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?

Conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theories make for great fiction and film. Many bestsellers posit conspiracies that would seem to take more infrastructure and organization than we expect in our own world... but that's why they fascinate us.

As I said, the worldview of a conspiracy-theory novelist is usually (for the time of writing the book), "Everything is connected." Some secret organization or subversive powerful interest group is controlling a series of seemingly disconnected events in order to achieve some hidden goal. This makes for fascinating reading, especially when it's coupled with important cultural objects (The DaVinci Code) or seminal historical events (Winter Kills, which derives, as so many fictional and non-fictional conspiracy theories do, from the JFK assassination). I think one reason we are intrigued by books like these is they bring order to what seem like random and usually negative events, and by positing a sort of single master villain, make it more possible to imagine correcting or preventing disaster. That is, a single big conspiracy, however scary, is easier to deal with than a bunch of random events, so the essential task of "social" popular fiction -- to disrupt then restore order-- seems more difficult and interesting, but ends up easier.

Anyway, a question I have is-- if you are going to have a sleuth or investigator discover the conspiracy and follow the clues through, do you want someone who believes in conspiracy, who is already of the mindset that "Everything is connected?" Or would you rather go with someone who is skeptical and might even have reason to reject the conspiracy and has to be convinced?

DaVinci Code uses a semiotician as a slueth, that is, someone academically trained to see connections and signs in everything. (In fact, when I was reading Chronic City, I realized that the conspiracy theorist/semiotician in the middle of that was almost schizophrenic-- there seems to be a fine line between the semiotician seeing signs in how Mother's Day cards are arranged, and the schizophrenic hearing radio transmission through his tooth fillings.) The advantage here is that he is trained to interpret and connect, and doesn't have to be taught. Also, I guess, he doesn't have to be convinced. He can get right into the investigation without having a lot of resistance to the notion of a conspiracy. He hits the ground running (literally).

But in Winter Kills, the disaffected young brother of the assassinated president has an incentive not to investigate. The whole world has accepted the conventional wisdom, and he quickly realizes that yanking at this loose thread (a deathbed confession) might lead to information he doesn't want (family involvement). He has to be drawn in to believing in the conspiracy.

So, two questions:
1) What characterizes a good opportunity for a conspiracy theory story? Why, for example, has the JFK assassination engendered so many conspiracy theory stories, and 9/11 (which probably has at least as much official secrecy and unanswered or misanswered questions, and inadequate answers) hasn't?

2) If you had to pick a protagonist/investigator for a conspiracy theory, would you choose one who already was open to such theories, or a skeptic, and why? For example, if you watch Law and Order, SVU, there's an odd couple-- Munch, who is probably a licensed paranoid, who never met a conspiracy theory he didn't accept-- and Finn, a real skeptic, who doesn't believe in God, apple pie, or any theory at all. If you had a conspiracy theory novel, which sort of protagonist would you choose, a Munch who was predisposed to believe it, or a Finn who is predisposed to disbelieve it and has to be persuaded?

And of course, why, and under what circumstances? And what do you see as the hallmarks of the conspiracy novel?

“Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.”
Jimmy Buffett

Alicia

Unemployed Protagonists

I'm noticing a new trend in my inbox lately. An awful lot of manuscripts are starting with the protagonist getting fired. I can't decide what I think about this trend.

On the one hand, this would seem to be a good, emotional starting point. It's inherently dramatic -- drama is rooted in change and in conflict, and losing your job encompasses both. An event is in motion, and that event creates change in the protagonist's life. And people hardly ever accept the reasons for which they're being terminated as good or legitimate reasons, so there's always a tendency to fight back. Conflict.

It gives the heroine an instant problem to solve. What will she do? How will she continue on in her life? Jobs are hard to find these days. Will she lose everything, or will she manage to survive?

It provides the added opportunity for a little bit of character set-up. The reasons for the termination are backstory -- that is, they happened before the present moment of the storyline -- but their presentation comes about naturally through an active scene. "Joe, when you went to that convention and sent a strippergram to Acme's lead buyer, you might've thought it was funny, but he didn't. We lost our biggest account because of this. I'm afraid we have to let you go."

