Three Acts: Three "Things' That Can Increase the Coherence of Your Conflict

 Try this exercise if you're afraid your conflict is lagging!

This uses the 3-act Structure to organize your plot events into setup, rising conflict, resolution, and that structure provides propulsion and the progression of events within the story arc. Willy-nilly eventing won't build up the dramatic power that intensifies the emotion.  In fact, effective plotting is all about cause and effect. Events matter because they cause something else to happen and something to change and the characters to feel. The accumulation of events is what propels the reader to read on, and organizing this cause/effect sequence into acts will help you build tension and cause change.

Three Acts:
Act 1 -- Set up conflict.
Act 2 -- Make conflict rise.
Act 3 -- Make conflict explode, and then resolve it.

Try breaking these acts into 3 big events of ascending emotional risk: Examples-
3 times she needed help
3 times he got stuck
3 attempts to deal with the conflict
3 attempts to reach the goal
3 heartbreaks
3 secrets
3 lies
3 failures
3 betrayals
3 times she didn't ask for help

Just try it-- ascending risk, remember!
Then consider: What are the risks he/she is afraid of?
Why is this a risk?
What might this risk cause, and what might be caused by their trying to AVOID the risk?

THREE ACTS. THREE SECRETS.
For example, let's take one that is just full of emotion-- secrets. Three secrets.
Kept or revealed? Or both? Maybe the attempt to keep a secret leads to revelation.
Let's think of ascending risk --
Act 1: This sets up the first secret. She's an FBI agent, and she's sent undercover into a small town. So the first secret is that she's secretly an FBI agent.
There's not a lot of emotional risk in this secret because it's her job. But it sets in motion all the rest of the risks.
What does this cause? It causes her to be placed in this small town to investigate the local bank, and it causes her to have to take on a disguise—she's pretending to be a bank teller.

Act 2: The next secret comes when she meets and is drawn to the son of the bank president. This is just the sort of guy she despised when she was growing up, rich and polished and educated. But she's supposed to investigate his father, and she's supposed to be a bank teller who would be flattered by his intentions, so she has to keep the secret from him about who she is... and the secret from her boss that she's falling in love with one of the "targets".
What does this cause? She's getting deeper entrenched into deception. It's going to be far, far worse now when her secret is revealed. She's also becoming alienated from her job, from her old self, from the FBI, as she's not reporting her contact with Junior. Maybe she's even started lying to her boss, withholding information that could get Junior in trouble.

Act 3: What's the final secret? It's probably her real identity, not just FBI, but her former identity. Maybe she's never told anyone that she grew up as "trailer trash," the daughter of a small-town prostitute or drug dealer. Her final secret is her shame, which has caused her all along to hide her past and her true self, to cut herself off from her old friends and her family, maybe even to make up a more generic and acceptable past.
(The big task would be—and I'm too brain-dead now to come up with an idea!—make the revelation of that secret in the start of Act 3 happen and affect the plot.)
REMEMBER TO TRY AND ASSEMBLE THIS IN "ASCENDING ORDER OF EMOTIONAL RISK." THE RISK OF THE LAST SHOULD BE THE GREATEST RISK TO THE CHARACTER'S EMOTIONAL SECURITY. SO IN THIS CASE, WE'RE SEEING THAT THE BIGGEST SECRET IS HER PAST, AND THE GREATEST DANGER IS SHAME.

Let's try another "Three Acts, Three Somethings."
Remember the film Casablanca? Rick is a symbol of the United States before Pearl Harbor, isolated, uninvolved, as the world crashes around him.
This is a tightly plotted story, and there are several "3 things", but the one I like to focus on is "Three Times Rick Refuses To Help." (Tip: To determine “ascending risk,” you want to ask after each of the 3 things: What is the risk? What does this cause?)

Act 1: Ugarte asks Rick for 2 things—to hold the letters of transit for the evening (he agrees), and later to help him escape from the police (Rick refuses this time).

What is the risk? There's some emotional risk from refusing to help—a few hours later, he drunkenly refers to it—but he can shrug it off as kind of a cost of doing business—sometimes, to run a successful saloon, you have to sacrifice a friend.

What does this cause? It's very important externally because with Ugarte dead, Rick is now stuck with these letters of transit, and as he says drily, "As long as I have them, I'll never be lonely." (I tell you, this film is SO well-written, because in fact, he is alone, and his loneliness is ended only because he has those damned letters of transit!)
--

Act 2: The news of his having the letters spreads, and he's approached by Victor Laszlo, a Resistance leader who will be arrested by the Gestapo if he can't get out of Casablanca. When L offers to buy the letters (which will get him and his wife to safety—do NOT ask why! Because, that's why. These are magic letters :), Rick refuses, and when asked why, says bitterly, "Ask your wife."

Much more emotional risk here! In refusing to help, he is acknowledging that the wife (Ilsa) hurt him earlier, and he's using this as a means of revenge. His hard-won isolationist wall is beginning to crumble. Also, weirdly, he's sort of letting himself hope that Laszlo will find out about the earlier affair and cast Ilsa out so that she will come to Rick again.

What does this cause? Well, one effect is, paradoxically, to reconcile Laszlo and Ilsa. She's been keeping the secret of the former affair (she'd thought L was dead), and this actually lets Laszlo understand what happened and gently indicate that he doesn't blame her. (This becomes a huge part of her conflict, actually, as she realizes she still loves both of them.)
For Rick, this causes him to get more and more involved in Ilsa's dire situation and make it that much clearer that he's still in love with her.
--

Act 3: Ilsa herself comes to him and asks for—no, demands—the letters of transit to save Laszlo so he can continue to fight the Nazis. She is so determined that she pulls a gun on him, and he is so determined to refuse to help her, that he invites her to shoot him. Rather than help her, he will commit suicide! Talk about emotional risk. Helping her would be worse than dying?
(She as always ends up acting with love, putting the gun down and confessing that she still loves him, and he ends up embracing her—this is one of the greatest scenes in the history of film.)
What is the risk? That he will fall in love with her again (as he does), that he will lose all his defenses, that he will be hurt again, that he will lose her. This ALL happens. (That is, sometimes the greatest emotional risk should explode.)

What does this cause? Rick’s refusal causes her to confess her love, and that leads to their tacit decision to use the letters of transit. But here's the amazing thing. Ilsa says to him, "You'll decide what's right? For all of us?" That is, she is telling him that whatever he decides to do, he has to help Laszlo to safety. (She assumes that he will give Laszlo one letter of transit, and she and Rick will escape together some other way. And you know what happens, or if you don't, go watch the film!!!!!)
The real result is Rick's return to the family of man, actually. He accepts responsibility for other people, and joins the war effort. He gives up his isolation and accepts the power of love.

Notice that a powerful place to put 'the thing' is close to the end of the act, so that its repercussions propel into the next act.

So look at your own story, and see if you can identify "Three Things", or invent them, and center each act upon this thing.
1. What is the "thing" in "Three Things" in your story? If you'd like to speculate about what this means, how it relates to a deep internal issue or theme (like Rick's refusal to help is an aspect of his fear of getting too involved again and getting hurt), have at it.

2. Where can you put some manifestation of "this thing" in each act?
For each occurrence, ask:
    a. What is the emotional risk here (and remember to assemble these three in ascending risk)?
    b. What does this thing cause to happen?

3. How can this thing near the end of the story (maybe the dark moment?) cause a great emotional change?

Try that. It might mean a bit of re-arranging or intensifying events you already have.

Any examples?  Questions? Ideas?

Alicia  Writing articles

Three Acts: Three "Things' That Can Increase the Coherence of Your Conflict

 Try this exercise if you're afraid your conflict is lagging!

This uses the 3-act Structure to organize your plot events into setup, rising conflict, resolution, and that structure provides propulsion and the progression of events within the story arc. Willy-nilly eventing won't build up the dramatic power that intensifies the emotion.  In fact, effective plotting is all about cause and effect. Events matter because they cause something else to happen and something to change and the characters to feel. The accumulation of events is what propels the reader to read on, and organizing this cause/effect sequence into acts will help you build tension and cause change.

Three Acts:
Act 1 -- Set up conflict.
Act 2 -- Make conflict rise.
Act 3 -- Make conflict explode, and then resolve it.

