Protagonist Checklist

My mother cleaned our house from top to bottom every year; she cleaned out every drawer, every cupboard, every closet. 

That’s practical industry at its best. Unfortunately it’s also something I’m almost completely devoid of. I feel at my best amidst a friendly snarl of papers and pens.

Yesterday, though, I had the day to myself and had the uncharacteristic urge to go through the drawers in my office and do a bit of tidying. (These days most of my tidying gets done as I listen to an audiobook.)

My office drawers have become receptacles for the revolving miscellany of papers I tack to my walls: bits of writing advice, admonitions, to-do lists and urgent reminders for events long past. 

I sifted through the pages of writing advice and lifted out one or two of my favorites to share with you.

Character Development

After I write a first draft here are some questions I ask about my protagonist (or any character that’s not a walk-on):

1. Main Desire. Every protagonist must want something deeply, desperately. Does she? What is it? Find (at least) one clear expression of it in your novel. Bonus points if you showed rather than told. (Though this is so important you might want to do both.)

2. Motivation. What is your protagonist’s motivation? Why does he have this particular overriding desire? For example, in The Mummy Rick O’Connell’s motivation for leading the expedition to Hamunaptra was to repay Evy for saving his life. His goal, on the other hand, was to get everyone there and back safely. (That, and he liked Evy.)

3. Decisive Action. When (in which scenes) does your protagonist take decisive action to get what he wants (his main desire)? Although a character can do their share of wiffle-waffling, they have to take decisive action at least once.

4. Stakes. What are the stakes? They should be clear and substantial. Further, the stakes should get bigger over time. (The stakes are what the character gets if she achieves her main goal—in other words, fulfills her main desire—and what she loses if she doesn’t.)

5. The Stakes Must Matter. Why do the stakes matter to the other characters? In the case of The Mummy all the characters wanted the treasures concealed within Hamunaptra, though their reasons for wanting them varied.

6. Well Defined Problem. What is the well defined problem that sets the protagonist’s goal? I mentioned The Mummy, above. In that movie the problem was to find the lost city of Hamunaptra and return with its artifacts.

Character Development: Scenes

- Strength. What is your character’s main strength? Find (at least) two scenes where the protagonist depends on that strength to solve a problem.

- Weakness. What is your character’s main weakness? Find (at least) one scene in which the protagonist’s weakness prevents her from solving a problem (/achieving her goal or desire).

- Silly Quirk. What is your character’s silly quirk? Find (at least) two scenes in which the character’s quirk complicates their life. That is, find at least one scene in which their silly quirk threatens to prevent them from achieving their goal. The goal here is that of a scene or a sequence of scenes, not necessarily the final, ultimate, goal. For example, Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes. 

- Contradiction. I’ve blogged about this the last few days. Complex characters are, generally, a mass of contradictions. 

* How does the character’s characterization contradict one or more of her internal traits?

* How do the character’s internal traits (intelligence, charisma, etc.) contradict each other?

* How does the character’s dominant trait change over time?

Find at least four scenes that show your protagonist’s contradiction(s).

- Clever. Most protagonists should be clever and resourceful. List at least two scenes in which the protagonist’s resourcefulness turns a situation around and allows him to achieve his goal.

- B-story. This won’t be the case for all stories, but in some the solution to the B-story provides the hero with the solution she needs to, at the story climax, achieve her main goal. What is your B-Story? In which scene does it begin and which scene contains its climax? In which scene, or scenes, do you tie in the epiphany of the B-story with the final culmination of the A-story?

- Guiding Principle. Often a character will have a guiding principle they live by. Hercule Poirot was fond of saying, “I do not approve of murder.”

General Questions

I try to always keep these questions at the back of my mind:

- What are your protagonist’s positive qualities? Is she strong? Good? Is she principled? Is she brave?

- What can your protagonist do that no one else can?

In Conclusion

I agree with those who hold that a protagonist doesn’t have to be amiable, likable or admirable. As long as your protagonist:

a. Has a special talent

b. Is clever and resourceful

c. Is wounded

then it doesn’t matter if the reader thinks he’s likable. The key thing is that the protagonist must be pursuing justice.

That leads us to our final  question: In your manuscript what one thing embodies the protagonist’s pursuit of justice?

That’s it!

Today’s writing exercise: The significance of the apparently mundane. (William Hjortsberg make the most of this in "Falling Angel," a book which was made into the movie "Angel Heart.")

Photo credit: "Oh happy rainy day!" by Caroline under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Key To Making A Character Multidimensional: Pairs of Opposites

I’m not going to recap the content of my previous two posts (it would take too long), but if you’d like to give them a quick look here are the links:

First post: Mind Worms And The Essence of Drama.

