Something Everybody Wants

In my last installment, we considered a plot structure in which a character desires more than one thing, seeks more than one goal.  It’s a handy trick that not only provides character depth, but also almost guarantees conflict.

It occurred to me later that it might be worth looking at the trick in reverse – what happens when multiple characters all want the same thing?  The potential for conflict is obvious…

There’s a classic American comedy film directed by Stanley Kramer called It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  The movie revolves around about a dozen characters who are all given a hint as to the hidden location of $350,000 in stolen cash.  (It’s a 1963 movie – that was a lot of money back then.) Do the characters cooperate and agree to split the money?  Of course not.

When everybody wants something at the expense of someone else, conflict is inevitable.  The prize doesn’t have to be cash – it can be love, recognition, a scholarship, a place in the sun. The point is, our hero isn’t the only one striving for the prize. The question becomes not just what does your character want, but what will he or she be willing to compete for?  And how  far will he or she go to get it?

The rule of this type of story is this – only one wins the prize.  You can’t split a gold medal and your audience will feel cheated if you try.

But if we, as writers, can make our readers care about more than one of the characters seeking the goal, if we can make it uncertain who is going to finally win, if we can sympathize with the losers as well as the victors – well, that sounds like a darn good story to me.

Working Backwards

In the last three installments, I played around with building a story out of various pieces – a setting here, a conflict there, couple of characters – with the intention of showing how none of the individual pieces were enough to be story by themselves.

Today I’d like to take another approach.  If the point of art is to express something, to make your audience feel, then why not start at the point? In stories this is usually done through conflicts, through the risks the characters take and the decisions they face.

There are some concepts (regardless of how they are presented – scenes, images, conflicts, etc.) that we can expect most people to respond to strongly. Children in peril, for example. There are other concepts that, human individuality being what it is, that different people will respond to differently.  Say a cold glass of iced tea. It’s great if the weather is hot and you happen to like tea.

You want to include concepts in your narrative that people will respond to. But it most stories aren’t all children in peril, all the time. But the less universal the interest point, the more you have to build around it.  If you want to focus on that glass of ice tea, for example, you should probably also provide the hot day (a setting element) and someone who could really use a cup of tea (a character element) and possibly even some additional background.

What we are doing here is starting with an interest point and then working backwards to insert the elements that help sell that interest to the reader. All stories are contrivance and all stories contain conflict but it is never good for your conflict to feel contrived to the reader.

So if you have a really good, interesting conflict, perhaps somewhere in between my child is in danger! and I could sure use some iced tea, the next step is to construct the narrative elements that lead naturally to that conflict so that it doesn’t feel like it’s just been dropped into the story like a falling piano in a cartoon.

Sure, there are events in life that feel that sudden to the people they impact, but remember that your characters are only one element of your story.  A bomb going off can be every bit as stunning as it should be to your protagonist, even if your readers saw the bomb planted by the antagonist several pages ago. And better still if we’ve spent enough time with the villain to believe he or she really would resort to explosives.

All of this is really a way of saying you can work backwards, if you like. Start with a scene you’d like to have and then consider everything that is required to make the scene work, building the elements from the needs of the story instead of drawing the story from the elements.

I have a tendency to work in both directions. But as I have said before and will no doubt say again, every author is different, so play around with the tools and find what works for you. No one cares what tools you use to fix the sink – they care if the sink works.

Setting, Situation, Scene… Part Three – The Conclusion

Once, as a child, I read a very forgettable book with a memorable bit in it. I don’t remember the book at all, but I remember this: one of the child heroes (it was a kid’s book, after all) was in the middle of a Lassie movie when the call to action came. When he whined about missing the end of his movies, one of his friends pointed out that we all knew how it ended. Lassie saves the day.

Yeah, the first kid replies, but I wanted to see how.

In my previous two posts, I pulled together the elements of a story. We have an interesting setting, some character interaction, an intriguing situation, and even some nice conflict.

Will our heroes risk their jobs and possibly even their position in time and space in order to expose their employer’s dangerous experiments? And how will the odd, one-sided romance angle play out?

If you think about it, gentle reader, you probably already know the answers to those questions. I mean, it’s not like you haven’t been exposed to stories before. Of course our heroes will pursue both the dangerous truth and the romance. Wouldn’t be much of a story if they didn’t.

But, if I write it all up well, hopefully you will want to stick around to see how they reach those answers.  To be a story, to be a good and satisfying story, beguiling the reader or viewer or audience with all the fun bits isn’t enough. It’s just a start.

