(NaNoWriMo Day 3): 3rd Key Scene: The Midpoint Crisis

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” —George Orwell

Welcome to NaNoWriMo madness! Every day this month my plan is to blog about a key scene, one that pretty much any story of any genre has to include. Then I’ll take a closer look at how this scene, this structure, this general idea, is implemented in three popular genres: Action, Romance and Mystery. So far I've posted articles about the Inciting Incident and the Climax.

Today I'm going to talk about the Midpoint Crisis.

The Midpoint: Breaking It Down

I used to think that the Midpoint was primarily the place where the protagonist and antagonist confronted each other. I’ve changed my mind. It can be that, but it’s often more.

During the Midpoint the protagonist usually goes through what I’m going to call an enlightenment. She realizes that her understanding of the Special World of the Adventure is deeply flawed. She thought she knew what the Special World was like, what the capabilities of the antagonist are, but at the Midpoint she discovers she is oh-so-very wrong. As a result, the protagonist goes from being passive to active. She transitions from just reacting to the world to making plans and engaging with the antagonist.

What I just sketched in the above paragraph is generally true of most stories. Below, I go into specific variants. Note: Many of these points overlap. The difference, often, is one of emphasis.

What is it?

The protagonist goes from ignorance to knowledge. 

At the midpoint the protagonist discovers just how ignorant she has been about the Special World. Often the protagonist finds out how much she doesn’t know and, in that moment of revelation, is put at a disadvantage. The antagonist likes to do a bit of (justified!) gloating about how he has pulled the wool over her eyes. Then the protagonist uses this knowledge—and a bit of good luck—to escape.

Or, sometimes, the protagonist figures the truth out on her own. The antagonist doesn’t show up personally, he sends his minions to set a trap for the protagonist, one he hopes will prove fatal to her. But the protagonist is clever and figures out the antagonist’s scheme just in time to escape.

The pot of gold at the end of the Midpoint’s rainbow is that now the protagonist knows the true nature of the Special World. Sure, they know they’re in deep doodoo, but still. Understanding how little you know is the beginning of wisdom. Perhaps the protagonist has gotten a late start but at least now she’s in the game.

The protagonist goes from reacting to circumstances to shaping those circumstances. 

The protagonist goes from passive to active. Or perhaps that’s not the best way of putting it. It’s not as though the protagonist was a balloon drifting in the wind. When the antagonist makes a move on the protagonist she reacts, she resists, but that is the extent of her planning. The protagonist doesn’t initiate action. To be fair, perhaps she can’t because she doesn’t know the rules of the Special World yet and she keeps getting it wrong.

In any case, the rule of thumb is that before the midpoint the protagonist merely reacts to events. Something pushes her and she pushes back. She’s not thinking ahead, she’s not taking the fight to the enemy. She’s being swept along in a fast moving river, just keeping her head above water.

In the second half of the story, the protagonist makes a plan and does FINALLY take the fight to the enemy. She no longer merely reacts to the world around her, the crucible at the midpoint has transformed her into an active agent of change.

The protagonist goes through a point of no return. 

The Midpoint irrevocably changes the protagonist with the result being (among other things) that she cannot go back to the Ordinary World, at least not until she sees her quest to the end.

As we’ve seen, what the protagonist learns at the midpoint changes her, transforms her. There is no going back. This is a point of no return. What she learn at the midpoint transforms her from someone who reacts to circumstances, someone who is buffeted by external forces, into an agent who can form a plan and act on it. She is now an agent of change.

The protagonist chooses self-sacrifice because of something larger than themselves (e.g. love). 

Cage in Edge of Tomorrow is comfortable with his cowardice, his intimate, oh-so-reasonable concern for his own skin. But then he meets a girl, he falls in love, and at the Midpoint he puts her welfare before his own. It moves him from relying on her to save him to him taking the lead, to him trying to save her even if it means facing-off against the Big Bad all by his lonesome.

This all happens at the midpoint and it is this change, this internal transformation, that turns Cage from a passive, reactive, person to an active agent who makes plans and takes the fight to the enemy.

Discovery. 

The midpoint can simply be a moment of discovery, where the hero oh-so-briefly gains the thing he seeks only to have it snatched away from him. (After all, if it weren’t, the story would be over!) Sometimes this discovery is external (the protagonist briefly acquires his object of desire) and sometimes it is internal (the protagonist discovers who she really is). More on this below.

Where is it?

As the name suggests, this scene occurs smack dab in the center of the story. In practical terms, it usually occurs somewhere between 45% and 55% of the way through.

How is the Midpoint connected to the protagonist’s desires?

The midpoint confrontation is intimately connected to the protagonist’s desires (both internal and external) and the protagonist’s goal. For example, in Edge of Tomorrow, Cage’s weakness is an excessive concern for his own skin—he’s a coward. At the beginning of the movie his goal is to get as far away from the front lines as he can. His challenge is to love something more than he loves himself, more than he loves life. This begins at the midpoint.

The Midpoint: An Example

I’ve already given a number of examples. Ideally I would simply describe a scene in some detail and then go on to analyze it but today I’m running short of time so my description will have to be briefer than I would like.