Second post: Story World As Crucible.

Today I’m going to look at ways of making the story world a crucible for our main characters.

How to show the reader a character’s layers

It’s simple. Or at least simple to explain yet not at all easy to do.

In my first post I talked about how to create a complex character. It is not enough just to give them desires, one must give them conflicting desires.

For example, a character could be both bold and timid. That’s one dimension. But how could we show this? One cannot be both bold and timid at the same time.

Though, as I typed the above, I realized that it’s perfectly possible to, say, both want, and not want, the last slice of cheesecake. Or the last potato chip in the bag. But, in those situations, what the character is experiencing are competing desires (in my case, the desire to lose five pounds and the desire to eat something delicious; one cannot live on rice cakes alone!).  

The sort of traits I’m talking about here are, really, dispositions. In general, one is either timid or bold, brave or cowardly, happy or sad. 

In any case, there are, I believe, three ways to show the reader a character’s contradictory trait.

1. People. Have the protagonist interact with different people. With one person they are bold and outgoing, with another they are shy and retiring.

2. Setting. Have the protagonist interact with different settings.

3. Time. Look at the protagonist at different times. (This is, I think, the most common way of exploring character.)

Let’s take a look at these one by one.

1. Pairs of Opposites: People

It would make the protagonist seem crazy to react one way one second and another way another second. Like Bill Murray in “What About Bob” when the titular character works up his courage to step onto a crowded elevator on the 40th floor but his fear, his terror, makes him turn away at the last moment. And he does this over and over and over and ... If we’re writing a character like Bob (or Mr. Monk) then, okay, but more often we demonstrate the opposites of a character—let’s call this a “character dimension”—by having them interact with different people.

So, for instance, with one character—perhaps a character who doesn’t have much money and is absent-minded (they’re always dropping things and forgetting where they left their glasses, their keys, etc.)—the protagonist is snippy and short. They’re rude. But with another character, perhaps one that is polished and who comes from a wealthy family, the protagonist goes to great lengths to be pleasant. This tells the reader much more than if we just showed him one side of the protagonist or the other.

Anyway, as many great books do, Gillian Flynn uses this technique in “Gone Girl” to create the kind of novel one can’t just read, one must consume it in great greedy gulps. It’s the kind of story I love to lose myself in, only surfacing—and, then, reluctantly—as I turn the last page. I’ll sit on the couch (or curl up like a pretzel on my bed) stunned, and wonder how long it will take her to write another.

Anyway, without giving anything away, “Gone Girl” is about two characters, Nick and Amy. Early on in the book Amy disappears and one wonders whether Nick had any part to play in that. What is Nick really like? What does he feel? One way Gillian Flynn teases out, fleshes out, Nick’s character is through his interactions with other characters, how he sees them. 

But Gillian Flynn doesn’t stop there.

We get both perspectives—Nick’s and Amy’s—from the first person. Nick is the narrator of the book but Amy talks to us through diary entries. To make matters more interesting still, Nick and Amy give us their very different perspectives on the same events. First we see things from Nick’s perspective and hear his gripes, then we peer into Amy’s diary and get her version of events.

In many ways Nick and Amy are opposites, but we don’t just see these characters through the eyes of a dispassionate narrator. We hear their own words, always aware that neither can be a hundred percent correct. We always see our lives through a filter and it’s the same with Nick and Amy. This leaves the reader to try and read between the lines and attempt to separate the truths from the lies. On top of it being a very well written book, “Gone Girl” is tremendous fun.

My point is that the more one layers in conflicting qualities, the more dimensions we create in a character, the more real, and the more interesting, they become.

2. Pairs of Opposites: Setting 

Think of a haunted house. The dark hallways, the creaking floorboards, the mysterious groans as the house settles. You turn a corner and a sticky cobweb stretches across your face and ... what’s that? Something long and thin and hard presses up against your cheek. You scream and fling it off you, not really wanting to know what it was but you can’t help it, you’re curious. You look at it. It’s long and thin, slightly curved, wrapped in silk. It looks just like a severed human finger! (Cue screaming violins.)

What would the normal response be to such a scenario? Like Gus on Psych the average person would scream and run away. At least, that’s what I’d do! But what would Indiana Jones do? He’d look at the finger, wonder who its previous owner was, and move on. Heroes, at least action heroes, tend not to be shaken by stuff like that. But what if, instead of a spider web, we’d dropped a snake on Indy? That would be a different matter. One of the most memorable things about Indiana Jones is his fear of snakes, something which is established early in the first film.