But the story has to resolve. To reach a conclusion. To reach a good conclusion consistent with and worthy of what has gone before. And your audience has to care enough to follow you there.

And if I knew all the secrets to making that happen I’d be rich and famous. But I tell you this: it can be done.

Strange Reverses

Conventional writing wisdom tells us that dramatic interest is generated by placing characters in conflict.  I’m  not saying it isn’t true, but I’d like to mention a couple of effective techniques I’ve seen that run a little bit counter to the notion – The Reversal and the Optimistic Cliffhanger.

Readers and audiences are quite accustomed to the notion of conflict in stories – they expect to see their heroes in peril (for horror and adventure stories) or in some emotional, social, or moral turmoil.  But they also like to see conflict resolved.  And it’s fun when the resolution doesn’t occur quite when you’d expect.

The Reversal is an old literary device when the fortunes of the protagonist change suddenly and unexpectedly.  The cool bit is that it works when the change is in favor of our hero.  It works particularly well when our hero creates the change in fortune, so his or her actions save the day. 

Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen anyway?  Sure, but the key to the Reversal is that it happens at an unexpected time.  Also, the Reversal isn’t necessarily the point where everything is tied up nicely with a pretty bow on top – its the point where things turn in favor of the hero, who may still have a fair bit of work to do before all conflicts are resolved.  But now, for the first time in several pages, we’re looking forward to the resolution instead of dreading it.

Not wanting to give specific spoilers here, but the second Star Trek movie, Wrath of Khan includes a great reversal if you need an example.

There’s a newer, similar technique that I’ve observed primarily in serial entertainments such as TV shows and comic books.  It doesn’t have an official term that I’m aware of, so I’ll call it the Optimistic Cliffhanger.  In a traditional cliffhanger, the episode stops at the worst possible moment for the hero.  (Note that cliffhangers work in novels, too – look for them at the end of chapters.)

The Optimistic Cliffhanger occurs when the episode ends a few minutes later – just after the hero has escaped from the trap.  The dramatic tension that keeps the pages turning, that keeps us coming back for the next episode, is generated by the promise of what the hero is going to do next.  Instead of ending when the villain plunges the hero into the tank full of sharks, it ends with the hero soaking wet, heading after the villain and grinning, “Now it’s my turn!”

It is interesting to me that both of these techniques draw their power from the promise of resolution.  They form that dramatic points in which the hero starts to create the resolution of the story, the point where we as readers suddenly realize that success might actually be possible.

Off the Map

We’ve been having intermittent power outages in the basement where I live. We also have for a pet a curious breed of Siamese Vomiting Cat.  As a consequence of these two facts, I spent part of my morning cleaning up cat barf by candlelight. And I’m thinking, “Yep. This is my life.”

Some stories start with a bang. Others take time to establish whatever passes for ordinary life in the protagonist’s world before they go off the map. Another common trick is to start with a prologue where someone other than the protagonist gets the bang  and then cut to establishing the ordinary world. But in most cases, that world does get established fairly early on.

Stories, the conventional wisdom tells us, are based on conflict. But it can’t just be any old conflict. It has to be sufficiently important conflict. One measure of conflict is how much it takes the character outside of his or her ordinary life.

In big epic stories, travel is often a metaphor for this internal journey – Frodo going from the comforts of the Shire to the fires of Mount Doom, Indiana Jones leaving a nice, safe university position to chase over the rooftops of Cairo – but a person can just as easily face a life-altering decision at home. If the decision is big enough, day-to-day affairs like cleaning up after the cat become hazy and far away.

Another way of looking at it is to consider what’s at stake. In any conflict situation, the protagonist can take action and succeed, take action and fail, or not take action at all. What are the consequences? The stakes have to be real and significant beyond the daily trials of our ordinary lives. In order to be satisfying, the conflicts can’t have an easy solution, either.

And one more thing: They have to be personal. Superman may spend a lot of time saving the world, but the good writers like to remind us occasionally that if he fails he doesn’t just lose a set of continents and oceans. He loses Metropolis.  He loses Lois. And that’s why even Superman has an ordinary life.

Got to have the map before you can go off it.

Story and Structure, Part Two

Once, back in the ancient days, there was a poor cobbler’s son, who wanted nothing so much in all the world as to marry the baker’s daughter and live a quiet life.

Still talking about the tricks I used in creating a satisfying story on the fly. Today I want to talk about stylistic language, the Rule of Three, and story structure.