Try breaking these acts into 3 big events of ascending emotional risk: Examples-
3 times she needed help
3 times he got stuck
3 attempts to deal with the conflict
3 attempts to reach the goal
3 heartbreaks
3 secrets
3 lies
3 failures
3 betrayals
3 times she didn't ask for help

Just try it-- ascending risk, remember!
Then consider: What are the risks he/she is afraid of?
Why is this a risk?
What might this risk cause, and what might be caused by their trying to AVOID the risk?

THREE ACTS. THREE SECRETS.
For example, let's take one that is just full of emotion-- secrets. Three secrets.
Kept or revealed? Or both? Maybe the attempt to keep a secret leads to revelation.
Let's think of ascending risk --
Act 1: This sets up the first secret. She's an FBI agent, and she's sent undercover into a small town. So the first secret is that she's secretly an FBI agent.
There's not a lot of emotional risk in this secret because it's her job. But it sets in motion all the rest of the risks.
What does this cause? It causes her to be placed in this small town to investigate the local bank, and it causes her to have to take on a disguise—she's pretending to be a bank teller.

Act 2: The next secret comes when she meets and is drawn to the son of the bank president. This is just the sort of guy she despised when she was growing up, rich and polished and educated. But she's supposed to investigate his father, and she's supposed to be a bank teller who would be flattered by his intentions, so she has to keep the secret from him about who she is... and the secret from her boss that she's falling in love with one of the "targets".
What does this cause? She's getting deeper entrenched into deception. It's going to be far, far worse now when her secret is revealed. She's also becoming alienated from her job, from her old self, from the FBI, as she's not reporting her contact with Junior. Maybe she's even started lying to her boss, withholding information that could get Junior in trouble.

Act 3: What's the final secret? It's probably her real identity, not just FBI, but her former identity. Maybe she's never told anyone that she grew up as "trailer trash," the daughter of a small-town prostitute or drug dealer. Her final secret is her shame, which has caused her all along to hide her past and her true self, to cut herself off from her old friends and her family, maybe even to make up a more generic and acceptable past.
(The big task would be—and I'm too brain-dead now to come up with an idea!—make the revelation of that secret in the start of Act 3 happen and affect the plot.)
REMEMBER TO TRY AND ASSEMBLE THIS IN "ASCENDING ORDER OF EMOTIONAL RISK." THE RISK OF THE LAST SHOULD BE THE GREATEST RISK TO THE CHARACTER'S EMOTIONAL SECURITY. SO IN THIS CASE, WE'RE SEEING THAT THE BIGGEST SECRET IS HER PAST, AND THE GREATEST DANGER IS SHAME.

Let's try another "Three Acts, Three Somethings."
Remember the film Casablanca? Rick is a symbol of the United States before Pearl Harbor, isolated, uninvolved, as the world crashes around him.
This is a tightly plotted story, and there are several "3 things", but the one I like to focus on is "Three Times Rick Refuses To Help." (Tip: To determine “ascending risk,” you want to ask after each of the 3 things: What is the risk? What does this cause?)

Act 1: Ugarte asks Rick for 2 things—to hold the letters of transit for the evening (he agrees), and later to help him escape from the police (Rick refuses this time).
What is the risk? There's some emotional risk from refusing to help—a few hours later, he drunkenly refers to it—but he can shrug it off as kind of a cost of doing business—sometimes, to run a successful saloon, you have to sacrifice a friend.
What does this cause? It's very important externally because with Ugarte dead, Rick is now stuck with these letters of transit, and as he says drily, "As long as I have them, I'll never be lonely." (I tell you, this film is SO well-written, because in fact, he is alone, and his loneliness is ended only because he has those damned letters of transit!)

Act 2: The news of his having the letters spreads, and he's approached by Victor Laszlo, a Resistance leader who will be arrested by the Gestapo if he can't get out of Casablanca. When L offers to buy the letters (which will get him and his wife to safety—do NOT ask why! Because, that's why. These are magic letters :), Rick refuses, and when asked why, says bitterly, "Ask your wife."
Much more emotional risk here! In refusing to help, he is acknowledging that the wife (Ilsa) hurt him earlier, and he's using this as a means of revenge. His hard-won isolationist wall is beginning to crumble. Also, weirdly, he's sort of letting himself hope that Laszlo will find out about the earlier affair and cast Ilsa out so that she will come to Rick again.
What does this cause? Well, one effect is, paradoxically, to reconcile Laszlo and Ilsa. She's been keeping the secret of the former affair (she'd thought L was dead), and this actually lets Laszlo understand what happened and gently indicate that he doesn't blame her. (This becomes a huge part of her conflict, actually, as she realizes she still loves both of them.)
For Rick, this causes him to get more and more involved in Ilsa's dire situation and make it that much clearer that he's still in love with her.

Act 3: Ilsa herself comes to him and asks for—no, demands—the letters of transit to save Laszlo so he can continue to fight the Nazis. She is so determined that she pulls a gun on him, and he is so determined to refuse to help her, that he invites her to shoot him. Rather than help her, he will commit suicide! Talk about emotional risk. Helping her would be worse than dying?
(She as always ends up acting with love, putting the gun down and confessing that she still loves him, and he ends up embracing her—this is one of the greatest scenes in the history of film.)
What is the risk? That he will fall in love with her again (as he does), that he will lose all his defenses, that he will be hurt again, that he will lose her. This ALL happens. (That is, sometimes the greatest emotional risk should explode.)
What does this cause? Rick’s refusal causes her to confess her love, and that leads to their tacit decision to use the letters of transit. But here's the amazing thing. Ilsa says to him, "You'll decide what's right? For all of us?" That is, she is telling him that whatever he decides to do, he has to help Laszlo to safety. (She assumes that he will give Laszlo one letter of transit, and she and Rick will escape together some other way. And you know what happens, or if you don't, go watch the film!!!!!)
The real result is Rick's return to the family of man, actually. He accepts responsibility for other people, and joins the war effort. He gives up his isolation and accepts the power of love.

Notice that a powerful place to put 'the thing' is close to the end of the act, so that its repercussions propel into the next act.

So look at your own story, and see if you can identify "Three Things", or invent them, and center each act upon this thing.
1. What is the "thing" in "Three Things" in your story? If you'd like to speculate about what this means, how it relates to a deep internal issue or theme (like Rick's refusal to help is an aspect of his fear of getting too involved again and getting hurt), have at it.

2. Where can you put some manifestation of "this thing" in each act?
For each occurrence, ask:
    a. What is the emotional risk here (and remember to assemble these three in ascending risk)?
    b. What does this thing cause to happen?

3. How can this thing near the end of the story (maybe the dark moment?) cause a great emotional change?

I'm trying to (finally) re-start the website, so I thought maybe I'd start up the blog too. (Pause for cheers. Pause. Pause.... Cheers, please?)

Have recently been interested in looking for ways to braid the internal or interactional plots into the external plot (or reverse).
Terms:
Plot (an important sequence of events and changes that starts very early in the story and ends late in the story, that is, not a subplot, which will start later and probably resolve earlier and be less than central).
Most common main types of plots:

1. Internal plot (how the main character changes or confronts some emotional/psychological/life issue during the story)
2. Interactional plot (how the main character's relationship- including possibly romance- with another character or group-- like family-- changes in the course of the story)
3. External plot (how the main character-s confront and resolve or fail to resolve some external problem in the course of the story)

Not all stories have all three of these plots, and some stories will relegate one or two of them to "subplot status (like when the protagonist frees the hostages, and along the way, decides he will go ahead and attend the family Thanksgiving after all).

But if we have two of these or all three, we generally "braid" them in some way so that the reader can experience them together, if not in every scene, then in most scenes. In that way, the events of one plot affect the next event of another plot. Example: She's about to leave for the airport when her mom calls and begs her to come home for Thanksgiving, that Dad promises to behave and not bring up the past this time. She is upset by this and misses her plane, and when it leaves without her, she realizes that her luggage is on it, including the jewelry she was supposed to deliver to Mr. Big.

Etc. That is, each plot affects the other in some way-- not just once, but over and over in the story. This should be not like parallel train tracks, but more like a braid, then.
NOT:







The plots don't run parallel to each other, but are braided, intersecting in almost every scene.