So there we have the opposing responses, fear vs courage—or at least calmness. And this is brought out by varying the setting.

3. Pairs of Opposites: Time

The most common way of a character exhibiting opposite traits is over time. We’re all familiar with this. The protagonist starts his journey as, say, a cringing milquetoast and, over the course of the story, gains confidence in his abilities, in himself. At the climax, he faces his fears and defeats the antagonist.

But, wait! We’re still not done. There’s one more element I’d like to discuss: how to create a supporting cast of characters that will draw out the multiple dimensions of a robust protagonist. I’ll get to that on Monday, stay tuned!

Photo credit: "cold hearted orb" by Robert Couse-Baker under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Story World As Crucible

Yesterday we talked about the essence of drama and the key to developing character; namely, developing a story world which will test the main character’s strengths and force him to face, and overcome, his weaknesses. (Or, if it’s a tragedy, to fail and die.)

Everything in the story universe—setting as well as characters—is chosen with the protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses in mind.

It is in this sense that all story is about character. The plot is as it is because the writer believes certain goals will be best at helping reveal character, that they will be best at forcing the protagonist to reach beyond his limits. 

Caveat

This way of looking at story (we could call it story-as-crucible) makes sense to me but I want to emphasize that not all stories are about a hero realizing his/her potential to the fullest.

Story as crucible is not, I would imagine, the way most writers think about their craft/art. That said, it’s not a bad way of looking at what we’re on about when we write a dramatic story. (Note: many stories aren’t intended to be dramatic stories.)

Thinking about the books I’ve read, the movies I’ve seen, the overwhelming majority of them fit the story-as-crucible idea. The story world and the events that unfolded within it, as well as the characters that enlivened it, can all be seen as tools used to put the main character through trials designed to burn away what is inessential. 

At the end of most dramatic stories, the main character either shatters like a flawed pot or emerges, reborn, with a realistic appraisal of both themselves and their environment. The  protagonist has come into their true strength, they have recognized and, for the most part, overcome their weaknesses. Or at least learnt how to work around them. 

Even action flicks—movies self-consciously plot oriented—bring the hero to a crises point. Think of any of the Indiana Jones movies or Die Hard.

In any case, I wanted to make the point that not all authors self-consciously sit down and decide to design a story universe as a crucible for their protagonist (nor should they). But, even when the author doesn’t, I believe that this story-as-crucible idea can still aid one’s analysis.

How to create a story world as a crucible for your main character

Well, that was a rather long summary of my previous blog post! I really just wanted to set things up for two concepts I wanted to write more about.

Now that we know what we’re on about—constructing a crucible for our main character—let’s talk about how to do this. That is, how to create a story world to serve as a crucible that will test, strengthen and transform your main character.

This is where McKee really shines, he doesn’t just talk about the importance of one’s story world being a crucible for the main character he tells you how to do it.

McKee gives the reader three techniques:

1. McKee discusses how to create a fully realized main character, one with many dimensions.

2. He also talks about how to create a supporting cast of characters, one that will force your main character reveal all his quirks, weaknesses, strengths and foibles.

3. Finally, McKee goes over how to double-check that your story world is a crucible for your protagonist. 

I wrote about (1) and (3) yesterday so tomorrow I’ll dive into how to create a cast of characters designed to put your main character through his paces.

Stay tuned!

Photo credit: "Stars and Sparks" by Zach Dischner under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Mind Worms And The Essence of Drama

Have  you ever watched the movie, The Game? Michael Douglas plays a person with every material advantage who is, nevertheless, precariously close to killing himself. Here’s the setup:

“Nicholas Van Orton (Douglas) is a wealthy investment banker, but his success has come at a cost. He is estranged from both his ex-wife and his only sibling, his younger brother, Conrad (Penn). He remains haunted from having seen his father commit suicide on the latter's 48th birthday. For Nicholas' own 48th birthday, Conrad presents Nicholas with an unusual gift—a voucher for a "game" offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Conrad promises that it will change his brother's life.” (The Game, Wikipedia)

If you’re wondering what this has to do with anything, hang on just a moment longer.

Mind Worms

In “Story” Robert McKee writes that in the Middle Ages scholars had the notion of a Mind Worm. He writes:

“Suppose a creature had the power to burrow into the brain and come to know an individual completely—dreams, fears, strength, weakness. Suppose that this Mind Worm also had the power to cause events in the world. It could then create a specific happening geared to the unique nature of that person that would trigger a one-of-a-kind adventure, a quest that would force him to use himself to the limit, to live to his deepest and fullest. Whether a tragedy or fulfillment, this quest would reveal his humanity absolutely.”

