How to Succeed: The Importance of Clarity

It doesn’t matter how well a story is structured, or how clever the writing is, if it isn’t clear to readers what the text is meant to express.

Ask yourself, What is writing? Here’s my experience: I sit at my writing desk and have a thought. I write down that thought. When someone reads that sentence I want them to grasp the same thought I had when I wrote the sentence. If that happens, my prose is perfectly clear. Goal accomplished! But thoughts can be garbled in various ways.

In this article I write about how to communicate thoughts and emotions clearly as well as how this can go wrong.

Cause & Effect: Order Matters

In Jack M. Bickham’s excellent book Scene & Structure, he gives several examples of a garbled thought and how to fix it.

Example 1

Take the sentence:

“Joe turned after hearing the gunshot.”

Grammatically, there is nothing wrong with this sentence, but the stimulus and response are backward. It should be:

Hearing the shot, Joe turned.

That’s the psychologically correct order of events. As a result, not only is the sentence clearer and easier to read but it is more emotionally engaging.

Example 2

Here’s another example Bickham gives:

“Having been angry for days, Joe punched Sam.”

When I first read this sentence I thought, “Well, that’s okay!” But it isn’t. You likely saw it right away. Joe has been angry with Sam for days, so why punch him now? What happened? There is no motivating stimulus, no trigger.

Years ago I had long hair that fell past my waist. After a particularly rough breakup, I told my hairdresser to cut it all off. She had wanted me to let her cut my hair for years, so I expected her to be happy. She wasn’t. She frowned and asked, “Why? What has happened?” That was insightful. Why should I cut my hair NOW? Something in my life must have changed.

Bickham doesn’t give this example but -- even though it’s far from perfect -- even this construction would work better:

Having been angry for days, Joe said, “You have some nerve!” to Sam.
Joe punched Sam.

That’s better! At least we have a trigger. Sure, there are still questions. For instance, why is Joe angry with Sam? However, maybe you want your readers to be curious, to ask themselves, What did Sam do to Joe?

If we wanted to make things clearer we could add an internalisation between the stimulus and the response:

Having been angry for days, Joe said, “You have some nerve!” to Sam.
Sam wondered if Joe had found out he’d slept with his wife.
Joe punched Sam.

That’s not great literature, but you get the idea. We now understand Joe’s motives and the progression of action and reaction makes sense.

Example 3

Here’s another one of Bickham’s examples. And, again, when I first read this I didn’t see anything wrong:

“Rick hit Bill. Bill was surprised.”

It’s boring, but it seems like an okay sentence, right? If I walk up to someone and they hit me, I’d be surprised! But, more than that, we seem to have a stimulus (Rick hit Bill) and a response (Bill was surprised).

To show you what’s wrong, let’s change the sentence a bit:

“Rick hit Bill. Bill was surprised. Bill hit Rick.”

Again, I am NOT saying this is great literature, but on some deep level the second sentence is more satisfying than the first. Why? Because it is complete. Here the response is VISIBLE. Rick hit Bill and Bill was surprised, the surprise is internal, invisible.

How do we know Bill was surprised? Did he stagger back, put his hand over his cheek and yell at Rick, “Why’d you do that!?” That would have been okay.

To sum up: Clarity depends on the correct presentation of cause and effect. The punch (a physical thing) is thrown, there is a moment of confusion, or perhaps of expectation (internalization), and then the punch lands (physical) and then there is an internal response to this and then another physical action, and so on.

That’s the pattern: ACTION - INTERNALIZATION - RESPONSE. Both the action and response need to be EXTERNAL. Visible. The internalization is optional. But for every action there MUST BE a response, and for every response there must have been an action.

Two Plain Facts about Feelings

You’re a writer. You’ve grasped the basics of grammar, word choice, sentence structure, and working with five hours of sleep. You can craft a sentence that communicates a clear thought. However, none of this has anything to do with how to craft an entertaining story, and that’s your goal.

There are two things here. Actually, it's the same thing on two different levels.

a. Create a world full of meaning: Give the hero a goal

You want to create a world filled with meaning. But how? Easy. Give the protagonist a goal, set her upon a quest. Then order everything else in the story according to this final goal. (This is one reason why knowing your ending in advance helps.)

This is an aside, but I want to say something about the usefulness of free indirect discourse. You want your reader to identify with your hero, you want your reader to see through your hero’s eyes. When you use free indirect discourse, your reader sees the character’s thoughts laid bare and this helps the reader sink into his perspective. The reader feels as though (temporarily and only in this imaginary world) she shares the same goal.

(If you want to read more about free indirect discourse, I've written an article, "Free Indirect Discourse: How To Create A Window Into A Character's Soul," where I include examples.)

That’s one level, that’s a 20,000 foot view of Story and why we love them so much. But there is another level, one lower down. This one has to do with the mechanics of creating meaning.

b. It’s all about the reader’s feelings

Our tools are words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. How does one thing -- a reader hanging off your every word -- come about from reading words arranged one after the other?

Dwight V. Swain in Chapter 3 of his book, Techniques of the Selling Writer, writes that (I’m paraphrasing) the manipulation of your reader’s feelings is the foundation stone on which your story will succeed or fail.

Question: WHAT should you try to communicate to your readers?
Answer: Feelings.
Question: How does one go about communicating feelings to your readers?
Answer: Through motivation and reaction. 

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s actually quite complex. I can’t cover all of Dwight V. Swain’s ideas about this here, but I want to touch on how he views motivation and reaction.

Motivation and Reaction

How and Why

I’ve read stories where the writer has mastered the basics of storytelling, their dialogue was great, the bones of the general story and how it hooked into the setting was good, but the way the character was introduced confused me. And there is NOTHING more important than introducing your protagonist, at least in terms of keeping your reader turning the pages.

I think this is one of the many places where Dwight V. Swain shines.

By the way, New York Times Best Selling author Jim Butcher studied under Deborah Chester and she, in turn, studied under Jack M. Bickham who in turn studied under Dwight V. Swain. They have all made their living writing stories. This works.

Here’s the logic.

1. decide what is good and what is bad

Easy, right? But a lot of writers don’t do this! Let’s say I’m writing a fantasy story and I give the protagonist the power of generating electricity from her fingertips. Well, so what? What difference does that make in the context of the story?

In order for a reader to know how to feel about our wonderful protagonist developing this new power we need context. How would her family feel about her developing this power? How about her friends? How about her society?

For example, if her family thought her gift was a gift from god then they would feel proud. On the other hand, if they thought it was a curse -- if they believed she had done something dispicable to bring this on herself -- then they might be hostile toward her, they might disown the protagonist or even try to harm her physically.

1a. How society sees things

I've touched on this, above, but let's go into it in more depth.

Having developed her new power, would the average person, or even the state, think the protagonist was a demon and attempt to burn her at the stake?

Would the average person greet the protagonist as a potential hero, as someone who could defend them from a potential threats? That matters! That is going to shape not only how the protagonist feels and reacts toward her new power, but how the other characters react to her.

1b. Relative to a goal

Continuing with the example, another thing for a writer to ask her/himself is whether this new power will help the protagonist achieve her goal. (Let’s say the hero’s goal is to save the world from an asteroid set to crash into it in 31 days.)

Let’s say the hero becomes a vampire and needs to drink human blood to survive. This is time consuming, she’s not crazy about the whole blood drinking thing, there are ethical considerations about procurement of blood, and so on.

On the other hand, our hero is super strong, has preternaturally good hearing, sight, and so on. Is this good or bad?

It depends on whether it helps her or hurts her in attaining her overall goal. Perhaps it turns out that there really is no asteroid set to crash into the earth and Nemoth the Numbnut had made it appear so because he wanted to create a panic. He wanted to rob a few banks and decided that in all the confusion caused by everyone believing the world was going to end would be useful.

1c. Be specific.

I think this is what is behind the admonition to avoid sentences like, “It was a dark and stormy night.” I’ve used the example of Stephen King’s first line from IT several times. Like all of Stephen King’s first lines it grabs the reader and shows them something specific about a character pursuing a goal.

