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The Two Laws of Backstory (and why Superman breaks both)

It’s one of the hardest moments in writing—knowing that even though you’ve picked a perfect character or an ideal plot complication, you have to write in so much more to justify it. But with so many kinds of backstory you could explain it with, how do you pick the one that fits? Or make it do more than fit, so it opens up new depth and possibilities to the story?

It’s not as hard as it looks.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Understanding backstory really comes down to two things, and they’re so simple that I thought I’d demonstrate them using a few of my favorite comic book heroes, just to show how big a curve we can grade “realistic” on.

We could call those two rules looking forward and looking further back from the time of the backstory idea you’re trying out… or we could simply say “does it do enough? does it do too much?” But I think I’ll call them “the seed” and “the worms.”

The Seed: does the backstory grow what you need?

You’ve got such a simple question to start with: what do you need this history to do? Then, find an idea that seems, logically or at least intuitively, like it relates to that.

Call the Superman origin a classic example of how not to cover things. Since these are comics, I don’t mean how hard it is to justify the raw amount of power he has. The goal is still to explain physical strength.

[bctt tweet=”What does being an alien have to do with picking up mountains? #backstory #Superman”]

No, if you want personal power, a better backstory would be someone trying to give himself personal power, like the experiments used for Captain America or the modern Hulk. (Come to think of it, the original Superman simply came from an “advanced” people, and he only lifted cars.) Wonder Woman or Thor make even more sense; we have thousands of years of storytelling saying the universe just makes gods that much stronger. The Flash does the same thing, tapping into a cosmic power source. Aliens, not so much.

Still, we all know “alien powers” can play better when they’re like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy: focus on how different their tree- or flying- or whatever evolution is from human. (That and, give the creature whatever offworld training or enhancements you want to raise that to a real asset.)

But it depends on your story goal. Say, instead of needing raw personal power, your character can have a weapon or device that does the job. Now your choices might be anyone who builds those, meaning anyone with a brain and the drive to create. Hawkman doesn’t claim “alien=superpowered,” he simply uses his planet’s advanced gear; Green Lantern puts a human in the center by giving him the aliens’ weapon. And so many human heroes (and villains) invented their own arsenal.

And of course we’ve got Batman, whose “powers” are so limited that determined training and the Wayne fortune really are all he needs. (Plus, Batman Begins takes it even further to show that he doesn’t dream up his gadgets as much as discover and adapt tech that’s already out there. Then Dark Knight reminds us just how far he can adapt it if he’s desperate enough.)

–We’ve looked through types of power here, as examples of how to make a story’s facts able to do what you want. Let’s start shifting toward how to make characters want to do what the story needs.

Aliens do work best in Guardians of the Galaxy’s main tale of simply treating them as people; just people with more varied beliefs and homelands, plus better-than-Earth laser guns. They can be especially fun for an invasion, “abduction,” or exploration story that wants to contrast human motives and interests with a people that seems different—whether they turn out to be as powerful as H.G. Wells’s Martians or as vulnerable as E.T.

For Superman’s motives, though, his story works. To build a driven but optimistic hero, some salt-of-the-Earth role models like the Kents might be just the thing, while having his original home blown up at least gives Clark an extra reason to protect his new one.

But it isn’t always the scale of tragedy that makes it mythic; Batman’s drive goes much more into the “orphan” theme than Superman’s. It’s so spot-on it would be cliché if it didn’t have enough details to be specific:

[bctt tweet=”‘A crook killed his parents, so #Batman fights crime.’ Sometimes writing’s the art of the obvious. #OriginWin”]

Spider-Man has a tragedy that hits closer yet: instead of being helpless to save his family, he considers Uncle Ben’s death his own fault for not getting involved earlier. No punches pulled there. And the core of the Hulk isn’t fighting evil at large; he only wants to get through a day without being hunted for what he might do, and stop his enemies from exploiting his power. (I’ve called those the only two core options for creating character conflict.)

For real precision writing, though, take a look at the cinematic Iron Man. The first movie makes a decent case that Tony Stark didn’t invent a hundred comic-book technologies, he invented one, the game-changing power source that let him pump every other weapon up to a whole new level—at least when you’re smart enough and rich enough to build the rest to take advantage of it. He gets a precise motivation too: creating a one-man army calls for vastly more money and effort (and personal risk!) than equipping an actual army, which is what power brokers usually do… unless you’ve already done that and just had your nose rubbed in how you might lose control of any weapon you let out of your own hands. Face it, if you’d escaped that cave (yes, “with a box of scraps”) and you were as proud and gifted as Tony, what else could you have done?

Speaking of “what else,” there’s the other side of backstories.

 

The Can of Worms: what ELSE would the backstory mean?

Even if you think you’ve got a backstory that does the job, you’re just getting started. And the other step might be even more work, but it’s also the one that can unlock whole new dimensions for a story: ask what other ripples the idea could create.

[bctt tweet=”The basic #backstory test is: does this take the story where you want spend time writing?”]

Superman’s alien origin not only isn’t enough for his powers, it’s definitely too much to let the rest of his adventures happen the way the comic wants. A whole other planet, of god-strong beings, just blown away before the story even starts—what a WASTE of story material! Bringing out just the occasional General Zod, or a Lex Luthor grumbling about alien influences, doesn’t come close to what an origin like that ought to root the rest of the storyline in. Even the fact that he looks human… we chuckle at Star Trek’s “planets of the pointy-eared folk,” but this Strange Visitor blends in so well a human woman both idolizes and ignores him depending on his clothes?

All of these could have been glorious opportunities for a darker or more thoughtful superhero (a bit of X-Men, a bit of X-Files), but they all come down to the same way that they don’t work: they aren’t the story the writers wanted to tell.

Consider this: how often does a modern-day writer even use the word “alien” with a straight face? Sure, aliens work just fine in a story that’s set up to do it justice—-invasions, Roswell, and so on. But otherwise, we tend to save the word for the silliest of all silly ideas a character might spit out at random, and I’d say it’s just because the implications are too huge to take halfway. If we aren’t ready to handle a story idea’s implications, “from out in left field” just means “the idea’s going to get lost.”

Of course, standard comic books and their heroes are an odd place to look for backstory concepts. Ideas there rush by so fast you can find hundreds of promising thoughts, but how many other cans of worms do they take a pass on? It may be the number of ignored implications, more than the powers themselves, that make superheroes so different from the harder SF and fantasy they borrow from.

Still, I can see a few more careful examples we can learn from:

One alternate version of Superman has already hinted at what might be the perfect origin for him, in the Red Son comic: Make him a literal “Man of Tomorrow” by making Krypton the doomed future of Earth. It would have been so much more elegant, with less baggage from a missing planet and making him not such a total misfit around here… and amping up the pressure on the hero. Instead of knowing that “a” planet could destroy itself, he has to protect and inspire this world to change what might be its destiny.

(Wait, wouldn’t that mean that every planetary threat until then is guaranteed to fizzle out? We could crib from Star Trek and say Superman’s own passage through time attracted the “attention” of certain history-changing forces. So if Darkseid invades Earth it would be Superman’s fault for coming here first… Over to you, DC.)

Or, the Avengers movie gets more careful use out of its aliens. The Chitauri do bring a proper invasion, but only at the film’s end, so we don’t have time to ask the larger questions of why they’re after Earth or what makes them tick—instead we focus on Loki and their other allies. Once the battle begins, we don’t have to deal with too many questions either: since they invade through a dimensional gate (set up by our visible foe and a MacGuffin power source), they can only send so large a fleet, and no more once the door’s shut. This skips the classic Alien Invasion problems of “That was all a planet could send? And now, how long till the next wave, and the next twenty?” Instead the gate’s closed, done—for now.

(It doesn’t hurt that Joss Whedon has written his share of stories about demons. For many writers, the word itself is a perfect shorthand for “hordes that can only fully invade through their particular Hellmouth.”)

Batman does make a lot of this look easy (he does that for everything), with his down-to-earth heroics making fewer ripples. But even for him, The Dark Knight was one of many stories to look into just what a vigilante might mean for the Gotham public. (And, even with the Christian Bale Batman borrowing more tech than he built, it did have its fun with who might notice where those toys had been borrowed from. “And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck with that.”)

Look at how hard both film versions of Spider-Man worked to keep Peter Parker from being a web-inventing super-genius; the first had webbing as just another of his organic powers, the second stole it from the Sinister Lab that’s wound up with all the schemes. Meanwhile Iron Man 2 looked into how Tony didn’t create his Arc Reactor completely from a standing Stark (sorry), and who else might have been involved in it and have his own agenda.

For more about watching an idea’s implications, see Brandon Sanderson’s Third Law of Magic: “Expand what you already have before you add something new.” The master makes a fine point: doing justice to what you have is usually better than the work and the problems of adding whole new wrinkles on top of it. Best of all, keeping closer to home leads to a final picture that’s more complete and yet more elegant than just adding more.