Consumer Recreation Services, from The Game is basically the modern equivalent of the Mind Worm! (BTW, if you’ve never seen the movie, Roger Ebert’s review of “The Game” was right on target and, as his reviews always were, beautifully written.)

I’ve talked about The Game and Mind Worms to lead up to what McKee says is the essence of dramatic storytelling: fully developed characters placed in a world designed to test their strengths and play on their weaknesses, to force them not only to face themselves as they are but to push past what they thought were their limits and be reborn, a new self. Or fail and die.

That’s dramatic storytelling in a nutshell. The question is: how does one do that? Today I’d like to talk about part of the answer to that question by discussing the difference between what McKee calls characterization and True Character. Let’s dive in.

The events a character experiences must fit the character.

Characters aren’t human. They aren’t persons. They’re better! Why? Because they are intentionally designed to be clear and knowable. It is possible for me to completely understand a character. I’ve never been able to say that of a flesh-and-blood person. Just when I think I have them pegged they will do something that completely bewilders me.

Character Design: Characterization vs True Character

You’ve likely heard this part before, but let's review it since we’ll be building on it in what follows:

1. Characterization

A fictional human’s characterization will include some or all of the following:

- physical appearance

- mannerisms

- style of speech

- gestures

- gender and sexuality

- age

- intelligence

- occupation

- personality

- attitudes

- values

- where he/she lives

- how he/she lives

A character’s characterization is the sum total of the observable qualities. They are what makes that character unique.

2. True Character

As we’ve seen, characterization is about the outer, the observable. True Character is about what is inside.

- Is the character loyal or disloyal?

- Are they honest or dishonest?

- Loving or cruel?

- Courageous or cowardly?

- Generous or selfish?

- Willful or weak?

True Character is expressed through choice necessitated by dilemma

McKee writes:

“How the person chooses to act under pressure is who he is—the greater the pressure, the truer and deeper the choice to character.”

The key to True Character is desire

What does the character want? McKee writes:

“A character comes to life the moment we glimpse a clear understanding of his desire—not only the conscious, but in a complex role, the unconscious as well.”

Which suggests a number of questions:

- What does the character want/desire?

- When do they want it? Now? Soon? Later?

- What is their overall desire, their chief desire?

- Does the character know he/she wants this?

What we mean by a “three-dimensional” character

But having a single, unitary, desire isn’t enough. McKee points out that truly great characters have one particular trait in common: they have contradictory desires.

Kinds of contradiction

This fundamental contradiction can take a couple of forms.

1. Contradiction deep within the character.

The character has contradictory desires. For example, Macbeth was torn between ambition and guilt.

2. Contradiction between characterization and True Character.

Another common kind of contradiction is that between the characterization—the character’s observable qualities, those that make her unique—and her True Character.

For example, a effusively complementary, gorgeous beauty queen might be seething with bitterness and anger.

That’s it! In my next post I’m going to pick up on Robert McKee’s contention that the entire story world is formed—or should be formed—as a kind of fiery forge or crucible to push the character to, and then past, his limits. That’s the heart of drama.

Photo Credit: "Love is in the Air..." by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Story Composition: Variety Within Unity

I’m slowly worming (bookworming!) my way through Robert McKee’s epic book on life and writing, “Story,” and have come to what I think is one of the most valuable concepts he’s covered, as well as one of the most difficult: composition.

When I see that word, “composition,” I think of all the dreary elementary school writing assignments I had to endure. But this is different.

Story Composition

When we compose an essay or a diary entry—or a story—we make decisions about how to order and link events.

Composition is about “selecting what to include, to exclude, to put before and after.”

This sort of patient ordering is something I’m especially bad at. On my first draft, possible alternate story lines like to bubble up in my thoughts like mushrooms after a rain. But that just leads to chaos (at least, it has with me!). I must impose an organizing principle, I must be selective.

McKee lists various principles that can help with this selection process:

- Unity and Variety

- Pacing

- Rhythm and Tempo

- Social and Personal Progression

- Symbolic and Ironic Ascension

- The Principle of Transition

Don’t worry! I’m only covering one of these today.

Unity and Variety

Let’s tackle unity first.

A story must be unified. As in Highlander, “There can be only one.” Yes, we can weave in numerous sub-threads, but there should be one overarching plot/arc/story thread.

What is this story thread? It follows a very simple organizing principle:

“Because of the Inciting Incident the Climax had to happen.”

