Heat #13: Short Track Speed Slating

This is our final judged event. Alicia and I are the judges.

Are you all familiar with flash fiction? Flash is ultra-short storytelling, complete with a protagonist, a conflict, and a resolution. It's focused, condensed, and often as delicious as a single bonbon. (There's a great article about it here if you want a more detailed definition.)

Your job today is to write a 300-word flash story. Your story can be on any subject, but you must use two of the three following words: short, track, or speed.

Post your entries in the comments before the Closing Ceremonies begin. Alicia and I will pick the winner.

Heat #12: Freestyle Keying

Alicia says that voice begins with worldview and ends with word choice. Today's exercise gives you a chance to reflect on your worldview in a simple, black-and-white manner.

Use a kitchen timer so that you don't dawdle over this one. It can be very tempting to dwell and ponder and explore trains of thought, but this is just an exercise. The end result should be a bit of enhanced clarity of your personal worldview.

Take a pad of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle of the page. On the top of one column, write "Yes." On top of the other column, write "No."

The Yes column will be for things that make your creativity hum in a positively energized way. These are things that wake you up. Things that excite your curiosity. Things guaranteed to make you stop and look twice. They might not always be pretty or charming or nice. But they will always call out to you, and you will always be drawn to them.

The No column is for things that raise your hackles. If you want to write a letter to the editor about it, it goes here. If you want to slap your Congressperson over it, it goes here. If you want to stop total strangers in public and let them know why they shouldn't do it, it goes here.

Set your timer for ten or fifteen minutes or so. Write quickly. Don't stop to think about whether anyone will approve of your choices. Nobody but you ever needs to see this list. This is personal self-exploration, for your eyes only.

List items in the Yes column until you can't think of any more, then switch to the No column. When you get stuck in the No column, switch back to Yes.

Don't worry about why a particular item makes the list. It can be irrational -- we all have pet peeves, after all. It can be mundane -- there's a reason we all cringe to see someone pick their noses and wipe it on their shirts, right? But the underlying reasons or values aren't important. All you really want is to write a list of things that make you buzz with emotion.

This list represents part of your worldview, the part that taps into your emotions and creativity. It's worth a few minutes to get all those things down where you can see them together, isn't it? Leave a comment about this exercise to be entered into the drawing for the Closing Ceremonies!

Heat #10: Wordic Combined

Shakespeare created as many as 1,700 new words for our English language.Today, you get to follow in his footsteps and make a new word, too.

Take two existing English words which commonly exist in most people's vocabularies.

Combine them into a new term. The meaning of this new term must be clear and easy to grasp upon first reading.

Example: Shakespeare gave us coldblooded, moonbeam, and skim milk.

(He also gave us Olympian. Huh. What a coincidence.)

This is a judged event. Enter more than once if you wish, but get your entries in no later than February 26 at noon central time. Mail them to edittorrent at gmail dot com. Polling will go live at the deadline and will continue until just before the Closing Ceremonies.

Heat #9: Figure Stating

Today we're going to build on the Skeleton from Heat #6.

This is not a judged event, but everyone who comments about it will be entered into the prize drawing.

You already know your new character's age, gender, social roles, and mannerisms. Today, your job is to use that information to build a physical description of the character. Think closely about how these factors might influence physical characteristics. Your aim is not to list the merely visual, but to understand how a confluence of factors might allow you to create a visually coherent character. For example, does your 16-year-old fry cook have bad skin? Burn marks on his hands? A slight paunch from all the fries he sneaks? Or does your 16-year-old fry cook have a serious light to his brown eyes and a bankbook perpetually tucked into his back pocket?

You can take the same set of facts and slant them toward very different descriptions. Your goal is to find a description that is meaningful.

Heat #8: Cold-as-Ice Hockey

They say that Eskimos have like eleventy squillion words for snow and cold.

Today, you're banned from using any of them.

Your task: Write one vivid and evocative paragraph (not to exceed 150 words) depicting a man on the verge of freezing to death in the wilderness.

The catch: You cannot use any of the following words:
Cold, frozen, arctic, bitter, cool, freezing, frigid, frosty, glacial, ice-cold, icy, nipping, nippy, numb, numbing, polar, shivery, shiver, shivering, winter, wintry, subfreezing, subzero, zero, chill, chilled, cooled, frosted, iced, ice, snow, refrigerated, unheated

This is a judged round. Send your entries to edittorrent at gmail dot com. Entries will be posted anonymously on the 24th, and voting will remain open until just before the Closing Ceremonies. Have some fun with this one! Make us really shiver!

Heat #7: Biothlon, Take Two

In the Opening Ceremonies, we asked you what your "parade moment" would be. At what moment will you know, right down to the tips of your toes, that all your hope and faith in yourself has been justified?

Your Heat task today is to write the author bio which will be true when you experience your parade moment. How many books will you have released by then? How old will you be? What does your daily life look like? What are your new career goals at this stage of your career?

Leave a comment about this exercise to get an entry in our drawing. Prizes will be awarded at the Closing Ceremonies.