“The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.” (Stephen King, It)

How great is that! There’s something about King’s writing that sucks me in from the very first sentence. And I really do believe it has to do with specificity. The general is vague, the specific is clear.

1d. Introduce a yardstick.

I’ve touched on this a bit, above, but let’s go into it in greater depth. A writer needs to introduce something which tells the reader that, within the story world, one thing is better than another. A hierarchy of values (think of a pyramid) needs to be implemented. The highest value is at the top, and everything in the story world is sorted according to that.

As far as what exactly this ultimate good is, that is going to vary from story to story, from hero to hero. The occupation the hero has (engineer vs doctor vs psychologist vs politician) can also influence what that character's highest good is. For example, Indiana Jones’ ultimate good was recovering and preserving the artifacts of ancient (or alien) civilizations. He believed they had intrinsic worth.

In each Indiana Jones movie, in each story, it was a different specific artifact, a different goal, but the general goal never changed.

Events

As in real life, the important thing is never the event itself. Graduation is important because you’ve accomplished a goal and are now heading out into the world to start life.

In fiction, there are two ways a thing can matter. First, it matters if it relates to your main character and whether it helps or hinders him accomplish his goal. Second, a thing also matters if it affects the other characters achieve their goals.

In the beginning, the hero is faced with a specific instance of tragedy. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle were murdered by Stormtroopers operating under the orders of an evil Emperor. Luke came home from his visit with Obi-Wan Kenobi and saw their skeletal, smoking, corpses. That’s traumatic!

Luke’s aunt and uncle had raised him since he was first born, he loved them and was grateful for what they had done for him, although it was time for him to go off on his own.

Swain writes that (I‘m paraphrasing) something is meaningful to the reader only if it is meaningful to one of your characters. That sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But I’ve gone through many of my old stories and, in the beginning, I sometimes narrated events that should have been enacted. I needed to show how events changed my character’s lives.

Give your character a moral compass

While this is related to the previous point, I thought it deserved a section of its own. A character’s moral compass is usually expressed through a character. For example, in Pinocchio Jiminy Cricket was the wooden puppet’s conscience. Introducing a moral compass also has the advantage of introducing conflict.

When your main character is going to do something morally dubious and likely self-destructive the moral compass (often a best friend or sidekick, for example, Donkey in Shrek) warns the hero against it. An argument, which introduces conflict (and that’s good!) usually begins.

Swain writes that, “All reactions, all feelings, boil down to ‘This is good’ or ‘This is bad.’ You like chocolate or you don’t. You like your job or you don’t. And as I’ve said, whether you like these things changes from time to time based on associated factors like whether you’re hungry, whether you’re tired, whether your boss has yelled at you for no reason, and so on.”

I have a mild disagreement with Swain. He believes that a fact, a story, an event, cannot provoke an emotion in a READER if a character does not react to it. I see his point and I think that's mostly true. And I don't want to throw any shade on Swain, he was a master storyteller.

But honestly, I’m not sure I believe that everything of significance needs to be shown, filtered through, a character. I think that some descriptive writing builds a picture and can be moving.

To sum up this point: You need to know where your hero stands in relation to everything else in the story because everything is set in relation to him or her. The hero’s greatest goal, greatest desire, becomes the greatest good and stands at the top of the hierarchy of values.

The Focal Character

This phrase isn’t used often: The focal character. Think of Sherlock Holmes stories. Watson was the narrator but everything, the whole story was about Sherlock Holmes. If the reader could have seen inside Sherlock Holmes’ mind there would have been no suspense. They were mystery stories, after all!

Many of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories were like this as well. We saw the world through Watson’s eyes, he was the viewpoint character, but clearly the entire story was about the powers of deduction of Hercule Poirot and so he was the focal character.

So, to put this in my own way, the focal character is the one who orders the story world and gives it meaning or significance.

The focal character needs to constantly be put in situations -- both large and small -- where he stands to win or lose. This will illicit feeling within the reader.

So it’s VERY IMPORTANT that, at all points of a story, at every moment in every scene, you strive to orient the reader in relation to your hero as he acts in a specific situation.

But this is more difficult to do than it may seem. It is easy to confuse the reader. I’ve been guilty of this time and time again, especially when I was a kid. I would write about THINGS, about a beautiful sunset, about a meandering stream, about a mysterious glade I happened upon. I would sit (literally!) on the steps of the art gallery and write vignettes about how the crowd swirled around me.

But none of that made for a good story.

Stories are about a CHARACTER’S reactions to a series of specific situations. Yes, there are Things in these scenes but a thing is only included if it relevant to a character achieving their goal.

I’m paraphrasing Dwight V. Swain here: The story is about the hero’s reactions to what happens. It is about the hero’s feelings, emotions, impulses, dreams, ambitions, drives and inner conflicts.

Again, things are only important inasmuch as it helps depict the hero’s reactions.

2. Create a story world.

Remember that your reader has never been in the world of your story. Make it memorable, make it easy to grasp. It can be alien and complex, but make it easy for your reader to fall into. Make sure to use all the focal character’s senses when describing it.

Show the reader, your reader, the hero’s mind, his thoughts, his feelings. Remember, your hero is becoming something. He is going from cowardice to courage, from incompetence to mastery. He changes, and he changes by DOING things.

How does a writer accomplish this? Shape external developments. The outcome of each scene must have a significant effect on the rest of the story. It must be linked to the hero eventually getting or losing his final goal, whatever that is. The final goal could be to keep his license to practise law, to kill the dragon, to rejuvenate his community, or whatever.

3. Each cause must have an effect and every effect must have a cause.

Dwight V. Swain writes, “People like the idea that there’s a reason behind everything that happens … a cause for every effect …” And that’s true! Readers -- people -- do like that idea. It’s likely not true, but we want it to be. So, in our story world, every event needs to have a cause and every cause needs to have an effect.

Please note that when I talk about cause and effect I mean more than that there has been a change. We aren’t just saying that something has happened. We are saying that something has happened because of something else, and that if that something else hadn’t happened, then the current event wouldn’t have either.

4. Motivation and Reaction

For each motivating stimulus there is a character reaction. Someone spritzes your character in the face with perfume (motivating stimulus) and the focal character sneezes (character reaction). This is a one-to-one relation.

First there is a change in a physical, visible, state of affairs. Then (this is optional) there is a change in a character's state of mind. Finally the character physically responds to the change in affairs that just occurred.

A story -- or at least a scene -- is a chain of these motivation -- response units.

5. Motivation and Reaction Units Shape Emotion

I’ve belonged to various critique groups. In all of these, writers had different levels of skill. Some were professionals while others were just starting out and so shared their first stories.

Sometimes a beginning writer would create a captivating story, but it was difficult for me, as a reader, to get into the story. Why? Because what the protagonist wanted, what her goal was, was either unclear or it didn’t make sense.

I expand on this, below.

The Order of Events Should be Clear

In order for readers to become attached to the protagonist. The focal character must be presented with a problem. In Swain’s example (I've used the same example in a previous post) when a man gets home from work he finds a note from his wife on the hall table. He reads it. She has left him for someone else.

So that’s the problem, that’s the break in the status-quo, the change in his state of affairs.

Now the reader needs to know how the character responds to that change.

The man doesn’t believe it. He’s numb. His state of mind has changed. Then shock washes through him, shock and horror and rage and, finally, grief.

Note the order here.

a. Something happened. An event. The man found and read the goodbye letter.
b. The man had an internal reaction to that event.
c. The man does something, he physically reacts. He slumps, boneless, shaking, into a nearby chair.
d. The chair is broken -- his wife kept nagging him to fix it -- and it crumbles beneath him.