And, sad to say, this taps in to our current cultural zeitgeist. Nationwide, we've been in net job loss territory since May of this year. Unemployment is always a serious problem for the people and families dealing with it, but lately, it seems to be on the public radar a little bit more than usual. I know there are a lot of pundits out there who want to talk about "mental recession," but leaving politics aside, it doesn't really matter for fiction purposes whether these things are born from facts or from perceptions. When people start paying attention to a topic, that topic finds its way into creative works of storytellers. So job loss is topical, and it's entirely possible that a lot of people out there in this current climate would want to read stories that deal with this precise problem.

But, with all that said, I'm still not sure that getting fired is a good opener for story. There are two basic patterns for when people lose their jobs. The first is when it's part of a mass layoff or layoff for economic or similar reasons unrelated to the person's job performance. The second is when an individual is being fired for cause. The main difference between these two scenarios is that under the first, the employer is not going to refill the job -- the job itself is being eliminated, and the person is just a casualty. Under the second, the job will have to be refilled. It's not the job that's been eliminated, but the individual.

The first is inherently more sympathetic. It falls under the category of bad things that happen to good people, and might actually enhance the amount of sympathy a reader feels for the protagonists -- although, of course, much depends on the way it's written. I think we can probably all agree on the increased sympathy factor, though if you have other ideas, I'd like to hear about them in the comments.

But this is not the scenario that's been popping up in my inbox. What I've been seeing instead are stories about people who are terminated for cause, but the reasons for their termination are either incorrect or unfair. If incorrect, the story then becomes about proving that the big bad employer was covering something up, made a mistake, or failed to get an inept manager under control before that manager committed the ultimate blunder. If unfair, the story then becomes about lawsuits and revenge.

In either case, though, I'm out of step with the protagonist right from page one. The protagonist was not a victim of the economy, not a sympathetic bystander. Our dramatic question is not, "How will the protagonists survive?", but, "Was the protagonist fired for good reasons or bad?" And I think that's a far less compelling dramatic question.

But I could be wrong. That does occasionally happen -- I know, I know. Shocker. ;) Maybe the dramatic impetus provided by this big, compelling problem is enough to propel the reader through the first chapter and get them deeper into the plot. And the deeper they read, the more bonded they become to the protagonist. That's just the way it works.

I'd like to know what you all think about this. If the protagonist is fired because of job performance issues, are you going to want to read a story that's essentially about whether the job performance was correctly assessed?

Theresa

First Thoughts About Don and Sex

Several of you have commented behind the scenes that you don't think that Don Draper is an antihero. So I want to revisit this topic a little, maybe explore it a little more in depth, and share with you some of the analysis that led me to conclude he's an antihero. Not everyone will agree with this, of course, and that's okay. This kind of analysis is always subject to interpretation.

Spoiler Alert

Before we proceed I want to make it very clear that this post will be full of spoilers. If you don't want to know the plot twists, don't keep reading.

Protagonists and Their Spouses

One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Don is an antihero can be found in his relationship with his wife. He cheats on her, and then when he's done cheating on her, he cheats some more. Speaking in generalities, how do different protagonist types handle the issue of marital fidelity? Do they cheat?

Romance Hero -- "I see only one woman, a woman so beautiful and infuriating that she claims every bit of my attention. I may have had sex with other women in the past, but any attempt to do so now, if I were even foolish enough to try it, will only result in my humiliation when I can't perform."

Tragic Hero -- "I want to be a good and faithful husband. Events conspired against me, and I cheated on my wife with my mother/sister/daughter/a nun. And now I will die."

Tragic Hero, Part 2 -- "I want to be a good and faithful husband. I made a mistake, and I cheated on my wife. Now my wife left me, I lost my job, someone dinged the left fender of my Buick, and my dog is dead. And it's all my fault."

Action Adventure Hero -- "I'm a lone wolf. I may have loved in the past, but it ended badly, and now I keep to myself. I might have a new lover in every book. But I'm not married, and probably never will be."

Women's Fiction Hero -- "I loved my wife. She died. Will you be my new wife? I know your first husband left you for a 22-year-old aerobics instructor, but I'm not like him. I'm a nice guy. I'll even wait for you while you have a rebound fling with that totally inappropriate guy."

Thriller Hero -- "Wife? Who's got time for a wife? I have to find the killer, stop the bad guy, avoid the cops, find a relic, escape from a collapsed tunnel, and learn how to fly a Cessna, all in the space of 24 hours. And I have no one to help me except this incredibly beautiful and incredibly intelligent young woman. Hey! Where did she come from? Maybe I should have sex with her."