In every story there’s an Inciting Incident. That incident changes the protagonist’s Ordinary World in such a way that, ultimately, it is impossible for him to go on with his life as normal.

McKee uses the movie “Jaws” as an example:

“Because the shark killed a swimmer, the sheriff had to destroy the shark.”

I would say that, in “Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark”:

Because the Nazi’s were in search of the ark, Indiana Jones had to get to it first and bring it home.

McKee continues:

“We should sense a causal link between Inciting Incident and Story Climax. The Inciting Incident is the story’s most profound cause, and, therefore, the final effect, the Story Climax, should seem inevitable. The cement that binds them is the spine, the protagonist’s deep desire to restore the balance of life.”

Now, I’m not saying that this is true—or should be true—for every single story. As McKee points out, there are different kinds of stories. But it is interesting how many stories this applies to. Take, for instance, Margaret Atwood’s most recent book, “Stone Mattress” as an example.

Margaret Atwood wields her pen like a scalpel, honing her words, her meaning, to a sharp edge as she slices into her characters, revealing their still-beating hearts, their souls.

But I digress. One of the stories from “Stone Mattress”—The Freeze-Dried Groom—follows, or embodies, the principle McKee mentions. In this story, Sam, the protagonist, is a scoundrel who we meet the morning his wife finally wises up and gives him the boot. 

That event, that severing of ties, is the Inciting Incident and sends Sam hurtling toward, not only the end of the story but, we feel, the end of his life. Or at least that’s how it unfolded in my imagination. Atwood hides the climax of her story; it occurs after the last word. She invites the reader—literally as well as figuratively—to spin out the story for themselves. It’s the perfect lead-in to a fan-fiction contest.

I mention Atwood’s story because it demonstrates an important aspect of this principle of unity: The writer’s challenge is to finish the story in such a way that whatever ending is chosen, it will seem inevitable—and come as a surprise.

That’s tricky to pull off, but the stories that do often go on to become reader/viewer favorites. For example, the end of Empire Strikes Back, when Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father. It came as a surprise but, afterward, when I thought about it, it seemed to fit perfectly. It seemed obvious. Inevitable.

Variety

McKee writes:

“Unity is critical, but not sufficient. Within this unity, we must induce as much variety as possible.”

Action/adventure stories are often also love stories—or contain within them this thread.

Yesterday I watched “22 Jump Street.” It was a comedy about two police officers who respond to the death of a girl by arresting a drug dealer, but it was also a bromance, a romance, and an action adventure.

McKee ends this section by writing:

“[...] we don’t want to hit the same note over and over, so that every scene sounds like every other. Instead, we seek the tragic in the comic, the political in the personal, the personal driving the political, the extraordinary behind the unusual, the trivial in the exalted.”

At some later date I’ll come back to a few of McKee’s other points, but that’s enough for today. Here’s my takeaway: Within unity, variety. 

Good writing! Have a terrific and productive weekend. 

By the way, I have been sending out writing prompts on my Google+ feed. If you would like to join in the fun, please do.

Photo credit: "quiet" by 55Laney69 under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Freeze-Dried Fiction Contest with Margaret Atwood

I’m back!

My vacation was fabulous, but it’s equally fabulous to be back in my writers cave surrounded by my books and cats and dust and post-it notes.

This morning I read the most fabulous story by Margaret Atwood—The Freeze-Dried Groom (currently free on Wattpad)—and then discovered there’s a fiction contest associated with it.

Margaret Atwood leaves readers guessing about what will happen to the characters in the story. Will the protagonist, Sam, be the killer or the victim? (Or, perhaps, something else entirely.) Who is the mysterious woman he is romancing?

Instead of leaving readers guessing, she has invited them—invited us!—to continue the story and answer the questions ourselves. 

The Freeze-Dried Fiction Contest with Margaret Atwood

Here is a link to the rules and regulations on Wattpad: What you need to know and how to enter.

To be eligible, your story must be between 1,000 and 5,000 words. You need to use the tag #FreezeDriedFiction (or #Freeze-DriedFiction) and post it on your own Wattpad account between October 1 and October 31, 2014.

To learn more about the prizes, as well as who is eligible to apply, visit the link I gave above (“What you need to know and how to enter”). 

That’s it! Wow, a post under 300 words. I don’t expect this brevity will last, though. There are a number of writing related issues I want to chew over with you in the coming weeks and months. Cheers!

Photo credit: untitled by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Royal Order of Adjectives

Lists are powerful.

I don’t know what I’d do without them. Lists of names for characters, lists of locations, lists of interesting words (like rutabaga).

Today I’m making lists of another kind, lists of items I must remember to take with me on vacation.