Event causes event that causes event that … You get the idea.
Let’s break this down chronologically

Here’s the structure Swain gives:

Motivation Reaction Units (M-R Units)

First: Motivating stimulus.
Second: Character reaction. He divides this into three parts:
a. Feeling
b. Action
c. Speech

First we have the motivating stimulus. Next we have the character’s reaction. The character’s reaction has three parts and each of these parts has to occur in a particular order: feeling, action and speech. Note, though, that not all of these must be used in each motivation reponse pair, you can skip one or two depending on the situation. For instance, in dialogue, we often only have speech.

That said, motivation ALWAYS precedes reaction. Recall that the goal of all of this is to help writers create clear prose and in so doing create stories that are eminently readable. If you can do that and ignore one or more of these steps, awesome! But if readers have trouble imaginatively entering into your story world, if they have trouble understanding your characters, then this is something you could try.

Exercise

Go through a scene in your work in progress and rewrite it so that the motivating stimulus and the character reaction are explicit. Do this for the viewpoint character. Make sure the character reaction includes feeling, action and speech, in that order.

Done? Now read both scenes, is the re-written one easier to read? Please tell me what you think in the comments, I’m really very interested in whether this worked for you.

In a future post I’ll go over the motivating stimulus in more depth. If you’ve gotten something out of this article and would like to support my writing, here is a link to my patreon account.

Creating Emotion Through Action and Reaction

Good Writing Patterns: Creating Emotion

Hello! Welcome. Yesterday I talked about the importance of getting cause and effect right for creating characters that feel real. In that article I broke cause and effect into: stimulus -- internalization -- response.

Today I want to focus on how to use that basic idea to sculpt a character, and to put that character in a situation, one that will create a specific emotion in your reader.

That sounds manipulative, doesn’t it? And it is! But when a reader picks up a book they want to be entertained AND maybe learn something. That would be a bonus. The image I keep coming back to is of a group of people huddled around a campfire. It is cold and dark and they will soon go back to their damp tents and try to sleep. It is the storytellers job to tell the group a story that will make the darkness less scary, the cold less miserable, and the prospect of a night in their damp tent almost bearable. At least, that’s how I think of it.

But in order to do that, we need to know how to create characters, and put these characters in particular situations, ones that will elicit certain emotions in our audience. For example, the emotion of hope. Why do you think single women (I am saying this from personal experience!) like to read romance stories? Enough said.

BTW, in what follows I’m drawing from Dwight V. Swain’s excellent book, Techniques of the Selling Writer.

Motivating and Reaction Sentences

We’re going to get to the good stuff in a minute -- I don’t want this to feel like you’re back in school! -- but we need to have these concepts under our belt for the rest of what I have to say to make sense.

So, briefly, motivating and reaction sentences are cause and effect pairs. I’ll explain this in detail in a moment, but let me give you an example so it will make more sense when I do.

Motivating sentence: “The car raced down the dangerously narrow road.”
Reaction sentence: “Joe gripped the steering wheel with sweaty hands, hoping he would be in time to see his daughter born.”

Here we set up the general situation, there is the event and then the character's reaction to the event.

These are their characteristics:

Motivating Sentence

The motivating sentence is one sentence.

Swain believes that if you’re not familiar with writing in motivating and reaction sentences that it will work best if the motivating sentence really is just one sentence. He writes:

“Yet though extra sentences may sharpen up your copy, there still are virtues to the one-sentence rule. When you’re just learning, for example, you tend to kid yourself that you need a lot more verbiage than really is essential. Given half a chance, some of us would feel it necessary to mention that fury seethed within Brad; that his blue eyes grew bleak; that muscles knotted at the hinges of his jaws; that his nostrils flared and his fists tightened and his face flushed. As the saying goes, the kitchen sink would be there too if we could only figure out a way to get it through the door!” (Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer)

He’s not wrong!

The motivating sentence contains no mention of the focal character.

The motivating sentence does NOT contain any mention of the focal character. For example, even this won’t work: “Kim saw the car speed away.” It would need to be, “The car sped away,” we need to keep Kim’s internal states out of it.

BTW, the focal character is usually the protagonist, but not always. The focal character is the character that the story revolves around. For example, in Sir Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories the great detective was the focal character even if the story itself was written from Watson’s first person perspective.

This sentence describes the way the world is. 

This is what my english teacher called third person, fly-on-the-wall perspective. I love the expression “fly-on-the-wall” because I ask myself: What would a fly see?

This sentence must be specific.

I’ve said this before, but I think that one of the reasons why a writer these days should never use, “It was a dark and stormy night” as an opening line is that it’s too general. Instead:

“Lightning flashed, slicing open the darkness, as rain beat a soothing staccato rhythm on the canvas tarp.”

I probably should break that into two shorter sentences, but I think it works. Again, my example isn’t meant to be great literature, I just want to illustrate the principle. The sentence expresses a much more specific picture than “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Reaction Sentence

One sentence

I went over this point, above.

This sentence is all about the character’s reactions.

In the motivating sentence the focal character couldn’t be mentioned, not even by pronoun! In the Reaction Sentence it is all about the focal character and how they are reacting. I’m going to talk a lot more about this either below or in a separate post.

Keep in mind that the character’s reactions should reflect who they are.

For example, let’s say a character is generally fearful (as opposed to angry, happy, clueless, observant, and so on). So, for example, if Jim is a fearful sort and he’s inside the canvas tent mentioned in my earlier example, I could write, “Shaking, Jim pressed his eyes shut -- the storm will pass in a few minutes, it will pass in a few minutes, it will … -- and inched further inside his sleeping bag.”

Include the focal character’s dominant attitude.

Swain writes that the reaction sentence should communicate your character’s state of mind. To do this you use their DOMINANT ATTITUDE.

I’ll talk about what Swain meant by the dominant attitude or feeling of a character more in another post, but I just touched on this idea when I said that a character will have one distinctive primary way of reacting to things.

For instance, in my example I gave above, Jim’s dominant attitude was “fearful.” Whenever he encounters a stormy night, an unexpected bill, someone asking him for the time, he filters what he sees/feels/smells/hears through his general attitude of fearfulness.

Using different dominant attitudes for each of your characters helps make them each unique.

The Significance of the Motivating Stimulus

Recall that the motivating stimulus can’t involve the focal character. But we want to craft the motivating sentence in such a way that it will grab the interest of the focal character.

Of course, all your characters are different, they have different interests, different capacities. For each main character, a different set of motivating stimuli will be important.

For example, if two people -- Joan and Adam -- go to a racetrack, different things are going to be significant to them based on their past history, interests and dominant attitude. Joan is a mechanic, she is egotistical (that’s her dominant attitude), and has had a lifelong interest in cars. So what does she notice first? Yes! Cars. But, specifically, she notices the fastest car driven by the best team. Joan completely ignores the drivers.

Adam, though, is a timid limousine driver who shuffles around rich clients at moderate speeds, but he has always dreamt of racing. HE notices the drivers and looks at them with envy. Adam would really like to go and talk to the drivers but he has trouble summoning up the courage.

Again, the idea of SIGNIFICANCE is that, based on a character’s interests, different characters will notice different things about the environment based upon how important -- how significant -- those features are to that character.

Creating an Environment

At this point, you might think, Well, that’s fine, but how do I create an environment that will interest a particular character? Swain has this covered, but this post is already going to run a bit long, so I’m going to go into detail about it in another post. (I think it will have a title like: bringing a character to life.) However, here's a brief overview:

Ask yourself: What is the effect you want to create by using this stimulus? For example, a car racing down a road or a thunderstorm in the dead of night. Remember you want to do two things: You want to MOTIVATE your focal character in such a way that that character will have the desired reaction. At the same time, you want to get your reader to FEEL for the focal character.

An Example

Let’s say that Jim, a timid insurance salesperson, is your focal character and you want your audience to bond with him. To do this, you need to let your audience watch Jim struggle with big challenges, and you need him to suffer big setbacks.

Let’s have Jim’s wife run off with another man. (Writers really are horrible people, the things we do to our characters!)

a. Pick something -- a person, thing, event -- to create this effect.

This is Swain’s example, more or less: Jim comes home from a hard day at the office and finds a note on the hall table. His wife has left him and he reacts to this.