Thriller Hero, Part 2 -- "Of course I'm married. Too bad for you. You may know things about me that I will keep secret from my wife until my dying day, but I am far too noble and magnificent to break my word."

Don Draper -- "Of course I'm married. It's all part of the master plan to make people think I'm normal. But I treat my wife like an accessory, I disappear for days at a time, and I sleep with anyone who catches my fancy. When I get caught cheating, I promise to be a better husband, but I am miserable and occasionally impotent. Obviously I'm better off sleeping around, even with a woman I despise."

As you see, a character's sexual behavior can be used to demonstrate something about the nature of that character. While we recognize that a character can still be heroic whether married or single, and while we recognize that heroic characters may go through different stages in their sexual lives, in general we expect married heroic characters to honor their marriage vows. And if they don't, we expect there to be consequences -- ranging from broken homes to broken fenders.

So let's take a look at Don Draper. Actually, before we do that, let's remind ourselves that the author of Mad Men is also the author of the Sopranos. Despite my perverse and abiding love of Mafia stories, I never watched the Sopranos, but my understanding is that people felt a lot of sympathy for the main character. He did bad things. He got away with them. We felt sorry for him.

A similar effect is being created with Don Draper and his marital infidelities. I think we can all agree that cheating on a spouse is a bad thing, just as murder and robbery are bad things. (Ignore for a moment the issue of motivation. We're talking about the act itself, not the reasons behind it.) So first Don Draper sleeps with Midge, and then he has that brutal affair with Rachel Menkin, and then in season two, despite apparent promises to his wife, and despite not even liking the woman, he has an affair with Bobbi Barrett.

Don Draper does a bad thing when he cheats on his wife. He gets away with it right up until the last moments of the last episode of season one. In season 2, Don starts out faithful. He's also miserable. He comes home every night, but he isn't happy to be there. His misery begins to manifest in high blood pressure and even on occasion impotence. So what are the consequences for his infidelity? Well, his wife is ticked off at them, but she doesn't throw him out. She just demands that he live up to his vows, which is not an unreasonable demand.

But the consequences of fidelity, the consequences of being a family man who comes home after work every night -- those are perilous. They cut right to the heart of his manhood and threaten his health.

If in usual circumstances a hero will not cheat on his wife, and if a hero who does cheat on his wife is exposed to negative consequences, then what we have here is a reversal of audience expectations. What other type of protagonist undercuts audience expectations? The antihero. Antiheroes fail to act when action is required. They wallow in angst. They do things that they shouldn't do, even though they know they shouldn't do them. They ignore consequences, they dodge consequences, or they accept consequences with a churlish shrug of the shoulders. Those of you who have been watching Mad Men can probably see how Don does exactly that, over and over.

Someone privately suggested to me that it was okay for Don Draper to cheat on his wife because the entire atmosphere at Sterling Cooper is so highly sexualized. We'll talk more about that next time.

Theresa

More antiheroes

Okay, much discussion here about anti-heroes. I wrote it all up, and before I saved it (stupid me— I really do know better), the power went out in a storm, and there went all my brilliant thoughts. So you're going to get my UNbrilliant but at least saved thoughts.

First, Andy told me that I got it wrong. (He's been saying that most of his life.) Here's how he parses Michael Corleone:

Godfather I: Anti-hero.
Godfather II (this is interesting): Villain/antagonist.
Godfather III: Tragic hero. (I pointed out that GIII has definite allusions to King Lear, btw, particularly in the daughter-death scene, but also the king giving up his kingdom.)

I thought about that Godfather II idea, and thought, yes— because young Vito, the Robert de Niro character in the 20s, is the hero. Why? He's doing heroic things (in his way): protecting his family, strengthening his community, eliminating a bully, establishing a code of honor.
Now Michael, half a century later, undoes all that. He puts his family in danger, kills his own brother, alienates his foster brother/best friend, weakens his community by starting a mob war, becomes a bully (and allies with dictators), and violates most of the elaborate code Vito and his generation created.
So if Vito is the hero, and his goals are paramount, then Michael who ruins those goals becomes the antagonist. (Back to this later— can the villain be the protagonist? Cf. Macbeth.)