Heat #6: Skeleton

Your Heat for today is a simple character or subject mapping exercise. Choose a new character or subject for this one. This is not a judged exercise, but everyone who comments will get another entry into the drawing for the prize awarded at the Closing Ceremony.

For your new character or subject, write down all of the following:

1. Age. (Does the character's age create any physical, mental, or emotional characteristics?)
2. Gender. (Ditto -- but go for non-obvious characteristics here.)
3. Social roles. (Start with the main role(s) played by the character in the story, but then brainstorm the character's other social roles. Is your waitress also a student at the community college? A Meals On Wheels volunteer? A daughter, a girlfriend, a mom?)
4. Mannerisms. (Include physical mannerisms, such as scratching an elbow, that might be unrelated to mood or emotion. Also include physical mannerisms that flow from internal states, but try to avoid the obvious such as smiling when happy.)
   

Congratulations! You've just outlined a character or subject, and you now have a skeleton which you can flesh out as you choose.

Heat #5: Cross-Query Skiing

Today's Heat is open to everyone. This is not a judged Heat.

Your task is simple. Using Query Tracker, Agent Query, Writer's Market, or any other reference tool you like, identify one editor or agent who takes the kind of work you write. This must be an editor or agent you haven't previously researched. You're looking for new terrain to explore.

Once you've identified this new-to-you agent or editor, find their website. (If your reference site doesn't have a link, use google.) Read their submissions guidelines. All the way through. No skipping of paragraphs allowed. If you choose, you may also take a moment to browse books they've repped or published to learn more about their preferences.

How easy was that? Leave a comment about today's Heat, and we'll enter you into the drawing to win a prize at the closing ceremony.

Heat #4: Speed Scrivening

This is an easy one. Anyone can play. This is a judged event with prizes and bragging rights.

For those of you competing in the Drafting event, take a moment to imagine a scene you must write. No writing yet. Just daydreaming, but daydreaming with a focus. You want to give some thought to where they are, what must happen, what the dominant moods of the characters will be, and how they are thwarted in the context of the scene.

For those of you competing in Pre-Writing, choose whether to focus on character histories or plot summaries. Don't bother pre-thinking. You want all your words to get spooned up straight from the deepest part of the psychic soup bowl. No filtering or stirring allowed.

For those of in Submissions, this will be a chance to write a new synopsis. Don't review the old synopsis, if you've already written one. Just take a moment to think about your plot and refresh your memory about the order of events -- no peeking at the manuscript or outlines, though. You're aiming for only the key events, the parts you can remember most easily, the biggest moments in the plot. If you refresh your memory, you might get sucked into the quicksand of detail.

For those of you competing in Editing, pick a scene which is giving you trouble. Longish scenes with structural issues might be best suited for this exercise. (Too bogged down/not developed enough/action gets sidetracked/etc.) Read through the scene one time only. Then set it aside in some place where you cannot see it. This is important. You want to be working from a refreshed memory.

Next, everyone, go to the Write Or Die tool created by Dr. Wicked.

Set the time goal for 15 minutes.

Write as fast as you can until the time is done. Don't worry about word choices or spelling errors or other nits to pick. Your goal is to write fast and get a flow through the events. Don't let your hands stop moving!

Drafting -- write a new scene, as imagined.
Pre-writing -- get busy exploring your plot or characters.
Submissions -- write a new plot-based synopsis. No peeking at the old one!
Editing -- take another stab at that complex scene. No peeking at the old one!

After you're done, send your final word count to edittorrent at gmail dot you-know-what. Everyone who sends us their word count will be entered into the pool for prizes at the Closing Ceremony, and another prize will also be awarded once all entries are received. Get your entries in by midnight tonight, and we'll announce a winner tomorrow!

Ready, set, GO!

Heat #3: Doggerel Sled Racing

This is a judged event, and it's open to all Pen Olympics Team members.

Doggerel. adjective

Etymology: Middle English dogerel, probably diminutive of dogge dog

Date: 14th century

: loosely styled and irregular in measure especially for burlesque or comic effect; also : marked by triviality or inferiority

For today's Heat, we invite you to write a short comic verse on the topic of writing, winter, or athletics. Send your entries to edittorrent at gmail dot you-know-what. Entries will be posted anonymously on the blog, and judges -- that's everyone who reads the blog -- will be invited to vote for their favorites. The winner will receive a special Medal graphic and wicked cool bragging rights.

Get your entries in no later than February 18, 2010. We'll post the competitors the following day.

Heat #2: Curling (Around His or Her Little Finger)

Today is the High Holy Day of Romance, so of course our Heat must have something to do with twoo wuv. Everyone is eligible to play this Heat.

For Team Fiction, choose a happily committed character in one of your stories. Romantic leads are a good choice, but certainly not the only choice.

For Team Nonfiction, choose an interview subject you can easily reach for a brief interview. Got any elderly relatives who would appreciate a phone call?

For Team Submissions or Team Drama, choose whichever method suits your project best.

Your subject or character must answer two questions:

1. What was the most romantic thing your lover did for you that nobody else would have thought was romantic?
2. Your lover is charmed by a trait of yours which everyone else finds annoying. What is that trait, and why does it charm your lover?