One last tip: if you want a true master class in smart world-building, watch Stargate SG-1. Most of its off-worlders really are human (it’s all explained), their alien masters use human bodies too, and the blaster staffs actually have a reason they’re inferior to our machine guns. YES!

 

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How to be a Writer (a modest theory)

Do I really want to be a writer?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Everyone who ever glanced at a pen must have asked that, and many of us keep asking. For myself, I think one reason it’s hard to answer is that it keeps leading to other questions to answer first. So I thought I’d try to pin down those questions, and try to find a way through them.

Who is a writer, and who’s a wanna-be?

Sorry, I don’t think this one has a clear answer. Is it when you can talk about writing with your friends? Or when you make your first traditional sale—except then you start needing some bigger success? There’s no one threshold here, but the question points out one thing: we all want writing to have a reward that’s worth the cost.

Can I be a real writer?

WriteScrap

Here’s an unpleasant question, because we all have a few doubts. Let’s try to narrow it down some, and look at what those answers say about the writing’s reward and cost:

What’s the best thing to do to be a writer? (And can I do that?)

DrummingPencil

Feel that? We’re getting warmer now…

–Is it getting my work out there?

Sometimes. If you don’t share, submit, and promote what you write, nobody else is going to pull it out of the bottom drawer for you. But it’s not the key.

–Is it learning to write better?

Some. Feedback, taking classes, or pouring over the best and the worst stories out there can open up whole new worlds for any of us. But, it’s not quite the key…

–Is it writing?

Okay, so the other “answers” were only there for this one to put them in their place. Still, “just write it” is the advice every blogger will give, and it isn’t always enough to motivate us. Could there be anything more to it…

–Is it to KEEP writing?

Yahtzee.

It’s simple truth: every time you write, some of your struggles to make the work better WILL get easier, because there are damn few problems on Earth that can stand up to sheer practice multiplied by days, months, years of building a better mousetrap. (Even though this is one of the few professions where we rarely feel we’ve improved, but that’s another storytelling post: the Scary Bicycle.)

And, bonus: if you mix ongoing effort with some of that promotion above, you build up your body of work, your reputation, even your income. Do it right and all of these only keep growing.

Is there anything I have to write?

NewWriter

This is a tricky one, because it depends on another question:

What’s writing going to give me?

NOT money, or even fame and respect—not if you understand about how little you’ll get, compared to how many years it takes to get there. But if you do it right, the reward you’ll get most of is…

The years you spend writing. Once you find your own balance of sheer fun, or insights to share, or clever craft, or mass appeal, then your playtime (don’t call it work) will drag you to the keyboard every day and make you fight the world for more time to spend in that zone. You’ll still have your slow starts and dry spells, but the writing itself will be as close a friend as you’ll ever have.

What you have to write is, whatever will keep you writing. What will set your work on fire with joy.

SurfWriter

(And honestly, if you think being the toast of a convention each month would be worth grinding out three books every year that you hate, you aren’t seeing that effort clearly. Even Stephen King’s royalties can’t make up for the fact that he spends most of his life writing, so he spends that time with the stories he wants. Take a look at Jeff Goins’s Writer’s Manifesto, and take his challenge. Or Myke Cole’s description that there’s nothing but the work: There is no That.)

The writing life never gets far away from putting in those hours. (Okay, and some promotion and learning, I hope.) But it you spend half a day capturing a hero’s way of speaking, working out how to bribe a mayor or describe a dragon’s fire playing over a catapult… doing whatever you want is the only way to make it worth all those hours.

–“Worth”? What I don’t get is why anyone would do anything else!

[bctt tweet=”#Writing: there’s no escape from playtime.”]

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Does your villain need more evil?

Is your story good enough?

In fact… you’ve probably been exploring and sweating to make your protagonist more real, more dynamic, and the supporting cast just as compelling as you need. But, could it be that what you aren’t getting the most out of isn’t the good guys, it’s the bad ones?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Villains can be frustrating folks to write, with so many of them already out there to make your idea seem unoriginal, if the word itself doesn’t sound cliché to you. Or you might think you’ve got a brilliant villain concept, but wonder if you’re making full use of it.

Well, I know I’m not pushing my villains to the limit, and most other writers aren’t either. But then, I’m not sure villains have a limit.

If “story = conflict,” that can make the opposition a whopping half of the tale’s very nature. The hero’s struggle may be at the center, but the villain is the root of it all, often the one who created the crisis in the first place. Neglect the villain and the hero has more and more moments when he’s struggling against empty air.

[bctt tweet=”A story is no stronger than its hero, or its #villain – whichever is weaker. #writing”]

(And let’s face it, a good villain stays with the reader. Heroes need to not be “boring,” but they’ve usually got a relatable balance of issues they’re sorting out over time. But the villain’s liable to make a choice and then “watch the world burn.”)

Watch the world burn

—Or your writing could be going for a different kind of conflict than Heath Ledger’s Joker. Still, every moment of human conflict can learn a few things from what we call villains. A protagonist still needs major obstacles, whether they’re “bad” people or well-meaning ones; and whatever’s making those people problems ought to be key parts of the story.

[bctt tweet=”All in all, maximizing a #villain is just: write him more like a human being.”]

(Except for tone, most of the time. We’ll get to that.)

How human? Hold onto your keyboard, it’s going to be a bumpy night:

 

Coming to the Dark Side

None of us want to write someone who’s “just a villain.”

—Okay, some writers do, and it can be downright liberating. But if you do, keep reading: a bit of the same balance can still strengthen them.

But: have you really given your villain enough of a reason for what he does? Could you push him harder? One good measure is K.M. Weiland’s challenge that “Maybe your bad guy is right.” Myself, I think it all comes down to, based on what the reader learns,

[bctt tweet=”“How much would a person like this just NEED to get in the way?” #Villains”]

Of course, “in the way” might mean anything from blowing up the world to a by-the-books teacher who won’t give a student an inch of slack. But whatever they’re creating that conflict about, what these people need is to make that motivation and its ties to the conflict utterly clear. Remember that marvelous Terminator line:

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Will. Not. Stop.

If you can give a human antagonist some of that momentum, for human reasons, you magnify everything about the villain. Which magnifies the whole story.

What are those human reasons? You’re probably got your idea there already, so I’ll settle for mentioning my Sith/ Seven Deadly Sins breakdown and my Thunderbolt Ross question as a starting point (is it what he wants to take from the hero, or what he’s afraid the hero will take?).

So what reveals those reasons? It’s usually how well the backstory, the evolving plot, or at least the story’s situation shows this person HAS to do what he’s doing. Possibly the best way is to plot in the way he might be fulfilling his goals without making trouble (bonus points if it’s as a friend of the hero, of course)… and the perfect chance to make that work… and it goes utterly wrong. You also want to choose a balance between the sense of a harsh world that makes that “fall” seem like something that could happen to anyone, and the intensity in this character that shows he’s better than most would be at embracing his fall—if it wasn’t a leap.

Keep asking that question: would this person NEED to get in the way? (The words you’re looking for are “Hell yes!!”)

 

Darker and Deeper

Once you put the villain on his path… is that enough?

Part of it is “narrowing” that path, finding ways to show that this villain isn’t out to do whatever “bad things” are available, he wants what he wants—meaning, what chances to do damage can he pass up because they aren’t in his interest? The more you show what things he’ll pause for, the less cliché he is and the more you’ve reinforced that the rest is where he will not stop.

(At least, he won’t stop for long. Some of the best villain “falls” happen in the middle of the story, with his missed chances to turn back happening at the height of everything else.)

All this means giving the villain chances to let people live, to clash with his lieutenants, whatever it may be—maybe because it doesn’t fit his plan, or sometimes even because he does have his softer side or other motives as well. It also means surprising the hero (or at least some less villain-savvy friends) with twists where the villain passes up one target to go after another, probably a nastier one. (If you were thinking that The Dark Knight seemed to ignore the last section’s tips about justifying the villain, you’re right. We never learned what made the Joker, but instead the whole movie used this method to demonstrate in detail just what he was.)

To really show things off, try letting the villain do good now and then, maybe allying with the hero if there’s something they both need gone. (“He can’t destroy the world, I need to rule it!” is always fun.) And of course the hero should be spotlighting the villain’s nature too, with every scene where he tries to predict, trick, frighten and generally outwit his enemy. (I’ve analyzed a few ways to do that.)

In fact… could the villain change? Star Wars and many other tales turned out to be about redeeming their villain. Or he could give up his evil world-view for a different and even more vicious one. (In its most overused form, “If I can’t have her…”)

Villains may be implacable at the right moments, but they need a sense of precision and even change as well. Because they aren’t forces of nature, each is something much more terrifying: a human being who’s actively looking for ways to get you.

Note that word, “actively.” That’s the next question for maximizing a villain: are the hero—or you—taking them for granted?

 

No Evil Autopilots

It’s a simple question: How often does your villain act on the story? That is, what proportion of your scenes are about his attacks, his control, his ability to get and stay “in the way” of your hero?