An example I just saw was in Granite Flats, an absurdly fun mystery series set in 1962, where three pre-teens solve mysteries (including big international spy dramas) while negotiating early adolescence.

Both of the boys are sort of in pre-teen love with the girl Madeline. But she finds herself liking Tim. In one scene, for mystery-plot reasons, she and Tim trick the bank into giving them access to a safe-deposit box (where they find something significant-- you can tell which plot intrigues me the most, as I recall every glance between them, but not the point of the external mystery).
Their parents find out about this deception, and (correctly) assume neither would have done this alone-- that it's the pairing of the two kids which lead them into bank robbery.
So in the next scene, the parents ban them from seeing each other (much misery ensues, including Romeo and Juliet references-- they're studying that in English class).

So the external event of finding the clue in the safe deposit box leads to an interactional consequence -- their incipient romance is stifled (though of course, in the way of teen romance everywhere, restriction only makes the love more intense... so good!).
The cause-and-effect keeps going on-- because they aren't allowed to speak, their little detective agency goes defunct (and all of this has an effect on Arthur, the other member of their trio). So they cannot pursue the implications of this clue they just found.

What are some more examples of scenes or scene sequences where two (or three) of the plots intersect and cause changes in both? This is such a good technique for making your plot individual (it's not just another mystery, but also a love story), and also for pulling the reader along.

Alicia

Sagging Middle-- dropped plot?

I was talking to another writer about that dread syndrome, the sagging middle. This is when your opening chapters bristle with potential and power, but then sags when you get past the set-up into the second act of rising action. We realized that often the middle sags because we've dropped a plot line, or diminished it to a sub-plot that enters scenes only occasionally rather than directing the course of the story.

For example, in an adventure story, the writer might be having so much fun with the action plot, moving the characters from one near-disaster to another, but forget about the internal purpose of the events, to change the main character from a loner to someone capable of affiliating, maybe.

Or-- I see this a lot with romance plots-- the writer concentrates on the romance, showing the conflicts and compatibilities of the couple, letting them conceal and reveal secrets... but forgets about the external plot. For example, maybe the situation that got them together in the first place is an election for mayor. This is the external plot and shouldn't be going on in the background, arising only when the romance flags. Rather every scene ought to involve some problem or solution or event having to do with the election, and the "end of the middle" (the crisis scene) probably ought to be when the election seems lost or the candidate corrupt-- something external that connects the characters to outside events and challenges them in some psychological or emotional way.

Anyway, if you're in the middle of your story, and you're feeling a sag, feeling like you have to drag the reader to the next scene, or that you're replaying unimportant situations (like "eating dinner" or "going on the run") from earlier scenes-- go back to your essential story lines. You might have a central plot, but you probably also have another important plot-- the mystery plot, or the internal journey plot. See if you've plotted that all the way through. I always benefit from outlining the steps involved in the underused plot, like what is involved in the election campaign, or what he has to do to learn to trust again-- break the plot down into steps, and then develop those steps in the scenes I've already planned out or drafted for the non-neglected plot.


And don't forget, the middle is the time of rising conflict, where the "on-the-brink" situation in the opening chapters gets more and more intense. This applies to each of the major plots, not just one!  If the external conflict is a campaign for mayor, every scene makes the election outcome less predictable... and the costs of victory more acute. If the romantic conflict is that the heroine is disguising her identity, then every scene should bring her closer to discovery, and her deception should become more dangerous to their growing love. 

Alicia

Perception --> conclusion

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. 
Elmore Leonard

That's a really harsh edict, isn't it? As a reader who tends to skip most descriptive passages, I find myself wanting to skip writing the whole look/sound/taste/smell part of the narrative. But it's so boooooring, I say! I hate describing! I don't see the point!!!

Much of this resistance is me being lazy. But then again, the point is... what's the point? If we don't like writing description, and if after hours of labor we present this paragraph or passage that the reader is just going to skip.... what is the point?

Exactly. What is the point? We're not just writing to fill up pages. So... what's that descriptive passage there for?

Actually, sometimes a description of the setting is needed, to set the stage for action, to outline the context of the conflict, to reflect some aspect of the character. And I think if before I start, I can figure out my purpose here, why I'm describing this, maybe I won't hate writing it, and the reader won't want to skip it.

In deep POV, or in first-person, the essential purpose of description is to show something about what the POV character perceives... and maybe to show what's changing in the character-- what this all means to him/her, how he or she interprets this.

Here's a short passage (end of chapter) in Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. (Very good book, "boarding school thriller," I'll call the genre.) It's in dual first-person (the good guy and the bad guy). This is the good guy, an old Latin teacher at the boarding school. He's been there forever, and at this point, things are starting to change in ways he doesn't like. So the author uses this "change" to provide an opportunity to describe the place:
     As I said, it's hard to explain St. Oswald's: the sound of the place in the mornings; the flat echo of boys' feet against the stone steps; the smell of burning toast from the Refrectory; the peculiar sliding sound of overfilled sports bags being dragged along the newly polished floor. The Honors Board, with gold-painted names dating back from before my great-grandfather; the war memorial; the team photographs; the brash young faces, tinted sepia with the passing of time.

Okay, notice how very much this is in HIS viewpoint-- the description is filtered through his memories, his values, his affection for the place.  And notice how the beginning perceptions are very sensual, very focused on the experience of the senses in this place. But then, the 'summary" becomes something more personal (my great-grandfather) and poignant (the brash young faces). The nostalgia and sadness of that last (this is in Britain, so the names of many of those "brash youngsters" probably are etched onto the war memorial) leads into the deep feeling of the POV character. This is the paragraph that ends the chapter:

Gods, I'm getting sentimental. Age does that; a moment ago I was bemoaning my lot, and now here I am getting all misty-eyed. It must be the weather. And yet, Camus says, we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Am I unhappy? All I know is that something has shaken us; shaken us to the foundations. It's in the air, a breath of revolt, and somehow I know it goes deeper than the Fallow affair. Whatever it may be, it is not over. And it's still only September.

Notice that he is commenting on his own description, analyzing what his own choices of perceptions mean. The movement in the first paragraph from pure sensual description to nostalgia and sadness creates a slow accumulation of emotion. And the POV character is the one who, without using the word, identifies that emotion-- dread. Something wicked this way comes.

Description should never just be description. It should be there for some purpose. It should somehow advance the plot, or develop the character-- something that deepens our experience not just of the setting but of the story as a whole.

Why not look at some descriptive passage you have in the last scene you wrote, and tell what the purpose is, and how you furthered that purpose with the sensory description?

Alicia

Question from comments re: sequential action

Arial asks:

I've got one for ya! Setup for the sentence: The heroine is in the saddle, sitting in front of the hero. He has just reached into his saddlebags for a bottle and... 

His arms coming around her, he uncorked a small bottle, took a swig and replaced the cork. 

I'm told that he can't have his arms come around her AND uncork the bottle AND take a swig AND replace the cork all at the same time. I'm told that the way the sentence is written above, that's what I'm describing. Obviously, my original intent was to have these actions happening sequentially, but I loathe writing, "After his arms came around her, he uncorked a small bottle, then took a swig before replacing the cork." BLAH! It's wordy and sloppy. Help! Thanks! Arial 

 Hey, commenters! How would you revise the sentence?

I have to ask Arial a question. Where is the bottle? In the saddlebags? Where are they in relation to the heroine?

Now let's have some suggested revisions!

Actually, this gives me the opportunity to mention a new guideline, but I haven't really formulated it yet. I'm just thinking that the complexity of the action sequence (and the time it takes) might dictate whether it's more than one sentence. I see too often that action is rendered too quickly, so the experience of the sequence is lessened. All the action pieces are made minor, and of equal importance.

So in the above, if this is a romance, it's a lot more important that his arms go around her than that he uncorks the bottle, but putting this all in one sentence makes it seem like they're of equal importance.

(Also it's hard to tell whose POV this is-- either way, though, the arms going around her should be FELT -- perception, emotion, not just movement, should be narrated here, I think.)

So I guess I'm saying, first, I wouldn't do it all in one sentence. And then, I would go into the POV of the POV character and narrate a bit of how it feels, what it means.

Okay, suggestions! What would you all do? Arial, what do  you think would help? Which of the suggestions would you think would work best?