Yes, I’m leaving the country and won’t be back until the end of the month. I probably won’t post here again until I get back.

The Royal Road of Adjectives

Before I leave, I’d like to mention something I came across: the Royal Order of Adjectives. I hadn’t heard of it before—maybe that doesn’t say a lot for the school system—but, apparently, there’s an accepted order that the various kinds of adjectives should adhere to.

Huh.

Here’s the handy-dandy graph, complete with examples. This is from Grammar.ccc.commnet.edu’s page dedicated to adjectives. It’s the best primer on adjectives I’ve come across, highly recommended if you’re into that sort of thing ... which it seems I am. Now. 

The Royal Order of Adjectives (click to enlarge)

For example: A delicious little square vase of old red Italian silk roses.

It’s interesting to play around with the adjectives in the chart and see what sentences you can come up with!

While you’re doing that I’m going to slink off to parts unknown. I’ll miss blogging here, but it’ll be nice to have a short break. I’ll be back, with renewed vigor, at the end of the month. I might even have a few stories to tell! It’s amazing what crawling out of one’s writer’s cave every once in a while can do.

Photo credit: "Serpent" by Daniel Zedda under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Keeping A Writing Journal

“I have advice for people who want to write. I don’t care whether they’re 5 or 500. [...] [I]f you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair.”
— Madeleine L’Engle

Today I want to talk about something a bit different: writing journals and whether writers should keep one.

I keep a writing journal and it has helped me enormously. That said, I suspect if you saw it my journal wouldn’t look like anything you’d classify as a writing journal. 

For the last few years I have scribbled, daily, in a book I keep ready-to-hand when I’m in the house. (When I go out I keep a pad of paper in my purse and transfer anything I write there into my daily journal.)

While this journal may contain the odd (and I do mean odd ;) insight into life, the world and everything, what mostly fills its pages are bits of writing that in years past I used to commit to random pieces of paper, pieces that would drift around my office. Inevitably, they would disappear and I would be left with the vague feeling that I’d written something important on one of them. 

I think what happened is that I’d grab a piece of paper and use the reverse side for a shopping list, or to take a message, or to dash off a to-do list, and then I’d forget there was writing on the back and recycle it.

After years of this I hit on the notion of keeping a notebook as a kind of—this is how I think of it at least—RAM. The book is, essentially, an extension of my memory. I write in it all the things I would like to remember a hour, or a day, or a year from now but absolutely won’t unless I record them.

And it’s much more difficult to misplace a book than unattached slips of paper!

My writing journal is also the place where I doodle, do math, sketch out cover ideas, program code, and first drafts of blog posts and stories.

Yes, it is a bit of a hodgepodge, a dogs breakfast (for some obscure and likely bizarre reason I love that phrase, “dogs breakfast”) but being-difficult-to-find is a step up from lost. To mitigate this problem I’ve developed a system of labeling that involves multi-colored highlighters and yellow post-it notes. My goal is to make it obvious what information each page contains, especially when that information is the first draft of a story.

After writing that I feel a bit naked! I’ve never discussed my writing journal before.

Anyway, there it is. I wish I had developed this system years ago, less of my writing would be lost and a (crude, confused) record would exist of what I’d written on a day to day basis. 

You might wonder: Would keeping this sort of life-in-a-bucket journal be of help to you? Maybe! If you regularly lament that you can’t find a short little note, or a writing sketch, you jotted down then, perhaps, an everything-in-a-tin journal might be helpful.

One thing I can guarantee you: after a year or two, seeing a couple dozen journals snuggled up beside each other on your bookcase will make you feel like a writer—because you are!

Either that or it’ll remind you of the movie, “Se7en.” Whichever. ;)

Photo credit: "Stargazin" by Zach Dischner under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Subplots And The Great Swampy Middle

Today I’d like to talk about something that puzzled me no end when I first began writing: subplots. I’ve been reading Robert McKee’s book, “Story” and what follows draws liberally from his insights.

The Shifting Sands of Terminology

Subplots, main subplots, main plots, central plots, minor arcs, major arcs, and so on. As I’ve read about writing over the years each of these terms has been pressed into service to describe the interwoven threads of a story.

The idea that I came away with—and it’s not at all a bad way of looking at it—is that a novel length story isn’t composed of just one plot but many. One of these plots will form the spine of the story and the other plots, the subplots, are woven around the spine, strengthening it, giving it depth and complexity. 

The plot that forms the spine of the story, let’s call this the central plot, this plot line involves the main character’s pursuit of her goal, the obstacles she has to overcome, the cost of winning/failing as well as the final outcome.