He also said he didn't think Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven was an anti-hero because he did what he did for his family. He said motivation determines whether you're a hero or an anti-hero. (I somewhat disagree. Later.) Outlaw Josey Wales is a more "anti" Eastwood hero, he says.

He brought up King's Dark Tower series (just so you'd know he does know how to read ), and said if you calibrate by book, Roland is definitely an anti-hero in The Gunslinger, but gradually becomes more heroic and is a full-fledged hero by The Wolves of Calla.

Second, my husband remembered that Benjamin in The Graduate (Dustin Hoffman, that is) was called an "anti-hero" when that film came out. What do you all think? The reasoning then was that he was NOT a hero— not strong or brave or powerful. Things happen to him, and the major praxis of the plot is his growing self-awareness and wisdom. Well, as that spawned a whole genre of similar films about nebbishy but intelligent young men encountering adulthood, I gave that some thought. I think those young men (like Zach Braff in Garden State— a real update of The Graduate) are not ANTI-heroes, but non-heroes. That is, they don't have the usually heroic qualities of courage, ambition, potency. But they are protagonists, and we're supposed to identify with them. (Not me… the angst of post-adolescent young men has about as much interest for me as the dietary habits of fruit flies.)

So… some questions, anyway, that arise from these discussions:

1) Does heroism/anti-heroism depend on the motivation? That is, is the hero the one who does the right thing (by whatever standards) for the right reason, and the anti-hero the one who does the right thing for the wrong reason? (That is, he saves the old lady because he wants a reward.)
2) Or— this is my thought— that the difference has to do with the end, not the beginning. That is, if the character is redeemed in the end, he's a dark and dangerous hero. But if he's not redeemed, he's an anti-hero. So Dirty Harry is an anti-hero, but Paul Newman in The Verdict is redeemed, so he's more the hero. What do you think? The one who triumphs but is not morally redeemed= anti-hero? Theresa mentioned Scarlett O'Hara— she ends up rich, but not redeemed — she's still thinking at the end that she can block out the past and just look ahead. Or think of the "Seven Samurai" type stories where an outlaw helps a town out, but leaves in the end because he can't conform to community standards. Anti-hero? You know, say the John Wayne character maybe in Liberty Valance— he never really gives into the redemption?
3) Does the anti-hero have to triumph? Can there be a tragic anti-hero, who fails or is defeated?
4) I keep thinking that the relationship to the plot is important— the anti-hero is EFFECTIVE. This is why the notion of Benjamin Graduate and all his ineffectual descendants as anti-heroes annoys me. They are reactors, not actors. Things happen to them… they seldom make things happen. The major change is just that they learn… they don't really have much effect on the world. Hero, anti-hero, seems to me, they have to be the "proto-agonist"… they have to act, and have an effect on their world.
5) Comic anti-heroes? Paul Newman? Butch Cassidy and Cool Hand Luke?
6) What's the difference between an anti-hero and a villain?
7) The Macbeth issue… what is Macbeth? Definitely a protagonist. Is he a villain because he does evil, or a tragic hero because he is brought low by his own attributes, or an anti-hero because he has heroic attributes— courage, ambition, power— but unheroic motivation?
8) Tragic anti-hero?
9) Women anti-heroes? Scarlett, yes, plenty of heroic qualities there, but also huge negatives.
10) What makes a hero anyway? What makes an anti-hero? What do you see as the connection between the two?

How about some examples of heroes vs. anti-heroes? Can you think of female anti-heroes beyond Scarlett?

I think Buffy wished she could be an anti-hero, but she was too tied to the need for moral behavior. Are we actually open to that gradation in women? (Scarlett really is special!)

Let's look at Shakespeare characters, because we'll know them. Hamlet, the precursor to all those nebbish guys? Lear. Othello. I think Macbeth is a particularly interesting example.

Anti-heroes

(Alicia, we ought to do some posts on antiheroes. I love me some bad boys.)


Okay, Theresa, you're on. My first question is, how about some examples of anti-heroes?

What do you say about Michael Corleone in Godfather I and II?

Andy would say he's the hero of I and the anti-hero of II. (And he alone in the world loves III, and he'd probably say he's the hero again of that.)