Alicia

There's Subtle, and There's Obscure

The more sophisticated the writing and plotting, the less obvious the exposition. But that doesn't mean there's no exposition, only that it's done subtly and carefully through the characters in a way that is consistent with the way they think, speak, and interact.


An example of subtle exposition is in the movie Lincoln, which by narrowing the focus to a couple weeks before Lincoln's second inauguration, presents an unfamiliar take on a very familiar subject. That means that there has to be exposition (there's a lot we don't know), but it has to be rendered carefully (we think we know a lot, and we'll notice any "lecturing" or "As you know, Alphonse" explanations). So what the writer and director did was to portray Lincoln as someone who likes to hear and tell stories. (This happened to be true to the historical character, but is universal enough a trait that it could have been invented without penalty.) From the start, Lincoln is shown telling stories about people he knew, people he represented in court cases. So when in the middle of a folksy story, there's a nugget of actual information, it goes down easy. It "sounds" in character.

Oppositional characters-- the opposite of attentive listeners-- are used to evoke-- paradoxically, through their opposition to the telling-- more information. At one point, a fellow Republican exclaims, "Not another story! I can't stand to hear another of your stories!" which just provokes Lincoln to grin and tell another.

At one point, Lincoln provides his own opposition. There's a particularly knotty bit of explanation needed, because we all know about the Emancipation Proclamation, and I'm sure I'm not the only viewer who was thinking, "Why wasn't that enough?" Whenever readers are going to have questions, then it's a good idea to consider giving them an answer-- but subtly. So Lincoln asks this himself, and plays devil's advocate-- it might have been unconstitutional. Or maybe it was all right during the war, but the war is ending. Maybe he did the wrong thing. He argues with himself (to an audience of younger aides), and through this conflict, we get all the information we need to answer our question, why do we need an amendment?

So: Subtle.In character. In conflict. Use opposition. Use interaction.

But there's subtle exposition, and then there's obscure. I'm reading a book now which has a fairly complex set of events leading to the characters' having to make big serious decisions. I'm at the point where one major character is going to take some major action. So two of his aides are talking. A says to B, "I hope that C will do the right thing." B gets angry, and replies, "C always does the right thing." A comes back, "Well, just tell him, we're counting on him to do the right thing."

So I read that scene, and I went back and skimmed the previous chapter, and I still had no idea what "the right thing" is. I mean, it's not just that I don't know precisely what they meant. I don't even know the basic area of what they meant. Did they mean morally? Did they mean about the staff? Did they mean legally? Did they mean about themselves?

That's too subtle. I'm a good reader, and I was paying attention. And while I'm okay with not knowing everything, I'd like to know a little. (There are about 12 major characters in this book, so, alas, I don't know enough about C even to know what -he'd- think this was.) But really, this is just a dialogue problem. A few more words here and there, and there would be enough to satisfy-- maybe not enough to make it all clear, but enough to keep me aware so that when (I hope) there's a resolution I'll know it's happening.

For example:
A says to B, "I hope that C will do the right thing about (one word, maybe? us? about the evaluation? about the account?)."
B gets angry, and replies, "C always does the right thing. He's no (deadbeat? traitor? idiot?)."

 A comes back, "Well, just tell him, we're counting on him to (what? keep us safe? tell the truth? solve the problem?)."

That is, with just a few words-- completely in character, because we don't actually speak that cryptically unless we're being overheard, and that wasn't happening here--  we could get a sense of whether this is the staffer scared they're going to be used as a scapegoat, or if this is about some payment, or if it's a problem only he can solve. We don't need to know everything-- but we do need to know a little.

And it only takes a little. How would these two converse if they weren't being forced by their author to be obscure? They'd still be subtle. But they wouldn't be cryptic.

The reader has only what we put in there. Now exposition can be handled many ways. But if there's exposition needed, decide how much the reader needs to know, and find a way to tell it.

Alicia

Three Acts, Three Risks

 THREE ACTS, THREE RISKS

Use the 3-act Structure to organize your plot events into setup, rising conflict, resolution, and that structure provides propulsion and the progression of events within the story arc. Willy nilly eventing won't build up the dramatic power that intensifies the emotion.  In fact, effective plotting is all about cause and effect. Events matter because they cause something else to happen and something to change and the characters to feel. The accumulation of events is what propels the reader to read on, and organizing this cause/effect sequence into acts will help you build tension and cause change.  

Three Acts:
Act 1 -- Set up conflict.
Act 2 -- Make conflict rise.
Act 3 -- Make conflict explode, and then resolve it.
 
Try breaking these acts into 3 big events of ascending emotional risk:
Examples- Three Things
3 times she needed help
3 times he got stuck
3 attempts to deal with the conflict
3 attempts to reach the goal
3 heartbreaks
3 secrets
3 lies

3 failures
3 betrayals
3 times she didn't ask for help

Just try it--ascending risk, remember!

Then what are the risks he/she is afraid of?
Why is this a risk? What might this risk cause, and what might be caused by their trying to AVOID the risk?

THREE ACTS. THREE SECRETS.
For example, let's take one that is just full of emotion-- secrets. Three secrets.
Kept or revealed? Or both? Maybe the attempt to keep a secret leads to revelation.Let's think of ascending risk --

Act 1: This sets up the first secret. She's an FBI agent, and she's sent undercover into a small town.
So the first secret is that she's secretly an FBI agent. There's not a lot of emotional risk in this secret because it's her job. But it sets in motion all the rest of the risks.
What does this cause? It causes her to be placed in this small town to investigate the local bank, and it causes her to have to take on a disguise—she's pretending to be a bank teller.

Act 2: The next secret comes when she meets and is drawn to the son of the bank president. This is just the sort of guy she despised when she was growing up, rich and polished and educated. But she's supposed to
investigate his father, and she's supposed to be a bank teller who would be flattered by his intentions, so she has to keep the secret from him about who she is... and the secret from her boss that she's falling in
love with one of the "targets".
What does this cause? She's getting deeper entrenched into deception. It's going to be far, far worse now
when her secret is revealed. She's also becoming alienated from her job, from her old self, from the FBI, as she's not reporting her contact with Junior. Maybe she's even started lying to her boss, withholding
information that could get Junior in trouble. 

Act 3: What's the final secret? It's probably her real identity, not just FBI, but her former identity. Maybe she's never told anyone that she grew up as "trailer trash," the daughter of a small-town prostitute or drug dealer. Her final secret is her shame, which has caused her all along to hide her past and her true self, to cut herself off from her old friends and her family, maybe even to make up a more generic and acceptable past.  (The big task would be—and I'm too brain-dead now to come up with an idea!—make the revelation of that secret in the start of Act 3 happen and affect the plot.)

REMEMBER TO TRY AND ASSEMBLE THIS IN "ASCENDING ORDER OF EMOTIONAL
RISK." THE RISK OF THE LAST SHOULD BE THE GREATEST RISK TO THE
CHARACTER'S EMOTIONAL SECURITY. SO IN THIS CASE, WE'RE SEEING THAT THE
BIGGEST SECRET IS HER PAST, AND THE GREATEST DANGER IS SHAME. 

Let's try another "Three Acts, Three Somethings."

Remember the film Casablanca?
Rick is a symbol of the United States before Pearl Harbor, isolated, uninvolved, as the world crashes around him. This is a tightly plotted story, and there are several "3 things", but the one I like to focus on is "Three Times Rick Refuses To Help."

Act 1: Ugarte asks Rick for 2 things—to hold the letters of transit for the evening (he agrees), and
later to help him escape from the police (Rick refuses).
There's some emotional risk from refusing to help—a few hours later, he drunkenly refers to it—but he can shrug it off as kind of a cost of doing business—sometimes, to run a successful saloon, you have to sacrifice a friend.
What does this cause? It's very important externally because with U dead, Rick is now stuck with these letters of transit, and as he says drily, "As long as I have them, I'll never be lonely." (I tell you, this film is SO well-written, because in fact, he is alone, and his loneliness is only ended because he has those damned letters of transit!)

Act 2: The news of his having the letters spreads, and he's approached by Victor Laszlo, a Resistance leader who will be arrested by the Gestapo if he can't get out of Casablanca. When L offers to buy the letters (which will get him and his wife to safety—do NOT ask why! Because, that's why. These are magic letters :), Rick refuses, and when asked why, says bitterly, "Ask your wife."