So that's the idea. In what follows, I'm going to try and break sentences up into Motivating and Reaction pairs.

b. Get specific. Zoom in. 

What is it about the motivating stimulus that will evoke the particular character reaction you want your character to have? Well, being specific helps.

In the following, as Jim reacts I'll try and convey the impression that Jim is timid, passive. I'm sure this could be done better, I'm just trying to illustrate the ideas I've been talking about.

There is a note on the side table.  (Motivating sentence)

Jim sees the note soon as he walks in the door. Startled, he looks around for his wife but the house is silent and cold. Jim reaches for the note with a trembling hand. He reads: (Reaction sentences)

I’ve left you darling, there’s meatloaf in the fridge.  (Motivating sentence)

Jim slumps against the table, his mind racing. It must be a mistake. He’s in the wrong house, or this is an elaborate, cruel, joke. (Reaction sentences)

One of the table’s legs, damaged during a particularly good New Year's Eve party his wife had organized, breaks. (Motivating sentence)

John falls to the floor and sobs. (Reaction sentence)

Poor guy!

Here, reading the note was the stimulus, we then have an internalization -- we see his pain, his puzzlement -- and finally the response, he slumps against the table. This response is a bit anemic, I could put a vase of flowers on the table that he could throw, a vase he had given her as a gift for their first anniversary. Or something. But you get the idea.

c. Trim away anything unnecessary.

Okay, you’ve written your scene. Look at it. What do you NEED to motivate your character’s reaction, his response? Got it? Okay, good. Now throw away everything else.

There is a note on the side table.

Jim sees it as soon as he gets home and reaches for it with a trembling hand. He reads:

I’ve left you darling, there’s meatloaf in the fridge.

Jim slumps against the table. It must be a mistake. He’s in the wrong house, or this is an elaborate, cruel, joke.

One of the table’s legs, damaged during a particularly rowdy New Year's Eve party his wife had organized, breaks.

John falls to the floor and sobs.

I prefer the stripped down version!

d. Make your character unique.

Now take things to the next level. Describe the cause, the motivation, in a way that reflects your focal characters attitude.

There is a note on the side table. It is folded in half and has the name, "Jim," neatly written across it. Jance, Jim's wife, loved writing notes; she refused to text. She wrote notes to plumbers to tell them their work was subpar, she wrote to her only sister to tell her how she could fix her life. She had never, ever, written a note to her husband. Until now.

John sees the note as soon as he gets home ... etc etc

As you can see, I completely disregarded the one sentence rule! I tried to keep the sentences free of any mention of the focal character, Jim, and the experience demonstrated to me how much I really wanted to write the sentence: Jim saw the note on the table.

I think that trying to write in M-R units could be a very good exercise for me. I just re-read the beginning of Stephen King's The Shining, and King seems to more or less follow this. Although, that said, he doesn't begin with a motivating sentence, he begins with a reaction sentence. And that reaction sentence is one of the best opening lines I've ever read because it takes the reader inside the focal character's head IMMEDIATELY: Jack Torrance thought: Officious little [expletive].

Writing Challenge

I'm going to rewrite a scene from my work in progress and put Dwight V. Swain's tips to work. I challenge you to do the same. I'd love to know what you think of the re-written scene. Is it better? Worse? How much of Dwight V. Swain's tips do you think you'll incorporate into your work?

If you've enjoyed this article and would like to help me keep doing this, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks! :-)

Links

Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel

Good Writing: Cause and Effect

Suspension of disbelief is crucial to crafting an immersive story. If readers don’t believe in the story, they won’t keep reading. So how do we do this? How do we wave our pen and make readers fall under our spell and into our world of words?

In my opinion, the answer has to do with patterns. Patterns of action and reaction.

Patterns of Reality

There is a pattern to how we humans react to things.

For example, when I work, I’m off in a world of my own, if someone creeps up behind me and yells, “Boo!” (and, yes, this has happened!) I’ll scream like a little girl, only it’ll be louder and more embarrassing. And then everyone laughs. Well, I’m glad that I was entertaining!

Let’s say (as I just did) I were to write about this event and I described it like this: I screamed and someone said, “Boo!” and everyone laughed. Confusing, right? Of course! It’s out of order. Or if I left out the part about my screaming and just wrote: Someone said, “Boo!” and everyone laughed. Readers would be left scratching their heads.

Writing a good story is all about being true to REAL patterns of action, it is about understanding how we react to stimuli. And being true to this has everything to do with cause and effect.

I’m going to come back to this, below, but first let’s take a brief look at what a story is.

Stories Aren’t Real Life, They’re Better

Stories must make more sense than real life. In real life our loved ones become ill for no reason -- at least no reason anyone understands. But if this happens in fiction, readers become grumpy. After all, there is a very human intelligence behind the story: you! You’ve created the story world so you should know all the whys and hows of anything that significantly affects your characters. You don’t have to write all that information into the story -- readers should only be told what they want to be told -- but you need to know it.

Keep in mind that the kind of fiction I’m talking about is the sort that one would tell around a campfire. You want listeners to hang on your every word and leave satisfied, you want to give them something to beat back the darkness that lies in wait for us all. They need something to hope for, something to aspire to.

Of course, there are MANY other kinds of stories -- there are tragedies, and those are, unfortunately, equally true of human experience, but that's NOT the kind of story I'm talking about. That’s not the kind of story I tell my friends to keep the existential darkness at bay.

Cause and Effect

Every plot development must have a cause and each cause must have an effect. Although, sure, sometimes this cause occurs off the page in the deep background of the story.

In fiction, one thing must lead logically into another. You can make anything happen in your story, you just have to figure out a cause for it. In fiction, unlike life, there is no blind luck. Yes, your hero can begin an adventure because of a coincidence, but they can never ever achieve any of their goals because of a coincidence. (I think perhaps the only exception to this is in a comedy when the hero adopts the persona of The Fool.)

Recreating, respecting, the patterns of real interactions is part of what allows readers to suspend belief. This is part of what makes the story world make sense. It is part of what makes the story world believable. Only believable story worlds grab readers -- it can be as insanely futuristic or fantastic as you like, but if the characters don’t react, don’t behave, in a credible, believable way, your story won’t grab them.

Stimulus and Response

Let's drop down a level. Bob and Joe are fighting. Bob throws a punch and Joe ducks. Joe throws a punch and his fist connects with Bob’s face. Bob falls to the floor and is out for the count. Now, that’s not great literature (I’ll leave that to you!) but it’s understandable. You don’t have trouble picturing what’s going on.

Walking through this: There’s an observable stimulus -- Bob’s fist -- Joe has a reaction to this stimulus, he ducks. Then there’s a response, Joe’s fist -- Bob reacts to this by getting hit in the face and falling to the ground.

A scene consists of linked stimulus-response pairs. I’ll go into this more, below, but before we do that let me touch on the topic of internalizations.

Let’s do this using the simple example I just gave. Let’s say that Bob is a LOT bigger than Joe. Bob tries to hit Joe (stimulus). Joe knows that if Bob hits him he’s going down and never getting back up, which is why he decided to cheat and put weights in his gloves (internalization). Joe ducks the punch (response). Joe tries to punch Bob (stimulus). Bob chuckles to himself and thinks, This is so cute, like I would be worried about this mosquito (internalization). Joe’s (illegally) weighted fist connects with Bob’s head and he goes down for the count.

Again, not great literature, but it makes sense. You can visualize what’s happening. Here, there’s an observable stimulus, Bob’s fist flying through the air toward Joe’s head. Joe has an internal reaction to the stimulus, he reflects that this is life or death and that more-or-less explains why he has resorted to cheating. Then there is an observable response, Joe knocks Bob out.

That was just an example -- yes, it’s great for action scenes -- but the pattern applies to everything. Honestly, this is one of the most useful principles I’ve ever studied.