You should be able to complete this heat in under 500 words. Feel free to post your answers in the comments, or if you prefer, just post an insight gained by this exercise. Everyone who comments will be entered into a pool of pen athletes to win a prize at the closing ceremonies. (Yes, this means that the more Heats you enter, the more chances you have to win!)

By the way, I must give a tip of the hat to Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer, who inspired these questions with their brilliant romance, Agnes and the Hitman. Here's how Agnes might answer the questions:

1. He bought me an air conditioner. I can't believe he bought me an air conditioner. He saw that I needed it, and he went out and bought it. Just. Like. That. I was trying to pretend that he wasn't the right guy for me, what with him being a paid killer and all, but I was a goner as soon as he bought me that air conditioner.
2. Okay, so I have this slight habit of assaulting people with kitchen implements. Frying pans are usually pretty handy, but meat forks are a great way to make a, er, point. Usually people tell me it's wrong to bash cheating boyfriends and other reprobates in the head with skillets (even if they're not cast iron!), but Shane didn't mind. He did disarm me a couple of times, but that might have been just so I wouldn't get blood on my Cranky Agnes apron.

Your turn!

Heat #1: Biothlon

We thought it would be fun to do Heats just like real athletes. Each day during the Olympics, we'll post a Heat exercise. None of these exercises should swallow all your writing time (unless you let it!), but I still want to urge you to put your Event goals first. Some Heats will be judged heats with rewards, and some will be just to help you build your creativity muscles and stretch your writing muscles.

Today's is in the second non-judged category, and it deals with your specific project. We're going to write a bio. (Get it, biothlon! When your words are shot with deadly accuracy! *teehee*) But this won't be an ordinary bio. Here's how to play:

1. Choose a character you would like to know better. (For Team Nonfiction, choose an interview subject you've already interviewed at some length, or someone you know particularly well.)
2. If your character/subject could meet anyone in history, living or dead, who would they choose to meet?
3. Now here's the twist. Imagine your character/subject through the eyes of this historical person. From the POV of this historical person, write a short piece describing the character/subject and what it was like to be interviewed by that character/subject. How did the character/subject behave in the presence of such an important person?
   

Did you learn anything new about your character or subject? Did you find it difficult to look at your character or subject through a different lens?

Leave a comment about this exercise, and you'll be entered into a pool of pen athletes to win a prize at the closing ceremonies!

Theresa

From the Mailbag: On Starting With Dialogue

A shy reader who prefers to remain anonymous asked this question.

I don't get it. I know I've read books that start with dialogue. So why does everyone keep saying that it's bad to start with dialogue?

I'm going to answer with an example.

----

"But I like dialogue." John pushed his manuscript across the kitchen table toward Mary, almost knocking over his mug of cold coffee.

Mary shrugged and uncapped her red pen. She drew a big circle around the first line on the first page. "So do I. But I guess this is a rule. Doesn't make a lick of sense, but lots of rules don't make sense. I mean, they tell you they want your word count, but then they say it doesn't matter whether you go off the computer count or the number of pages multiplied by an average. That doesn't make sense, either."

"Word count, shmerd count. I write stories with lots of dialogue, so it's natural to start with dialogue, too." John removed the red pen from Mary's hand and recapped it. "Let's keep the dialogue."

----

Here's what we have:
* A notch over 100 words, so roughly half a page.
* Two named characters
* Clearly attributed dialogue
* A few small setting details
* A hint of conflict

Now, I have a question for you. Whose point of view are we in?

Theresa

Relevant Details and Viewpoint

If you have a fairly small amount of information about a secondary character, it's fairly easy to extrapolate that and build a "solid enough" presentation. We know, for example, that Dr. Cannon is a doctor. From that, we were able to extrapolate:

Money is no contraint for her, because she makes several hundred thousand a year, and she is the daughter of another prominent surgeon.
~ Wes

And from that, Wes built a character wearing an expensively tailored, elegant suit and expensive but understated jewelry, all of which are appropriate to her socioeconomic status.

Gwen took her in a different direction:

She wears no jewelry, and her shoes are flat and suitable for walking. Her hair is dirty blonde and curly, pulled back in a quick bun. Tendrils are escaping from the front. She has blue eyes with slight darkening beneath them.

Where Wes was thinking about the status benefits of the job, Gwen was thinking about its demands. Flat shoes, efficient hair, and dark shadows under the eyes are some of the things a very busy doctor might be expected to have. This is also appropriate for the character, though the result is a different character.

Green Knight started by rejecting the request to describe the character's clothing, and ended up with a character who herself rejects fashion:

I can't describe Dr. Cannon's clothing - I don't have an idea of her character yet, and I don't know what I want to invoke.... Hm. I guess she took the easy way out and went to whereever women buy upmarket fashion and allowed a personal shopper to dress her. She liked the effect and bought the ensemble - her own wardrobe being out of date, and after six months in a dusty camp without running hot and cold water, she can't be bothered to invest the time it takes to keep up with fashion talk.