In the movie Malice, Andy Safian, played by Bill Pullman, initially wants nothing more than to live in marital bliss with his wife, Tracy, and have reliable plumbing. After Tracy loses her unborn baby as well as her ability to have children (Andy gives the doctor permission to perform the surgery thinking he is saving her life), she lets Andy know she blames him for her loss and leaves him.

At this point Andy’s world is shattered and his goal becomes to find his wife and reconcile with her. At around the midpoint, or a little bit after[1], Andy begins to realize he never knew Tracy. Everything she told him about herself was a lie. But he doesn’t yet know why she did it. What did she want from him? Why did she do this? Why him? He needs to know.

This midpoint scene occurs a bit late, about 65% of the way through the movie, when Andy talks to Tracy’s mother, a woman he had thought dead, and finds out the whole ugly unvarnished truth about the woman he married. It is a dramatic scene. After Andy learns the truth he is able to come up with a plan that will even the scales of justice.

Andy’s journey is primarily one of ignorance to knowledge. Andy was happy. He was! Sure his life was based on illusion, but he was still happy as a drunken clam. But this was based on ignorance of who his wife really was and what she wanted from him.

Also, Andy’s journey is one of self-discovery. None of us really know what we’re capable of, what we will choose, until we are put through the crucible of life’s pinch points. Walking through the fire of his wife’s betrayal reveals who Andy really is. How? Through his choices. Everything is stripped away from him and in that rawness he is forced to act. These are primal choices, choices that reveal character, choices that reveal (both to themselves and the world) who someone really is.

How the Midpoint is Implemented in Three Genres: Action, Romance & Mystery

Action Genre

I know I’ve used this movie as an example a time or two, but let’s take a look at Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, since it is the quintessential action movie. At the midpoint Indiana Jones acquires his goal, he finds and (however briefly!) takes possession of the ark. This is a moment of (external) Discovery.

Romance Genre

The midpoint is where the two lovers come together. Whatever differences they have are temporarily resolved, their disputes are temporarily suspended. Depending on the spiciness of the romance, this could be anything from handholding to spending the night in a creatively equipped dungeon.

Murder Mystery Genre

I’ve read ... wow. A lot of murder mysteries, and they’re all a bit different. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that there’s only one thing to do at the midpoint. That said, there is often a false resolution at the midpoint. It seems as though the mystery is solved, that the murderer has been found. But, of course, he hasn't! If he had this would be the end of the story.

Often it only seems to the police as though the case is solved. The sleuth knows it isn’t but no one will believe her.

This is one of those places where the B-story can come in to lend a helping hand. The resolution to the B-story can expose the falseness of the A-story, expose that the person the police think is the killer really isn’t. For instance, the suspected killer can be murdered!

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I'd like to recommend a book that has meant a lot to me over the years, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Have you ever thought, “Who am I kidding, I’ll never be able to do this!” If so, read this book! Here’s what Robert McKee had to say about The War of Art: “As I closed The War of Art, I felt a surge of positive calm. I now know I can win this war. And if I can win, so can you.”

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That’s it for today! Tomorrow I’ll talk to you again about another key scene. Happy NaNo-ing!

Word count so far: 3,778 words.
Word count for today: 1,800 words.
Total words this month: 5,578 words.

Notes:

1. Or a little bit after the midpoint. There’s an important subplot that plays out in the first half of the movie that pushes the timing of the main arc back a bit.

How To Write Characters Your Readers Will Love: Character Checklist

I read one of my old short stories yesterday. It’s one of my favorites but it’s far from my best. At the time I wrote it I knew a little about story structure, but I didn’t apply the knowledge I had. Why?!

I can tell you from experience that knowing what to do is a long way from doing what you know. Implementing what you know, weaving that knowledge into the warp and woof of your story, that’s a tricky thing. And, for me, it has been the number one source of massive rewriting.

One of the reasons I’ve gotten better at dreaming up stories, stories that are easier to structure, is that I have a checklist! Never doubt the power and usefulness of checklists. Here's mine:

Character Checklist

I’ve written quite a bit about story structure but character development is just as, if not more, important. In order to get readers excited about what happens in your story you need to get them excited about who it happens to.

(By the way, these points are drawn largely from Jim Butcher’s article on character development.)

Our Goal: We want the reader to identify with the character. We want the reader to cry when the character’s heart is broken and rejoice when it mends.

Here are various traits or techniques that can help nudge the reader toward identifying with your characters.

1. Exaggeration

Sherlock Holmes isn’t just smart, he’s brilliant. He’s possibly the second smartest person in the world—behind his brother Mycroft, of course. In other words, his intelligence is exaggerated.

Exaggerating a trait makes it memorable. Generally speaking, a trait won’t make much of an impression on a reader if they don’t remember it.

2. Exotic Position

Make the setting exotic. Fun. Different.

Jim Butcher mentions four kinds of environments your characters can be in: social, geographic, intellectual, moral. Make sure each of these types of situations is interesting. Memorable.

Examples:

- Social: Your team is training to win an important tournament this fall. Or perhaps you are part of a team preparing to climb Devil’s Mountain.
-  Geographic: A far flung region of the globe. That is, far flung for your readers!
- Intellectual: I think of Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft's club. What does the smartest person in the world do for companionship? He creates a club and then makes sure there’s a strict no talking policy!
- Moral: A couple goes on what they think is a retreat to discover they’ve joined a cult!