Tips for Writing Prose That Feels Real

We’ve covered some of this above, but I’m going to spell it out, so it will be easy for us to reference, later:

1. Stimulus

- A thing that causes something else
- The stimulus must be external
- The stimulus can be a physical action, like throwing a punch.
- The stimulus can be something spoken.

2. Internalization

- What the character thinks or feels in response to the stimulus.
- Sometimes this is deep narration -- which is intimately related to Free Indirect Speech or Discourse -- but sometimes it is just a sentence or two in the narrators voice that communicates how the character is feeling or thinking. The essential thing is to show how the character responds internally.
- This reaction doesn’t have any physicality, we can’t see or hear or touch it. We must rely upon the narrator.
- Internalizations are optional. If you’re writing from a strict third-person perspective and you don’t want to dip into any of your character’s minds, you might not use them. (You could write something like: Bob hit Joe. It seemed like Joe cringed in pain. Joe hit Bob.)

3. For every stimulus, there must be a response

- If there are any hard and fast rules in writing -- and there really aren’t many other than “Writers must read and write” -- it is that every cause must create an effect and every effect must have a cause. You’ve heard of Chekhov’s Gun? This is the admonition that a gun in the first act must be used in a subsequent act. This is the same idea. If you introduce something that seems significant, there has to be a payoff, otherwise, why have it in the story? Everything in a story must pull its weight, everything must create some sort of (significant) effect. And an effect is only significant if it affects a character in pursuit of a goal that is linked (in some way, however tenuous) to the protagonist’s main goal.
- The response must be caused by a stimulus.
- The response, like the stimulus, must be external.
- Generally, the response must be IMMEDIATE. As soon as Bob throws a punch, Joe needs to either get hit in the face or duck.

Internalization

As I’ve said, every action is really STIMULUS -- INTERNALIZATION -- RESPONSE, although the internalization is optional.

I’ll write more about internalization in another post, but for now just think of it as anything your character thinks or feels. So, for example:

Diane glared at Jill. (Stimulus)

Scared, Jill stiffened. I wonder if she found out I kissed her boyfriend, she thought. (Internalization)

Diane stalked up to Jill -- if she’d been a cartoon character, steam would have been coming out of her ears -- and punched Jill in the jaw. (Response)

That’s it for now! If you liked this post, please consider supporting me over at Patreon.

As always, keep writing!

Notes

The material in this post was inspired by two authors: Jack M. Bickham's excellent book Scene & Structure and Dwight V. Swain's incredibly useful book, Techniques of a Successful Writer. I can't recommend both of these books highly enough.

Finding the Theme of Your Story: The Vomit Draft

Hi! Welcome back. A short post today. I’m not being lazy, I’m working on three much longer ones, but that’s for next week. Today, I thought I might update one of my more popular older posts: 22 Ways to Tell a Great Story. But then I read tip number three and realized I needed to do a post about the virtues of writing a vomit draft/zero draft.

Three Reasons to Write a Vomit Draft

1. A vomit draft will show you what your story is about, it will reveal the theme

This list of 22 tips comes from the fabulously creative brain of Emma Coats who used to work for Pixar. A few of these points jumped out at me. They communicate a certain picture of how to create a story, one that I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically agree with. Here are the tweets in question:

“3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.”

Yes! (3) had me hopping up and down. I totally agree. This is what I’ve been saying about the advantages of a vomit draft or Zero Draft (I didn’t invent that name!).

(The Zero Draft: How To Beat Writer’s Block)

I keep a writing journal and I always write my first draft out longhand. There’s something about the motion of my hand skimming along the rough surface of the paper, the feeling of cradling the pen between my fingers, the feeling of the jaggedness of the pen’s contact with the page.

Anyway. That’s not what I want to talk about, what I want to talk about is ONE of the benefits of writing a vomit draft, one that Emma Coats touches on: It will help you find your theme.

Let me try to unpack that.

I remember watching one of John Green’s videos where he discussed the writing of his marvelous and immensely popular book: The Fault in Our Stars. As you probably know, this book reached the number one spot on the New York Times Bestseller list, as well as various others. It was also TIME Magazine’s number one fiction book pick for 2012. AND it was made into a movie. It’s safe to say it was successful. I think we’d all settle for that kind of response to our work!

I mention this because John Green said -- in a YouTube video I can’t find the link to! -- that essentially nothing in his first draft made it into his final draft. It was simply a place to start from, it was something that helped him figure out what his book was about.

2. Flawed Ideas on Paper Beat Perfect Ideas in Your Head

“11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.”

That’s really why I’m such a big fan of writing a vomit draft, it gives you space and time to flush your ideas out of your brain and get them out into the world where they can be examined, played with. You can’t improve nothing. Start with whatever scrawled idiotic nonsensical blather you can come up with and then make it better! (And, whatever you do, NEVER show anyone your vomit draft. I like to ritually burn mine.)

3. Endings Matter

“7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.”

Perhaps this doesn’t belong in an article about the advantages of writing a vomit draft, but IF you have a general idea about how your story ends -- you don’t have to! -- it helps. And of course your idea regarding how the story ends can change as you write. This is a vomit draft, that’s okay! There are no rules EXCEPT: just write.

And that’s it! Thanks for reading, and if you’d like to help keep this blog going head over to my Patreon page. You can donate as little as one dollar a month and have my eternal thanks as well as the knowledge that you are unconditionally awesome. Also, if you’d like to send me a story or a portion of your WIP for me to critique, head on over to my Patreon account or just contact me.

Articles you might like:

How Many Drafts Does It Take To Write A Novel?
The Zero Draft: How To Beat Writer’s Block
Pixar: 22 Ways To Tell A Great Story

Writing Prompt: Who, What, Where, When, and Why

When I’m putting together a writing prompt I think of the five Ws: Who, What, When, Where and Why.

Who

When you look at this beautiful, inspiring, photo created by JD Hancock ask yourself, who is the creature? I’ve named her Penny the Purple, but of course you can call her whatever you like. Is Penny sentient? Does she have thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears? Where does she come from? Who is Penny emotionally connected to? Who does she love? Who does she hate?

What

What is happening? Is Penny the Purple going into the refrigerator or is she leaving? What kind of fridge is it? Is it a normal fridge with milk and nutella inside or is it a time machine like Dr. Who’s TARDIS?

Where

“Where?” might seem like the least interesting question, but what if this scene were occurring back in the Cretaceous? Perhaps a time-travelling alien ripped a 1950s house out of its foundation and plopped it down in a field somewhere, sometime 100 million years ago and one of the creepy crawlies got in.

When

Is Penny the Purple crawling into the fridge to go to bed for the night, or is she emerging in the morning?

Why

This is the big question. Why is Penny creeping in/out of the fridge? This is about her goal, about what she wants. Is she hungry? Is she seeking a mate? Or perhaps she is an interdimensional hit person, slithering out from her interdimensional fridge?

Photo credit for "leftovers" goes to the incredibly awesome JD Hancock and his creative, beautiful photographs.

I'd love to see what you write! Please do leave a link in a comment. :-)

5 Necessary Characters in a Romance Novel

Yesterday, I posted about the six scenes every romance novel needs. Today I'm going to write about the five characters every romance novel needs.

There are certain characters that show up in, for example, an adventure story. There is usually a love interest, a sidekick and a mentor (to name a few).

Similarly, in a romance story there are certain characters a writer needs to help keep the plot moving, to keep the tension escalating.

1. The Rival

If we just had the protagonist meet and fall in love with the antagonist, we wouldn't have much of a story! We need a third person to come in and break this up, to introduce conflict.

The rival is someone who is either in love with either the protagonist or antagonist or who pretends to be (perhaps they aren't truly in love, he just wants the protagonist's money, or he desires the influence such a union would bring). He or she is there to create discord, for reasons of his or her own.

I don't think that every romance novel must have a rival, I think there can be enough conflict without this, ALTHOUGH I do agree that practically every romance novel has a rival of some sort, but they can be a minor character.

2. Best Friend/Horrible Friend

Characters can be divided into ‘helpers’ and ‘harmers’ based on how they relate to the protagonist.