Again, by focusing on a slightly different aspect of the few known character details -- Dr. Cannon is not just any doctor, but one who donates her time to MSF -- we end up with a value system for this character that has tangible evidence in the way she dresses.

I also want to point out that Dave noticed a physical attribute unique to surgeons:

Her fingers are quick and clever, fitting for a surgeon.

When we started this series of exercises, I mentioned that there are no wrong answers to any of these questions. Now we start to see why. Each writer has a unique perspective -- voice -- which will lead you to create characters in different ways. Does this character play the same role in all version of the Johnny and Drago lunch meeting? Yes. Is the character identical across the board? No. Nor would we want her to be, because your unique voice (and the unique way that voice creates characters and other story elements) is part of what makes your story special and, ultimately, marketable.

So, your viewpoint -- your voice -- will influence your natural tendencies while building a character.

But here's where things get interesting.

Your other characters' viewpoints can also influence interpretation and extrapolation of secondary characters.

You're creating the secondary character, but that secondary character will be viewed through the prism of point of view. How that prism works depends in part on your pov choices. Who is the pov character in this scene? Johnny or Drago? How intimate is the pov -- do you choose a subjective, deep, intimate form of third person, or do you prefer an objective, external, narratorless omniscient?

During the "Paging Dr. Cannon" part of this exercise, some of you touched on how Dr. Cannon would view the students.

She's easy with Johnny, understands him. She can't help responding to his charm, which he turns on full blast; but she notices that he doesn't reveal much about himself.
~ Green Knight

Johnny seems eager, perhaps over eager, but he's charming enough. Drago seems nervous, which she can sympathize with, but he's also too pushy.
~ Jami G.

They looked worried and that’s exactly how she wanted them to feel.
~ Murphy

So you're already primed to deal with the ways these characters see each other. Which leads us to our next exercise.

Take out a blank sheet of paper and divide it in half horizontally and vertically so that it is separated into four quarters. The left half side of the page is for Johnny, and the right is for Drago. The top half is for subjective (deep) pov, and the bottom is for objective (ominiscient) pov.

Like this:











Here's your mission, should you choose to accept it. First, think about your version of Dr. Cannon, the character as you want her to be. Now, in the upper left quadrant, jot down the aspects of her character that Johnny would notice. These are things that are relevant to Johnny, things that he looks for when evaluating a person. Consider also the unique way he will react to these details, and jot that down too.

Now repeat this for Drago in the upper right quadrant. Are there details which both Johnny and Drago would notice, but would interpret differently?

Now we move to the lower part of the page. In the lower left quadrant, note the things that Johnny would NOT notice because they are NOT relevant to his personal worldview. Are any of these details important for the reader's understanding of the action?

Now repeat this for Drago, lower right quadrant. He'll ignore certain things, too, and these things might be different from the things Johnny ignores.

Sometimes it's difficult to choose the viewpoint character for a particular scene. By understanding how the unique character perspective can shade the interpretation of the scene -- or ways you would be limited by a given perspective -- the choice can be clearer.

Theresa

Paging Dr. Cannon

We've taken a look deep inside Drago and Johnny, our primary characters, and have constructed some complex characters with a lot going on inside and outside. We've constructed backstories, analyzed emotional needs, examined needs in conflict, and predicted behavior based on all these factors.

Do you want to do this for every single character in your story?

You can if you want to, and it might (might!) make your story richer. It sure would be a lot of fun, too, because let's face it, this stuff is fun.

But it would be awfully time-consuming to have to build every character in this complex and nuanced manner. For characters that play minor roles, that appear only in one or two scenes, there are other ways to make them vivid without writing dozens of pages of backstory and filling in detailed charts and questionnaires.

Think about this. You're attending a business function with a friend, say an awards dinner. The friend knows everyone, but you don't know anyone but your friend. You walk in, and your friend introduces you to someone right away, before you've even taken the lay of the land.

Immediately, you will begin to take in information about this new person to help you understand what kind of person he or she is. Clothing, hairstyle, smile, mannerisms, how loudly or softly they speak, even word choices -- thousands of cues that all mount up to create an impression of character. Some of these cues are large and some are small, but each plays a role in helpin gyo to understand what kind of person you've just met.

Here's what you don't get with your new acquaintance: details of their childhood, parents, siblings, education, and all the other backstory; goals, dreams, plans and other details related to external motivation; emotional weaknesses, core needs, emotional strengths, secrets, obsessions, and other things related to the deeper psyche; and, indeed, anything not appropriate for chat at a business cocktail party or dinner.

Yet you can still draw some conclusions about this character, can't you? He's bossy. She's needy. He's a really warm-hearted guy. She's the class clown. His conversation is limited. And you can use those conclusions to begin to predict character behavior. You begin to understand how that particular character would behave in a different setting even though you might not know every detail of their childhoods.

You do it all by staying in the present and analyzing only the information available at this moment and in these circumstances.

And now you're going to do it for Dr. Cannon. She's our pal, the interviewer surgeon on staff at a prestigious city hospital and involved in MSF. That's all we know about her so far.

Now, keeping in mind that every detail you choose must be evocative of a consistent character type, I want you to:

-- Pick out Dr. Cannon's clothing.