Much more emotional risk here! In refusing to help, he is acknowledging that the wife (Ilsa) hurt him earlier as he's using this as a means of revenge. His hard-won isolationist wall is beginning to crumble. Also, weirdly, he's sort of letting himself hope that Laszlo will find out about the earlier affair and cast Ilsa out so that she will come to Rick again.

What does this cause? Well, one effect is, paradoxically, to reconcile Laszlo and Ilsa. She's been keeping the secret of the former affair (she'd thought L was dead), and this actually lets Laszlo understand what happened and gently indicate that he doesn't blame her. (This becomes a huge part of her conflict, actually, as she realizes she still loves both of them.)
For Rick, this causes him to get more and more involved in Ilsa's dire situation and make it that much clearer that he's still in love with her.

Act 3: Ilsa herself comes to him and asks for—no, demands—the letters of transit to save Laszlo so he
can continue to fight the Nazis. She is so determined that she pulls a gun on him, and he is so determined to refuse to help her, that he invites her to shoot him. Rather than help her, he will commit suicide! Talk about emotional risk. Helping her would be worse than dying? (She as always ends up acting with love, putting the gun down and confessing that she still loves him, and he ends up embracing her—this is one of the greatest scenes in the history of film.)

What is the risk? That he will fall in love with her again (as he does), that he will lose all his defenses, that he will be hurt again, that he will lose her. This ALL happens. (That is, sometimes the greatest emotional risk should explode.)

 What does this cause? His refusal causes her to confess her love, and that leads to their tacit decision to use the letters of transit. But here's the amazing thing. Ilsa says to him, "You'll decide what's right? For all of us?" That is, she is telling him that whatever he decides to do, he has to help Laszlo to safety. (She assumes that he will give Laszlo one letter of transit, and she and Rick will escape together some other way. And you know what happens, or if you don't, go watch the film!!!!!)
The real result is Rick's return to the family of man, actually. He accepts responsibility for other people, and joins the war effort. He gives up his isolation and accepts the power of love.
Notice that a powerful place to put 'the thing' is close to the end of the act, and its repercussions propel into the next act.

So look at your own story, and see if you can identify "Three Things", or invent them, and center each act upon this thing.

1. What is the "thing" in "Three Things" in your story? If you'd like to speculate about what this means, how it relates to a deep internal issue or theme (like Rick's refusal to help is an aspect of his fear of getting too involved again and getting hurt), have at it.

2. Where can you put some manifestation of "this thing" in each act?

For each occurrence:
3. What is the emotional risk here (and remember to assemble these three in ascending risk)?           
4. What does this thing cause to happen?
5. How can this thing in the end of the story (maybe the dark moment?) cause a great emotional change?

The Narrow Character Focus

The dh mentioned the current trend towards revenge films, you know, Liam Neeson (hmm) as action star, manfully pursuing vengeance for his daughter's abduction, and Harrison Ford going after those who killed his wife, and Uma Thurman killing everyone something about her wedding (sorry, I could never actually watch that pair of films, not really needing to know how many different ways there are to kill other people).

Anyway, he said that something that made films of this genre seem thin is that the perspective is often so narrow, that we as viewers(readers) are meant to identify entirely with the protagonist and never question his goal or his motivation or take a wider view of the situation.

It's hard for a writer, I know, because we have to identify with the protagonist, and we certainly want the reader to do that too. But the reader is NOT the protagonist. The reader has and should have a slightly wider view, or rather, we ought to provide that wider view. It might be just the question of whether, say, the hero has perhaps gone too far in his vengeful actions, or a hint that perhaps the other guy might have another story, or just a sense that this might be disproportionate.

The protagonist doesn't actually have to consider this or express ambivalence for the reader to feel that. Another character, for example, can provide the other dimension (and it is dimensionality this adds-- depth is created by adding a different perspective). Spielberg's film Lincoln does both of these. Lincoln himself admits that his action in emancipating the slaves during the war might have been extra-constitutional, thus he is showing the other side of the question. But then, in regard to his own family, it takes his wife and son to add dimension to his refusal to let his son serve in the army. His wife (paradoxically) in providing his justification (keeping their child safe) forces Lincoln to remember that many parents haven't had that security. And Robert, the son, by showing his opposition forces Lincoln to say something that appalls even himself-- that every father wants to protect his son, but only Lincoln has the power to send thousands to their deaths and also the power to spare his own son. So in this case, the other characters are the ones who bring out the extra dimension.

In that case, the question is resolved when Lincoln reluctantly allows his son to serve, showing his complex moral progress.  If he'd been okay with this from the start, the question would never have been raised. It's the opposition or the conflict which provides the dimension.

So I guess-- it's important to get the reader to identify with the protagonist. But to offer a fuller reading experience, we might add to that by at least hinting at a more complicated dimensionality, that the world of the book is not confined merely to the one character's reality.

Alicia

Emotional experiences in books

Let's think of ourselves as readers, which we were before we were writers. We're still going to learn most about writing from the authors we love. So let's talk about books that have affected you emotionally.

For example, there's a great Patrick O'Brian book, Reverse of the Medal, where the hero, a storied sea captain of great courage but not great intellect, has invested his war booty with someone who turns out to be a crook, and Jack gets charged with stock market fraud. He is sentenced to pillory (this is 1811) and forced to be shackled in a public square in London in the midst of a crowd which is going to pelt him with rocks and
rotten fruit.  But seamen (his fellow Royal Navy guys) show up from every corner of the kingdom and surround him and doff their caps in respect for him-- and of course, keep the rabble from humiliating him.

Reading this really did show me the separation that can occur between the reader's experience and the main character's experience. Jack feels overwhelming gratitude and humility, to be protected so well. The reader
feels pride mostly-- the opposite of humility-- because of the actions not of the hero, but of all these anonymous seamen. Centuries before Facebook, they manage to learn of this travesty and figure out how to
deal with it together, and they do it with a characteristically British blend of self-deprecation and bristling arrogance.

That is, in the final moments, and throughout the book, I as the reader of course identify with Jack, the protagonist. But every character, every scene, every setting, every value in this book contributes to the reader experience. I really learned from that book that the emotion comes from the entirety of the story, everything that builds up to the final scenes, and everything that comes from the interaction of all the characters with the events of the story and the settings.

So I learned it's really important to get the reader to identify with the protagonist. But that's not enough. The reader has to be able simultaneously identify deeply with the main character, but also have a fuller experience that comes from reading the whole book (which the hero can't do :).

Let's start with the totality of the book experience, the change from start to end, and then break it all down:

Theme: I'm just pointing to the title here-- this book is all about "reversal"-- of fortune, of expectations, of focus.

Change from start to end, the "praxis": Jack starts out at the top, a real war hero, a bit conceited about his new glory. Because of his gullibility and desire for wealth and status, he trusts the wrong person. So the change for him is from pride to shame, really from "moving up" to "falling down". This descent is paralleled in the war's progress. In the beginning, it seems that France (Napoleon) will be surrendering soon, that Britain will finally triumph (which it does, but not for another long year and not in this book). In fact, this misconception is what is used to trap Jack into the stock swindle. Point is, the nation's fortunes seem at the top to start, and that turns out to be wrong.

Situation change: But all of O'Brian's stories are more than the story of the main characters (Stephen, the other major character, has his own downfall). The situation is the Royal Navy at war, a war that the Navy won years ago (at Trafalgar), and at this point is more about acquiring wealth in ships and influence. The purity of purpose has been lost, along with the camaraderie that makes months at sea bearable. The powerful simplicity of the military at the beginning is corrupted into the deceptive, dangerous world of the City of London and Westminster (finance and politics).

Setting change: The setting starts out in that "wooden world" of the ship at sea, with its familiar traditions and simple loyalties. But half the book, the latter half, is mostly on land and in the sophisticated, deceptive world of London politics and finance. The ending takes place at Cornhill, in the City of London, the finance center, so very different than the ships and the sea. But that pillory scene brings the two worlds together as all the seamen "from Land's End to John o' Groats" arrive to protect Jack.

