dominant feeling? Is it hate? Love? Fear? Desperation? Dread? Whatever it is, this will give you the unifying theme. For example:

Lily blinked at her computer and cringed. She would rather have a root canal than try to string words together coherently. Perhaps her ideas would flow more easily tomorrow. But when tomorrow came even the thought of writing felt like the blade of a knife.

In the above example I attempted to communicate the feeling of dread I've felt a time or three at the prospect of having to commit words to (virtual) paper. Lily was also dying for a big juicy hamburger and tired after a night of troubled sleep, but I didn't say anything about that because it wouldn't help express her feeling of dread.

Simple Transitions

Let's take a deeper look at simple transitions. As Jack Bickham writes in Scene & Structure, simple transitions cover either a change in time, a change in place or a change in viewpoint.

a. A change in time

Example: “It was the following Tuesday when they met again.”[1]

Example: Ruth flung her head back, closed her eyes and faced the sun, letting the heat dance over her skin. She wanted it to stay sunny forever. Alas, she lived in the Pacific Northwest. Fifteen minutes later it started to rain.

Transitions generally come between scenes and compress time. Chances are the protagonist has lost and lost big at the end of the previous scene. She must now figure out what to do and, as part of this, she will likely need to travel to different places, talk to different people. If we followed our protagonist around second-by-second our story would be very boring. So we need to summarize, condense. We need to figure out her dominant emotion and let that guide our choices.

b. A change in place 

Example: “At about the same time Joe met Billy another meeting was taking place on the other side of town.”[1]

Just as transitions compress time they generally compress space as well. When your protagonist goes to visit his friends you're not going to want to describe the car, the heat, etc. You only want to bring in what’s important for your story.

c. A change in viewpoint

Example: Dan smiled hoping his girlfriend, Jan, wouldn’t find out he’d made it to second base with her best friend. [New chapter] “Bastard!” Jan thought, looking at Dan, seeing his guilty smile.

Changes in viewpoint are straightforward. First you were telling the story through one character's eyes and now you've switched and are telling the story through another character's eyes.

Just make sure it's clear to the reader that the viewpoint has changed as well as whose viewpoint the story is now being told from. The writer doesn't want to confuse the reader so it's a good idea to do this in the first sentence and certainly in the first paragraph.

Transitions and Time

Recall that scenes happen in the moment, time unfolds second after second. Sure, time can slow down but there are no jumps, no gaps.

But if you wrote a story that detailed every single second of your protagonist's life you'd end up with a story bored any reader to tears!

We need to see characters live moment-by-moment when there is a burst of purposeful activity (i.e., a scene) but then we need to transition to the next burst. How we do this greatly affects the pace of a story.

Controlling Pace

New writers tend to write stories that need speeding up rather than slowing down, but here are the a few pointers for doing both. (Most of these points were drawn from Jack Bickham's book.)

How to speed up the pace of a story:

• Where possible, remove sequels from between scenes.
• Where it’s not possible to remove a sequel see if it would be just as effective if you used a simple transition rather than a sequel.
• Can you cut some descriptions of emotion from your sequels?
• Check the motivations and goals of your characters in the scenes your transition links. Is it clear what motives your main characters? What their goals are?
• Can you raise the stakes in one or more of the scenes?
• Can you make the disasters at the end of your scenes more dramatic?

How to slow down the pace of the story:

• Cut one or more scenes.
• Shorten one or  more scenes.
• Reveal more of the viewpoint character’s thoughts.
• Expand the sequels.

That's it for today! I'll talk to you again on Friday. Till then, good writing!

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Every post I pick something I believe in and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I like with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, they put a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

I've talked about Jack Bickham and Dwight V. Swain in my article and can wholeheartedly recommend their books. Yes, they say basically the same thing but I love reading authors who the same topic but from different perspectives. If you're wondering which book to start with I'd recommend Jack Bickham's Scene & Structure. 