(All, Andy is my film student son, and Theresa has known him all his little life, since she was a mere toddler herself. )
Alicia

Secondary characters who do too much

This is the advice that gets the most squawks. Let me say first that some stories have a bigger scope than others. If this story is about how a town reacts to a mini-epidemic, then profiling several or even a dozen characters might work just great. (Just make sure each character gives the reader a different perspective on the events… combine characters who are quite similar, like the two elderly men who lose their wives can become one elderly man with one lost wife.) But if you're writing a book not about an ensemble cast, but rather tightly focused on one character or a couple or a protagonist or antagonist, look closely at the scenes involving secondary characters. The secondary-character-who-acts-like-a-primary is, I have to say, all too common in manuscripts, perhaps a holdover from the days when books weren't so narrowly focused. But this kind of character treatment not only takes up space, it makes the protagonist less of a protagonist when someone else commits too many major actions in the plot.

Again, plenty of books have ensemble casts where several characters have near-equal status-- say, four members of a punk band, each with his own journey to make. And if your book is like that, great—just cut down on the OTHER characters' passages. But if your book has one or two central characters, he/she/they should probably be causing most of the plot action. (When it comes to plot-development, the antagonist is often one of the two-three central characters, even if we are never in that viewpoint.) If, for example, the protagonist doesn't confront the external conflict, make mistakes, fix those mistakes, take action, change the course of the plot – at nearly every juncture—is that really a protagonist? Rule of thumb here—the turning point scenes should almost always either result from protagonist action or cause protagonist reaction.

But all too often I see a secondary character, most often the hero's best friend, interestingly enough, doing too much of the protagonist's job. And almost invariably when I point out, oh, that the best friend needs to be throttled down a few notches (during the whole climax, the supposed hero is unconscious, and his wisecracking best friend has to save the busful of schoolchildren, rescue the heroine from the villains, and bring the mayor to justice), the writer will react angrily (my reactions to that reaction in parens):

It has to be this way because the hero gets knocked out (so the god who decided that—the writer—can decide to wake him up).

This is part of the hero's journey, because he has to learn to ask for help (he's not asking for help—he's abandoned the duties of a protagonist).

This is part of the heroine's journey, because she has to learn not to depend on the hero (okay with me, because he's obviously a loser—she should run off with his oh-so-effective best friend, who is the one who has really earned a happy ending).

This is part of the best friend's journey (oh, I'm sorry! I thought this book was about the hero! Let me run off and change the jacket copy to make clear it's about the best friend's journey!).

I have to set up the sequel, where the best friend is going to be the protagonist (and exactly what are you going to do with him in his own book, since he's already done most of the work of the protagonist in THIS book?).

This conception of books as having central characters who do most of the acting and changing is … is too restrictive! (Wait, I have to go email Aristotle and Shakespeare and tell them they got it all wrong.)

You know what the real problem is? The writer loves the secondary character too much, and the main character too little. Yep. Hey, I've been there. I've learned from painful experience that hero's best friend is incredibly seductive and can run off with the book if you let him. Two words for you: Han Solo. And that's fine if the book isn't tightly focused on the hero, and/or if you don't mind demoting the hero (Luke Who?). But be careful of plot incoherence, where the position of Luke indicates he is supposed to be the protagonist, but the plot development actually leads to Han's growing centrality.

Just decide what your book is, and be true to that. If it is a story about the friendship between these two guys, okay, maybe best friend can be a sub-hero. But if it's about the hero overcoming his conflicts, the best friend really can't do that for him. And popular fiction is about internal conflicts being played out in the external realm—that is, the hero can only confront and overcome his conflicts (in pop fiction, not, thank goodness, in real life) by confronting and overcoming some external conflict… and he cannot delegate that duty.

Special note to romance writers and erotica writers: Two men can be lovers. They can even get married now! (Yay, Massachusetts Supreme Court!)

But if this is a romance or an erotic romance between the hero and heroine, make the great love blossom between them. Make their interaction help them together resolve the plot. Too often when there's a hero's-best-friend in there, that becomes the primary love relationship. I've even seen supposedly hetero-romance manuscripts where the hero chooses his best friend over the heroine in some fundamental "love" way (though never, damnit, an INTERESTING way). Male bonding is really intriguing to us ladies (I have never understood how you guys can love each other and insult each other so badly—really, if MY friend called me lardbutt, she would not be my friend for long!), but determine what your central relationship is and focus on that. The hero can certainly, in the start of a romance, trust his best friend more than his lady, but if at the end of the book, the best friend is still taking precedence, methinks the romance has sputtered out somewhere. Or maybe the hero is sublimating his homoerotic affections, and really, that's fine! This is the 21^st Century! Come out of the closet and declare your love, guys… just don't tell me that your real love is the heroine sitting there all dejected and rejected.