-- Give her a physical description.

-- Describe the meal she orders and how she orders it.

-- Describe her manner of interacting with Johnny and Drago.

That's it. In essence, you will build a character by analyzing her appearance and behavior in a given setting. Go!

Theresa

Foiled by Drago

In our last post, we created Drago and put him in direct competition with Johnny for a medical school scholarship. I gave you a simple exercise and series of questions designed to help you understand how to exploit "core conflicts" -- conflicts that arise from clashes between people's core beliefs and needs. We also had an external conflict in the competition for the scholarship.

As the comment thread shows, most of you had a relatively easy time putting Drago and Johnny into a position where these core conflicts would have an impact on the progress of the meeting. None of you hunted for common ground between Johnny and Drago -- same major, same age, same career goals, perhaps some other similarities that might form at least some basis for a casual friendship. All of you focused on their differences and on the way their differences create conflict. These differences are the soul of drama. Conflict can be created by two people who want the same thing (a scholarship), but that conflict becomes dramatic when the people involved challenge each other on some deeper level.

I did this on purpose. I created Drago specifically so that he would challenge Johnny and Johnny would challenge him for more than just a scholarship. And now I would like to take a moment to explain how I did that.

One Simple(ish) Method for Creating Foils

Step One.
Identify the character's core emotional need.

Johnny has a core emotional need for status. We already knew this, and knew some of his other competing needs. But I chose to focus on status when creating Drago.


Step Two.
Figure out what would threaten that core belief.

This is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Imagine something that would take away any possibility of satisfying that core emotional need. Johnny's need for status is expressed through material things. Taking away those material things in another character would call up the emotions for Johnny. See, it's not that Johnny actually wants all the latest gadgets and the shiniest car. He wants what these things represent. (Yes, he might actually want many of these things for themselves, but this doesn't explain why he always buys his new iPhone on the first day of release.) Taking away any possibility of gathering all these status symbols is good, but taking away both their physical presence and the desire for them is even better.

In the comments, some of you have mentioned that you know a guy just like Johnny. Have you ever had conversations with them about what other people own? In my experience, these conversations have three levels:
- envy (He has more than me, therefore he will be better than me until I get it, too.)
- confusion (I don't understand why he thinks this one is better. What am I missing? Do I have to get one of these things now, too, even though I don't understand it?)
- dismissal (They got nuthin. Ha! I win!)

In all those cases, Johnny is comparing what he has to what others have. This is how he relates to people. Remove the possibility of object comparison, and you remove his habitual means for relating to people.

So right away, I knew we wanted a character with nothing. But mere poverty would not suffice, because Johnny would dismiss them easily. After all, in the world according to Johnny, money can be made, even if you're a kid. Babysitting, lawnmowing, paper routes, even lemonade stands. So we needed a character for whom none of this would have been possible. And that impossibility would have been so absolute that even Johnny would see it.

I considered a scholarship student who grew up in foster care. I think we can all agree that foster children rarely grow up with silver spoons. Maybe he moved around a lot, so things like a paper route would have been out of the question. And there would have been some tragedy in his past that would have triggered the foster care situation, so this might have awakened some sympathy in people who met him.

But I changed my mind because of step three.


Step Three.
Make it big.

We talk alot about "big" books, but it's not always easy to explain what we mean. So let's look at an example. Remember, we're evaluating these scenarios in terms of how they challenge Johnny's core emotional beliefs.

Scenario 1: Character's parents are both doctors. He grew up in a wealthy suburb. Went to the best private schools. Drives a BMW convertible. He was raised to believe in service, the old "those to whom much is given, from much is expected" thing. He spends the lunch with Dr. Cannon discussing his volunteer work at the hospitals where his parents work. The discussion of volunteerism might challenge Johnny a little, but Johnny would still evaluate this character in terms of what he owns. There's little meaningful challenge here, so it's a fairly small conflict.

Also, it's worth noting that we're talking about a character with a fairly typical upper-middle class upbringing. There's nothing shocking, nothing to rouse our sympathies, and nothing to make it bold or unique.

Scenario 2: Our foster care student. This guy had little stability as he was growing up, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. We know that Johnny has some stability needs that tie into his status need. Johnny would feel uncomfortable around him on some level, but ultimately he would be able to resolve it. "The guy grew up with nothing and no possibility of getting anything. But it's different now. He got a free ride to a state school for his bachelor's degree. All the foster kids get that. It's guaranteed (stable)." And then, having resolved the stability question at least in part, Johnny would start thinking in terms of whether the free public school was "better" than the high-priced private school he attended.

This character's upbringing is less typical than the doctors' kid. There might be something shocking in his past that led to the need for foster care. Foster care can rouse people's sympathies, and so it's a bigger situation than that of our first student.

Scenario 3: Drago.

I don't think we need to revisit the ways in which Drago challenges Johnny's core beliefs. He does, and we've explored various ways that this might play out.

Let's look instead at the relative bigness of his situation.

Genocide is less common than foster care, which is less common than a middle-class upbringing.

Civil war is more destructive to a person's environment/stability/material accumulation than foster care, which is more destructive than a middle-class upbringing.