Here's a quote from Scene & Structure:

MENTION WORDS SUCH AS STRUCTURE, form, or plot to some fiction writers, and they blanch. Such folks tend to believe that this kind of terminology means writing by some type of formula or predetermined format as rigid as a paint-by-numbers portrait.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, a thorough understanding and use of fiction’s classic structural patterns frees the writer from having to worry about the wrong things, and allows her to concentrate her imagination on characters and events 

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Note:

1. The example for (a) and (b) were from Jack M. Bickham’s book, Scene & Structure.

Reading Critically: Try-Fail Cycles (Part 3 of 3)

Today I’m going to finish up the critical reading portion of these posts. We’ll finish examining the anatomy of a scene by taking a look at try-fail cycles. Then we’ll look at an alternative to try-fail cycles. Finally, we’ll take the briefest of peeks at backstory and setting. And that’s it! 

The first post in this series: Reading Critically

The second post in this series: Reading Scenes Critically

In my next post I’ll talk about how to write a useful critique that a writer would like to receive.

Onward!

Scene Level Analysis: Try-Fail Cycles

I had this part of my post written and then, yesterday, came across a talk Jim Butcher gave in 2013 for the Space City Con. (part 1 is here, part 2 is here.) JB talks for less than half an hour at the beginning of each part, the rest is Q & A. Part 1 is about scenes, part 2, sequels. It’s great stuff, I highly recommend it. 

One thing JB talks about, and something you’ll come across in almost every scene—at least in genre novels—is the try-fail cycle. After all, it would be pretty boring for readers if the protagonist had a goal, there was some sort of opposition to this goal and then the protagonist either gave up or achieved the goal. 

At the beginning of the cycle, the protagonist tries to surmount the obstacle. Usually, her first attempt fails, as does the second. The third will either fail completely, partially succeed or completely succeed. But, whatever the outcome, the third attempt should be different. (Heidi Tighe has written a wonderful blog post on this, so—if you’d like to read about a great example of try-fail cycles from Breaking Bad—go check out her post: Four Elements of a Try-Fail Cycle.)

But that leaves us with a question. At the very end of the scene—that very last try—should the protagonist succeed or fail? Actually, there are four possibilities to choose from:

a. Total Failure: Does the protagonist achieve their scene goal? No!

This is a great way to end a scene! In the sequel we would then cash out the stakes and show the negative consequences for both the hero and those who were important to her. Then she would have to scrape herself off the floor (perhaps with the help of friends and allies), formulate a new plan and try again.

One of the most common pieces of advice offered to writers is to throw as much trouble as possible at the protagonist—and then triple it! Why? Because the way the protagonist reacts to adversity will show us who she is. It will skin her like an onion, showing readers the layers of her personality. It will (changing metaphors) whittle her down to her essence. Want to know who a person is? What they’re really like? Look at how they preform under pressure, when everything is going wrong. 

b. Total Failure with complications: Does the protagonist achieve her goal? No! AND there is a messy complication.

Everything we’ve said about (a) holds true here, but we pile even more trouble on the hero. Not only did his final attempt fail, but now it will be more difficult for him to reach his goal.

c. Success: Yes! The protagonist achieves her goal.

The hero achieves her scene goal. Often when this happens (unless it is the final scene in the book) it turns out that achieving the scene goal doesn’t get her closer to her story goal—although she had every reason to think it would!

For example, let’s say our protagonist found a way to overcome her allergy to the rejuvenating cream (this continues my example from last time). At the end of the scene her skin glows with youthful vitality. In the next scene, when she gets to the audition, she discovers that the modeling agency wants a more mature looking model, so her youthful glow actually works against her. Once again, the goal of her securing a modeling contract is in jeopardy AND now she has next to no time to fix matters, thus ratcheting up the tension.

d. Partial Success: Yes! The protagonist achieves her goal, BUT there is a messy complication.

The hero achieves part of her goal. She achieves something but also experiences a disaster. 

This can work fine as well. After all, it makes sense that a price must be paid for success. It makes sense that one can’t get something without first giving up something. I’ve written two articles on this, if you’d like to read more about try-fail cycles:

Try-Fail Cycles And The Gap

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

Questions to think about when reading critically:

- How does the main character of the scene attempt to surmount each obstacle put in front of her?

- Do the stakes build throughout the scene?