(Not all male bonding is homoerotic, but careful—men tend not to comment too much on other men's physical attributes, except, as above, in an insulting fashion. If your hero and his best friend are really just friends, how can you show that without making me think that they want to be more?)

Anyway, whenever (just about always) I tell a writer that the secondary characters are too prominent, I get bristled at. For some reason, this is a very delicate issue for many writers. Could that delicacy be an indication that these characters are getting a bit too much love from you? Taking some of your attention off the main characters?

Now, as I said, there are plenty of books with multiple protagonists, group protagonists, ensemble casts. But if you have a tightly focused story type, try being ruthless here. Look at the actions of the secondary characters. Can any of them be transferred to one of the main characters? Can something that is passive for the protagonist be made active? For example, I have seen secondary characters discover a clue and deliver it to the protagonist. Does the protagonist really EARN that clue, if it's just handed over?

I know I wrote an article about this... it had a cool title. Lemme see if I can find it. Ah, yes, buttinskis.

Alicia

Deuteragonists and Tritagonists

This morning, I received a complaint email that was so absurd, my first thought was, "Ha, ha, April Fool." Then I realized the sender was in earnest. My day has not improved from there.

The Great Inbox Spring Cleaning continues, and I'm averaging revision letters on three novella manuscripts a day. I've just finished reading my last lonely manuscript from 2007 -- I've actually read it twice now, and just have to let it simmer before I contact the author. After this one, everything I read will be from January and February, though I probably have fewer than two dozen manuscripts pending from that time period. So at my current pace, I should be into March manuscripts sometime next week. Just saying, in case any of you are wondering about the status of your submission. (This all assumes that I will be able to remain focused on submissions for the next week or two. That's never a safe assumption.)

Deuteragonists and Tritagonists

It's probably fitting to post this on April Fools' Day, because if you're unfamiliar with these terms, you might just think I'm pulling a prank. I'm not. Google the words if you need evidence.

This ties in to my intermittent mullings on the nature of protagonists. Most of our literary theory evolved from dramatic theory, and most of that came to us from the ancient Greeks, or was at least built on notions that originated with the ancient Greeks.

But their notion of a play was very different from ours. In the beginning, there was a chorus. No actors, no monologues, no spotlights. Just an assortment of people on the stage, singing or chanting in unison, maybe with a bit of dancing or rhythmic motion similar to a marching band or drill team's synchronized movement. The truth is, we're not exactly positive how the chorus behaved. None of us were around to witness one, and scholars debate exactly what a chorus did and how they did it. But we're pretty sure that whatever they did, they did it as a team.

Then one day, somebody got clever and suggested that a solitary person could stand in front of the chorus and dramatize their song. If they sang, "He fell to his knees and wept," then this poor schmoe would fall to his knees and weep. They gave him some lines to speak and even let him interact with the chorus at times. He remained on stage for the duration of the show, as did the chorus.

This fellow was known as the protagonist, from proto- meaning first, and agon meaning gathering: he was the first in the gathering on the stage. He became a central figure in Greek drama, and eventually, a dude named Aeschylus figured out that if you could have one actor in front of the chorus, then why not have two?

This second actor was the deuteragonist. The funny thing about the deuteragonist is that his role depended on the story. He could play one role as did the protagonist and function like a sidekick -- a Robin to the protagonist's Batman, a Watson to his Holmes. Or he could play several roles, switching masks and wigs and props to indicate that now he was the angry father, and now the trembling maid. His role, in either case, was to help the audience better understand the protagonist's actions. You could say he provided a context for the protagonist's acting.

At some point they also added a third actor, the tritagonist. But instead of adding a fourth, fifth, and so on, they stopped with the tritagonist and developed a few theories to support that -- all dramas are triangles composed of three interacting and competing elements; stable alliances are rendered unstable by the introduction of a third party; between parents, a child; between parent and child, a spouse; between lovers, a parent; and so on.