3. Active Introduction

Communicate the essence of your character, through action, in a memorable way.

Jim Butcher calls a "characteristic entry action" an action that can communicate the essence of your character. For instance, take Mr. Monk from the TV Series of the same name. The beginning of every episode reestablishes the essence of the character.

Recall that Mr. Monk mourns the loss of his late wife, Trudy, and that he is a bundle of phobias and neuroses which all stem from his acute observational abilities combined with his fear of germs. He even has a saying: It’s a gift ... and a curse. One of his characteristic entry actions is straightening something—a pillow for instance—that is just a wee bit tilted. Once he had a cold and put his used kleenex in plastic baggies before he threw them out. Why? So that they wouldn't contaminate anything else.

The TV Show, Archer, is especially good at communicating the essence of the characters through action. At the beginning of every episode their tags and traits (for an explanation of tags and traits, see below) are reintroduced. Also, often, there is a humorous ending where the tags and traits are reinforced again. And it works beautifully!

4. Verisimilitude: Make your characters believable.

In order for a character to be interesting they must act believably. A big part of acting believably is acting consistently.

Butcher writes that:

“The single most important technique for doing that is through showing your character's: 1. EMOTIONS 2. REACTIONS and 3. DECISIONS. When something happens in your story, a character with a decent V-factor [verisimilitude] will react to it. The reader will see his emotional reaction played out, will gain a sense of the logic of a question or problem, and will recognize that the character took a believable, appropriate course of action in response.”

Butcher notes that most of this work, making your character act believably, is going to take place in sequels.

Tags and traits ... so much could, and has, been written about them. Briefly, a tag is a very short description of one concrete aspect of a character. Blue eyes, uses a whip, wears a cool hat. Jim Butcher advises having about one to three tags per character. For example, when I think of Indiana Jones I think of his whip, his hat and his leather jacket. When I think of Neo I think of his leather jacket and his sunglasses. A tag or trait can also be a mental attitude, for instance if someone is always glum or always chipper. Basically, anything that will make your character stand out from the rest, anything that will make them memorable.

A terrific book on tags and traits is “Techniques of the Selling Writer”. I’ve written about it here: Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel.

5. Empathy. Get readers to identify with your characters.

Jim Butcher writes, “if you can make people love who you want them to love and hate who you want them to hate, you're going to have readers coming back to you over and over again.”

Sure, but how? One way is through shared experience. Chances are, what makes you angry (or sad or happy or ...) makes your readers angry (or sad or happy or ...). Give those kinds of experiences to your characters and they will become real to your readers.

Dramatic experiences

- What angers you? Think of a time when you were angry.

- What saddens you? Think of a time of deep loss.

- What irritates or frustrates you? Think of a specific instance. What happened? What did you react to?

- What makes you joyful? Giddy? What has made you grin from ear to ear? What sort of things have made your day?

When we see other people behave in ways we can relate to—when we watch them experience deep loss, transcendence, happiness, and so on—we identify with them. We begin to care about them. This is true for characters as well.

But it doesn’t have to be BIG things. Even the little, small, events in life will do as long as they’re more-or-less universal. For example ...

- You’re driving to work on a day when you ABSOLUTELY can’t be late and, of course, you’re a stuck behind a slow driver.

- It’s late, you’ve had a grueling day, you walk to where you parked your car in the parking lot but it’s not there. You stand in the middle of the vacant parking spot and look around like maybe it’s still there and you’re just not seeing it.

A couple more ways to make your character more interesting:

A) Persecution. Have the protagonist be unfairly treated and lose something achingly important to him.

B) Big Challenge. Have the protagonist take on something that takes him so far out of his comfort zone that he's on a different planet. Most folks won’t be able to keep from wanting the guy or gal to succeed. Also, humans being the curious types we are, we won’t be able to help wanting to know if the character will succeed or whether he will be a spectacular failure.

For example:

- A character trying to protect something of great value puts herself in jeopardy by fleeing down a dark, dangerous, alley.

- A character on a mission to find a great treasure ignores grievous bodily peril while using his experience and intellect to defeat the traps between himself and his prize.

Does My POV Character Have to be Nice? 

Before I end this post, let me address one often asked question about characterization:

Does a character have to be nice for a reader to empathize with them?

I don’t think so. There are many characters who, though while not at all nice, are easy to identify with, empathize with.

I love Sherlock, the TV Series. Benedict Cumberbatch portrays Sherlock as brilliant, egotistical and definitely not nice. But we can relate to both Sherlock and to his ‘everyman’ Watson. We can understand Sherlock’s occasional bouts of boredom as well as John’s impatience with them.

 That's it! I apologize for the long post. And for skipping Monday. Truth is, I'm working on a non-fiction ebook and I'm hoping (* cross fingers *) to get it out this weekend.

I'm sponsoring this post with an affiliate link to Stephen King's marvelous exploration of good writing: On Writing. If you click that link my blog will get a tiny percentage of anything you buy on Amazon for the next 24 hours.

Cheers! Talk to you Friday. :-)

Creating a Three Dimensional Character

Three dimensional characters are interesting. Readers care about them. So the question is: What makes a character three dimensional?