The fulfillment in the end: The end really does have to fulfill the promise of the rest of the book. The conflicts are intensified and then resolved, if not in the obvious fashion. The Reverse of the Medal's ending is particularly emotional because the verities are restored. Jack has, to some degree, abandoned his crew by associating with the men of finance and politics who destroy him. As a consequence, he loses his ship and his position in the Navy. (This is extremely affecting, btw.) That loss makes him remember what really counts. I know it sounds trite (it's not in the book), but he learns who his real friends are when every seamen in the kingdom shows up to honor him in his moment of greatest shame. (And then Stephen buys the old ship and gives it to him to be a merchant ship.)

The distinction between the protagonist's emotion at the end and the reader's: Jack's shame and loss are so entire, and the reader participates in that. But when the seamen come to protect him, Jack's response is appropriately (for him) gratitude and humility. He knows how badly he screwed it up, and how fortunate he is to be restored to the camaraderie and friendship he had moved beyond. But for the reader? We don't have to be confined to his experience. I know what I felt as I closed the book was pride-- pride in the Navy and these simple seamen who were able to forgive so generously-- and also admiration not just for the courage of Jack, but for the unstinting love of his wife and his best friend. I know I had a sense of the power of forgiveness, as everyone was able to forgive Jack and gather him back into the family of the Navy. That is, the reader response moves beyond Jack's to a greater understanding of the meaning of the story, and part of the emotional reaction (to me, at least) was a renewed hope in the goodness of humans. (A final reversal-- at the lowest, most humiliating moment in the 20-book series, we have the greatest joy.)

So how about you? What's a book that you can remember really experiencing emotionally-- the book, not just the character?  And how in the end did you feel and why?

Alicia

Emotion in The Three Acts

I was just doing a workshop about emotion, and we were talking about how to convey emotion in characters who aren't openly emotional, about making an emotional journey for them in the plot. That is, story emotion isn't just the immediate outburst following an event within a scene, but it can be a book-length exploration and dynamic, changing as the plot changes.

So let's think of the Three Acts of the story, and this is just the simple Aristotelian plot structure:

Act 1: Set up
Act 2: Rising conflict
Act 3: Climax and resolution

When I think of "book-length," I think in terms of "three" like above. How does this journey break into three parts? (My article about the book theme developed through the three parts, as an example of "the three.") So here's an "emotion journey" in three acts:

Act 1: Repression. (Protagonist starts out repressing an emotion like grief.)
Act 2: Suppression. (The rising conflict of the plot forces the protagonist to start feeling that emotion, and pro must actively suppress what previously could just be repressed.)
Act 3: Expression. (Finally, the climactic events in the end-- the crisis, the dark moment, the climax-- lead tha protagonist into accepting the need for that emotion, and expressing it.)

Example:
1. Willa had a complex relationship with her father, and the day after they have a big argument, he suddenly dies. Willa represses her grief, "surfacely" or ostensibly because she is involved with something important in the plot (solving a murder, finding a cure for this killer virus, run for election whatever) and grieving will interfere with her goal. But subconsciously, she repressed grief because grieving would reveal and force her to feel the guilt that she might have caused her father's death, or was never a good daughter.
    How to show? Well, start at the funeral. She wears sunglasses ostensibly to hide her red-rimmed eyes, but in fact to hide that they are NOT red-rimmed (she hasn't cried). What else?

2. In pursuit of the goal, she gets right back to work, but every now and again, the "need for grief" arises in some "reminder" about her father, like a friend calls to ask how she's doing, or a sibling calls for a consult on the gravestone, or.... Just repressing isn't enough now. She has to actively suppress the emotion, focusing on work, refusing to answer the phone when sib calls. 
      But there are repercussions to suppression-- she gets blocked in her work. She drinks too much. Her sister is furious with her. The voters think she's cold and the polls show she's going to lose the election.

3. Something forces her into confrontation with the suppressed emotion. (A misdirected letter from Dad arrives a couple weeks late?)  (And of course all the important stuff about her goal-getting external plot is coming to a head here.) She lets herself express the grief, or rather, lets down the suppression barriers, and grieves. Something in this grief, or the catalytic event-- the letter from Dad, whatever-- gives her the key or the will or the motivation to solve that external problem.  Now that she is expressing rather than repressing or suppressing emotion, she can solve that murder or cure that virus or find an emotional connection to voters.

Okay, that's pretty simplistic, but you can see how "emotion" can be turned into a journey over the course of the story, so that the character's experience of emotion develops along with and braided into the plot. What do you think? The journey of course might be a different set of three parts than this (it might be Involuntary Expression, Resistance, Understanding, for example), but RSE is an example of one way to create an emotion journey in the story.

Have you tried showing emotional change in the story acts, and having the change affect the plot? Examples?

Alicia

Something in the air

First, I read this HuffPo essay about historical fiction and accuracy online. Then I ran across a debate on Facebook about an historical novel which substituted a fictional character for a somewhat prominent public figure of the time. Now I just received an email from an author questioning just how historically accurate we must be in our fiction. Something in the air right now, people are thinking about this issue.

My take on this issue is somewhat fluid. I answer any questions about historical accuracy on a question-by-question basis. Some details are so important that they must be portrayed in accordance with the historical record, or people will become understandably upset, as they did when a blue-eyed actress was chosen to play Anne Boleyn. Anyone familiar with her story knows that she was famous for her flashing dark eyes, and for these people, choosing a light-eyed actress is something like choosing a brunette to play Farrah Fawcett. It just rings false.

But, by the same measure, as the HuffPo essayist notes, sometimes it's possible to err on the side of historical accuracy. Some things from the past are simply disgusting to modern tastes. We don't want to read about oozing flea bites and halitosis and whatever passed for medicine in the old days. We don't like to think about how they ate old meat dredged in cinnamon and black pepper to disguise the rancid taste. People died from splinters, and the streets were paved with feces. But do we want to fill our books with this stuff? Heck, no, because it's just not entertaining.

Exhibit A: The Libertine, a movie that could have been entertaining, but fell short. Between the "natural" lighting and the insistence on portraying every bit of squalor in London, the film's visuals were so distracting that people found it alienating. That wasn't the only problem with the film, but the selection of which historical details to include, which to leave out, and how to display them was a big set of bad decisions. 

So this is how I evaluate historical information. It has to ring true, it has to appeal to modern readers, and it has to avoid distracting us from more important things. How do you evaluate historical information in novels?

Theresa

An ongoing discussion

Okay, so, here's the background on this post. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed that I'm detail-oriented. (I prefer "detail-oriented" to "OCD about everything inside the four corners," thank you very much.) Some time ago, in response to a post of mine about how to manipulate details within settings, another editor challenged me (privately, and no, I won't tell you which editor) by claiming that none of that kind of detail matters. Only the plot matters. If the plot works, the book works.

This has led to an ongoing, behind the scenes debate about whether a book with a good plot and bad mechanics can still be deemed good. Obviously, I disagree with her position. I believe that plot is just one of many story and narrative elements that must work in order for the book as a whole will work.

And I think I have found the book that will allow me to declare permanent victory in this debate. I'm not going to humiliate the author here, because I'm not into that sort of thing. But here's the short rundown on the good aspects of this book --

-- I cannot fault the plot. If I were editing this book, I would have only one plot note to make, and that has to do with a secret that should be revealed a bit earlier. You know the old saying -- if a conflict can be resolved with an honest conversation, it's not a real conflict. This book has one of those, but it is not the only conflict, so resolving it early would free up the plot to focus on the real conflicts. This is a fairly minor plot note, and fairly routine. The fact that it is the only plot note speaks pretty well of the plot.

-- In fact, the other aspects of the plot are sort of fascinating. The amazon comments that give the book 4 and 5 stars all focus on these aspects of the book, these plot aspects and the mystery angle. It works, and it works well. The book has sold semi-decent numbers, and I suspect it's on the strength of this aspect of the story alone.

Those are the pros. Here are the cons.

-- The pov fluctuates wildly. It took me about 30 pages before I knew who the heroine was, mainly because of the way the pov bounced around secondary characters at the beginning of the book. The character I assumed was the heroine died in the second chapter. Some of the 1 and 2 star reviews on amazon complain about their inability to connect to the characters, and I blame the pov for this. It's hard to cheer for a protagonist you can't even identify, and it's hard to relate to characters who keep bouncing in and out of the text and dying off.

-- Each page contains at least one, and usually several, strikingly difficult and awkward sentences. Nobody line edited this thing, I promise you. It's a mess. Again, the weak amazon reviews sometimes refer to this by talking about how they had to re-read passages to understand them. "Confusing" is a word that comes up over and over again in the bad reviews.