Stylistic language is just setting and keeping a tone of voice that suits the tale. One of my personal rules when I was performing as a storyteller was never start with “Once Upon a Time.” To me, that phrase is reserved for either (a) working with very small children, or (b) making fun of fairy tales and parodying them.

So at the very beginning of the story, I had to make a decision that helped set the tone of voice. And I kept a number of stock beginning phrases available to select from.

The other interesting thing in the example above is that contains a lot of compressed information. A good rule in performing is to say what you need to say and then shut up. My intro above  introduces in one sentence a setting reference (back in ancient days/fairy tale), a hero (poor cobbler’s son,) and the goal that must be met for the story to end happily (marry the baker’s daughter). 

Important side note: The goal can change if the character grows and changes. The story can end happily if he learns that the baker’s daughter is not really for him and he marries someone else. But it’s easier to simply meet the conditions set at the beginning.

So in order to hang a story on these bare bones, the hero needs to overcome an obstacle between him and his goal.

And this is where the Rule of Three comes in. Three is a measure of complexity. One is simple and unsatisfying. So he asked for her hand in marriage and she said yes. End of story. Yawn. Two is not quite enough to clearly establish a pattern. Four is more than we need.

So the hero must do three things. Or maybe one complex thing with the help of three friends or allies. Or three kindnesses he does to strangers along the way get him the three tools he needs to succeed.

Story and Structure, Part One

I used to do this trick where I’d tell a story, totally impromptu, making it up as I go along. I’d do this performing to a live audience. The general consensus from the feedback I got is that, over time, I got fairly good at it. I haven’t tried it in years, mind, so I don’t know if I still have the knack.

But I’ve been thinking recently about how I did it. I relied on a number of tricks – stylistic language, the rule of three, creative repetition, and a basic, even formulaic, idea of story structure.

I’m going to start with that last one first, because it is actually the most important one for writing. The others are mostly embellishments, so we’ll get to them later.

Usually, in impromptu work, the performer is given a topic or challenge. This does two things: first, it keeps the performer from just telling some already memorized work and second, it gives the performer a starting point. I tended to work from three things, often a character, a place, and an item, which I asked the audience to provide.

So, basic story structure: We start with a hero (character) in an established situation (place) who has something that he or she needs to do (perhaps acquiring or delivering an item). The necessary conflict is generated when doing the necessary thing doesn’t turn out to be easy.

The story is resolved when the hero succeeds. How satisfying the story is depends on how cleverly and how easily the character succeeds.

And that’s where the rule of three comes in, which I’ll explain next time.

Decision Points

Last time I wrote about the decisions authors make detailing their characters. This time, I’d like to consider the decisions made by the characters themselves.

Stories are built on the actions of characters, and the making of decisions is a core action. Unless a character is somehow acting against his or her will, all character actions inherently include the decision to act.

A great deal of dramatic power can rest on a single decision point. Choosing between two or more marriage proposals, for example. Or a pregnant woman choosing whether to have a surgery that will help her but risk her unborn child. Choosing whether to kill an enemy or show mercy. Whether to attend a funeral where one is unwelcome, because the dead must be honored.

For a choice to have dramatic power, it has to be difficult. Choosing between two bad options, or between two good but mutually exclusive options, or choosing between risks. Easy choices don’t count.

And showing the character making the decision also ties him or her to any consequences that follow. Even the unintended ones.

Character can also be revealed in the decision making process. Why choose one way and not the other? The author can spend paragraphs expounding on motivation, or can simply let the choice stand for itself.

Authors have a lot of decisions to make. Sometimes, so do their characters.

The Moment of Doom

So I’m rewriting my April Project D&D movie script (see any of my posts from April for more info). Now as I noted before, I’m rewriting to establish stakes for the hero’s quest, to make his success or failure more meaningful to the audience.

Only, now that I’m rewriting, I’ve hit another snag. I am questioning now whether I need a moment where things go really bad, where the hero fails and the quest seems impossible.

It’s not that there are no conflicts. But the pattern is something like: monster attacks, heroes find a way to beat monster, heroes move on to next monster. Rather like the source material, actually. And I have some personality conflicts along the way as well, just to add a little spice.

But the heroes are never captured, hope is never lost, the fellowship of the core team is never truly tested. And I’m afraid the quest will seem too easy without such a moment, too unsatisfyingly simple.