Robert Mckee, in his wonderful tome, "Story," talks about how giving characters opposing qualities helps breathe life into them.

One way to make a character three dimensional is to give them diametrically conflicting characteristics. And, of course, the best way to do this is to show and not tell. Which raises the question: if a character is, say, both generous and selfish how do we show this?

Showing opposing characteristics:

1. People. Have the protagonist interact with different people. With one person they are, for example, bold and outgoing, with another they are shy and retiring.
2. Setting. Either have one character interact with two different settings, or have two characters who have opposite characteristics interact with the same environment.
3. Time. Look at a character at different times. (This is, I think, the most common way of exploring character.)

How to show opposing characteristics:

1. Using other fictional people to develop character.

In real life I wouldn't act one way to a friend and the next second act the complete opposite way. For instance, I wouldn't give a friend—or anyone!—a big bearhug and then slap their face. That behavior wouldn't even make sense.

Obviously, our characters shouldn't behave that way either. If we want to use our character's interactions with other, fictional, people to bring out diametrically opposed aspects of their personality then we craft other characters to specifically tease these characteristics out.

For instance, with one character—perhaps a character who is absent-minded (they’re always dropping things, forgetting where they left their glasses, their keys, etc.)—the protagonist is snippy and short. 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 either just showed one side of the protagonist or told the reader the character in question was a snob.

2. Using setting to show character.

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 cold and slimy presses 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 the object lying before you. It’s long and thin, slightly curved and covered in what looks like oil. It's a severed human finger! (Cue screaming violins.)

So there we have a setting. Now let's look at how that setting can help us with characterization.

Let's say Character A is naturally skittish and doesn't like dark old houses with ominously creaking floorboards. How would this character behave in the setting described above? I think that, like Gus on Psych, he would scream and run. (At least, that’s what I’d do!).

But what would a character like Indiana Jones do if confronted with a severed finger in the way described? I think Indy would look at it dispassionately, wonder who the finger used to belong to, then step over it. This shows us that Indy is the kind of person who has seen (and possibly done) it all. Nothing phases him. As was the case in Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is even more effective when you pair someone like Character A with Indy (as they in fact did).

Then, to show that Indy isn't just a calloused adventurer, that he is human, throw a few snakes in with him. That's right! The animal he is truly scared of. This shows us that Indy is both brave and timid, and we've demonstrated this simply by changing the environment. (The idea is to tailor the setting, the environment, to bring out these aspects of character.)

When we use a setting to show who our characters are as opposed to telling our readers who they are, not only do we avoid boring exposition, but we create movement, action and, ultimately, (hopefully!) interest.

3. Character change over time.

The most common way to exhibit opposite traits in a character is to do it over a span of 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 courageously faces the very scary antagonist and defeats her.

This is also what we mean by a character arc.

That's it for today! I'll post writing exercises on my new site (www.karenwoodward.org/blog) Saturday and Sunday and share them in my Twitter feed. Then on Monday I'll be back here with a new blog post. Until then, good writing!

Other articles you might be interested in:

The Key to Making a Character Multidimensional: Pairs of Opposites
Characterization Or Plot: Which Is Most Important To Readers?
Tags & Traits: Characterization And Building Empathy

Short Stories And Their Structure

Do you ever re-read your old blog posts? That's what I've been doing (and, inexplicably, I've been doing it while re-watching Dr. Who). I just finished reading—or, rather, rereading, "Short Story Structures: Several Ways of Structuring Short Fiction." It seems like I wrote that an age ago, but it's only (only!) been four years. And, believe it or not, I remember writing that post like it was yesterday.

In the years since, I've written many short stories—though I must confess these days I write more nonfiction than fiction. Still, though, I have formed a more definite idea of what the structure of a short story is. That said, I believe these things can be idiosyncratic. The kind of short story structure that appeals to me, that fits my writing style like a glove, that feels right or comfortable, might not be the one that feels natural to you. And that's fine. That's great! Take what feels right to you, what makes sense to you, and change or ignore the rest.

So, for what it's worth, here's what I currently think of as the archetypal short story structure. (It is very close to Sarah A. Hoyt's story structure, the one she outlined in her post: The Structure of A Short Story).

1) In the first couple of lines introduce your audience to the most startling interesting/puzzling/desperate thing about your main character's immediate situation.

In a full length novel we have more time to introduce the protagonist and her situation, but when we have only 1,000 words the story structure becomes condensed and every word counts.

Let's look at a few examples of terrific openers for short stories.

a) Stephen King, "Autopsy Room Four"

"It's so dark that for a while—just how long I don't know—I think I'm still unconscious. Then, slowly, it comes to me that unconscious people don't have a sensation of movement through the dark, accompanied by a faint, rhythmic sound that can only be a squeaky wheel."

b) Ernest Hemingway, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"

"It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened."

c) Raymond King Commings, "The World Beyond"

"The old woman was dying. There could be no doubt of it now."

d) Stephen King, "The Monkey"

"When Hal Shellburn saw it, when his son Dennis pulled it out of a mouldering Ralston-Purina carton that had been pushed far back under one attic eave, such a feeling of horror and dismay rose in him that for one moment he thought he surely must scream."