You want a character who is close to the protagonist and who encourages her to give the antagonist a second chance, this gives her a reason to tell her friend all the reasons why they could never be together. The friend can also comfort the protagonist when she is in relationship agony, give her a shoulder to cry on.

Similarly, you want someone in the protagonist’s life to say: He’s not good for you, kick him to the curb! Keep in mind, though, that the worst friend and the best friend can be the same person -- as so often happens in real life. Though often the character who tells the protagonist that the antagonist isn't any good for her is a family member, often a mother or sister.

3. The External Need

The External Need provides the impetus for the initial action, it could be -- often is -- what compels the protagonist to act, what initiates the Call to Adventure and brings the protagonist and antagonist together.

Granted, External Need itself isn’t a character, but a character can embody, can represent, the external need.

In jane Austen's, Pride and Prejudice, the external need is embodied in Elizabeth Bennet's father. Elizabeth and her sisters need to marry before their father dies. If they don’t, they will be penniless. That sets up the impetus, the external need for Elizabeth to find a husband. He is the ticking clock that drives the story. By the way, if you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice I would encourage you to! It is a lovely story.

Here’s another example: Let’s say our protagonist and her best friend are in a bar. The best friend bets the protagonist she can get the phone number of a cute guy, first. It’s a competition. That's a mild external need, but it sets up a reason for why our lovely protagonist would go in search of companionship.

4. Secret Keeper/Truth Teller

People lie to each other all the time and also to themselves.

I hope that’s not too negative! But, you know we do! I know I need to exercise more but I tell myself: You’re having a good writing day, you can exercise tomorrow. Instead, go for a long walk, that's almost the same thing. (It isn’t.)

In a lot of stories -- especially romance stories -- there is a secret keeper and a truth teller. These can be the same person.

Often this is the protagonist's best friend, but sometimes it is her worst enemy, sometimes it is the protagonist’s mentor.

You need someone your protagonist can tell her secrets to -- or thinks she can. You could add conflict to the story by having the friend betray the protagonist's trust. This could be intentional, coerced or a complete accident.

You also need someone who -- maybe around the All Hope is Lost point -- is going to tell the protagonist the truth. The protagonist -- like all of us, lies to herself about something -- something important.

(See my article: A Story Structure In Three Acts.)

The Truth Teller doesn’t destroy the protagonist's illusions lightly, but at some point she tells the protagonist the truth. And, as hurtful as that can be, it helps the protagonist get beyond the All Hope is Lost point. By the way, that's just an example, you could do this at any major turning point in the novel.

5. The Mentor

The Mentor is often someone who has memories of someone dear to the protagonist who has passed away.

For instance, and I KNOW I use this example more than I should, but in, Star Wars: A New Hope, Obi Wan Kenobi has memories of Luke’s father.

Memories are important, especially if they are shared. It is difficult to have a better mentor than Gandalf. And Gandalf shares many memories with Bilbo and Frodo, and -- because of his great age -- has memories of many who have passed away.

Because of this, the mentor can remind the protagonist who she really is and who she could be, the mentor can tell her how they have changed, both for better and worse.

Moral Progression

This isn't a character, but -- whatever kind of story this is -- the protag and antag need to become better people by the end of it. For example, at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, the lovers both have pronounced flaws. Elizabeth was prejudiced and Darcy was prideful.

At the end of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth was less prejudiced and Darcy was less prideful.

Simple, right? Simple is good! If a story is simple, clear, concise it is also easy to understand and read.

If you like my content please consider supporting me on my Patreon account. If you support the blog for just one dollar a month I'll send you my book, "The Structure of a Great Story."

BTW, I've combined this post and the previous one (The Structure of a Love Story) into an ebook: The Structure of a Love Story.

Thanks for reading and I'll talk to you again soon! :-)

A book you might be interested in:

How to Write a Murderously Good Mystery: The Major Characters, by Karen Woodward

Blog posts you might be interested in:

How To Write Characters Your Readers Will Love: Character Checklist

If you'd like to listen to this blog post, I've started reading them out and posting over on YouTube: Karen Woodward on YouTube

The Structure of a Love Story

Love is love, but there tends to be a certain pattern to how it progresses, both in fiction and real life.

I’m going to go over three different kinds of love stories and pivot to examine six scenes any romance story must have.

Before I do this, though, I would like to thank Shawn Coyne and Tim Grahl for their podcast, the Story Grid, a lot of the material for this blog post came from these podcast episodes:

The Most Important Genre
How to Write a Great Love Story

Okay, let’s get into it:

What is a love story?

That’s an odd question, isn’t it. We know when we are in love. But when we create a character, it’s a good idea to break these things down.

Shawn Coyne defines it like this: The protagonist pursues or runs away from an intimate bond with another human being.

As for the goal of the protagonist, it is to have an intimate relationship with that person.

That may seem like it is too simple to be stated, but if you’re like me it's a big help to have everything spelled out, especially when I'm in the weeds.

The Lovers: Protagonist and Antagonist

Romance stories are different from all other kinds of stories.

Of course the protagonist DOES NOT LIKE the antagonist and vice versa. In fact, they quite often hate each other and want to kill each other.

In a romance, on the other hand, the protagonist and antagonist often end up married. (I know there's a joke in there, but I'm leaving it alone.) Even when the lovers are hating on each other, there is a bond of potential love between them. And that's not generally true of protagonists and antagonists.

But it makes sense. There is a symmetry between the protagonist's and antagonist's goals. Whatever the protagonist's goal is, she will not be able to accomplish it if the antagonist achieves his goal. Similarly, whatever the antagonist's goal is he will not be able to accomplish it if the protagonist achieves her goal. That's true for any kind of story.

In a romance, the protagonist's goal is to form a meaningful relationship with a particular person she is attracted to: the antagonist.

The antagonist is very attracted to the protagonist but for some reason he cannot return her affection. Perhaps he can't reciprocate because the antagonist is scared of commitment, or perhaps he is a crown prince and cannot marry a commoner, or perhaps because he is a reclusive billionaire and she wouldn't fit in, or perhaps he is a vampire and cannot form that kind bond with a human. Be creative.

The key thing is that, initially, there has to be some sort of absolute incompatibility. But, regardless, they are insanely attracted to each other.

When I first started looking at the structure of a romance story it was slightly off-putting to think of the lovers as protagonist and antagonist, but that's what they are.

Make it Clear Why the Protagonist and Antagonist Can't be Together

I've covered this, a bit, above, but it's worth repeating. Make it clear why the lovers, the protagonist and antagonist, can’t be together. So, for instance, in Beauty and the Beast -- one is a beautiful human, and one … well, isn’t human! But, hey, every relationship has its problems.

Also, as for any story, ask yourself:

What are the protagonist’s biggest strengths?
What are the protagonist’s biggest weaknesses?
What are the antagonist’s biggest strengths?
What are the antagonist’s biggest weaknesses?

Okay, so, let's look at the three kinds of love stories.

Three Kinds of Love Stories

For each of these stories, we need to answer a different question.

1. Obsession

Obsession stories are, I think, the least common kind of romance story.

Obsession stories are about DESIRE.

We’ve all known a relationship like this, one person is crazy in love with another, they are both attracted to each other, but they are just too different and the outcome is tragic.

Here’s the pattern:

Question: Will the protagonist and antagonist overcome their extreme differences and transform their relationship into a loving bond?

At the beginning of the story: The lovers despise each other. BUT the lovers are also profoundly attracted to each other. Each acknowledges that being together would be a bad idea.

At the end of the story: One or both of the lovers are dead.

Not my favorite type of story, but there it is!

2. Courtship

I love a good courtship story. Especially after a breakup. Some port, a little chocolate ...

It will come as no surprise to you that the overwhelming number of stories are courtship stories.

Courtship stories are about COMMITMENT.

Question: Will the protagonist and antagonist commit to each other?

At the beginning: The protagonist and antagonist haven’t made any commitment to each other.