I’ve not followed any of the movie formulae – this isn’t meant to be the classic three-act pattern or the Hero’s Journey – but now I find I’m questioning whether I am missing a fairly classic element. What I’m looking for here is the Descent into the Underworld.

So I guess I’ve got a bit more rewriting to do before we can all have that script-reading party.

Easy as A, B...

There's a common plotting trick, called the A Plot and the B Plot. I first heard of in reference to episodic television, but it can work as well any media. The basic idea is to have two running plots in the same setting and period of time.

The first plot, designated A, is in the forefront, involving major action and lead characters. The other plot, plot B, often involves peripheral characters and is likely less significant to the overall story.

I would argue that the overall work is stronger if the running plots are somehow related. I've seen shows were it felt like the two plots weren't even from the same writer -- and given the production schedules of weekly television, I suppose that's entirely possible. I can see at least three obvious degrees of interaction. From strongest to weakest, they are:

Connected
The two plots are connected, either in their action or thematically. The solution of one plot's conflict may contribute to (or even further complicate) the ultimate resolution of the other. (And generally, the A plot, being larger and more important, is resolved last.) Even a thematic link makes the overall story stronger.

Disconnected
The two plots have nothing to do with each other. This can still work, but it creates more of a balancing issue to make sure one plot doesn't completely outweigh the other. On the plus side you can cover more bases, maybe an action or mystery plot on one hand and a drama or comedy on the other.

Missed Connection
This one is bad and I've seen it happen. In this sad scenario, there is an obvious way that the plots should interact, but they don't. The characters involved in plot B find evidence that the hero of plot A needs, for example, to resolve a mystery. But even though the characters meet and discuss their respective plots, the plot B folks never bother to mention that they can solve plot A. This is, of course, frustrating to the reader/viewer/audience.

Things to consider when plotting your next work.

Tensioning the Reader

In my last post, I discussed a simple formula for conflict: Find what the characters want and don't give it to them. This time, I'd like to discuss a more advanced and more difficult version: Figure out the readers (viewers, audience, etc.) want and don't give it to them.

Ultimately, you want to satisfy the readers but you can keep them waiting for it. You have a villain that they need to see thoroughly defeated? You have a couple that are so perfect for one another that the readers want them to fall in love? You can tease the readers with almosts -- the hero looks like he's going to trounce that dastardly villain this time, but no, this isn't the final showdown. Not yet. And there's still that pesky ex to deal with. It's another way to create dramatic tension.

The longer we have to wait for that grand moment, the better it is when it finally arrives -- at least to a point. You don't want to go on so long that the reader loses faith that we will ever get there. And the more you build to a climax, the more, well, climactic it has to be. The pay-off has to be worth the wait. It's back to that idea of keeping your promises to the reader in order to make a satisfying story.

And there is another danger as you steer the plot to tease the reader. The reader might see what you are doing. The actions of the plot still have to develop naturally from the decisions and actions of the characters. If a character does something the reader thinks they are unlikely to do and the result of that character action is clearly the creation of an additional plot wrinkle -- it all just ends up feeling contrived by the author.

I suppose all action in a story is contrived by its author, but the reader is willing to suspend some awareness of that point if the actions appear to be derived from the characters rather than the needs of the writer. If the audience asks "Why did the writers make her do that?" instead of "Hmm, why is she doing that?" you've already lost the battle.

Desire and Denial

So far, I've discussed conflict in terms of meeting challenges and obstacles. But there's another way to look at it: figure out what your character wants and don't give it to him. It's a nice trick because it starts with telling us something about the character, and, if you'll forgive the buzz words, it ensures the conflict will be character-driven.

Everybody wants something. From the basics of food and shelter to the more complex desires like love, respect, power, and adoration, every character has something they fiercely believe they need.

True story: I had been unemployed for months and was in danger of my unemployment payments running out when I finally got called in for a job interview. So naturally, I had a flat tire. I knew it was the interviewer's last available time slot, so I couldn't reschedule. Not enough time to call a cab, the upstairs neighbors weren't home to loan me their car, fixing the tire didn't work... Man, I wanted my shot at getting that job. And I actually did make it to the interview on time, but I had to work for it. See the dramatic tension?

It's a simple formula - don't give 'em what they want. In fact, it's a little too simple. It's fine for a very short story, but in any extended form (novel, TV series, movie franchise), it will become tiresome if the hero never gets anything he wants. It still works, however, if leavened with a little bit of success.