2) In the remainder of the first paragraph give your readers a good idea of your character's problem. At the same time, flesh out the setting and your protagonist's character.

If you're thinking that's a tall order, you're right. But short stories have to get moving quickly. The character's problem is the story hook. I think of this as the engine of the story, as what propels the events of the story forward.

Here's an example from Stephen King's "Autopsy Room Four" (I promise it doesn't include any grisly bits!) King writes:

And I can feel contact, from the top of my head to the balls of my heels. I can smell something that might be rubber or vinyl. This is not unconsciousness, and there is something too ... too what? Too rational about these sensations for it to be a dream.
Then what is it?
Who am I?
And what's happening to me?
The squeaky wheel quits its stupid rhythm and I stop moving. There is a crackle around me from the rubbersmelling stuff.
A voice: "Which one did they say?"
A pause.
Second voice: "Four, I think. Yeah, four."

What is the character's problem? The protagonist of our story is not dead and yet he is being wheeled into an autopsy room. We understand the protagonist's problem—he's not dead, but if something doesn't happen to prevent the autopsy he will be soon. That's a grizzly, and immediate, problem!

3) From the first paragraph up to Act Two. Develop the character's Ordinary World, specifically The Problem the protagonist is enmeshed in. (25%)

In a full length book, and in some longer short stories, the problem you develop in the first quarter of the story isn't the protagonist's main problem. The main problem, I'll call this the Story Problem, is introduced after the precursor problem is wrapped up (This wrapping up will require a few try-fail cycles).

On the other hand, in a short story of under 2,000 words or so I think it's best to give the protagonist the same goal throughout.

Story Goal: The goal the protagonist pursues from Act Two on.
Story Problem: What is keeping the protagonist from achieving the Story Goal.

Around the quarter mark of the story everything changes. If the protagonist had a preliminary goal, she now realizes that the forces which were keeping her from fulfilling that goal weren't what she thought they were. Now the protagonist adopts the Story Goal, acknowledges the Story Problem and enters the Special World of the adventure. From now to the end solving the Story Problem will be her focus.

4) Have the protagonist try to solve the Story Problem and fail. (25 to 50%)

I know it's a movie and not a short story, and I know I should probably update my movie references, but this movie is my all-time-favorite action-adventure story. Yes, I'm talking about Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark. That movie had terrific try-fail cycles. Indiana Jones has acquired the headpiece of the Staff of Ra, the artifact he needed to discover the exact location of the Well of Souls—and now wants to appropriate the Ark.

(For more information about try-fail cycles: Try-Fail Cycles and the Gap.)

First the antagonist René Belloq steals the Ark and seals Indy and his love interest, Marion, into the Well of Souls. Of course the Well is teeming with snakes (Indy hates snakes). Indy uses his torch to keep the snakes at bay, but the torches are burning down. Then Indiana realizes he could use one of the giant statues to knock down a wall and escape the snakes. But the next room is filled with skeletons. And so on. It's a terrific sequence!

That's the idea. Put the protagonist and those she loves in dire peril, have them grasp at straws trying to get themselves out of the fix. Your characters don't have time to think, they're reacting, going on instinct, and in that pressure cooker of adversity their character is revealed.

5) The middle of the story marks a sea-change in the protagonist. She switches from passive to active, from ignorance to knowledge. (50%)

I used to characterize the middle of the story primarily as the place where a showdown occurs between the antagonist and protagonist. And this often does happen.

But over the years I've come to view the midpoint as the place where the hero's view of the world—both the Special World of the adventure and the Ordinary World—changes. This change is permanent. There's no going back. The information, the knowledge, she acquires at the midpoint indelibly marks her. As a result it changes the story. It twists the plot.

Also, often this change takes place as a result of confronting the antagonist, the Big Bad, of the story. The antagonist gloats, boasts, to the protagonist. He lets her know just how impossible reaching her goal is. Perhaps he laughs at her, letting her know he thinks her attempts to effect change are pathetic.

The protagonist now understands that, despite all her planning, she can't achieve her goal, at least not the way she was approaching things. What she thought she knew about the world, about her opponent, was deeply flawed.

The situation looks impossible. Still, though, the hero gets away with her life, so that's something. (Although sometimes one of her allies, possibly her helper or her mentor gives up their life for her escape.)

(List of archetypes: Archetypal Characters.)

Perhaps the hero's allies help the protagonist pick up the pieces. Or perhaps, briefly, the protagonist gives up hope. Sometimes it takes the intervention—and possibly death—of one of the hero's allies to get her to take up the fight again.

6) The hero forms a plan. (60%)

Having regained her will to fight, the hero forms a cunning plan. Of course, as we will see, this plan goes disastrously wrong! But she will adapt with the help of her allies.

7) Three trials culminating in the Dark Night of the Soul (65% to 90%)

As I've said, everyone has their own way of thinking of these things, but to my mind the middle of the third act—here I'm thinking in terms of four acts—contains three events, each of them a major setback to the hero's plans, and each one more devastating than the last. The final setback is known as the Dark Night of the Soul and it completely scuttles the hero's plan.