—Actually, let’s make that a more specific question:

[bctt tweet=”How often does your #villain *change* his plan, or adapt to the hero’s plan? #BattleOfWits”]

It’s a common complaint against even Lord of the Rings: a villain can cast his influence over everything in sight, and drive them all along his sinister scheme. But then… those forces stay driven, pressing closer and closer but always along the same overall plan. Impressive, but it misses the chance to show the villain doing something more.

One of the best tools in a writer’s arsenal is: what readers notice is the story’s changes. Heroes have their character arcs, and you’ve probably given yours those moments when they follow one plan only to find it a red herring or failure, just to show the hero can move on to a better one. Your villain deserves some of the same respect.

After all, a threat that keeps pushing in the same ways might as well be hostile weather; what’s scary (and real-life relevant) about a living enemy is knowing there’s a human mind out there that keeps looking for new ways to get ahead of you, and you always need to keep up. When your hero makes a move, look for ways the villain can counter it or try to come in from a whole new angle. Ask yourself, which is a better epitaph for that doomed first strategy of your hero’s:

  • “Guess that plan wasn’t good enough.” Or,
  • “He saw me coming.”

A serious villain forces the hero—and of course us writers—to look harder, hit harder, and never ever let our down our guard. And each separate time either side takes their game up a notch, the story gains another marvelous moment of tightening the tension.

(If you’ve got a less villainous antagonist, your options here are more limited. One rule of thumb is that “evil” is what we call someone with a goal that hurts us deeply, if too much of that motive includes a need to stop reasonable ways to work around him or compromise. We may hate the Scrooge types that don’t give extensions on mortgages, but it’s the ones that are trying to stop us from paying up that move into full villain territory.)

 

Keeping Score

Does your villain actually win, sometimes? You might ask how much your story develops using either:

  • Victories, the hero winning part of what he’s after or weakening the villain—“points” for the hero, with the villain on a losing streak that might undermine the story if it goes too long.
  • Defense, where the villain tries one counterattack or scheme after another and the hero blocks each—looks good for the hero, but the villain gets some credit for his efforts.
  • Pressure the hero isn’t holding back, but toward a goal of the villain’s that isn’t reached yet—strengthens the villain’s image, but only partway.
  • Defeats for the hero (or “tragic victories”), where the villain takes or destroys an actual person, place or thing the hero cares about in its own right—the dark moments that might do more than anything else to drive the story.

[bctt tweet=”When does your #hero win, or just stop the #villain? And vice versa? Each changes the tone.”]

Look at your favorite stories, and see how often the major parts of them are marked by a friend of the hero dying, or the hero losing a fair fight and needing a rematch… or failing a test, having an ally hired away, or other less bloody equivalents. There’s a reason these are often the cornerstones of a tale.

Of course, each story has its own balance of these, not only the overall “score” but how much it uses each and in what combination. Lord of the Rings is a classic heroic series of victories and defense, that builds power from a few well-timed defeats (mostly deaths) and the sense that Mordor and the Ring both have an infinite amount of pressure they’ll keep raising until our heroes reach their limit. Its darker descendant A Song of Ice and Fire (or Game of Thrones) is clear that the full defeats will outnumber the victories, partly to remind us it has so few true “heroes” at all.

 

And, Points for Style

We’ve looked at some of the biggest missed opportunities for villains, in character and plot. But, presentation matters too. How many chances do you have to remind the reader how dangerous the villain is, and also how he’s a specific rather than a cliché?

It might be as simple as a name. Some stories need a villain named Dr. Doom or Randall Flagg, and others really call for a Martin Smith. And that’s the general approach, before you look for particular images and sinister sounds. “Hannibal Lecter” sounds like a brilliant mashup of a ruthless general and a trusted professor, even before you hear what that first name rhymes with.

The first scene matters, when your Vader strides in and seizes the rebel captain’s throat, or your Saruman waits as the wise friend Gandalf comes to for help. Or you can use be moments the villain isn’t even in: Conan Doyle wrote Moriarty a whole page of Holmes himself describing how dangerous he was, and then only one brief but pivotal instant when we actually glimpse him.

Really, every scene of the villain’s ought to be a chance to push him further. We can’t imagine Dr. Lecter missing one moment where he could show off his wit and his sinister stillness. Or take Blue Velvet—its villain isn’t the smartest, but he’s Dennis Hopper at his absolute wildest, with our poor heroes trapped right under his thumb. Some villains radiate evil; others need their “kick the dog” moments as a fast way to hint at how vicious they can be.

Speaking of dogs, it’s all about hitting the right tone. The original One Hundred and One Dalmatians book was full of chapters of the dogs’ life and their struggles on their road, neatly spreading out the scenes with the elegant, sinister Cruella deVil that had more than the dogs wondering if she came by that name literally. The movie made her less like the previous Disney film’s Maleficent (who could have been her role model), and more… you know. –And yet, do you know any other trick to get away with a fast-paced “kids’ movie” about skinning puppies?

(Pause, take deep breaths.)

 

Whichever way your story’s going, even a hint of the wrong kind of “Disnification” to the villain can drag it down faster than anything. The villain’s providing a huge share of your story’s energy, for either your key moments or almost the whole thing, and he may well be the reason there’s any conflict at all.

But it’s all too easy to set that villain in the foundation of a story and then leave him there. Any time you want more conflict in the story, the answer may be as simple as finding the most dramatic, sinister ways that villain is human.

 

Quick: right after your villain’s first move, how many scenes does your hero have? Is he sort of trusting that he’ll have a little time to mourn or rest, and letting his guard down?

Now, are you going to let your hero get away with that?

Evil laughter echoes…

 

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The Prologue Checklist

“What’s past is prologue.”

–William Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

It’s only natural—you’ve got a powerful story to write, so you open with a prologue. It’s your chance to show off a clever idea, it guarantees the tale has a wider scope and maybe an extra viewpoint, and it’s traditional for everything from Lord of the Rings to every other horror movie made. Shakespeare used plenty.

Then you hear it: “I don’t read prologues.”

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

We can hear it from some readers, from bloggers, from agents that sound like they’re willing to slam the door on our best idea and maybe the whole story too. When I started hearing that, it’s hard to say which of my reactions was louder: “D’oh!” or just “That’s not fair…”

Yes, a lot of writers love prologues, and readers too. That might well be the cause of the Prologue Problem: for every marvelous example of the art, it’s easy to find case after case that doesn’t exactly push the writing envelope. And I admit, much as I relish their potential, more than once I’ve felt my eyes moving to skimming speed when I come across the P word.

To Prologue or not to Prologue?

It’s just too easy, to find ourselves writing a prologue without asking the hard questions it needs. My own latest, The High Road, has seen its prologue go through more than one total rewrite. But, I’m thinking the process comes down to:

 

#1: Is the prologue idea just a way to ease into writing this story?

Prologues are as natural as “Once upon a time,” especially if we’re still getting a handle on what the story is. Just start with a big picture or a contrasting part, and work our way over to the focus, right? Trouble is, “pre-focused” is exactly what the first pages of a story can’t afford to be.

How often do you revise your first chapter, and your first paragraph, knowing the whole story can be judged by how perfect those are? I’m betting it’s more than a few times—in fact, many authors decide their original Chapter One was a distraction and they’re better starting the story on Two.

[bctt tweet=”#FirstScene paradox: the one bit that you NEED to work is the part you wrote as you learned the story.”]

So ask yourself, could this prologue idea have already done its job, by helping you find some better scenes? Keep this in mind as you ask the next questions. (And if it doesn’t make the cut, “outtake prologues” are prime candidates for a Bonus Scenes section of your author website, so no scene has to be truly abandoned. DVD-makers figured that one out years ago.)

 

#2: Do you have the PERFECT contrast with the rest of the story?

This is the big one.

The one defining thing that makes a prologue different from a regular chapter is how it isolates part of the story from the rest: a character giving history, a young glimpse of the hero, something. And normally storytelling is about how much each part is integrated with the rest of the tale—so are you sure the best place for this thing is right out there in front, on its own?

Maybe the clearest prologue I know is in Pixar’s Finding Nemo (thanks to Feo Takahari for pointing that out). The bulk of the movie is Marlin struggling to, well, find his lost son, but it’s also him facing his own overprotective ways. And the fastest, clearest, most irresistible way to set that up was to open with a tragedy that gives him a reason to be so worried—and not just setting it on the day the rest of the story begins, but long before then. As a prologue.

Or: horror tales love prologues. Any time the story wants to follow an ordinary person slowly discovering the nastiness, but the writer still wants to make an early promise that the payoff will be worth it, an easy choice is to open with a glimpse of the monster. And a hapless victim, of course.

Fear vs finding confidence. Full-on villain vs slowly-alerted hero. See the pattern here?

A prologue that really pulls its weight zeroes in on the perfect element to contrast with the rest of the story. If that contrast is so vital that it itself should be the first thing you show your reader… so essential that it would cleaner to give that one thing a spotlight moment that shows off how it differs from the flow ahead… if you’re sure of those, you’ve got a prologue.