Take a classic romance plotline: Girl meets Boy. Boy is cute (and probably rich), but more importantly, Girl sees something in Boy that others don't -- kindness, perhaps. Boy has no idea Girl exists. Girl pines for Boy. This is stage one - she wants something she can't have. Girl works at getting Boy's attention, or is thrust into an awkward situation where they are forced to work together. Somewhere beyond the halfway point of the story, Girl gets Boy. Their love is recognized, acknowledged, and (depending on the age of the intended audience) consummated.

This is when Estranged Wife shows up. See, a single success doesn't necessarily end the story. Now Girl has to fight to keep what she wants. Or consider that maybe, having gotten it, what she thought she wanted all along wasn't what she really needed. Now we have opportunities for character growth.

And if all else fails, you can always ask -- what does my character want next?

Power

A lot of today's popular fiction involves power figures. Our adventure stories are full of cops, tough guys, and gunslingers. The fantasy section of the bookstore is full of vampires, werewolves, and witches. The summer movie screens are filled with superheroes and space aliens.

A degree in psychology is not required to understand the appeal. By identifying with powerful figures, we indulge our own power fantasies. If I could fly...

But powerful figures can be tricky to write. Drama requires conflict and greater power requires greater conflict. It's harder to threaten a character who is bulletproof. It's harder to fool a mind-reader. It's just plain difficult to find good challenges when your hero is a god. Finding excuses to make the hero weak (on anything other than a temporary level) only dillutes the power fantasy for the audience.

Power is relative, however. One common solution is to make the antagonist even more powerful. The hero is still strong -- it's just that the villain is even stronger. Then the challenge is for author to find the hero to some believeable way to overcome the more powerful foe.

There is a danger of escalation, espescially in ongoing serial adventures. The villain can't let the trick that worked last time beat him again. As the protagonist develops more tricks and therefore becomes more powerful, it becomes harder to account for what he can do. "Why didn't he do that mind trick he did three episodes ago," departing fans will ask. Or "C'mon, she's already been established as a better fighter than that!"

There is another type of conflict that can be used with powerful characters. There is a drama in considering how power should be used. One of my favorite Star Trek episodes involves a case when the Enterprise was the most powerful ship in the conflict. There was no question of who would win if the phasers started firing. The drama came from the question of how that power would be used and what the potential long-term consequences would be.

Spider-man's origin is a classic example. Spidey is the only one in the story with super-powers at all. But his failure to use them rightly leads to the death of his Uncle Ben and thus drama, conflict.

My current set of published novels involve people who gain magical power that they never asked for and don't know how to use. They have to learn the responsibilities of power. I rather suspect that more of us dream of having power than dream of having the wisdom to use it well.

Powerful characters are fun, no question. But writers should think carefully about how to challenge them.

Talkin' Conflict

Drama comes from conflict. No big revelation there. That's high school English level stuff. But here is the tricky part -- quality drama comes from seemingly insurmountable conflict. It comes from seeing our protagonist face a problem with no obvious solution. Because, after all, if there is an obvious solution and our hero doesn't see it, then our hero is an idiot.

In my second novel -- speaking of missing the obvious, I never established my credentials before starting this project. I am, in fact, a published novelist. You can look me up on Amazon and everything. So, where was I?

In my second novel, my hero is a rock star and she's on a special intimate venue tour where she's playing accoustic versions of her hit songs. She loves the tour. She believes she needs the tour. So, as a typical sadistic author, I want to create conflict by taking the tour away from her. I need her to leave the tour in order to grow and learn what she really wants and needs.

So I wrote this scene where her management shuts the tour down because it is not promoting new songs and they want a new album. Nice conflict, right? But the thing is, there was this trend awhile ago (and the book was written awhile ago) where rock stars were successfully selling albums recorded off of live accoustic tours. The tour could be the new album. And if I could think of it, the reader could think of it.

You can't be smarter than all your readers. But you still want to try. So I went back and re-wrote the scene. Management threatens to shut the tour down, the band says "Hey, let's make a live concert album!" and suddenly our hero looks smarter because she's found a solution to a conflict instead of missing a solution to a conflict.

And everyone is happy. Except the author, because the plot isn't going the way he intended and he doesn't want the characters happy at this stage of the book. But that's a conflict that's invisible to the reader and that's how it should be. When you buy a chair, you don't care how difficult it may have been for the carpenter to make. You care whether it's a quality chair.

Quick note: Next Thursday is Christmas Eve. If I don't get the regular Thursday post out, I will pick up again the next Tuesday.