Civil war, genocide, being rescued by the UN, being an international refugee -- these are all played on a bigger world stage, where foster care is statewide, and a middle-class upbringing is local.

We could go on. I'll leave it to you to find other means for comparison, and post your ideas in the comments.

But here's your real assignment for this post. People have a fairly limited number of core emotional needs. Some common ones are needs for approval, power, or independence. Choose one of these, or choose another core need if you prefer. And then think of two ways (one smaller, one bigger) that this need could be challenged through a character foil.

Yeah, it's a harder assignment, but it's a fun one. Have at it!
Theresa

Core Conflicts

Let's start by reviewing the way we've worked over poor Johnny the status-seeking pre-med student. (He would object to being called "poor Johnny." He deserves better than to be manipulated and exposed by a bunch of starving artists. Really, who the hell do we think we are? lol)

We started with a few key pieces of external behavior and worked inward to get to his core emotional need.

We used that core emotional need to predict simple, controllable behavior.

We used that core emotional need and companion needs to demonstrate how seemingly contradictory behavior can be consistent with that character.

We examined self-image as a facet of emotional need and as a predictor of behavior.

We looked at how Johnny's desire to hide pieces of his personality might influence behavior in a common social situation with zero conflict.

And this has all been leading up to this post. Now we'll look at how to exploit core conflicts.

Meet Drago

What we haven't done yet is create a second character with an external goal which puts him in direct conflict with Johnny. Remember, the pretty party girl was not a developed character. We let you all stand in for her and imagine how you would respond to Johnny. We didn't give her her own set of needs and goals. This is why we need Drago now.

Drago is a survivor. He grew up in a region of Europe torn apart by civil war. The wars left his remote village intact for the first few years -- his village is so remote, in fact, that the communist government never could figure out how to get electricity to them. They didn't import much of anything, but they did a little bartering with neighboring villages. As a child, Drago sometimes walked the three hours through the mountains to the next village with a load of homemade cheese in a pack on his back. He enjoyed the return trip more because he could spend his time in anticipation of his village's excitement to see what he managed to get in trade for the cheese.

One day when Drago was making this trip, rebel soldiers came to his village, collected all the men and boys, and slaughtered them. Then they moved on to the next village and did the same. Drago survived only because he was on a mountain path that the soldiers didn't know about. Drago, his mother, and all the other surviving women and girls were taken in by the UN, moved to a refugee camp in another part of Europe, and eventually were settled in the US.

Drago's self-image is "survivor," and his core emotional need is justice. He wants to be a doctor because he wants to right the wrongs committed by bad men, brutal soldiers. He has watched his mother struggle to adapt to her new environment. She may have been the best cheese-maker in the mountains, but her lack of exposure to modern living has made it impossible for her to even find work as a cleaning woman. This has also made Drago hyper-protective.

Drago, Meet Johnny

Drago got a scholarship to college, and he needs a scholarship if he's going to go to med school. He and Johnny have both applied for a prestigious internship that would pay their tuition and expenses. In addition to these benefits, the intern would be allowed to work during school breaks under the mentorship of a famous surgeon at an internationally-renowned NYC hospital. This surgeon is heavily involved in Doctors Without Borders.

The selection committee uses a precise calculus to determine the winner of the internship/scholarship. In the event of a tied score, the selection committee interviews the two candidates, and they have lunch together with the famous surgeon. (Let's give her a name. Dr. Cannon. Assume she's a placeholder character much like the pretty girl at the party. You may stand in for her if you want to.)

Johnny and Draco are meeting each other and Dr. Cannon at this lunch for the first time. The lunch is at a white-tablecloth place. Hushed music. Heavy silverware. Well-trained waiters.

They have an external conflict. Obviously. They're competing for a scholarship.

But here is your assignment. Just by being in the room together, even without the external conflict, these two will be projecting needs, values, goals, and hiding aspects of their shadow selves. Your job is to think through how they interact on this level. Consider:

-- What do they see in each other that makes each of them feel uncomfortable about themselves?

-- How do they each handle that discomfort?

-- What do they see in each other that makes each of them feel good about themselves?

-- How to they each handle those positive feelings?

-- How does the environment impact their interaction? What does it highlight about their interpersonal conflict? What do they order for their meals, and why?

-- Finally, how do they try to control their self-image to each other and to Dr. Cannon?

AFTER you've considered these questions, write the scene. But do think about the core conflicts first. Don't settle for what is easy and obvious. Dig deeper. Think it through. You might find some surprises along the way.

There are no wrong answers to an exercise like this. No two writers will handle the same core conflicts in exactly the same way. Your interpretation of character and behavior is part of what gives you a unique voice.

Theresa

By the way, Drago's story is real, except that he did not survive. Author Kate Rothwell a/k/a Summer Devon works with the women who did survive that day. Look here for photos of the sock booties they make and sell. Look here for details on ordering their handiwork. They make great holiday gifts. Just sayin.

Johnny, Dressed in Layers

You're at a cocktail party. A young man walks up to you and introduces himself.