[bctt tweet=”Use a #prologue only if has the perfect thing to play off the rest of the story, and nothing else.”]

(If not… If it’s only a good piece of contrast but not a perfect one, it’s better off worked into a regular Chapter One or elsewhere. Or if you really want a sense of history or scale first, you could open with a snippet from a history book, news report, or letter, that doesn’t look like a prologue—in fact, you could weave bits of these into the start of every chapter instead of putting them in one place.)

One other thing: if any point is so vital the reader can’t appreciate the story without it, you can do a prologue but put it in Chapter One as well. If the prologue’s good enough, we can afford to be generous even to the prologue-haters.

 

#3: Size matters

Readers expect prologues to be small. You might have a marvelous concept for one that’s built like a midsized chapter, but it’s hard to convince the reader you’ve got true laserlike precision to set up a strong chapter when the prologue itself wears the reader out.

[bctt tweet=”If a reader reads your #prologue and takes a break before Chapter One– fail.”]

No, there are no rules about size, but I’ve heard “500 words” mentioned as a good high average. That seems about right; it should mean (at least with many print paperbacks) that the moment the reader turns the page once she’ll see the end on the third page, so she never has to wonder if the prologue is going to take two or ten more page-turns to get the job done. In fact, if you can hone a prologue down to two pages, or one, you can impress the reader even more.

To put it another way, a prologue is no place for just a slice of life. It might have a strong point combined with a slice of life, but you want to make it a thin slice.

(No, you don’t want to do a prologue for flash fiction. The second season of Arrow doesn’t count.)

 

#4: Are you giving the prologue what it deserves?

A good first scene can make your story; a weak one can certainly sink it. It’s no secret that you want any opening to be the best it can. But prologues have the same need, plus the added burden of convincing reluctant prologue-readers… and they have the sheer power of having such a focused goal.

So if you can make the prologue the best scene you’ve ever written, the rest of the story will thank you. Dig through your whole arsenal of writing tricks, from imagery to irony to a really unique point about the scene’s character, and how you could twist the plot up, down, and sideways just for the sake of showing off.

–And then don’t do all of them! You want to use your best writing judgment too, about the ideal central technique for what the prologue needs and how many more tricks can fit in around it without overstuffing it. (Well, without quite overstuffing it. Like any story’s opening, you still want to blow the reader away.)

Extra tip: if the prologue isn’t about the hero’s younger days or about the villain (and these may be the two best reasons for a prologue), consider killing off its viewpoint character right then. That saves the reader from wondering when he’ll show up again. It does also add to the risk that the reader will decide you’re abandoning the story’s best material, but a good prologue needs to invest the reader in what’s coming rather than just in itself. Besides, you can take a memorable prologue character as a challenge to be positive your hero’s even better.

 

One Thing

Maybe the best single advice I’ve heard for this comes from another movie: City Slickers. Granted, Jack Palance as Curly the cowboy was talking about how he simplified his whole life, and that’s more than most of us want to use his rule for, but it’s perfect for prologues:

“You know what the secret of life is? One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.”

And the real secret the movie claims is that we all have to find our own One Thing.

Just One Thing

(Image credit: Sundayeducation.com)

A prologue works… if you have the right One Thing to make it about, and you keep everything else out of the way, and you make that thing worthy of the spotlight you’ve given it. (Okay, for a prologue it might be fairer to say the One “Thing” is “one contrast” between two elements in it, like a character and just who betrays him, and then how that combination contrasts with the rest of the story.) If you don’t have that one clean combination—if you can’t sum it up in one sentence—your story’s better off going straight to a full-sized Chapter One.

It’s a hard choice. Every character in a story (and ones that aren’t in it yet) might be whispering in your head why they should be the prologue viewpoint, and prologues may still feel too much like the default tool to work your way into the story. But, is this idea the One Contrast that the reader needs as a prologue, or not?

If it still is, you’ve won yourself a rare insight into what makes your story tick. An opportunity like that would be a shame to waste.

Now excuse me here. My own book’s start needs some more trimming… and I’ve got some prologue cynics I’m hoping to blow away.

 

“And, by that destiny, to perform an act,

Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come

In yours and my discharge.”

–William Shakespeare, The Tempest (the whole quote, emphasis mine)

 

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Deals, Decoys, and Dirty Tricks for your Characters

Your hero’s trapped by his enemies, no way to run or fight—unless he can take what those goons really want and use it against them. Your villain needs to slip past the police lines to work his sinister plan, but how? Or even, what would it take to make those two stop and call a truce? It all comes down to knowing who you’re dealing with.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

It’s the classic question, used by Mr. Morden to tempt the people of Babylon 5 and by cops to talk down hostage-takers: “What do you want?” Because once you know a little about what makes a character tick, you have four easy ways another character might use that to influence them… and better yet, deepen the story by revealing how well they and you understand them. Win/win.

The framework I use comes from comparing what we’ll call someone’s “Standard” action—let’s say searching a smuggler or attacking a hero—with the “Offer” of doing what our trickster wants instead. The options for making that Deal work come from either giving the Offer a better reward, or reducing the Standard’s reward. Or it might happen in negative form, where instead of changing the balance of the two “carrots” you change the “sticks:” reduce the Offer’s cost for taking it, or raise the Cost of staying with the Standard.

–Yes, the last is the classic “Offer you can’t refuse.” (In fact, part of the fun of that Godfather line is that it doesn’t mean “can’t resist the Offer itself,” the way most people use it. It really is the refusal side of it that it shuts down.) Or,

[bctt tweet=”4 ways to manipulate a character: hire him, get him fired, reassure him, or threaten him. #writing”]

 

Survivors and Smugglers – some samples

How does this breakdown work? Let’s take two scenarios: a smuggler trying to get goods past customs and a zombie-hunter who needs to keep a particularly large wave of undead away from a camp of refugees.

Offer’s reward: (aka, “the carrot”) This might be the simplest, and because it delves into people’s motivations directly it may add the most character depth to the story.

The zombie concept makes it simpler yet: just what draws them to attack people, and what part of that could be used to draw them away? Will a loud enough noise draw them from a distance? Or does it have to be about getting in close, running just ahead of them, and not heading into some (yes I’ll say it) dead end.

The smuggler eyeing the customs officer can get into more human territory. It means something if that guard is less interested in policing the border than in some extra cash—and is it for himself or his sick child? Or if he’s so shaken by a developing war he wants guns smuggled to those rebels.

On the other hand, even if the guard only cares about stopping crime, that could make him willing to trade for tips about a much bigger smuggling ring. Or just faking (or exposing) another smuggler nearby would make the perfect distraction, just as fresh meat can lead zombies around. Best of all might be if that smuggler can pose as an undercover cop.

Standard’s reward (reduced): (or, “no other carrots”) This plot twist may actually take the most work to pull off, but it does dig pretty deep into characters and their lives.

Zombies don’t give many options here. You’d need a way to make the refugees less appetizing, compared to the decoy; most worlds’ zombies being the tireless eating machines that they are, simply hiding the victims might be the closest thing that counted.

But the smuggler might get past a guard who’d given up on his work. If he can find the most burned-out inspector in the place, or even make that inspector lose his faith that anyone will listen to him, the inspector has no reason to put much effort into searching our smuggler.

(Or for a more thorough example, picture the army that bypasses the Impenetrable Fortress to take the capital beyond it. Even if the fort is vital in its own right, its defenders may have nothing left to fight for.)

Offer’s cost (reduced): (“carrot has no strings on it”) This is usually in the mix with other tricks and deals, part of tipping the balance the way you want.

For decoying zombies, it might mean keeping the bait from getting too far ahead or crossing any ground that’s hostile enough to zombies to make them turn back. If these zombies are afraid of fire, don’t go near burning buildings until you’ve finished drawing them away.

For the smuggler, it’s recognizing what bothers the guard about letting him through. Probably that he’ll get caught and expose them both, so the smuggler has to seem competent enough that the Offer is less of a risk. But it might not be that: if the guard has lost friends to gunfights and the smuggler switches from running booze to running Uzis, that smuggler may be in for a nasty surprise.

Standard’s cost: (or, “the stick”) This is the other simple tactic—really the simplest of all, since almost anything’s easier to harm than create. That means it might be a last-ditch toolset of quick and dirty options that say more about the situation than the character you’re leaning on… or they might show just as much insight as the best Rewards do. Plus, they might create the most conflict of all, since someone using them tends to make lasting enemies.

For zombies, it could be as simple as throwing up a wall of fire or some barriers to climb over, between them and the refugee camp. It won’t stop the horde, but it might be just enough to encourage them to go after the decoy instead.

The smuggler… You can probably guess: threats, ranging from exposing how much the guard’s already collaborated with him to targeting whatever the guard cares about.