At the end: The protagonist and antagonist are committed to each other and to their relationship.

3. Intimacy

In this kind of story, the protagonist and antagonist are already a couple at the beginning. One or both of them will be tempted to cheat on the other. There is a challenge here: will the couple remain faithful, will they remain together?

There are two concepts here: TRUTHFULNESS and FAITHFULNESS.

Question: Will the protagonist and antagonist remain faithful to each other?

At the beginning: The protagonist and antagonist are in a committed relationship. Perhaps this commitment has begun to wane because of whatever trials and tribulations they've gone through over the years.

At the end: The couple have re-committed to each other.

One more thing before we get started ...

The Protagonist's Secondary Arc

We know the protagonist's main desire (this will be her desire deep, deep down, although she will likely be in denial in the beginning) is to form a loving bond with the antagonist, but she needs a desire apart from this, she needs an arc apart from her connecting with the antagonist. And, of course, there has to be an obstacle to her completing this arc and achieving her goal.

Let me give you an example:

Don't laugh, but I personally think Die Hard is a romance story; specifically, an Intimacy story.

John McClane's main desire is to reunite with his estranged wife. It just so happens that at the beginning of his journey to do this, someone took his wife and all her coworkers hostage. At that point, McClane’s secondary desire becomes to defeat the terrorists. For most of the movie we are watching Willis's secondary arc unfolding.

As soon as the terrorists are defeated and his secondary goal is achieved, McClane goes right back to trying to reunite with his wife.

I would say this is a romance story because as a general rule the protagonist's highest level goal (in this case reuniting with his wife) sets the genre of the story. 

Anway! Now that we've got all that sorted out, let's look at the essential scenes in a romance novel.

The 6 Scenes All Romance Stories Need

Stories generally have three or four acts. That's not written in stone, they can have six or eight or how ever many you want -- it is just a matter of how you want to structure the events of the story. In what I write, below, I have a three act structure in mind. (see: A Story Structure In Three Acts)

1. The Protagonist and Antagonist Meet

Of course, right? This is a love story, if the lover’s never meet, there is no story.

When the protagonist and antagonist meet for the first time, it needs to be a BIG SCENE. You need to communicate to the reader the essence of each character, you need to communicate that the protagonist really quite likes the antagonist AND that she believes the two of them would absolutely, totally and in all other ways NEVER work as a couple.

Of course the reader knows it probably will work, but this should be a journey FROM lack of hope and lack of love TO hope reborn and love reborn.

But, naturally, before the protagonist and antagonist meet, you need to introduce the main character. And this really is the most important scene. Because, face it, if you don’t get your readers to connect with your protagonist they aren’t going to keep reading. In what follows I’m going to assume the protagonist is female and the antagonist is male. (And, yes, this may have something to do with the port and chocolate mentioned, above)

Unless you are writing a novel that is being told from two viewpoint characters, the protagonist is introduced at the beginning and then the antagonist is introduced at around between the 10% and 25% mark.

Things may have changed since the last time I read a romance novel -- I’m going to have to read another one soon. (I would love it if you would recommend your favorite romance novel!)

Onto the next point!

2. Confession of Love

Whenever anyone says, ‘I love you’ for the first time it is an intense moment. In a love story the person on the receiving end might be scared because they haven’t had the best experience with that sort of thing.

For example, I am a big fan of the TV show Big Bang Theory, Penny broke up with Leonard when he told her he loved her. She was scared because she wasn’t ready for commitment.

Or the thing that initially comes between protagonist and antagonist is, as I’ve talked about above, an inherent incompatibility. He is the crown prince, she is a penniless commoner -- and his mother hates her.

Or perhaps the thing that breaks them apart is the jealousy of one of the protagonist’s friends. The protagonist's bestie could lie to her and tell her that the antagonist is lying to her -- perhaps the best friend tells the protagonist that he has been unfaithful. Or perhaps the protagonist breaks up with the antagonist because she thinks that NOT being with him would be best for him.

By the way, this confession doesn't have to be, literally, "I love you!" It could be a look that the antagonist gives the protagonist, it could be him saying, "I really like you, I would like you to meet my family." And so on.

IN ANY CASE! We’ve come to the end of the first act. It’s time for the …

3. First Kiss

This usually occurs at the midpoint.

The protagonist and antagonist do not have to kiss here, but their relationship goes to the next level. Maybe they have an intense conversation, maybe they hold hands, maybe they kiss -- maybe they make love.  It all depends on the spiciness level of your story. Although, if they make love at this point, you have to figure out a way to kick things up a notch at the end.

4. The Lovers Breakup

This is the All Hope is Lost point (for more about this see A Four Act Structure). Something -- perhaps the protagonist's mean mother -- has forced them apart. There are two things here:

a. The thing that breaks the lovers apart is something neither of them has control over.

b. The breakup seems final.

For example, in the case of the prince and the pauper, the king has died. The prince must choose between taking the throne and his love for the protagonist, a penniless waitress. She sees that the situation is impossible and breaks up with him because she loves him and wants him to fulfill his destiny.

Another thing that is often done at this point is to have the breakup happen over a misunderstanding. For me, personally, this is less satisfying.

For example, the protagonist believes the antagonist has killed someone and, because she loves him and wants to save him, she takes the blame. Of course the antagonist didn’t commit the murder, but now he believes his one-true-love is a murderer and so he breaks up with her, possibly to protect her so she will receive less scrutiny.

At this point we are about 75% of the way through the story.

5. Proof of Love

At the beginning of the scene, both the lovers believe that any further contact between them is impossible. They can not spend their lives together.

But there is something each of them has overlooked. Or the antagonist does something exceptional to show the protagonist that she is mistaken, he really does love her. Or he discovers his love did not commit the murder he believed her guilty of, perhaps the true murderer was her oh-so-negative best friend. Perhaps the popper takes a bullet for the crown prince and this endears her to the citizens of his nation and so now they can get married.

In Die Hard John McClane saved his wife's life and the lives of many of her colleagues. And he did it because he was a good police officer and that was one of the things that had come between them.

Whatever the proof of love is, it needs to be something big, important. And it needs to be foreshadowed.

The Proof of Love often occurs about halfway through the third act.

6. The Lovers Reunite

This is the climax of the story.

As we have seen, the issue -- whatever it was -- that was keeping the lovers apart has been obliterated; it has gone away, it is no more.

This is a big scene. This is the payoff of all the struggle the lovers have been through. Emotionally, just as the All Hope is Lost point was the low point of of the journey this is the highpoint.

If anything is left between the lovers to be set right this is the place to do it. Have them forgive each other and do something to solidify their relationship, something that will make it stronger.

At the end of the story they are happier and more committed than ever.

That's it! By the way, I wrote about a lot of this in an earlier post, 6 Scenes Any Love Story Must Have.

If some of the information I have shared has been useful to you and you would like to support this blog I just opened up a Patreon account! If you support the blog for just one dollar a month I'll send you my book, "The Structure of a Great Story."

BTW, I've combined this post and the next one (5 Necessary Characters in a Romance Novel) into an ebook: The Structure of a Love Story.

Thanks for reading and I'll talk to you again, tomorrow! :-)

The Structure of Story

When I was a kid I had absolutely NO idea how to write an entertaining story. I wish someone had whispered the phrase “story arc” in my ear, it would at least have given me a place to start.

The Classic Character Arc: The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is something we feel in our bones, it is the story of human civilization, but let’s make it explicit. What are its elements? We need:

A character, in a situation, with a well-defined problem, who tries to repeatedly solve it, but he fails and, in failing, makes the problem worse.

At the climax of the story, the hero makes a final attempt to achieve his/her goal. The result of this final attempt -- of the race to the final confrontation -- should unfold from the pattern of the hero’s victories and failures during the rest of the story.

If that sounds a bit mysterious, hang in there, I’ll unpack it.

BTW, that summary was from Philip Brewer’s post, Story Structure in Short Stories.