"Hi, I'm Johnny. I'm a status-seeking pre-med student with a low tolerance for financial instability and a moderate tolerance for emotional instability. Can I get you a drink?"

Yeah, that ought to woo the women.

We very rarely craft our self-images to project our emotional needs (even though the end result might betray those needs). But we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how we hope to be, the image we wish to project, and what we want others to think of us.

It's something more than simple self-image. It's a combination of self-image and projected image, with a healthy dose of hiding just to keep things interesting.

If you're at all familiar with astrology, you might already have some basis for understanding this concept. (We're going to file this under "things I learned in creative writing school.") When an astrologer casts a natal chart, the first three placements identified are the sun sign, the moon sign, and the rising sign.

The sun sign is a person's core personality, the foundational traits which will always make up part of their character in some way. These traits can be magnified or diminished by other factors, but they're still pretty constant. When we say things like, "Geminis have quick minds," or, "Capricorns are good with money," we're usually referencing a sun sign trait. And when we read our horoscopes in the newspaper, we're reading for our sun signs.

When creating a character, the "sun sign" part of it will be things like long-term goals, backstory, immutable traits, socioeconomic position, career path, and the other enduring, big-picture factors that can be used to define the basics of who that character is. When a character defines himself or herself, these traits will factor strongly on the list. Example: Betty Draper is an upper-middle class housewife who worked briefly as a model before stepping in to her expected role of wife and mother. She has three children, a husband, and one married brother. She enjoys riding horses and uses and English saddle. Men are strongly attracted to her, and she places a lot of value on appearances.

The rising sign is the person's external or public personality. Think of this like a layer of external traits on top of the core personality, much like a layer of clothing over the body. Just as line and color and texture of a dress can influence the way the body looks, the traits of the rising sign can make a character "look" a certain way. Rising sign traits are often the first things we notice about people, even though they are often not the most important.

When creating a character, the "rising sign" part of it will be how others see the character. It's a mixture of projected image and actual impact on others. Part of thinking through this part of the character requires us to understand where a character tries but fails to create certain impressions. Example: Betty Draper is well-spoken but she doesn't have much to say. Her person and her home are meticulously well-maintained, but she does little of the actual maintenance work herself, though she does think she struggles to maintain a "perfect" facade. People think she's naive, pampered, and lucky, but when they get to know her better, they feel sorry for her. The impact she has on people, therefore, depends somewhat on how well they know her.

The moon sign in a natal chart indicates the hidden or shadow side of ourselves. This is the part of ourselves we hope people won't notice, the part we try to leave out of our public personalities. This doesn't make this part of us less real or valid. It also doesn't mean it's an automatic negative. But it does mean that we might not be quite as accepting of these parts of ourselves. The moon sign, in some ways, points to where we will struggle.

In creating a character, the "moon sign" often relates to our deep emotional needs and how we try to obscure them. These are the parts of ourselves we don't want others to notice. Is the character insecure? Hot-tempered? Afraid of her own basement? These might be seen as flaws, but they don't have to be outright bad traits. Think also of the ways a character indulges in self-sabotage (the dieter who hides candy in her sock drawer), takes a good trait too far (is he a saver or a miser?), or tries to obscure his upbringing or cultural background (the white suburban kid who dreadlocks his hair and tells you it's iree). Finally, think of the traits people will know only when they know us well. Everyone might know the man on the corner who is the high school football coach, who has outfitted his garage like a boxing ring, who drives a Hummer and wears the blackest sunglesses and the toughest leather coats. How many people also know that he grows and breeds show violets with his wife? How might he explain this when it becomes known, and what does it say about his self-image?

How does this relate to Johnny? We've already defined some of his core externals (pre-med, good student, etc.) and some of his shadow-self needs (status, and the ways status manifest for him). But there's more to it than this. How does Johnny want people to see him?

Johnny won't talk openly about seeing the world as a hierarchy and wanting to be as close to the top of the heap as possible. He will talk about money (which frequently masks another emotional need) and his elevated tastes. He might joke about being high maintenance. (This would be a joke to him, because we can diminish the dark part of ourselves by laughing about it.) He might use one obvious aspect of his shadow self to try to deflect attention away from the truth. Example: He might talk about his love of a good meal in a fine restaurant in terms of the food and flavors and choices, but in fact he thinks most steaks taste pretty much the same and he chose this restaurant because it's the "best" in town. There's a chance he won't admit even to himself that he would be just as happy with a Big Mac. We frequently turn a blind eye to our own shadow selves.

But this doesn't mean we can escape them. Johnny will dress and walk and talk a certain way to cultivate a certain image. Whether this effort yields success, and at what point people begin to see through it to his deeper self, is part of what makes people -- and fiction -- interesting.

So. You're a beautiful young girl at a cocktail party. You see a man, Johnny, across the room. Tell me--
1) What he is wearing.
2) What he does when you make eye contact with him.
3) How long it takes him to approach you.
4) How he approaches you.
5) What he says when he finally reaches you.

(Because, when it comes right down to it, lists of traits are nowhere near as interesting as watching a person with those traits in action. This is storytelling.)