-- There are far, far too many characters, and at least half of them don't matter at all. One amazon reviewer spent a very long paragraph trying to explain the relationships between all these secondary characters, complete with lots of ??? and !!!. It's too much, and it's confusing. (This is aggravated by the fact that so many of these secondaries have pov sequences.)

-- The description was almost comically bad. Several poor reviews note the clumsy handling of setting descriptions and the strange fascination with describing body parts that aren't usually described at all, let alone in such detail and with such frequency.

-- Typos and mechanical errors abound, and the reviewers mock many of them. With good reason. Some of the homonym errors, in particular, are laughably bad. I can guarantee that this book was not edited properly.

-- The pacing was disastrous. I lost count of the number of reviews that said they'd skipped over major chunks of text or had read only dialogue or only the first line of each paragraph. Even some of these complainants mentioned that they enjoyed the plot, but found it took too long to unfold.

-- The major characters were a bit wobbly. Most readers approved of the heroine (once we all knew who she was), and most of them found the villain to be cartoonish and clumsy. I didn't see any criticism of the hero, not even in the good reviews, but I also didn't see any praise for him. He read like a placeholder to me, a character with a clear plot function but not much else. Both the hero and the villain needed revision.

Several of the reviews noted that they had received the book for free but would never download anything else by this author. Several of them noted that they had been unable to finish the book. I could go on, but will spare you. My point is mainly to show that I am not the only one reacting to the book this way. It doesn't take an educated reader to spot the flaws and still see that the plot is good. The bottom line? I win the debate. A good plot cannot save an otherwise bad book. So this is the part where I throw down the mic, yo.

Theresa

Character motto?

I was listening to some of the Tropical Storm Isaac coverage, and they said the convention in Tampa was postponed a day: "Better safe than sorry!" they said. And I thought about my dh's grandmother, whose motto, he said, was "You can never be too careful."

These "character mottoes" tell something about the person-- in this case, that safety is of paramount concern, but what's under that-- a persistent pessimism that you can't trust fate, that you have to be careful?

How about let's come up with mottoes for our own characters? Here's an article (scroll down) by Susan Gable which lists some of her characters' mottoes:

• The glass is always half-full.
• Do unto others before they do unto you. (Imagine how different that person would be than the one who believed the "right way"-- Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.)
• Life’s short; eat dessert first.
• Trust no one.
• If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.
• Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,

 So what about your characters?  If they were to give a life philosophy, or a motto by which they live (and they were honest, which of course we can't assume), what would the motto be? To make this fun, let's use a proverb or slogan in common usage that everyone will recognize.

Examples, and as you read them, imagine what actions, motivations, and conflicts this character would have:

Grab all the gusto you can in life.
Love is all you need.
Family first.
Women and children first.
It takes a village.
Where's the beef?
Curiosity killed the cat.
A secret shared is a secret revealed.
 A man's home is his castle.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
A prophet is not recognized in his own land.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Don't burn your bridges behind you.
Half a loaf is better than no bread at all.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.
Let sleeping dogs lie.
Seeing is believing.

What are your characters' mottoes? And what do they mean? How does that internal motto manifest in action?

For example, I have a character who thinks,  "You can never be too careful." That doesn't mean she's a stick-in-the-mud. She's actually had an exciting life. But at every stage, she is very cautious. She's always trying to control the situation by taking great care. She never acts spontaneously or thoughtlessly. So when someone from her past appears and is going to tell her secrets, she acts to shut him up. She first diverts her lover-to-be by making him a lover-in-fact. Then she bribes the man from the past to leave. Everything in her life is done with care and thought... because otherwise, the dire forces will overwhelm her.

Her lover, however, is a rational man who believes that everything can be figured out: "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness." Whenever there's a mystery or a secret, he wants to find out the truth. For him, "knowledge is power." "The truth shall set you free." So of course he's drawn to the woman who keeps so much of herself secret. But he does this by "lighting a candle" rather than, say, trying to force her to be open with him. He doesn't want her to -tell- him. He wants to figure it out. So he's trying to gather clues (as well as solve the murder of the man from her past).

Your turn! What's your character's motto, and how does that manifest in his/her actions?

Alicia

Competing Goals

Often when we think about goals, we think about external goals that come in the form of antagonistic opposition. That is, Character A has a goal and takes (or attempts to take) action to advance the goal. Character B says, "Bitch, please," and takes (or attempts to take) action to prevent the completion of Character A's action. This is the classic character-versus-character form of external conflict. But what happens if there's no Character B, no "Bitch, please," no antagonistic opposition from outside forces?

There can still be conflict. You can put one guy in a room all by himself, and he can be overflowing with conflict without any help -- or hindrance -- from anyone else. This doesn't have to be angsty, actionless conflict, though it can be purely internal. Or it can still directly connect to the outside world and outside acts. It's all in how you manipulate it.

The basic technique is pretty simple. Give the character two positive goals, and then make it impossible for her to achieve both goals at once. Create a scarcity of time (if she spends Friday night on a date, she can't also spend Friday night building a new porch swing) or of resources (lost in the desert, and just enough gas in the tank to drive to the sheriff's office before nightfall or deeper into the wilderness where the villain's secret lair might be). Create geographical limitations (if she goes north for a job interview, she can't make it back south in time to stop the bank from foreclosing on her grandmother's house). The point is to put the character in a position to have to choose between two positive, worthy goals.

Then, with the choice clearly delineated, the character's actions will show her values. For example, let's consider the character who is lost in the desert with limited gas in the tank. We might be tempted to describe this limitation as a conflict, but actually, it's probably better to call it an obstacle. She has two goals: (1) go to the sheriff's office to report a crime, and (2) pursue the criminal, who is racing toward a hidey-hole. She can achieve one goal, but not both, because the limited gas is an obstacle to achieving both. This obstacle creates conflict because now she must decide between two competing goals. What does she value more?

-- Safety. Going to the sheriff's office guarantees she won't be stranded in the desert at night, and what is she doing chasing badasses with secret lairs in the first place?

-- Justice. Chasing the criminal will allow her to bring him to justice and see order restored.

So her choice is about more than which way to point the car. The choice is between her values. If she values safety over justice, she goes to the sheriff. If she values justice over safety, she finds the lair and kicks the door down. But this is only the starting point for the negotiation. The next question is whether she can satisfy both values with either choice.

-- Safety. Going to the sheriff is safer, and she might also get justice if the sheriff helps her track down the baddie. (Or not.)

-- Justice. Chasing the criminal makes it more likely that she'll catch him, and she doesn't have to kick the door down. She can find some other, safer way to capture him. (Maybe.)

This analysis is interesting to readers because it portrays an inner conflict and an attempt to solve a problem. The reader might agree or disagree with the rationale or with the ultimate decision, and either way, they'll continue to read to discover the outcome of this choice. But it's important to remember that when we set up these kinds of value-based choices, close calls are more interesting than clear winners. That is, if the heroine knows she has a gun and the baddie doesn't, the safety concern is diminished. If she suspects the sheriff is in cahoots with the baddy, she's less likely to get justice from that choice. But if the choices are roughly equal, then the decision becomes harder to make. And the importance of values becomes more exaggerated.

Notice, too, the lack of antagonistic opposition. Nobody is in the passenger seat arguing with her. She doesn't say, "Let's chase the baddie," and have to argue with the passenger, who wants to go to the sheriff. No outside force is trying to prevent her from reaching either goal. It's merely that she can't possibly accomplish both.

Think, for example, of a high school senior trying to choose a college. He wants to be an engineer, and he's accepted into the two top engineering schools in the country. His parents will approve either choice, so there's no opposition from people whose opposition might act as a veto. Both schools will give him full scholarships. (It's a fantasy. Stick with me.) In fact, let's say everything is equal except for climate. One is located in a warm and sunny beach town, and the other is located in a cold mountain climate. If he likes to surf, he chooses the beach. If he likes to ski, he chooses the mountains. But what if he likes both, and likes them enough that he would really hate to give up one sport? It's the roughly equal status that makes it a hard choice, and his ultimate choice will tell us which sport he truly prefers.