The Inward and Outward Journeys

Let’s break down the idea of a journey. There is usually an inward journey for the hero as well as an outward journey. 

In the movie, Edge of Tomorrow, William Cage (inner journey) went from cowardice to courage and (outer journey) from incompetence to mastery. These two journeys, these two paths, come together. Cage does something very brave just before the Final Confrontation and this gets him through the All Hope is Lost point. Mastering his cowardice was essential for Cage winning the final battle.

Again, more about this, below.

1. Opposites are good

This story structure comes to us by way of Larry Brooks's article: The Short Story on Structuring Your Short Story. 

Brooks writes:

"Like life, our stories always reside somewhere along that same continuum of set-up… shift… response… shift… attack… shift… resolution."

For instance, in the setup, the hero -- I like using the word ‘hero’ rather than protagonist -- is going through his normal everyday routines -- he struggles with the neighbourhood bully, he is in love with someone completely out of his league, he dreams of taking over the lucrative family business. That’s the hero's ordinary world.

Then something happens. There’s a shift. It could be that the protagonist gets a magical golden ticket, it could be that a young boy, sees a hologram and goes in search of an older, mysterious rather dodgy, character.

In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf came to Frodo, who had recently inherited the One Ring, and advised him to take it away from the shire in order to protect his community.

Okay. So. Another name for what just happened was the ‘Call to Adventure.’ After anything big happens in a story, there’s a response. In the case of Lord of the Rings, they are chased by the Black Riders.

But what I like about Larry Brook’s way of looking at things is that we really don’t need a lot of fancy names: the Ordinary World, Call to Adventure, and so on.

The key, the bedrock, is that something negative happens that derails the hero, and then something positive happens. That’s the pattern. The negative things that happen keep getting worse but the hero manages to keep going. Negative and positive. This back and forth keeps up until the hero and villain fight it out at the end and settle the matter once and for all.

Hook the reader early.

Plant a hook in the first couple of lines. Be bold. Here are a few first lines I think are marvelous:

“Halston thought the old man in the wheelchair looked sick, terrified, and ready to die. He had experience in seeing such things. Death was Halston's business; he had brought it to eighteen men and six women in his career as an independent hitter. He knew the death look.” (The Cat From Hell, Stephen King)

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling)

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” (1984, George Orwell)

If you THINK you have a good hook for your novel, but you’re not sure, test it out on your friends -- or even random strangers in line with you at Starbucks -- tell them your hook and watch their face, that will tell you pretty much everything you need to know. Also, do they ask questions? Are they curious about what happens?

I think it’s a good idea to include your hero’s perspective in the hook, although, that said, only one of the stellar opening lines I included, above, say anything about the protagonist (The Cat from Hell). As always, it’s up to you. If it works, it works.

2. Introduce the elements of a central problem as soon as possible. 

We’ve given the reader a hook. They’ve read the first sentence or two, now we need to draw them into some conflict, some problem, that is directly related to, connected to, the central problem of the story. 

Also, we need to fulfill the promise of the hook, or at least give the reader enough information to make them curious enough to keep reading. 

Here are the first two sentences of “The Sorcerer’s Stone,” (I know I just shared the first sentence, above, but this is one of the best first paragraphs I’ve ever read):

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

Now, I thought the first line was a very good hook, but just look at that second sentence! 

Right away, the reader knows there is going to be a lot that is strange and a lot that is mysterious occuring in the Dursley’s life and the Dursley’s are going to HATE it. I also knew right away that I would find the Dursley’s trials and tribulations humorous, because the Dursley’s seem like perfectly horrible people! (Which they are.)

3. The Ordinary World

Show your readers your character going through his/her daily routine, and show them one problem that he needs to overcome, one thing he/she is failing at.

For example, Harry Potter is failing to fit into the Dursley’s family, he is failing to find people who love him. Of course, it’s not his fault, the Dursley’s are despicable people, but, still, it’s a problem. Why is Harry failing to fit in? Well, he is the offspring of someone who could do magic and the Dursley’s are terrified of that. They are terrified their friends will find out they are related to people who can do magic. They are terrified of being rejected. So, the very thing the Dursley’s are terrified of, they do to Harry Potter. 

I have to be honest, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is one of my favorite stories! Both because it is very fun to read and because it is well structured as a story.

4. Try and Fail Cycles

Here’s the way I think about the construction of a story. The hero starts his journey in the ordinary world, going to his ordinary life. 

He is secretly in love with the lead cheerleader, but she doesn’t know he exists, he gets beaten up for his lunch money, etc. But then something happens that changes his situation. For Harry Potter it was a letter that invited him to attend a school for wizards. 

Generally, at around the 25% mark of a story the hero’s situation changes. Often when something big happens, there are a number of attempts to change but the first couple of attempts fail. For example, with Harry Potter, there were a LOT of attempts to deliver Harry’s acceptance letter to Hogwarts before he ultimately received it.

One movie that is great at demonstrating this is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Think of the scene where Indy is thrown into the Well of Souls, think of the number of times he tries to fight off the snakes and then his torch goes out, and then he tries to climb a statue, and then it tips over, etc. (I talk more about this in Parts of Story: Try-Fail Cycles.)

5. Midpoint confrontation

This is where the hero confronts the villain (or where the protagonist confronts the antagonist). Obviously, the protagonist can’t defeat the villain here, if he did then the story would be over! 

What generally happens is the hero learns that he’s wrong about something he believes about the world. He’s wrong about something important, essential, to the problem he is trying to solve. Further, he learns this because he confronts the antagonist. 

For example, in Edge of Tomorrow, William Cage, at the midpoint (Spoiler!) discovers that he has been tricked. He journeyed to a location because he thought he could fight the Omega (the Big Bad) but he was met by Alphas (run of the mill bad things). He discovered he was being tricked. That was an important piece of information that significantly changed Cage’s plans.

So, in summary, at the midpoint the hero fails in defeating the antagonist but he learns something vital from the confrontation.

6. The Hero’s Plan: The race to the final confrontation

At some point the hero comes up with a plan. Generally this is somewhere around the 75% mark. Generally, there is some sort of group scene around this point (your main characters meet in a bar, restaurant, etc), the hero has a touching bonding moment with his band of travellers.

Make sure the stakes are clear. What could the hero lose? What would the hero gain?

7. Something goes wrong: try and fail cycle.

The hero is racing toward the final confrontation, but of course something goes wrong. 

The hero’s plan was good, plausible, perhaps brilliant, but something went wrong and it failed. 

This is a try, fail cycle. The hero fails, then he tries something new. Then he fails. Then he tries something else. Then he fails. 

Then, facing certain death, he tries a new thing in desperation, believing that if it works he will die but at least the antagonist will be eliminated. And that is a good thing because it means his family and friends will be safe.

And it works.

Obviously this is difficult to set up. In the movie, Edge of Tomorrow, the protagonist, Cage, was introduced as a coward -- that is what he needs to overcome -- so when the final confrontation happens we need Cage to be prepared to give up his own life for the people in his community, for humanity. And he does.

8. All Hope is Lost

Toward the end of the Try and Fail cycle I just spoke about, the hero will experience an ultimate setback. They will fail, but they will fail in such a way that it seems there is no way back. At this point, often, the A-story (the outer journey) and the B-story (the inner journey) come together. Further, these threads come together in such a way that the hero sees the way out, the way to POSSIBLY win the confrontation.

9. Resolution

Either the hero defeats the villain or not. In popular fiction, generally, he does. And ideally, it should be done cleverly. If you can surprise the reader here, but in a way that makes sense and grows from the hero’s challenges, that is the stuff of which great stories are made.

There’s a reason why stories like Star Wars: A New Hope, Edge of Tomorrow and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark were box office favorites.

I urge you to take a peek at The Structure of A Short Story by Sarah A. Holt, it’s an older post, but it’s much shorter than mine and she has a good sense of humor.

BTW, I’ve begun reading my posts over at YouTube, so if you would rather listen to this, here is the url: Structure of Fiction.