Then again, sometimes the “stick” that character needs is already part of the situation, if you make the right part of it clear enough. If our smuggler is also sneaking children out of a ruthless dictatorship, and the guard takes a good look at them, the balance can shift on its own. (“It’s not a threat, it’s a warning, about who you’re working with…”)

ZombieDeals

That’s how I break down my options, when I have a character in a corner—or need someone to put him there—and want a plot twist that isn’t just brute strength. If I can either outbid or undermine the Standard reward one character was relying on, I can make a strong statement about what was driving him; meanwhile reducing the Offer’s cost keeps the plot twist on track; and, adding or finding costs in the Standard is another approach that might clarify character or might bypass it.

Something else you can see in these examples are that sometimes a tool works by changing one side of someone’s choice with the right offer or threat or other efforts, sometimes it’s deception (faking that same kind of change, or hiding one part of what’s in the balance), or else revealing the whole picture. If you look at my four Plot Device articles, you’ll see these are all ways to use Strength (or Movement) and/or Knowledge to affect a choice between two Motives.

It’s all about that pair of options you give that character, and the “What do you want?” (or don’t want) that lets you tip either side of that scale. Once you learn to look for those options, you can turn your characters loose to trick, bully, seduce… and even find grounds to make friends.

 

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The Plot-Device Machine – Motive

A story is its people. We all know that, and that’s why Motive is different from the other Plot Device points. We’ve seen how Movement and especially Knowledge can organize the plot around the Strengths that will determine just who gets what they want… but Motive is what they want. And it doesn’t matter if the rest of the story is about fighting Dracula or diabetes; it’s plotting from the characters’ Motive that really brings it to life.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

What counts as Motive? I’d say,

[bctt tweet=”Motive is what characters want or don’t, or some belief that ‘filters’ their choice.”]

In its simplest, it’s what goal someone could go after in the story. Fight or flight. The patriot’s war, the money-grubber’s deal, or the mother’s child. Family, love and friends, work, and coping with other problems are the common starting points (I’ve got a post on those options). And it isn’t only action stories that tend to make it “negative” rather than “positive,” on the grounds that saving a planet or a relationship (or at least rebuilding one) can make a more intense story than building it the first time. That’s just how we humans are wired, to react to threats faster than we notice opportunities.

Or Motive could shade into attitudes, expectations, or patterns that aren’t strictly “get this/ stop that” goals. This could be filters over charactrers’ actual goals, but one that’s just as key to what the people are and how we can use them: the company man who just won’t see what his firm is really doing, or the giver who’ll stick her neck out for anyone. Anything that affects the choices they make.

Why is Motive juicier than the other pieces of the story? I like to think it’s so fundamental it really is the part that the reader’s own life can share in. We just don’t connect a tale’s spotting a murder weapon lying in the corner (or even a time-saving accounting trick) to our own struggles, not the way we watch Peter “Bannon” in Hook missing his son’s proverbial baseball game and think of the choices we make every day. And it isn’t about kids, or any match between story subject and reader (though we all know it doesn’t hurt!), since so much of our lives are always dealing with other people. We don’t need to meet an alcoholic—or a vampire—to let a character with a secret remind us everyone has their private demons.

[bctt tweet=”Human nature: in the end we’re all fighting the same battles. I think that’s why stories work.”]

But… every writer talks about character and motive. Don’t I already have enough of that in my story?

 

Moments for Motive

One way to make full use of Motive is to check scenes, character layers and their conflict (for all characters), and larger contrasts. For instance:

  • Which scenes really hinge on Motive rather than Strength, Knowledge, or Movement? Star Wars might be crammed with shootouts and chases, but the loudest cheer in the theater always comes when Han and the Falcon drop in to clear out the Death Star’s trench after all.
  • How many Motives does a character have? “Depth” is a word we like to throw around, but can you count how many goals and beliefs each of your cast has that make a difference? We can tell a minor character by only having two or three… but if a side character has more Motive issues than the hero does it just might mean you’re telling the wrong person’s story.
  • How much do those Motives clash? Indiana Jones doesn’t slow down often to show off his issues, but he lets the Nazis (the frickin’ Nazis!) get a chance at the Ark’s ultimate power because he’s too much of a scholar to blow it up.
    • Still, build-up beats bigger stakes. For every story worth remembering, we’ve all seen way too many that announced everything was life or death, but didn’t take the time to establish why we should care. Has Michael Bay ever seen The Blair Witch Project, let alone read A Christmas Carol?
  • How many characters have layered Motives, complete with all the above? Even building the story around a multilayered hero shouldn’t hide the chance to make other characters the key to some some scenes, and to build up just how hard a choice they have to make. In fact…
  • What patterns do characters’ Motives form? This might be as simple as giving hero and villain opposite drives—or as careful as making the villain all too similar (the famous “Shadow Self”) to spotlight that one defining difference. It at least ought to mean sheer variety in the cast; what’s the point in giving the hero two friends if they’re both driven by revenge?
    • Answer: to show how two very different people can have that Motive in common. Or how two “similar” folks can become different.

Some of the best-designed stories out there can come from combinations of which characters seem similar but have a different Motive, or seem different but turn out to have something in common. Lord of the Rings gives us Boromir’s desire to save his people, that opens him to the Ring’s influence… and his brother facing the same choice and resisting. Meanwhile Frodo sees Gollum is actually another hobbit driven by the same hunger for the Ring that he’s coping with himself, until he can pity his enemy and make him an ally—and all the back-and-forth twists that that leads to, to make us wonder how far either of them can be trusted with this kind of power around. Or how much poor Sam will put up with.

[bctt tweet=”If you want a theme, compare two characters with their #motives. Or six, and their changes. “]

 

To me, that’s what writing is. It’s a chance to explore what kind of character has what in common with who else, or how different they can be—and then how the story can change those to show more truths underneath those. My Paul Schuman thought if he could stay away from his family he might have some kind of normal life again; Lorraine will fight for a complete life beside Paul’s brother, but still not tell Greg what she’s become part of. Mark Petrie wants to keep Angie Dennard and her father safe, but by getting them away from danger, not using the magic Angie wants to master, while Joe Dennard has his own reasons for avoiding it. Contrast, of Motives.

Well, the story’s that and pinning those Motives to the Strengths those people need to work for (and against) them, and spreading the storylines out with the evolving Knowledge of how they and the reader can only see so far, and the Movement that some of their “steps” to it mean they never know what might happen when they pass the next dark alley.

But it’s all there.

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The Plot-Device Machine – Strength

Welcome to the whole story… or at least a chance to step back from looking at single aspects of writing, like the last two Plot-Device posts did. Now that we’ve explored how characters’ movement and knowledge keep changing how the story works—and the ways each ends up reshaping the tale—it’s time to look at a third aspect and see how they all fit together to build a story. I call this third quarter of the Plot Device, Strength.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

(“Strength? What if my story only has a bit of fighting in it?” comes the voice from the back row.)

I’ll admit it, I’ve never had a perfect name for this one. That’s because it takes in every component in the story world that doesn’t fall into the other three groups.

“Strength” could be any tool or resource characters use to make a change in the story, and whatever’s in the story that gives them that opening. A hammer can break down a door, or nails can put it back up—or it could be someone having the muscle to smash that door, or how fast someone’s tiring from the room being on fire, or the fact that there’s a door there to smash and not just another stretch of wall. It does usually means physical “things,” but there’s also room for some abstract power in the grouping; if our hero’s goal is to write an unforgettable song, “strength” might be inspiration, time to work on it, and probably years of study or experience so he’s ready to write.

But the reason I group all these together is to tease out the other Plot Device aspects separate from them, and let them work in the ways we covered in the other posts. Our musician may test out and “learn” which chords work for his song, but that still works better as working through the songwriting’s Strength on its own terms. Meanwhile if part of the process is hearing one musical style and remembering it’s the way he always wanted to sing, that might open up things like:

  • Since he only has to hear that sound again once, it’s Knowledge—and like we’ve seen, it can have a whole investigation to track it down, or a theme-friendly depth of learning what kind of musician he’d rather be.
  • If he has to go to a hundred clubs before he hears it, that’s Movement’s way of spreading the story out, and giving him a chance to stumble into friends and enemies on the way.

Or there’s Motive—but that’s for the next post. Combining these two with Strengths is fun enough.