Even though these theories make a lot of practical sense, they neatly overlook the fact that the three actors on stage frequently played multiple roles. So it wasn't really the presence of three human characters that created drama. It was the three levels of character:

1. the protagonist, who always had to be on stage,
2. the deuteragonist, who functioned like a sidekick -- literally, a second to the protagonist's first -- and was important, but not omnipresent, and could be more than one character
3. the tritagonist, who was basically anyone else they need for the story to make sense.

What's missing from that list? The antagonist. I'm just going to float that idea out there for a moment. We'll come back to it eventually.

For now, I want to make a point about the way these characters were constructed. The protagonist was always a fully formed character. The deuteragonist could be either fully formed (when he was the sidekick) or a placeholder (when he had to change roles frequently). The tritagonist was usually a placeholder.

The placeholder characters were signaled by a change in props or masks. A sword and shield signaled a warrior. A mask with horns signaled a bull.

To this day, we use a similar form of character props to cue the audience about placeholder characters. Except, instead of giving the warrior a sword, we give the night desk clerk at the hotel a nervous shuffle in his gait. We give Aunt Flossie an aluminum crochet hook, and we make Uncle Ted a bit deaf. Our "props" are not symbolic (sword = warrior, horns = bull), but emblematic (that is, specific to one character instead of generic of a type of character).

So when our protagonist finds at the crime scene a bright blue aluminum crochet hook, we think, Aunt Flossie was here. Of course, it could be anyone's crochet hook. But because dramatic theory likes things to be neatly tied up, an emblem of a character must always be emblematic of that particular character. If horns indicate a bull, you have to use something other than horns to indicate the devil. If the crochet hook becomes emblematic of Aunt Flossie, than the blood-covered one in chapter seventeen had better belong to her.

It's a neat trick, and it's one that can be used pretty easily for secondary characters. (Get it? deuter = second. We still use the same basic language to talk about drama, except that now we call deuteragonists secondary characters.) But with secondary characters, the reader will want something more than a mere emblem. They'll want the emblem to become fleshed out a bit. There's got to be more to Aunt Flossie than a yarn hobby.

So, do you think it will help you develop your characters if you first decide where they fit on the -agonists scale?

Theresa

A Theory of Protagonists

I occasionally teach a structure workshop to writers' groups, and one of the challenges in that workshops is presenting a working definition of "protagonist" that crosses genres. So I'm always on the lookout for new ideas on this point, and that's one of the reasons I posed the question about protagonists last week.

One of the more interesting theories I've encountered applies Jungian dream analysis principles to the novel. I'm no expert in Jung's theories, far from it! So please keep that in mind. This is my understanding of the theories, and I'm sharing it because I'm interested in hearing what all of you think about it.

Jung said that dreams were ego mirrors. That is, people and features in dreams didn't stand for what they actually were, but for some aspect of the dreamer's ego. Your third grade teacher is not actually your third grade teacher, but some representation of your interaction with authority. Your empty refrigerator is not actually your empty refrigerator, but a symbol of your feeling that some basic need is being left unmet. Your first apartment is not actually your first apartment, but a symbol of newfound independence. And so on. Not a difficult idea.

And in some measure, it makes sense to transfer this notion to the novel. All of the ideas on the page spring, in some way or another, from the writer's individual psyche. We may think we've modeled the character of the waitress on a girl we knew in high school, but in fact, what we've done is model the waitress on our interpretation, our understanding, our memory and sensory impressions filtered through our own unique consciousness, of that same girl. The character has more to do with how we interpret people in our world than with who those people actually are.

So the novel itself becomes a mirror of the writer's ego. Here's where it gets interesting. Does this affect our definition of protagonist?

I saw one scholar argue that it should. (I can't find the link -- it was on my old computer, and didn't transfer to the new one.) This person theorized that if the novel, like the dream, is the writer's attempt to heal the psyche, then the "protagonist" should be properly identified as the character that changes the most. (I guess we have to assume that healing creates change, or change creates healing.) Whether we're pointing to the focal character or some secondary character, transformation would be the hallmark of the protagonist.

What do we think of this? Does this theory have any practical application to the day-to-day task of writing a story? Does it help with revisions, writers block, anything? I'm inclined to think it doesn't, but maybe I'm missing something.

Theresa

What Is a Protagonist?