Theresa

Deepening Your Characters

There are a number of methods for deepening your characters, but today we'll look at just one: Identification of dominant needs.

Typically, genre fiction writers think in terms of goals and motivations. "Johnny wants to ace his finals because it will help him get into med school."
Goal = good grades.
Motivation = acceptance into med school

This is fine, and you can build a sturdy plot this way, but you might end up with slightly flat characters. We don't know anything about Johnny's core characteristics at this point. You might be thinking that we can extrapolate certain characteristics from the core facts, but can we? Johnny might want to ace his finals, but he might also want to watch the ball game. Is it safe to assume he has the self-discipline and focus necessary to study simply because he "wants" good grades? Or is it possible that is competing desires might be stronger? The truth is that although a person's goals do say something about that person, they might not say enough to be accurate predictors of behavior.

The way to get around this is by digging deeper into the motivation to find the dominant emotional needs. You're probably already doing this on some level. If you find yourself asking "Why?" frequently when examining your characters, you're trying to dig past the wants and into the needs. But this can also lead to flat and even circular reasoning. If you've spent much time in writers' brainstorming groups, you've probably run into conversations something like this:

Why does Johnny want to go to med school?
To become a doctor.

Why does Johnny want to be a doctor?
He wants a stable job with good pay and benefits.

Why does he want this kind of job?
Uh, doesn't everyone? Beats the hell out of living under a bridge.


We're getting nowhere because we're focusing on externals. It may be true that people want good pay in general, but that doesn't tell us much about Johnny in specific. As a character he may be an expression of universal human tendencies, but that doesn't mean he can be generic. So how do we get past this generic or universal external desire and into the gears of Johnny's unique mechanism?

Try taking the external goal away, and see where it gets you. Johnny wants to go to medical school so he can become a doctor and have a good job. What if somehow Johnny is precluded from attending medical school? Is he still the same character, or do the changed externals change his personality, too? Or, to put it another way,


Why does he choose medicine over some other stable profession, like law or big business?
When he was a kid, he heard someone say, "Don't be a plain Mister Jones when you can be a Doctor Jones." It stuck with him.


Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. The money might be a good rationale for this profession, but there's also a deeper emotional need at play. Johnny wants status. Money is an external symbol of that status, but other things are, too. How else would Johnny express his need for status? Clothing, housing, designer luggage, expensive haircuts -- all these status symbols might be deeply important to Johnny.

Johnny might be the kind of guy with an expensive car, too, but it's not because he's a risk-taker. He doesn't speed. He pauses at intersections and lets people get a good look at him in the driver's seat. And unlike the guy who buys the exact same car out of some need for attention, Johnny won't squeal his wheels when the light turns green.

I want to pause a moment and consider what we've just done. We started with an external fact or goal, worked inward to the core emotional need, and are now turning it around to work back out. We're examining that emotional need for other ways it might express itself in Johnny's life. Johnny buys that car because of what it says about his status. By identifying the core need expressed by his car, we can also figure out how he drives it.

By doing this inside-out analysis, we might also identify some self-contradictory behavior. Let's think about Johnny's lady for a moment. Notice that when Johnny first started explaining why he'd chosen medical school, he referenced stability as a goal. If his core emotional need was for stability, he might choose his spouse early in life and then make darn sure their marriage was a contented one.

But if his dominant need is for status rather than stability, and stability is merely the need he's willing to cop to in public, then will Johnny marry young? Maybe not. Not unless he manages to snag a supermodel or the sorority president. And even if he does land a girl like that, he might also go for some side action as an expression of status. Because that's the rumor: high-status males get more nookie.

So now what we have is a status-seeking male who claims to value stability (and who might, in fact, value it to some extent, especially in financial matters) who undermines the stability of his personal life by joining the girl-of-the-week club and/or cheating on his wife.

We can complicate this further. If his need for financial stability is greater than his tolerance for personal instability, Johnny might avoid cheating because he doesn't want to lose his house in a divorce. So instead taking his side nookie to a nightclub, he'll go to the same club on date night with his spouse and flirt with the waitresses, but he'll only dance with his wife. Now he's satisfying multiple emotional needs: He has the status-symbol wife on his arm, the status-enhancing flirtation, and the stability of a public display of loyalty to his wife. Plus, at the end of the night, there's little risk that his wife will take half of everything.

So, now we understand that mining a character's emotional needs can help us understand why they do the things they do. They might even help us predict how a character will behave in a given situation. Next time, we'll look at how a writer can use all this to exploit conflicts.

Any questions? If not, I have one for you. Does Johnny study for his finals or watch the game with his friends?

Theresa

Sentence revising

Here's a sentence that I felt was wrong-- wrong rhythm or something-- and couldn't figure out what. I'm not trying single anyone out (this is from a book review I was reading-- don't know the author), but I did wonder if it's an example of an author trying to cram too much into one sentence?
That fictionalized version of his own turbulent adolescence, sexual proclivities and drug use made Elliott a cult favorite, known for transforming brutal experience into piercingly honest prose.

How would you revise that?
I'm thinking at first glance, there are too many adjectives-- each ends up depriving the next one of some power.

Alicia