 

Finding Strength factors can be trickier than it looks, with so much weighing into it. My rule of thumb is:

[bctt tweet=”Everything characters deal with is a lock; some just have keys that are harder to get. http://bit.ly/DevicesStr”]

  1. The “locks”: look on all sides for what makes anything a weak link, or ready to change. Small-scale example: look left and right and all through the building for where there might be a door someone can try to open. (Are there windows? Or are the doors so reinforced it’s easier to smash the wall?)
    1. Don’t forget, what’s changing on its own: from tides coming in and batteries dimming, to politics changing as whole generations fade away. Or, what times are they just not there (or some rare thing is) and that changes the mix?
  1. The “keys”: what tools, resources, skills, possible allies, and so on are out there that can change one of those—enable it, fix it, whatever you need?
    1. Yes, those keys might need components to build them, or bargaining chips to get someone involved, that break a simple process down into more scenes. We’ve all seen stories plotted like that, but they make sense if you don’t take them for granted.
  1. Plan B, C… You’ll always come up with a few locks and keys that might work, and some that would have worked if the conditions weren’t forbidding them, and probably a few that sound beyond crazy. Any of those are good for that moment when our hero shows he’s trying to think of everything—or of course if you have any time for Things To Go Wrong.
  2. The other guys, and forces. Remember to check all the above for how every other character (like the villain) is busy looking for their own shot at their own goals, and how all characters have changes around them even if nobody’s taking advantage of them. The hero has to sleep too, and if our villain knows where…
  3. Strong enough? Once those Strengths start to come together, you can write two ways: You can run a fight, surgery, or any other scene with the classic suspense of whether they’ll actually win. Or you can keep all the tension on the plot twists just before that, on just who’ll get the right tool or enemy attack there in time. (But then, I like to have the outcome hanging on skill and then keep changing the rules…)

Again, this the purely Strength side of it. You might have the perfect “key” that our hero just doesn’t Know about, or can’t Move out to get. Because it’s that combination, taking those Strength points and pacing them out with Knowledge and Movement (and all the smaller cycles within those) that really starts to look like a story. In fact it starts to look like a treasure map, but one that does justice to the complications you’d have trying to follow it.

The Treasure Map of Oz

Time to see how these work together. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s goal is simple: getting home. The Strength to do that turns out to be in her magic shoes (silver or ruby, depending on your choice of media) and her love of family to make them work. But that’s the Plan B, since there’s also the Wizard—

(There’s that back-row voice again: “Her goal is getting home? Doesn’t that make all of this Movement?” Well yes, it could be called that, but that’s a move she doesn’t start until the story’s end. The tale’s Movement parts aren’t the flight to Kansas and whatever happens on the way, they’re her journey to find Strengths that could let her go.)

So Dorothy’s quest is to discover the depth of love (Strength) to work those shoes… after she stops relying on the Strength of the Wizard. In fact the Wizard’s offering two ways out: a perfectly good balloon ride (that turns out to be too time-sensitive for a girl with a dog-shaped Deus Ex Machina), and before that his “magic” that’s a red herring—a bit of Knowledge plotting. But first, just to learn about that “Strength” she has to go and claim another Strength, by beating the Witch.

And those several Strengths are scattered over Oz—imagine how much shorter the tale would be if the Wizard and Witch were right there when she landed with the Munchkins, ready to fight out their differences with her in one busy scene! Instead it’s that Movement (and the missing Knowledge about the Wizard) that spreads the story out on the way to those Strengths; it’s what gives her time to meet her three friends, dodge the Witch’s attacks (our villain doesn’t miss her chances to use own Strength), and of course build up the Strength she’ll really need. And all those journeys, discoveries, and fights are made up of their own combinations of these—the Tin Woodsman even gets to break down a door.

Other stories are their own mix of the same elements. A thriller might turn on getting hold of a bloody shirt for evidence, layered over with the trail of Knowledge to find it, the Movement to get to each clue, and the Strength to reach them and come out alive. A business story could be gathering the resources to launch that billion-dollar idea; a monster hunt needs get hold of its silver bullets and then track down and shoot the werewolf.

 

(“But that isn’t ALL the story! Why is Dorothy even chased by the Witch, why’d the Wizard send her after her, why are her friends and her home so important—”)

I know. That’s the last piece of the Plot Device puzzle. Strength may give us pieces that Knowledge and Movement lay out, but we all know the thing that really aligns them all, and makes the story mean something. So next week: Motive.

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The Plot-Device Machine – Knowledge

“You can run but you can’t hide.” It’s simple truth, that getting distance from a problem may be no match for how “Knowledge is power.” And that’s only one side to how “who knows what” defines the story; my first Plot Device post showed how you might move your characters around to control how the plot unfolds, but knowledge almost is the plot.

 

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Think about this:

[bctt tweet=”Knowledge is the only side of the story that matches how the reader’s experiencing it. #secrets #writing”]

Unless you’re writing a travel guide, they aren’t following those movements; unless it’s a how-to they won’t be assembling the strengths the characters gain.

But knowledge means something, if the story can make us wonder “what’s really going on there” and let us share in the answer… because that answer or how to search for it always says at least a bit about our own lives. It could be

  • Specific: Bilbo solving each of Gollum’s riddles. Each time we figure one out ourselves, we cheer; each time we don’t, we sweat just a little for him.
  • Game-changing: the Green Goblin learning Spider-Man’s identity. (It’s not just what the hero knows!)
  • Layered: how much of a romance comes down to pacing what moments the couple are “getting to know” the chemistry they have, matched against thos False Impressions?
  • Or, bedrock: under all their twisting clues, mysteries can get their ultimate power from revealing just how vicious a killer was right next to us all along.

So the more of your story is tied to the revelations in it, the harder it can hit.

 

Knowing when to Know

It may be because information’s about blind spots, but I’ve seen (and written, sigh) so many moments where a plot misses one side of holding its mysteries together. A story can’t lose track of:

  1. What’s someone know, right now? And so, what does that make him think he needs to look into next—or not care about at all, so far?
    1. And, how do his assumptions play into it? There’s no better tool for a character arc than to find the facts he just won’t accept, then show how wrong he is.
  2. Then, how many ways could he follow that up? Talk to people, bring up Google, or track down a Dusty Tome? Run a test in a lab?
    1. One trick is to consider all five senses (or more, if you’ve got a cast like mine!) for what signs each fact might leave, including from looking back at its history. Detectives look for everything from footprints to strange sounds to glimpses in ATM cameras, and all the associates and back-story a suspect has. Can someone really run away from an enemy without coming back all sweaty? When you know what to look for, you know what ways someone might look for it.
  3. Also, which of those signs can he use best, to follow up? A hacker might dig through a dozen servers before he knocks on a witness’s door, but Sherlock Holmes will spot everything from calloused fingers to unscrupulous accounting at a glance—and he’ll know what the combination means, and how to shift to using a disguise to get the next piece.
  4. Check what all characters know, not just the main ones. Look at each step your central characters take (in investigating and everything else), and then ask who else is going to get a hint of what happened and start nosing around themselves—or just jump in and act. There’s just no comparison between Lois Lane being fooled by Clark Kent’s glasses and the thrill of Indy hauling up the Ark only to discover that the Nazis were watching him digging…
    1. Then ask what that tells the hero to look into, and keep things escalating!
  5. And, what are all those players doing for “information control”? Can they keep from leaving those traces (tiptoe past those guards), or erase them later or explain them away?
    1. Better yet, who can trick who with all of that? There’s the “moment of distraction” someone could use to tweak any moment in the story… and then there’s Holmes’s defining trick of pretending to set fire to a house, to make the blackmailer herself reveal her hiding place.
    2. On top of THAT, some of the best plot twists come when the villain (or hero) realize they’ve been tricked, and the tables start turning!

 

You can lay most parts of the story out in terms of how each scrap of knowledge lets the hero—and everyone else—move the plot forward, or else move off-track with your red herrings.

In fact, speaking of moving, it’s often literal! In many styles of writing, most of the pages are simply the combination of searching and moving. Whether it’s a grand investigation, sneaking past an enemy, or just describing scenery (whether or not real clues are hidden in it), they form the same pattern:

[bctt tweet=”Basic scene: everyone moves toward the expected next clue, sees what’s there, rinse & repeat. http://bit.ly/DevicesKnow”]

Think about it: how many ways are there that really vary from that? Yes, there’s when someone settles in to search in one place (through a process like reading or talking), or into a flat-out race or chase where speed matters more than scenery (but even then, things can come up in the environment to help them maneuver). There are Strength moments, from fights to change-the-tires scenes, that I’ll get to in the next Plot Device post. And you have other conversations, that can be their own mix of Knowledge and Motive, and maybe some Movement (or Strength) too. But mixing Movement and Knowledge might be the bread and butter of getting most sequences written.

In fact, part of the balance is how much you’ll let Knowledge obsolete Movement. Do characters need to go out to look at a site, or can they just run tests in their lab—or even skip gathering the lab samples if they can just talk to someone who’s seen it happen? (“Where’s my flying car? It’s called the Internet.”) Which means you can choose what clues call for legwork after all, and which dead ends the map won’t warn them about, to pick which discoveries get more emphasis… or just get more chances for complications.

And of course, the more amazing a character’s control of knowledge is, the more it reshapes the whole story from the start. (If you’ve ever played a video game with a secondary “radar display” to keep track of your enemies, you know how different it feels to see a bit further!) Many a story’s been built just around why the protagonist knows at least a little that the rest of us don’t: the psychic, the spy, or just the witness nobody believes. Or it could be the same advantage in reverse, being the invisible man or inside source that can hide in plain sight. Then you have the challenge of building the story around just how much more they can find, and what limits they still have.

(No, Superman, the missile control doesn’t have to be inside the lead box, that’s only the first thing where you can’t see what’s inside… oops.)