- Does the character’s success or failure connect up to the scene goal?

Questions to think about when writing a critique:

- Not all scenes have try-fail cycles, but if a scene does, was each iteration clear? By which I mean, was it clear what the obstacle was, how the character tried to overcome it, why they failed, why they tried again (as well as why they tried again the way they did), and so on.

- I mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating: Is there a clear resolution to the scene as a whole? At the end of the scene is it clear whether the character has attained their scene goal? (Note: Some scenes can end on a cliffhanger. This occurs when a scene ends just before we know the answer to the scene question. Of course that’s fine. Everything will be cashed out, it’s just that the cashing out will be delayed.)

- Is it clear how the scene goal connects to the story goal?

- When the character doesn’t achieve her goal, are the stakes worse than she thought? (They don’t always have to be, but the stakes should gradually increase throughout the story.)

Alternatives To Try-Fail Cycles

The try-fail cycle isn’t all there is. As Orson Scott Card points out, there are other ways of progressing through a scene. (See: Uncle Orson's Writing Class: Novel Length: August 2, 2000.)

a. The Conflicting Objectives Cycle.

Conflicting objectives are “Things that are worth doing, that need doing, which sidetrack the characters and distract them from their quest.”

b. The ‘This Can’t Happen!’ Trick

 OSC writes: “Then there's the This Can't Happen trick (Gandalf dies?) that ‘changes everything’ and causes the group to reconfigure (again, some of them being distracted as they go off on sub-quests).”

c. Unequal Commitments

Not every character is going to be equally committed to the story goal. And that’s as it should be. “[Y]ou need characters who are not equally committed to the main quest (think Boromir) or who have other quests that only they can perform (think Aragorn).”

d. The Protagonist’s Conflicting Emotions About The Quest

Even the protagonist is going to, occasionally, have his doubts. He’s going to have “conflicting feelings about having undertaken the quest in the first place, and about putting other people's lives at risk. (I'll go off by myself, says Frodo, because this way I'm only bringing destruction down on myself [Actually, this was deeply stupid, since the friends were his main hope of avoiding being killed by the ring-wraiths; but Tolkien made it all come out anyway <grin>].)”

Alternatives to try fail cycles: something to keep in mind:

OSC cautions that the thing to keep in mind, here, is that whatever you do has to advance the story (in other words, whatever you do “to make us care more or worry more about the characters”) it has to arise “out of who they are” and it must eventually transform them.

Other Elements: Backstory

The goal in introducing backstory is to:

a. Give backstory only when the reader needs to learn the backstory. The trick here is to make the reader want to learn the backstory.

b. Give as little backstory as possible. That is, give only as much as will make the scene intelligible. Ruthlessly cut the excess.

- Is this true of the book/manuscript you’re reading? Are you showered with details you don’t need to know or, alternatively, do you often feel that a character’s behavior lacks motivation?

Other Elements: Setting

Is the setting interesting? Memorable? Is it unusual, exciting, exotic?

A Bird’s Eye View: How Do The Scenes Fit Together?

After I finish reading a story, I’ll spread my notes out on my desk (this includes my notes on each scene). Then I’ll look at how the scenes fit together.

- Do the stakes continually increase from scene to scene?

- Are the stakes interesting? The stakes will be interesting if they connect to a character’s deepest desires as well as their emotional scars/vulnerabilities. This works especially well if the character’s vulnerabilities are similar to the readers vulnerabilities.

- Are the scene goals connected to the story goal? (I mentioned this earlier, but I thought I’d list it here as well since it is very important.)

That’s it for reading critically! Next time I’ll talk about how to write a critique a writer would be happy to receive.

Photo credit: Karen Woodward.

Reading Scenes Critically

Today I continue my two part series on reading critically. I had hoped to wrap things up today, but that’s not going to happen! Last time we talked about two levels of textual analysis, macro and micro: the story and the scene. Today let’s continue discussing scenes and what to look for. Let’s dive in.

Scene Level Analysis: Character’s Goals

Each significant character in a scene will have a goal and each goal will have stakes attached. That is, each scene will make clear what will happen if the protagonist achieves her goal and what will happen if she doesn’t.