This is the lowest part of the story. It seems impossible the hero could win. In terms of stakes, we knew all along what would happen if the hero failed, but now we discover that things are so much worse than we'd previously thought. Not only is the hero beaten, they are (apparently) obliterated.

Note: If you're writing a short story of less than 2000 words you might want to collapse these three events into one.

The Dark Night of the Soul generally comes before the hero's 'ah-ha' moment. There's something she realizes and this allows her to change her perspective. Her worldview shifts. She sees a possibility, a way out. It's a slim chance, but at this point in the story she has given up everything. The worst has happened, or at least been set in motion. She has one—exceedingly improbable—chance to save things.

And, of course, it's up to you, the writer, to determine whether she does in fact pull it off.

8) Climax and resolution.

The protagonist confronts the antagonist. Perhaps at first the antagonist is disdainful. He feels he has thoroughly beaten the protagonist and she no longer presents an interesting challenge.

Then the the protagonist draws on the lessons she has leant in the Special World, on her new skills. This gives her a fighting chance. But, as I said, it's your story. Does she win? Does she beat the antagonist and achieve the Story Goal? Or does she fall victim? Perhaps, in the end, she chooses to sacrifice herself for what she sees as a greater good.

The thing to keep in mind is that the climax, although it is a confrontation between protagonist and antagonist, is all about their opposing goals. The question is: will the protagonist achieve her goal?

The antagonist generally wants the same thing as the protagonist, but the two work at cross purposes. For example, both Indiana Jones and Dr. René Belloq wanted the ark but they wanted to do vastly different things with it. Indiana Jones wanted to take it back to the States and put it in a museum where scholars could study it while Belloq wanted to give the ark to Hitler in exchange for wealth and power.

9) Aftermath.

One doesn't have to spend a lot of time on this part, but I think it's important to show the aftereffects of the protagonist's confrontation with the antagonist. Show the hero back in the Ordinary World (if she survives the climax). How has her life and the lives of her allies, the lives of those in her tribe, changed because of her journey, her struggle?

That's it!

Other articles you might like:

A Story Structure In Three Acts
How To Write A Horror Story
Scenes, Sequels, Sequences and Acts

Part 7: RETURN - Bringing The Prize Home

Today I continue my series on Dan Harmon’s Story Structure. The first article in the series is here. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from Dan Harmon’s article, Story Structure 104: The Juicy Details.

7. RETURN - Bringing It Home

To review: Our protagonist (YOU) had a NEED that drove (GO) her into the Special World of the Adventure. While adapting to the strangeness of the Special World she SEARCHed for what would fill her need. When she found it (FIND), she TOOK it and RETURNED to the Ordinary World where she can now, transformed as she is, CHANGE the world.

Today we will be looking at the protagonist’s journey, or flight, from the Special World of the Adventure back into the Ordinary World.

The Flight From The Special World

Dan Harmon writes:

“For some characters, this [the journey back] is as easy as hugging the scarecrow goodbye and waking up. For others, this is where the extraction team finally shows up and pulls them out—what Campbell calls "Rescue from Without." In an anecdote about having to change a flat tire in the rain, this could be the character getting back into his car.

“For others, not so easy, which is why Campbell also talks about ‘The Magic Flight.’”

It doesn’t have to take up a lot of space on the page, it doesn’t have to be death-defying (though it could be!), but at some point around 75% of the way through a story the protagonist begins her return to the community, the world, they left behind in Part 3.

The Pursuit

But, as we’ve seen before, nothing comes without a price. The protagonist had to give up something, strip herself of the inessentials, before the meeting with the goddess in Part 5. Further, the knowledge acquired in Part 5 necessitated, in Part 6, that the last of the scales fall from the protagonist’s eyes and she endure the pain and ecstasy of seeing the story world for what it was. Or, to change metaphors, it necessitated reading within the world the deep truth of the story. But this was the last straw, the last little bit of pain/change needed to complete the protagonist’s transformation.

It comes, then, as no surprise that the protagonist’s exit from the Special World likely won’t be easy. Dan Harmon writes:

“The denizens of the deep can't have people sauntering out of the basement any more than the people upstairs wanted you going down there in the first place. The natives of the conscious and unconscious worlds justify their actions however they want, but in the grand scheme, their goal is to keep the two worlds separate, which includes keeping people from seeing one and living to tell about it.” (Story Structure 104)

As such, this part of a story is generally active. By this time many protagonists have become comfortable in the Special World so it will take an active push from something in the underworld to get the protagonist to leave. Christopher Vogler writes:

“This is a time when the story’s energy, which my have ebbed a little in the quiet moments of Seizing the Sword [TAKE], is now revved up again. If we look at the Hero’s Journey as a circle with the beginning at the top, we are still down in the basement and it will take some push to get us back up into the light.” (The Writer’s Journey)

For example, Dan Harmon writes that ...

“This is a great place for a car chase. Or, in a love story, having realized what's important, the hero bursts out of his apartment onto the sidewalk. His lover's airplane leaves for Antartica in TEN MINUTES! John McClane, who at step (1) was afraid of flying, now wraps a fire hose around his waist and leaps off an exploding building, then shoots a giant window so he can kick through it with his bloody feet.”