 

Knowledge, and Movement, can be the major tools for organizing a story. But then the other two Plot Device tools… Strength and Motive are the story pieces themselves.

 

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The Plot-Device Machine – Movement

I’m about to share with you my all-purpose tool for the all-purpose question that my characters (and I’d bet yours) are constantly asking. That question is, “How do I get out of this one?”

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Or, it can be how the hero will find a new way into a dilemma that holds the key he needs, or of course how enemies and good old Murphy’s Law can get at him. From escaping traps to staying on the good side of a tempestuous ally, in a hero’s eyes his life is a multilayered challenge that almost seems to be conspiring to push him to his limits.

And readers never stop asking the same questions, because they know his life is!

So much of the nuts and bolts of writing is building the dramatic out of the practical. Would that escape be more intense if he bargained rather than fought his way through? Does the plot touch all the bases of tracking a killer?

When I’m looking for problems or solutions for my characters, I’ve found I have four main options. As a writer you won’t see any of these as new, but I think the key is in seeing the combination of choices, and the ways they can steer a scene or story. (Plus, me being me, they all have their own implications for picking someone’s paranormal or other suspense resources.)

So my plot devices are either about:

  • Movement
  • Knowledge
  • Strength
  • Motive

 

Movement

Yes, I listed movement first, and it’s not because I have a weakness for chase scenes. Stop a moment and think:

[bctt tweet=”How many pages are the hero working his way through a place? #Movement matters. #writing”]

On a small scale, mobility can mean chase speeds and barriers, or whether hero or villain can find an unprotected approach to get where he wants. (Try the back door, crawl up the sewers, whatever way’s the weakest link.) On a larger scale, running a business or just getting through the day have their own logistics issues, and a problem anywhere on all those roads—or getting a new and better way around—may well be the most changeable part of the story. Or, you can force the heroine’s boyfriend or mentor to move across the country, even if it’s just to make phone contact less comfortable.

As often as not, part of making a whole scene or more story work is physically placing everything it needs. That can mean having a sense of:

  1. Pacing—of the story, not the people on the move. Do you want to stretch a scene out with escape maneuvers, or sum up a month of military campaigning with a paragraph that explains thinning supply routes? Giving a section more space usually means finding more complications for it, and a longer or rougher ride is an easy way to provide that.
  • Or else, just taking movement out of a scene focuses it on everything else. The more you’re trapped with your enemy, for better or worse, the more you know something’s about to change… though even then something might come between you…
  1. Who wants to bring which things together, and who doesn’t? Is that bystander who sees the approaching figure a cop who thinks standing and shooting at a monster will do any good, or is it Carrie Coed who’s perfectly happy to RUN AWAY?
  2. Speeds, and also distance, to which goals. Letting Carrie run to just “get away” may not be as intense as having her run to her car. So how far from the parking lot is she? How near was the beastie to catching her—and if it moves at a nice suspenseful shamble, the only way to let it gain on her may be to say poor Carrie’s already limping from a previous chase.
  • But then, movement isn’t only raw speed. If Carrie had one of my own books’ flying belts to float up out of reach (assuming the monster didn’t too!), or she had to run around a chain fence while the monster oozed right through it, the chase may take a very different turn.
  1. The big one: check everything for how it can change. Cliché or not, it’s only human for Carrie to stop and stare when the monster pours through the parking lot fence, or maybe even drop the car keys she needed. (Yes, this can be more a chance for “shock,” mixed in with more straight suspense of just following the movement.)
  • Especially, focus on how those characters try to control those. The creature might be smart enough to see that Carrie needs to run to the lot exit now, and try to head her off. But if Carrie had actually dropped her backup keys, and then doubled back to her car with her real ones, she can get to drive straight through the thing—SPLAT.

(Good for you, Carrie!)

 

All in all, movement ought to be a natural part of working out any writing. Wherever the story physically is, distance and barriers are a big part of stretching it out (distance metaphors—we can’t get away from them). And you’ll always find a few aspects of it that can be perfect for twisting the plot.

Especially, it can be part of defining the characters, and the story as a whole. A mobile hero might be the perfect match for a stronger but slower enemy (no wonder Peter Pan can laugh at all those pirates), or a faster, elusive villain can make him the one frustrated. At the same time it can set the scale for the story: Carrie only has to drive across campus to find out why her friends aren’t answering their phones, but the further Clark Kent realized he could fly, the more of the planet Superman patrolled.

[bctt tweet=”If you don’t think #movement can reimagine a whole story, two words: Road trip!”]

With all the different pieces of your plot, movement can be just the way to control who gets to act on what.

That is, if they know about it. Which brings us to next week: Knowledge.

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Worth Fighting For – choosing stakes for characters

When I’m first putting my sense of a story together, there’s one question that can turn the different pieces into a whole, sometimes faster than any other choice I make. And that is: what does a character want?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

I don’t mean the deep study of how the world looks through his eyes, not yet. (And not the “What’s my motivation?” acting jokes—although any cliché like that was usually washed downstream from a good idea up somewhere.) No, I mean a simple decision about what part of the story keeps that person in the action, in terms of his own history.

Think about how you come up with a concept, and what ideas come to you first. You might start with a protagonist and build the world as you start to understand her; “What kind of person would try to hide her psychic powers to live an ordinary life?” Or you might begin with a sense of the conflict (“wizards at war!”) or the cause at the root of it, or just a setting you want to draw a story out of. So many ways we can go.

But to keep those pieces from pulling apart, we want at least a basic sense of which of them got our people involved. In some stories this may be less important than how the plot escalates (such as trying to stay alive), but even as a starting point it’s a good one. So I like to look for whether the character’s here for:

Family: The earliest, maybe deepest motive we all have. When Inigo Montoya says “You killed my father, prepare to die!” or a troubled teenager tries to keep her sister from following in her footsteps, we all know how much is going on. It’s especially good for bringing in the weight of the character’s past; half the story’s subtext may be her fighting for these few people to not see her as who she used to be.

Love and Friends: If family’s bound up with the past, these can start as casual and in-the-moment as Watson’s initial curiosity about Holmes—or as life-changing as Romeo catching a glimpse of his enemies’ daughter. It might be the most versatile motive of all because that other person could be anyone, with whatever bond to the character you want to build up, and they have all their own ways of changing and pulling people in deeper.

Work: The classic, if you want the story tied to how police work or ranching operates, or at least how Certain Events are complicating those. Harry Potter starts his adventure wanting to earn his place as a wizard, and the sheer weirdness of Hogwarts fills half the pages of the books. And like Harry shows, this choice can be all about the structure that job brings, but it can also be an easy string for pulling in characters you don’t want to give a separate supporting cast to—or to show off how someone like Harry doesn’t have any good people in his life, at first.

Accident and Entropy: Sometimes a killer just thinks your hairstyle is more fascinating than the others on the street—or you win a lottery, or wake up with a disease. The other stakes usually come with their own baggage, but here we can say “It had to happen to someone”… and then build the story from how that plays off the rest of the character. That random target becomes all about whether her ordinariness (and all the unique bits it came from) will help her survive; the lottery winner finds out what he really wants in life. If you want this kind of setup, you’ll usually know it.

 

Whatever else the story does, the better I know a character wants the right thing, the more the whole story hangs together. The High Road starts with a family secret, but making my viewpoint character Mark a friend of the Dennards keeps him a step back from their legacy to appreciate it a bit more. It spotlights his relationship to them but told me I had to show how specific his reasons for being there were, from his suspicion of the magic he’d glimpsed to his lack of a stable family himself.

Besides choosing a type of stake, here are three other things that choice can lead to:

Often the way the character sees that goal can be as distinctive as the thing itself. If you look at the Marvel movies, Thor and Iron Man both start their arcs as superstars who think they know everything about changing the world, while the future Captain America is a weakling who dreams of making a difference any way he can. One person might have lost someone and be driven by revenge or just stumbling around with a grudge against the world, but a different spin on the same concept can give you a character trying to make amends—either to the people he’s failed or to the different ones that are all he has left.

Or, the most impressive thing about stakes may be the combination of them, and how many you cover or contrast. Harry Potter comes to Hogwarts to train, but he also has his lost family to discover, and the friends he soon makes… and even touching all those bases makes any character more complete. Or look at the symmetry between Harry and the picture we form of young Voldemort: both Hogwarts students, both from nightmarish homes, but Harry’s honest friendships (and how easily he makes them) make it easy to see how different their lives will be. Just think of a classic mystery: half the story might come out of “the real killer did it for simple greed, while the red herrings have these flashy love and cover-up-the-accident motives.” Or how many stories are about changing a character from career-chasing to love or family.

Most of all, choosing someone’s goal ought to be a signpost to what to flesh out next. “For his father” is pure cliché if it just lies there pretending to be a complete answer, without detailing what that father’s like. Other characters may never mention their parents at all, but that only works for the ones that have whole different forces driving them. And the better you are at picking which of those basics each character depends on, the sooner you can fill in what they’ll mean for the story.