Further, these consequences should be real-world consequences—concrete rather than abstract. We need to see and feel what happens to the character as a result of her emotional reactions, her decisions and actions. Also, these consequences shouldn’t just affect the protagonist, they should also affect those she cares about, those she feels responsible for.  

(Of course, in the beginning of the story the consequences may only affect the protagonist. After all, if everyone she ever cared about is affected right at the beginning there’s nowhere to go! The stakes should grow over the course of a story, so it’s fine to start small.)

Note regarding scenes and sequels:

In this article I’m concentrating on scenes rather than sequels but since I just discussed stakes let me make one comment. Often one uses a sequel to show the stakes being cashed out, to show how both the protagonist’s life, and possibly the lives of those he cares about, have been changed. (For more on sequels see: The Importance of Sequels and The Structure of Sequels.)

Scene Level Analysis: Character’s Motivation

Imagine that a character, Xan, is in a rowboat fleeing from a man-eating shark. He’s rowing to the shore, really putting his back into it, sweat soaking his clothes. In this scenario the shark (and accompanying bloody loss of life) is Xan’s motivation to reach his goal, which is the shore.

- In your scene, what motivates the main character’s action?

- What is the main character’s goal? Where are they headed?

- What obstacle (or obstacles) oppose the main character achieving his/her goal?

In my example, Xan was fatigued, worn out. That’s an obstacle to him reaching the shore. Or we could make the obstacle a bit more solid and have him hit a reef, one that shatters his rowboat. The possibilities are only limited by one’s imagination. 

Scene Level Analysis: The Antagonistic force

The antagonistic force is something that conflicts with, or opposes, the protagonist. This force can be a person, a place, a thing, an idea, or mental state. Further, if the antagonistic force is a person, then that persons’ goal must oppose the protagonist’s story goal such that if the protagonist achieves her goal then the antagonist cannot, and vice versa. 

In the example, above, the antagonistic force was a shark. Why? Because it opposed Xan’s goal of reaching the shore and because their goals were mutually exclusive. Xan’s fatigue and the reef are obstacles. Even though they weren’t placed there by the shark, they aided it in foiling the protagonist’s plans.

Obstacle vs Antagonist. One might wonder what makes one thing an obstacle and another an antagonist. It’s a good question; I think it largely depends on the context. In my example, above, if there had been no shark I might have thought of the reef as an antagonistic force rather than simply an obstacle. To my mind, antagonists tend to have agency, or we tend to attribute agency to them. Obstacles tend to be physical and specific. 

The Local Antagonistic Force

The Big Bad of a story is the protagonist’s ultimate opposition, but the Big Bad won’t be in every scene. However, the protagonist’s attempt to achieve his goal should be opposed in every scene. 

Let’s call this scene-specific opposition the local antagonistic force. For example, the protagonist could want to try out the latest in anti-aging creams so she can win a modeling contract (the story goal), but she can’t because she’s allergic. If she puts the cream on, her skin will become red and scaly. 

In this example her allergy is the (local) antagonistic force that prevents her from achieving her goal. The Big Bad of the story, on the other hand, could be another model she’s competing with for the modeling contract, one who will do whatever it takes to succeed. 

Questions To Ask When Reading A Scene Critically

Drawing upon all that we’ve said, here are a few questions to ask when reading a scene critically:

- Who is the main character of the scene?

- What is the main character’s goal?

- What are the stakes? What will happen if the main character achieves his/her goal? What will happen if he/she doesn’t?

- What is the antagonistic force in this scene? That is, who or what prevents the main character of the scene from achieving his/her goal?

- What are the concrete obstacles put in the protagonist’s way?

- How does the protagonist try to defeat these obstacles?

- Is the protagonist successful?

Here are a few points to consider when formulating a critique:

- Was it clear who the main character was?

- Was the main character’s goal clear?

- Were the stakes clear?

- Was it clear who or what was the local antagonistic force? That is, who or what opposed the main character in the achievement of his/her goal?

- Was it clear what obstacles were thrown in the character’s way and was it clear how these items (events, etc.) could prevent the main character of achieving his/her scene goal?