Mirroring

One of the things I like most about Dan Harmon’s treatment of story structure are the all too infrequent asides he makes about mirroring, about the way one part of the story mirrors or builds upon another. 

In Part 1 storytellers introduce something the protagonist is frightened of, something that is a definite weakness. For instance, in Edge of Tomorrow (spoiler alert) the protagonist, Cage, is a coward. He would do anything, absolutely anything, rather than fight. So, of course, he spends the entire movie fighting! Around the midpoint he becomes a seasoned fighter. But he has a special gift, a special ability, that gives him an edge. Acquiring that special ability marks his entry into the Special World of the Adventure and losing it marks his exit. 

Not every protagonist has as clear cut a flaw as Cage, a flaw that drives forward the action of the story. Indiana Jones, for instance, has flaws aplenty but they don’t drive the story forward, at least, not in the same fashion. Of course, as Dan Harmon mentions, it doesn’t have to be quite that clear cut. In Die Hard we learn early on that John MacClane is afraid of flying and then, in the RETURN portion of the movie, he overcomes that fear—or at least learns to master it—with dramatic effect.

That’s it! That’s it for today and it’s almost it for the series. Next time I’ll discuss the last step in the protagonist’s heroic transformation. Tell then, good reading and writing.

Mistakes of a Beginning Writer

A few days ago I dragged my old (and by “old” I mean ancient) stories out from under my bed and read through them. A couple weren’t bad. Many were snippets, fragments of thought. Perhaps today we’d call them microfiction. But all the stories had at least one glaring beginner mistake.

I began writing my boxed stories well over a decade ago at a time when the only arc I knew was the one Indiana Jones acquired from the Nazis. In those days, I finished about half my stories, but even the ones I did complete didn’t satisfy me. I knew there was something wrong with them but couldn’t quite figure out what.

Today, I thought I’d be fun to take one of the first stories I ever wrote and look at the beginner mistakes I made. 

The Ship

The story I chose—it’s one of my favorites; my execution didn’t do it justice—is about an enormous spaceship, a conservatory, traveling through deep space. It is thousands of years in the future and, though humankind is long since extinct, it carries our collective memories, entrusted to bioengineered orbs, into the future. 

Remember the alien probe from Star Trek IV? I imagined it like that, only rather than being a transport carrier for blue whales this ship sustained the life processes of organic orbs that are each encoded with the consciousness of one person. 

The vessel is almost like a ghost ship, wandering the universe, its only goal to keep its cargo safe.

I thought it would be fun to take this story and try to diagnose what was wrong with it, with my expression of the idea. 

Mistakes I Made:

1. The protagonist isn’t active. The orbs don’t really DO anything.

2. It’s not clear what the protagonist wants. 

3. Nothing happens.

In the case of this story, 1 & 2 & 3 are due to …

4. The wrong character is the protagonist.

When I began writing “The Ship” I had thought the contents of the ship, the orbs, were what the story was about, and that led me right smack into a brick wall. Why? Because the orbs don’t change over the course of the story! It’s implied they will change, transform, at some later date, but during the story … eh, not so much.

The story, as it stands, is about the ship. The ship has a goal: to safeguard the orbs. It refuels at conveniently placed stars and avoids dangers such as black holes, comets, asteroid belts, the odd space-pirate, and so on.

  

In retrospect, the idea is something like Silent Running, but after the bio-dome is set free to wander the solar system.

Summary Of Faults:

1) The protagonist isn’t active. 

The protagonist, the orbs, aren’t active. They are literal blobs of goo. They don’t DO anything.

2) No goal. 

Perhaps the reason the orbs don’t do anything is because they don’t want anything. After all, they’re gelatinous blobs, what could they possibly want? 

Against this my former self could argue they would want to stay alive, and that’s a good point, but the orbs live in a dream and have no knowledge of their true form.

3) The wrong character. 

If I was going to try to fix this story—which I’m not going to do; it is what it is and will be lovingly re-boxed and slid under my bed—I would make the ship the protagonist. The ship goes places and wants things. It can be harmed. 

4) Nothing happens. 

Now, I would begin the story at a point where the ship’s goal is put in jeopardy. Perhaps it’s running out of fuel, or it comes across an especially well-equipped band of space pirates. 

Or we could put the two together and say that, not only is it running out of fuel (and so must conserve energy) but its radar has just detected space pirates in the vicinity.

That’s the ticket!

That’s it for today. Have you looked at your old stories recently? If so, what beginner mistakes did you make?

BTW, here is the text of my story. Please keep in mind that I wrote this many, MANY, years ago. I know it is far from perfect. Read at your own risk. ;)

“The Ship,” by (a very young) Karen Woodward

The ship drifts through deep space. To an observer it would appear dead. Only the occasional whir of machinery disturbs the silence of its corridors.

Endless walkways, unused for millennia, snake through its body and lead to a vast metal womb, control panels decorating the walls. Lights blink on and off in hypnotic patterns that wash over a metal tank positioned at the center. Inside the tank, bathed by iridescent light, orbs float in lukewarm transparent liquid. 

The orbs dream of other places, other centuries—the soothing babble of a brook or the adrenaline filled, death defying, plunge of a skydiver. If any of the orbs become overexcited, the ship emits a light from one of the panels. The light bathes the affected orb in shifting patterns of illumination until its thought patterns quiet. 