Besides, the heroine’s father might turn out to be the hero’s too, if you find you’re creating the next Darth Vader…

 

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How All Writing is Suspense

Why is my writing all about suspense? I think a better question is, is there any story that isn’t really about building uncertainty, making the reader wonder about what comes next, making them care? Suspense. And understanding that may be the perfect tool for any kind of writing.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

But suspense is only one genre, isn’t it? One Wikipedia page (since it’s probably the quickest source to go check; I’ll wait) lists 22 genres, and umpteen variations within them. I actually class my own writing as fantasy, urban fantasy and paranormal in particular, one of several genres that many people think of for its distinctive character types and weaponry (see also Science Fiction) or conflict (Crime or Mystery).

Except, many of those genres are about choosing tools. When a writer sits down to use them, Tom Clancy doesn’t have the same aims as Ian Fleming, and my battles aren’t trying to imitate Seanan McGuire’s. (Not that anyone could…)

What the idea of suspense can do is bring all genres and styles together—and show how each of us is making our own writing choices, even line by line, but all following the same cycle.

I call it a “suspense” flow, because I think that’s the word that captures the energy we want each part of a story to have—especially how it depends on balancing different parts of the flow to get the pacing right. You might argue for “action,” “mystery,” or other words, but I think “suspense” captures more in one word. And it all builds on what all writers do know is: conflict.

[bctt tweet=”If #conflict is the ‘engine’ of a story, the #suspense flow shows which ‘gear’ the engine’s in.”]

How does that help us writing?

Partly, we can use the suspense model for a larger view of what any part of a story needs, whether it’s a single passage or a five-book plan. Such as checking for:

  • someone to root for
  • tone or atmosphere
  • complications, and a sense that these would be what he has to deal with
  • choices that are hard enough to reveal the character
  • pacing, not rushing or bogging down on the way to—
  • an outcome that means something

All of these are basic elements of writing and conflict, but this fits them all together to see them as part of the same cycle—and to ask whether they’re building the right kind of momentum, involvement, suspense.

“But my writing’s barely about suspense!” –If that’s what you’ve been thinking, consider this: the suspense flow is more than a way to find common needs in the genres and styles. It’s also a way to look at any part of writing, and to pick if you have any particular priorities for it:

  • If you want sensory mood or detail, you can start painting the picture right from the beginning, even before things happen.
  • To make your story more about its subject (anything from a neighborhood-specific tale to a political tale to SF and fantasy), you might define more of it by just what complications come out of it. Be sure the reader knows why it’s those problems those people have to face, and what that means.
  • A sense of mystery can mean playing up the contrast between choices about the subject, and of course stretching out how long it takaes to find that answer. Was it the vampire or the best friend that dunnit? Just why was the ruined city abandoned?
  • Or, classic suspense in its own right means extending the whole process, whether it’s building up more mood or looking for further complications to keep things up in the air.
  • Pure “drama” usually is code for making characters more important than what happens—not just important (we all want that), but focused on how they resist or interpret or put their own slant on the facts. Even in a whole sprawling war, nobody’s going to have the same PTSD as this one soldier.
  • Or an action story needs to do justice to the effect itself, the explosions at the end of the suspense cycle before the cycle starts up again.
  • (For that matter, comedy has the same need to stop there and enjoy the laughter. That same moment of release might well have explosions too, as long as fewer people are getting hurt.)

ItsAllSuspense

Naturally each point on the suspense flow is only as good as how the rest of the flow meshes with it. Only the crudest action story gets careless about why the danger’s there, or the hero’s choices in facing it; sensory description that shuts off once the complications appear would be absurd. And again, “suspense” is a reminder that it only works when the pieces have the right balance for the pacing we want.

Even a sequence that’s all mood or description can look at this pattern. By the time that boy finishes strolling out to the lake, what state of mind should the passage have nudged him to, and the reader with him? Do the bits of detail contrast with each other in ways that stir up preferences in us (looking at the open sky, and the gritty, tiring dust his feet kick up, before he’s finally rounding the corner), or give a sense of one thing disrupting another to demand our attention?

Can you look at these and see which part of the flow you want to give a bit more justification, a few more words, or an extra scene?

It’s all there, by one name or another. And if the combination of your words catches fire, it will do it partly because of what we call suspense.

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Writing for Five Senses – Combining Them All

Can you write a description with just sight and hearing? No, but those two can organize how all five senses fit together.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Last week I wrote about the classic advice to “describe all five senses,” and how much easier keeping track of description is if we focus on alternating the main two. But of course writing isn’t supposed to be easy. Having two primary senses doesn’t excuse us from keeping all five in mind to cover a scene, or help weave them together to build the kind of high-powered suspense (or warmth, or humor, or whatever your own goals are) a story deserves.

Except, they do.

[bctt tweet=”Sight and hearing aren’t just a shortcut, they’re models for writing all five senses. bit.ly/5SensesBy2″]

 

Two Models

Think about it: what’s the basic difference between eyes and ears? Different writers might think of points like:

  • Sight organizes our surroundings, with sound giving advance signs before something comes into view. (Or as we action writers call them, warnings.)
  • Sight gives a complete “picture” of surroundings; sound often adds feeling with someone’s tone of voice, or a noisy object’s “personality.” More poetic writers can savor this.
  • Sight shows everything (in theory); sound picks out which things are moving or active.

All true, and I think they all come back to one rule for organizing descriptions:

[bctt tweet=”#Describing sight is about things’ positions; hearing is about their nature. #writing bit.ly/5SensesBy2″]

When I look out my window right now, I see everything from the parking lot up to the sky—which also means I have to (literally) focus on different parts of the view each moment, and it means that if I don’t see someone walking up to visit me, there’s nobody right there. Hearing is more selective; someone standing beyond my door is hidden until he knocks, and I still won’t know if he’s holding a package or anything else until he (or she) makes another noise with that.

–That position vs nature difference is nothing new to any of us, but how often do we really think about it, as writers? Especially one further effect of it: if there is a sound, my hearing might still pick it up through walls and behind my back, and even when I’m not paying attention. (Say when a car alarm goes off when I’m trying to write…) But sight’s power and limits might lead to me walking over to check what’s off on the side of my window frame.

Of the two, focused sight is the one we keep acting on to get a clearer picture of what we need; sound gets broadcast to us on its own. For a writer looking to follow the moment, that difference is pure gold.

And best of all, the other three senses fit right into these patterns.

Touch is as position- and focused-based as sight, the way we have to reach out to feel anything that hasn’t come to us; it even has the same similarity that we already have a skinload of cold air, tight shoes, and other touches we’re always half-aware of and trying to focus past. And taste only has the range of our tongues, except when memory or “the taste of fear” stir something up.

Meanwhile smell works much like hearing: certain things jump right out at us because they—but only they—give off much scent, and they pour those sensations right into the air.

There may be five senses, but all they follow these two plans… and so does a character using them.

 

Stepping through the Senses

Since I always look at my writing as a chance to build different kinds of suspense, I think my scenes only work if I can build them in the right order. So if I want to drop a reader deep into one moment, I might describe all five senses at once. But more often, I’ll tie it all to the process of how my character is living through that scene:

Step 1) First outside senses: Is there something he can hear, or smell, before what’s important comes within reach of the focused senses?

A crunch of boots on the snow made him whirl around.

Step 2) Surveying: What can he see, touch, or taste as he first tries to take in what’s there? And, which pieces matter most to him, and what patterns (like barriers or possibilities) do they form in his mind?

One of the thugs staggered from the door, blocking the alley. Dark blood soaked his shirt, but Mark shivered to see the “dead” man’s wild eyes gleam brighter than the knife in his hand.

  • As part of this, sound/smell components: check which few of those sensations would also create a sound or smell, and how those senses might “demand” a bit of our attention. So instead I could start those lines with:
  • One of the thugs staggered from the door, scraping dully against the brick wall as he blocked the alley….

Step 3) Act & React (focus+changes): As the scene goes on, keep tracking what the character and everyone else do, the same way as Step 2. That is, use sight, touch, and taste to do their best to follow everything worth noticing, but watch for which things are adding a noise or scent to the mix.

Mark edged back, watching his balance as his heels picked through the treacherous bags of garbage piled behind him. The stink of blood as the killer stumbled closer brought sour vomit to Mark’s mouth.

  • plus Background: For an extra layer, once and a while is there a sound or smell from outside the immediate area that could filter into the mix?
  • The police sirens faded in the distance.

 

—Or if those sirens were to turn around, that “background” sound could restart the cycle as a new Step 1 of the police starting to drive into view. (Even if they don’t, if you know my Lavine series, you know Mark has at least four ways to survive that scene.)

 

That’s how I build suspense, or poetry or warmth or any other mood, by playing up the differences in the “focused” and “broadcast” senses to work them each in at their own places. Because to me (and I make no apology for saying it)—

Losing that distinction would be… senseless.

 

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