- Was it clear how the character dealt with these obstacles? Did he/she triumph against them or did they defeat him/her? (I’ll talk more about this next time.)

- At the end of the scene, was it clear whether he/she achieved his/her scene goal or not?

A Caveat

I’ll talk more about this when I discuss how to sift through this mass of information and use it to write a critique. But I want to stress that the questions I’ve shared, above, are only meant as an aid in reading critically. 

There are no rules. Stories don’t have to have try-fail cycles. Characters don’t have to have clear-cut goals. Actually, let me take that back. There are two hard-and-fast rules when it comes to writing: To be a writer, you must read. To be a writer, you must write. And that’s it.

With that out of the way, let me say that the stories I had in mind while writing these articles were genre stories. Generally speaking, readers have more expectations when it comes to genre stories than they do for literary ones (though I admit that the dividing line between genre and literature can be blurry at times).

What I’m saying is: Please do feel free to put everything I’ve written aside, read a story, and respond from your gut. Your heart. I’ve written these posts because ... well, I know that, for myself, I often would appreciate a framework. 

This is especially so when I feel that there’s something wrong with the story but I just can’t put my finger on it. In those cases, sometimes it helps to do a deep reading of the material while keeping questions—questions such as the ones I’ve raised here—in mind.

That’s it for today! I had hoped to finish talking about critical reading today, but I’d like to cover try-fail cycles. Also, I want to touch on both backstory and setting. I’ll pick this up again on Wednesday. 

Till then, just write!

Photo credit: I took this picture!

Parts of Story: The Importance of Sequels

In the previous chapter we discussed the structure of a sequel. Now lets talk about what a sequel does and how it does it.

Jim Butcher, author of the bestselling Dresden Files series, writes:

"Sequels, frankly, are what really make or break books. How you choose to show your reader your character's reactions determines everything about the reader's response to the events of the story."

Sequels have four main roles:

- Readers identify with characters. Sequels are where your readers bond with your characters; they are where, hopefully, readers will come to empathize with them. This is where the bulk of a character's development occurs.

- Time can move rapidly. Scenes are time-unified. If you want to skip forward, say, a week, that should happen in a sequel.

- Pacing. We use sequels to control the pace of a story. Long sequels slow down the pace while short ones speed it up.

- Fine tune your novel. By varying the amount of time you spend of each of a sequels parts, by varying your emphasis, you can change a flighty character into a brainy one or make a despicable character likeable. 

Lets take a look at each of these points.

1. Readers Identify With Characters

In Dwight V. Swain's book, Creating Characters, he writes that emotion is what gives a character direction. If, at the end of a scene, a bully has just kicked sand in your protagonist's face--or murdered their spouse--that character is going to be in pain and, consequently, motivated to make sure the killer pays for his actions. In short, strong emotion gives a character direction.

Further, in a sequel we get to show the kind of things the character dwells on, the sort of things he responds to. 

As characters reflect on the events of the previous scene each will focus on what, given their specific nature, was important to them. If a character is bloodthirsty she will recall her kills with gusto or longing. If a character is especially concerned with the welfare of others--perhaps overly so--she will focus on the harm she allowed to come to an innocent, perhaps ignoring the harm she herself suffered, or the reasons why the harm occurred.

2. Time Passes Quickly

A scene is time-unified; there are no breaks, no huge gaps. One thing happens, then another, then another, until the scene is over and the protagonist's goal has been attained--or not. Sequels are places where time can be disjointed and move quickly. 

3. Using Sequels To Control Pace

Character development tends to slow the pace of a story while action speeds it up. If you read a book and it seems as though you never got to know any of the characters, not enough to really care about them, chances are there were very few sequels in the book, or the sequels were short and insubstantial. 

On the other hand, if a book seems to drag, if it seems to explore the relationships between the characters ad nauseum, if there are short sprints of action followed by endless second-guessing and rumination, then chances are you'll find that it has long involved sequels and short scenes.