Of course, it's rarely that easy. If we start layering in other choices, in fact, the problem grows more interesting. The mountain school is large, with hundreds of students in a class, and he gets a little anxious in crowds sometimes. But he was on that beach campus for a visitation day, and half the students wore bathing suits and shorts to class, and that won't help his concentration much, either. (Social anxiety versus sexual temptation -- how else might these two factors affect his decision?)

In any case, this is how competing goals can cause conflicts even when both goals are good and there is no direct antagonism to either. And the resulting decision can say a lot about a character's values, so make sure they choose carefully. :)

Theresa

All characters have agendas

“The real hell of life is everyone has his reasons.”
― Jean Renoir

Hating on

Came across this is a review of Norah Jones's latest:
"That would be like hating on peaches for being juicy."

I am always-- who knows why-- charmed by the term "hating on."  "Hating" is a static  verb, referring to a feeling. (I am hating the smell of that banana peel in the trashcan under my desk.)

But "hating on" is an active verb. It's a new construction, but generally means that I don't just statically hate this thing, but I, you know, bitch about it, write nasty Tweets about it, leave bad reviews on the Amazon page. That is, I actively act on my hatred when I hate on something.

We should remember that when we're writing character emotions. If a character has strong emotion, she doesn't just feel the emotion. She acts on it in some way, especially if she can't formulate the thought or speak the words because the emotion is verboten somehow. She might not be dumb enough to SAY or even "think outloud" the thought, "I hate my best friend," but if she hates her best friend, she's going to show it somehow. She'll clench up when the friend comes close. She'll notice the friend's number on her cell phone display and refuse to answer it. She'll accidentally on purpose forward the friend's confidential rant about her boss to the boss. She might not TELL the emotion, but she'll SHOW it.

Telling what the character is feeling is good. It shows character depth. But it's not enough, especially when the character isn't able to articulate or own up to the feeling. Try showing it instead, and I don't mean useless actions like kicking that banana-redolent trashcan.For example, she closes the phone and ignores her friend's phone call, thereby missing out on the warning that her department is going to be closed and she laid off. Or her friend is fired by the boss and vows eternal revenge against the company, not realizing it was our character's fault for forwarding the email.

How can the character hate on or love on or deliberate on or worry on or bitter on or resent on in a way that affects the plot or at least that scene?

Alicia

Defaulting to the Protagonist

I've got this odd writing process. I write a chapter or scene, and start writing the next, but then realize that I need to add or deepen or change something in the earlier scene. So I got back and "layer in" whatever I've realized I need to do. So I never really have a first draft, as I'm making changes even as I write new material.

I'm doing that now, in fact. I've started what was supposed to be a short story but is looking to be a novella-- I'm in chapter three, and the conflict is just getting joined. When I wrote the first chapter, I had a minor character Amelia, the sister-in-law, and she is the "pivot" that brings the hero and heroine together. Well, she actually DID in the first version.  She writes a note to the hero telling him to meet her at an art gallery, and then tells the heroine to meet her there too, and she doesn't show but they encounter each other. Awwwww.... well. She certainly is a nice guardian angel, isn't she?

When I found myself inventing an elaborate motivation for her to do this ("she wants to bring Jordy back into the family from which he is estranged! And also to distract Felicity from possibly stealing back her former fiance, now Amelia's husband!"), I sensed that I was resting a whole lot of the plot action on the machinations of a minor character. Sure, she has motivation... but really. She isn't the protagonist. So her motivation shouldn't be more intense and dramatic and plausible than the main characters.

Every time I start a story, I learn this again. A story is only as strong as its protagonists. If they don't care enough, don't have enough motivation, to commit the actions that drive the plot, then they should be retired to the sidelines so someone more purposeful can take over the protagonist role.

So I went back to that opening scene, and squinted at it. How could I make Felicity re-encountering Jordy the result of the motivation of one of them? As soon as I posed the question, challenged myself to achieve this, I had the answer.  She wants to warn him about the sister-in-law's machinations. So she tracks him down to tell him what's going on.

There. I feel better now. A minor character is no longer the most important person in my plot. My hero and heroine are center stage, where they ought to be.

And, btw, by revising this scene to force Felicity to act, I also eliminated an embarrassing coincidence that would have truly annoyed the reader. ("Oh. Right. Out of all the churches in all the villages in all the kingdom, she walks into the one run by the sister-in-law's vicar brother. How convenient.") Defaulting to protagonist action and motivation rather than coincidence and minor character machinations, I think I strengthened the opening and more important, strengthened my characters.

Am I the only one who has to re-learn this every book???
Alicia

Character vs. trait

A character trait isn't characterization. Just declaring that a character is arrogant or obsessive or showing that means little. What's important is the cause of the trait and the effect on the character's life... and the plot, of course.

For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Darcy is famously arrogant, and behaves arrogantly towards all, especially Elizabeth. The effect of this character trait is shown immediately. Almost no one beyond his old friend Bingley likes him, and Elizabeth rejects his impetuous proposal, declaring that she can't abide his arrogant assumption that she will love him back.

So the effect is shown soon (he is disliked, and E rejects him).  The cause is revealed more slowly, as Elizabeth herself comes to understand it. He grew up rich, of course, and indulged, but lost his parents early and found himself the guardian of a large estate, a huge staff, and a younger sister. His arrogance, she realizes (with the reader), was a response to the many responsibilities. She also realizes that he does not act with such arrogance to those he loves when she meets his housekeeper and his little sister.

So the cause and especially its revelation become part of the progress of the plot. But more than that, this central trait is actually changed by the events of the plot.  Darcy is a snob at the start of the story, making clear that he looks down on Elizabeth's family for being socially inferior. But when he begins to help rescue her wayward sister, he must interact with her uncle, who being only a barrister is far below him in social class.  He changes to someone who can appreciate the honesty and honor of this man, and even defends Elizabeth and her family against Lady Catherine, the most aristocratic snob in the book.

Arrogance is more than just a character trait here-- it leads him to behave badly and so is a catalyst for action (Lizzie rejecting him), but is also a catalyst for change, as he moves beyond his arrogance to win Lizzie back.

So let's not stop with assigning character traits to characters! That might be the start, but it isn't sufficient.

Character aspect:
What caused it? How is this revealed?
How does this affect the story events?
How does this aspect change because of the story events?

I'm also curious about how we reveal it, perhaps early, but don't necessarily show the causes right away. I think probably we'd have to show effects right away (as it will of course affect the scenes where it "appears"). But how do we hold off the cause so we aren't just dumping backstory?
Alicia

Exploiting Orphans

Jenny and I got into a discussion once about how so many historical novels use "helping orphans" as a shorthand technique to supposedly make a jerky hero sympathetic. I always had a mental image of rakish looking hunks lining up outside an orphanage door,  checkbooks in hand. Anyway, I don't think that works!  I think that readers sympathize with interesting character confronted with interesting conflicts.  That is, "doing nice things to poor benighted orphans" isn't necessarily going to make him sympathetic. (And why is sympathy the reaction we want anyway? I do think "reader involvement" might more important, and allows for characters who are more or less than sympathetic.)

What I think I’m discovering is that character development sort of depends on these particular circumstances (the opening situation and then the plot events) causing a change in his behavior. If your hero already supports a dozen orphans because he's just such a doggone good guy, then his taking care of this new orphan is not only effortless (he’s got the whole system set up already), but also, in a way, nothing special. He always does that. All you’ll end up doing is showing that he’s a wonderful, charitable guy—and always has been.

Consider what would happen if he has no history of supporting orphans, and this kid shows up, claiming to be the orphan of the hero's former girlfriend. And... worst possible time... he's about to marry the beautiful and moralistic daughter of his wealthy boss, and she's righteous and jealous and boss is the Old Testament type. So the arrival of this orphan kid is a catastrophe, a conflict, not just the latest in a long line of orphans Hero has helped, but a problem he doesn’t know how to solve, but has to solve anyway. In other words, dealing with this orphan makes him grow, in compassion or empathy or generosity—doesn’t just display those virtues for all to see.

And if he’s embarrassed and mad at himself for doing the right thing, If he’s not sure it’s the right thing, and if doing it gets him into trouble, all the better.

What do you think? Maybe I’m misreading the attitude of the reading public, but I think a bit of curmudgeonly spirit, when coupled with eventually good actions, really does increase the sympathy factor.