Once every few millennia the ship corrects its course to avoid the death of a star. Occasionally, one of the orbs dreams of death and the ship assimilates its memories. Even more rarely, one of the orbs deteriorates, its cells dying. At these times, or in anticipation of them, one of the womb's panels retracts and a robot emerges. The robot injects the orb with substances designed to regenerate cells, mending it. With regular tending, the orbs are immortal as the stars, kept alive in anticipation of the beginning at the end of time.

Photo credit: Pulp-O-Mizer

Story Openings: Five Choices

Mythcreants is fast becoming one of my favorite blogs. Chris Winkle’s articles have the enviable quality of being both witty and informative.

I started off the day today by feeding Twitter. I comb through various blogs I’ve subscribed to (I use feedly.com and love it; and, no, I don’t have an affiliate relationship with them!), read the articles and then tweet links to those I found myself wishing I’d written.

Well, you know how it is, I started reading one article, followed a link to another and then fell down the social media version of the rabbit hole.[1]

Happily, though, I found “The Keys to a Great Opening Scene” over at Mythcreants. “The Keys” is the kind of post I look for, the kind of thing I love to read then keep in the back of my mind as I review my recent reads.

Then I thought, this is a blog post! I can use CS’s five-keys-to-writing-a-great-opening and go through the last few books I read, books that I enjoyed, to see how they score. (The books I look at will also be best sellers; I add that qualification as a kind of objective measure. That way you’ll know it wasn’t just me and three other people who thought these books were fabulous.)

Before I get started I’d like to make it clear that I agree with CW. Each of his five keys do (IMHO) make for a stronger opening. But, that said, many wonderful books, books that have sold fabulously well, lack one or more of these features. In that light I want to stress that if a book’s opening doesn’t receive a perfect score it’s not meant to reflect negatively on the book. No. I mention it to embolden nervous writers to try out different things, to experiment.

The Criteria

First, let’s take a quick look at the criteria Chris Winkle puts forward in his article The Keys to a Great Opening Scene. (I urge you to read CW’s article and to allow yourself to follow his rabbit warren of links. His site has some of the best articles on writing I’ve come across.)

1. Immediate Action

Chris Winkle writes:

“[...] surprising them [readers] with action and conflict in your opening scene is the single most effective way to keep them reading.”

CW links to another of his articles, one in which he discusses conflict in-depth (see: Five Ways to Add Conflict to Your Story). I’m not going to go into the kind of depth CW has, but I’ll just mention ...

a. Conflict within a character. 

The protagonist has conflicting desires. Part of him wants to find the buried treasure of the ancients even if it kills him while another part wants to stay at home with his family and watch his children grow up. 

Or the protagonist wants to become partner in the leading law firm in New York but she also wants to be there for her spouse who was recently diagnosed with a potentially deadly disease. Unfortunately, she can’t do both.

b. Conflict between one character and another. 

There’s goal centered conflict where the protagonist and antagonist each want the same thing but only one of them can have it. If Indiana Jones brings the Ark back to America then Dr. René Belloq can’t bring it to Hitler, and vice versa. 

But there’s also conflict between ideals. Again drawing from Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones cared about the artifacts themselves while Belloq was only interested in what the artifact could do for him. (The same could be said regarding their views of people, especially Marion.)

c. Conflict between the protagonist’s allies. 

Strictly speaking this is a subdivision of (b), but it feels different enough to warrant it’s own point. As before, this conflict could be internal or external. 

Internal: For example, a personality conflict. One person is loud and likes telling off-color jokes while another despises off-color jokes and just wants quiet so they could, I don’t know, read, sleep, write or merely hear oneself think. (Not, of course, that I’ve ever been in that situation personally. Of course not.)

External: Not all of the merry band of adventurers have the same goal. for example, in The Matrix, Cypher regrets taking the red pill and—far from wanting to destroy the matrix—wants to reenter it.

Again, I urge you to read CW’s article, “The Keys to a Great Opening Scene.”

Looks like I’m going to have to pick this up on Monday! Next time I’ll explore the pros and cons of beginning a story with a trailer or prologue.

Update: Here is an index to the posts in this series:

- Story Openings: Five Choices (the current post)
- Story Openings: Throwing Trouble at the Protagonist
- Story Openings: Tags and Traits: Bringing Characters to Life

- Story Openings: Tags, Traits and Tropes
- Story Openings: The Power of Paradox (upcoming)

Notes:

1. I want to share something with you that made me chuckle. Science Fiction and Fantasy author Tim Powers recently said:

“[...] you go to Wikipedia for some virtuous reason, because you need to find out about something. Except there’s those words in blue and you click on those and oh gee what is that, and pretty soon you’re eight levels in and you can’t find your way back to the page you started out wanting to look at. And then there’s a little sidebar that says ‘two-headed dog,’ and you think, well, jeez, what the hell’s that.

“And then if anything leads you to YouTube, you’ve had it.”

That’s from Mitch Wagner’s interview with Tim Powers: Interview With a Secret Historian. It’s a great read. Thanks to +Andy Goldman for recommending it.

Photo credit: "spence" by greg westfall under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

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.

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.