4. Sequels Help You Fine Tune Your Novel

Jim Butcher writes: 

"This basic structure for sequels is pretty much the ENTIRE secret of my success. I do it like this in every freaking book I write. I know it works because check it out. People like my books. They like them for some of the special effects, sure, and for some of the story ideas sometimes--but mostly it's because they find themselves caring about what happens to the characters, and that happens in sequels."

I think Jim Butcher is underestimating the appeal of both his unique voice and his wit, but that's still a powerful recommendation of sequels. I encourage you to read Jim Butcher's discussion of sequels in it's entirety. I'm not going to go into it in any depth here, but one of the most valuable things sequels can do for you is assist you in fine-tuning your novels during rewrites.

For instance, if you're writing a romance novel and there isn't enough pathos, enough passion, make the sequels longer and focus on your characters' emotional reactions. If the pace is lagging, make the sequels shorter. 

Here are a few character types Jim Butcher mentioned, types that can illustrate how sequels can help you shape a character.

Brainy characters:

- Emotional Reaction: Normal

- Cognitive Reaction: Heavy

- Anticipation: Light

- Decision/Choice: Normal or Light depending on what you want to do in the next scene.

It's no surprise that brainy characters will have more substantial Cognitive Reaction sections. Jim Butcher adds, though, that it's a good idea to play up the anticipation part. Build suspense, tension, around what is going to happen when the protagonist makes her move.

The result? In Sir Conan Arthur Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories the great detective hates explaining his method because then his amazing conclusion seems like a cheap trick, it seems as though anyone could have done it. It's the same here, by veiling exactly how the protagonist came to their conclusion the feat looks more impressive and generates curiosity in the reader: How'd he know that? 

Characters trying to pick a side:

- Emotional Reaction: Normal

- Cognitive Reaction: Normal

- Anticipation: Heavy

- Decision: None

This helps build suspense. By withholding a character's final decision from the reader, when that character goes into action in the next scene you know they've made a choice and you know what the stakes are but you don't know what their decision was. That makes a reader curious, and that curiosity will make them want to turn the page.

How to make a character's motivations clear:

If your character's motivations aren't clear then make sure that the stages of your sequels are in the right order (Emotional Reaction then Cognitive Reaction then Anticipation then Decision) and that his choices are consistent. 

For instance, if your protagonist is a hero's hero type (lawful good) he probably wouldn't choose to endanger the life of someone else even if it meant his death, except in extraordinary circumstances. I just finished reading George R.R. Martin's interview in Rolling Stone and he reminds us that even the best character can do horrible things given the right (or wrong) circumstances. Martin asks: If you could save the lives of your lover and your children by killing another man's child, would you? It's an excellent interview.

Sequels in a murder mystery:

- Emotional Reaction: Light

- Cognitive Reaction: Heavy

- Anticipation: Normal

- Decision/Choice: Light or None

In a murder mystery novel, the cognitive reaction part will receive a lot of space and each possible murderer is going to be given a lot of attention. But, as Jim Butcher points out, writers usually veil the "choice" aspect and keep their sleuth's best guess about the identity of the killer as surprise for the reveal at the end. That's when the sleuth explains his methods and how he came to figure out the identity of the murderer.

Romance

- Emotional Reaction: Heavy

- Cognitive Reaction: Light

- Anticipation: Normal

- Decision/Choice: Normal or Light

It isn't that heroes and heroines in romance stories are any less brainy than those in murder mysteries, but readers of romances are more interested in the interpersonal relationships than are readers of murder mysteries. Take, for example, a whodunit. As the name suggests, what the reader cares about is figuring out who did the crime. In such a mystery romantic connections that don't have anything to do with solving the crime would be an irritating irrelevance.

Those are just a few of the many, many, ways sequels can be used to shape your characters and, thus, your readers reactions.

Since writing these chapters I've begun seeing sequels everywhere, not just in books; TV shows and movies use them as well.

In the next chapter we'll look at the stakes of the hero's quest.

(Note: This post is from one of the chapters of my upcoming book, Parts of Story, which I usually publish separately. But this particular chapter proved to be a bit thorny and was taking so much time I decided to post it as one of my three weekly posts. I'm sorry if that creates any confusion. Thanks for your patience as I (slowly) blog my book. Cheers!)

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.

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.

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