I ask this question pretty frequently, and get lots and lots of smart answers, but none that really satisfy.

What is the definition of protagonist?

Can we come up with a simple, concise definition? Every time I try, I come up with reasons that the definition fails.

If we define the protagonist as "the character we root for," then this presumes that the protagonist's goals are always worthy. In the case of tragedies, they frequently are not. Really, did anyone actually want Oedipus to marry Jocasta?

If we define the protagonist as "the character in active pursuit of a goal," then this eliminates an entire class of protagonists whose only true goal is to preserve the status quo. Think of thrillers. Think of a bodyguard hero. His goal? To have nothing change. The antagonist -- the bad guy with an ax to grind and bullets to spare -- is the one who sets the plot in motion by setting a goal of killing the bodyguard's protectee.

If we define the protagonist as "the character on the stage or on the page most frequently," then ancient pieces with narrators and choruses get a bit muddled.

If we define the protagonist as "the character with the most central role in the plot," then what on earth do we do with ensemble pieces? Really, who was the protagonist in Crash? In The Big Chill?

And then there's romance. Can a story ever really have two protagonists?

I'm throwing this out there as food for thought and because I'd like to hear what everyone thinks. We've got some smart people hanging around this little blog.

Theresa

A Structure Primer

What is this odd and blurry diagram? A toddler's crayon scribbles?

Nope. This is large-scale structure, one rendition of what is sometimes referred to as Aristotle's incline.

We're going to kick off our structure talks by looking at this diagram and some simple definitions. Most of you probably know this stuff already. But we want to take the time to go through it just so we all know we're on the same page.

And then, once we establish the foundation, we'll move into a discussion of the openings of books. Preview: They almost always start in the wrong place, and we end up having to do first chapter revisions on -- what would you say, Alicia? 75% of manuscripts? 80%? 90%? All I know is that it feels like a bonus when I get a manuscript with a good opening.

So. To Aristotle. Some of you may have seen a map like this in your high school English classes. Or perhaps you've seen similar diagrams that focus on the angled portion, the line between the circles. I like the above diagram because it goes into a bit more detail than other version's of the incline.

If you were to map a typical story beginning on page one and through to the last page, it might look something like that diagram. We begin in the ordinary world, usually with our protagonist, sometimes with our antagonist.

Ordinary World: In simplest terms, this is the starting point, the place and space all the characters occupy before the initiation of the conflict.

Protagonist: There are a thousand ways to define the protagonist. Someday maybe we'll talk about that in more depth. For today, we'll define the protagonist as the focus character for the story -- the character who plays an important role in most of the scenes.

Antagonist: The antagonist is the person or thing standing in direct opposition to the protagonist. Antagonists can be people, but they can also be circumstances.

In the ordinary world, the protagonist is coasting along, maintaining whatever his or her status quo might be. Then one day, something happens to disrupt the flow. This something can be positive or negative. It can be the death of a loved one, or a winning lottery ticket, or a dead body found in an alley, or the arrival of a prince charming. It can even be as simple as a decision: I'd like to walk the Appalachian Trail.

Inciting Incident: The event, positive or negative, that disrupts the status quo of the ordinary world.

Once the inciting incident occurs, you're out of the ordinary world and into the plot. (Plot is not structure -- we'll also examine that notion in another post some day.) The inciting incident, more often than not, also introduces the conflict or directly leads to the conflict.

Conflict: The opposition of the antagonist to the protagonist. (Special note to romance writers: you sometimes have a dual-protagonist structure that results in dual conflicts, external and internal.)

If your inciting incident is: death of a loved one
Your conflict might be: return of a prodigal relative intent on stealing an inheritance

If your inciting incident is: arrival of a prince charming
Your conflict might be: he's competing for the promotion the heroine wants

If your inciting incident is: a dead body found in the alley
Your conflict might be: a killer on the loose who might strike again

If your inciting incident is: a winning lottery ticket
Your conflict might be: misplacing the ticket

This little exercise takes us through the flat portion, bottom left of the diagram (ordinary world) and into the circled part (inciting incident and introduction of the conflict).

Next time, we'll look at another way to break these pieces down. For now, your homework is to look at one of your manuscripts and identify your protagonist, your antagonist, and your inciting incident. You might find this harder than expected, especially the inciting incident.

Theresa