But not all stories have subplots. There are good stories—heck, great stories!—that don’t have subplots. “The Fugitive” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” for example. 

So, what’s the deal? Do we need subplots? If so, why? What do they do? What’s their function in a story?

Subplots are a tool—one of them—that will help get a writer through the Great Swampy Middle of Despair.

Everyone who has struggled through a first draft is intimately acquainted with what Jim Butcher calls The Great Swampy Middle (GSM). Let me, first, talk about what the GSM is and why it exists, then I’ll discuss how subplots are a solution to this problem.

Why the Great Swampy Middle Exists

I’ve often written about the three act structure and in those posts tend to make it seem as though the following is how a story is divided up into three acts.

Act One: The first 25% of the story.

Act Two: The middle 50% of the story.

Act Three: The last 25% of the story.

But as was the case in “Star Wars: A New Hope,” the third act can be—and often is—much shorter than the first one. McKay writes in “Story”:

“In the ideal last act we want to give the audience a sense of acceleration, a swiftly rising action to Climax. If the writer tries to stretch out the last act, the pace of acceleration is almost certain to slow in mid-movement. So last acts are generally brief, twenty minutes or less.”

As McKee says, in reality a story often breaks down as follows:

Act One: The first 25% of the story.

Act Two: The middle 60% of the story.

Act Three: The last 15% of the story.

Act Two bulges out from between acts one and two like a grotesque muffin top. With sixty percent of the action of the story unfolding in the second act it’s easy to get bogged down here. And that gives birth to the Great Swampy Middle of Despair.

Subplots are one of the tools we can use to firm up this flabby middle part.

How To Defeat The Great Swampy Middle

Robert McKee in “Story” writes that there are two things that will help us get through the GSM. They are:

1. Use subplots.

McKay writes that “Subplots have their own act structure, although usually brief.” As an example, McKay weaves three subplots into a hypothetical central plot with each subplot peeking at a different time.

Let’s break this down.

a. Subplots increase the number of major scenes.

By weaving subplots around the central plot we can have an interesting reversal every chapter or so. Although not every subplot will have four major scenes—an Inciting Incident and three Act Climaxes—there will be enough so that an interesting event happens regularly enough to keep a readers attention.

b. Subplots give a story depth by giving it layers of complexity.

For example, think of “A Midsummer Nights Dream.” All the love stories end happily but some end “sweetly, some farcically, some sublimely.”

c. One of the subplots (often the most developed subplot) can contrast the theme of the main plot, giving the story a depth and interest it would otherwise lack.

For example, the central idea or theme of a story could be about True Love, what it is and how it affects those in its merciless grip. The main plot could revolve around the protagonist and his search for, and finding of, true love. As a counterpoint to this, one could have a subplot about two people who think they’re in love but who really aren’t. They say and do all the right things but, in the end, when their love is tested it fails. They cannot—will not—sacrifice everything for the other. 

Then we see the aftermath. What one couple gains and the other looses. This gives the theme a depth it would have lacked had only one aspect of the central idea been explored.

d. Each complication in a subplot affects the central plot.

In “The Matrix” Cypher betrays Morpheus to The Agents. This was a victory for Cypher; it got him closer to his goal of once again being submerged in The Matrix. This same event was, obviously, a major blow to Neo. So here we see how a major scene in a subplot creates conflict/tension in the main plot and, as a result, drives the story forward.

2. Increase the number of acts.

The second way to defeat the Great Swampy Middle of Despair is to increase the number of acts. You will have noticed that many stories—especially action-packed stories—don’t have subplots. They don’t need them. The audience wants a fast paced story and with a major reversal coming every few minutes that’s what they’re going to get. 

The movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” had five acts and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” had—hold onto your hat—seven! Which, as McKee points out, means there was “a major reversal every fifteen or twenty minutes.”

The downside of this is obvious: the pace can be exhausting! Both for the writer(s) and the audience. Each reversal, each climax, must outdo the one before. And that’s difficult to do. It’s easy to resort to cliches or to dangle the hero off the edge of a cliff one too many times and stretch the audiences/readers suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. 

Sameness—even when it’s a stunning explosion-filled end-of-act climax—gets old fast.

Okay, that’s enough for today. Now go write something just for the sheer pleasure of it. (grin)

Talk to you tomorrow. Cheers!

Photo credit: "fields of gold" by Helmut Hess under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0.

Guest Post by Chris Pitchford on Writing And Programming

Today I’m going to do something a bit different. I don’t usually have guest posts, but when I discovered Chris Pitchford was coming out with a new book, The Agility of Clouds, I asked him to talk with us about his writing process, about how he—a programmer by trade—thinks about writing.

Take it away, Chris!

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Programming is nothing like writing fiction, except that it’s totally like it.

I'm a software developer and a writer, and the two supposedly “non-overlapping magisteria" might be more connected than you might think. I'll leave the poetry of code as a discussion for another time, and focus here on similar processes. Writing a solid and engaging application is really like writing a solid and engaging story, at least, in how I view it all.

Bear with me please, as I go through my process of creating software. When I start building a new application, I start with the data involved as the core concept around which all the other elements are built. I define a model of the data, whether it's a username and password, or messages sent about, files uploaded or whatever. Even if I’m rushing and jump right in to building form elements within a user interface: a text field is different from a checkbox; they represent different data types. Those types become central to the development, and I make sure they are defined first.

But you'll notice—because you're clever that way—that in addition to mentioning the data model above, I mentioned software controls like form elements. The interface is just as important as the model, and the attention to detail in creating elegant controllers is the first thing a user will see and the last thing they remember. The last component of the application I build is the glue that binds the data model and the user interface. These views of the data are the transport mechanisms that deliver the pieces of the data from the database to the interface, and return the results of any interaction.

It all works very well, for projects large and small, in different programming languages and even different environments—mobile apps vs. server applications, for example. The whole process I just described is really just a design pattern, called in this case the "Model/View/Controller" paradigm, but how does it relate to writing? Well, that's the premise of this little article, and I appreciate your patience in staying with me so far.

So, let's just imagine I start writing a completely new story ex nihilo, my imagination the only thing that's filling a blank page with prose. Have I skipped the core foundation of the structure I mentioned earlier? Not at all, as the tone of the words I chose to write is one of those fundamental concepts. The model of the story, like the data of the application, is always present. Even if I'm not explicit about the style of what I'm writing before hand, I'm defining part of the model in how the words will follow my modest start.

Of course, when I write the actual words of the story, that is the interface that the reader will interact with. Their own imagination and background are as important as the words on the page; the story only comes alive when it's read. So, all the details of pacing, grammar, word choice and even dialogue attributions are part of the interface that helps the reader become immersed and merge with the story. But in order to get the details and the model to cohere, I have to have a plot, or glue that binds the themes to the details. After I set the model of the story that I write, I loosely outline the plot so that I can make sure the goals and results of the writing are revealed in the details.

Okay, that’s fine in theory; how does it work in practice? For my novel, The Agility of Clouds, I had originally focused on the character who was eventually to become the antagonist, Father Time. I outlined a story that followed his humble origins in Ireland to the English colonies in the New World before the Revolution, where his latent paranormal abilities would be awakened. His mentor would be the formidable Lady Seramis Helleborine, who became so interesting to me, she would eventually become the main character of her own book—the book I’m referring to—The Agility of Clouds.

But at first, the story was too dark, and I lacked a definitive theme—the reason why I was writing. For The Agility of Clouds, I decided on a theme very important to me to serve as the purpose of my writing: empowering women and minorities at a time of disenfranchisement and slavery. I further defined my style—specifically, the dialogue—to more closely match eighteenth century modes of expression.

With that new model in place, I created a new outline or view of my story. In this new outline, I plotted the development of the story as well as the emotional arcs of the characters. I made sure to cover the areas that would make the emotional connections I felt with the characters and their stories apparent to the reader. Then, it’s off to the races, and I will let you, dear reader, determine how the interface, or the actual text of the novel works!

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Thanks Chris! A fascinating perspective; I'll never look at a user interface the same way again.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Chris Pitchford's latest book is The Agility of Clouds. Here’s a bit more about Agility as well as the man behind it:

C. J. Pitchford is a programmer and peripatetic prog-rock paramour and parent, living in a neighborhood in Denver, CO named for a cemetery and a mental health institute. He wonders which one of those is where he will end up…

His newest release, The Agility of Clouds, a sailpunk adventure in the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jo Walton, launched September 1. “Forced to spy for King George II of England by the scheming Lord De La Warr, Lady Seramis Helleborine faces the most dire enemy of all: Father Time. Of course, her enemies hadn’t counted on opposition from one of the most brilliant minds of the eighteenth century, as she pursues justice across the skies in her improbable airship, The Agility of Clouds.” Available in ePub for Kindle at amazon.com, it is also available in an illustrated trade paperback edition at amazon.com and in an illustrated iBook format at the iTunes Bookstore.

Photo credit: "Featherweight" by Daniel Zedda under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.