Tag: conflict

The Fights of Fantasy

What makes a good fight?

—In a story, of course, since in real life the best fights are the ones that don’t happen. But what makes a fictional clash worth reading?

And we do find them worth reading, watching, playing. Of course they’re a staple of storytelling since they’ve been all too real a force in real history. But, in a story they take on an extra kind of appeal.

Since I’m writing books like Running the Gauntlet, that starts with punching a hole in a wall, the question has me thinking.

 

Fighting Right

My Kindle is crammed with fantasy and science fiction. I have long boxes of some of the best superhero comic books ever written, and my movie picks keep an eye out for a really interesting monster.

Let’s face it, stories of the fantastic can be… fantastic.

And that’s one of the first things I look for in a story: the sense of what powers, weapons, and forces its people are dealing with. Give me a dragon-rider, a mindreader, a set of silver arrows and knowing they’re the only defense when the werewolf lunges out of the trees.

Except… anyone can make the action more flashy. Certainly anyone can write the same old fight and just say each super-punch leaves a bigger crater.

No, a really fantastic clash makes us believe a man can fly.

Give me a sense of what it means to sit on that dragon, soaring over canyons and racing to cut off an enemy who’s winging toward our unprotected town. How a telepath tries to read his opponent’s punches, but struggles to focus that power while keeping his physical guard up and his emotions steeled against his opponent’s rage. Or the razor-edged challenge of gathering every werewolf-slaying weapon and scrap of knowledge we can find and trying to herd a much faster, stronger creature into the one spot in the forest where we can get a clean shot at it.

I mean Chris Claremont, the revolutionary comic book writer whose X-Men were (among many other things) the first superheroes to feel like they understood how their powers really worked. Or Brandon Sanderson, creator of Sanderson’s Laws of Magic—and scenes like one in his latest book Rhythm of War, that’s a master-class in the long-standing question “How can one swordsman fight a dozen men?” (Short answer: very carefully.)

In this sense, it’s not the fighting at all that makes a scene work. It’s the imagination.

How does someone with flying or shapeshifting see the world? There’s nothing like a story that lets us walk in those shoes… or not walk, and why. And then the tale puts that whole expanded worldview to the test in strategic chess matches and split-second choices.

That’s the joy of gaming too: choosing our plans and watching whole new tactics or parts of the map get unlocked because of our choices, not just knocking down the next enemy in the line. Just this week I had a video game villain confront my character with all the killing he’d had to do to get by… and I took the chance to start investing in knockout blow and stealth abilities, because it seemed like the time for him to look for a gentler path when he could. A game’s story lets us explore those dimensions ourselves.

But that freedom comes at the price of a different experience: being led through the moments by a master storyteller.

Those scenes are some of the most compelling moments I’ve ever felt. When every step in a struggle, every choice, every twist, all builds the tension higher. Watch Indy force the snakes back from the Well of Souls, only to find the Nazis at the top grabbing the Ark anyway… or there’s a werewolf scene in Peter Morwood’s The Demon Lord that is so tense that…

There’s nothing like those times.

And no matter how much of that is a fight itself, it comes from using every tool the scene allows. Making the absolute most of that moment.

 

Right Makes Fight

Still, there’s another side to the best clashes: the fact that they are conflicts. That the “problem” each side is trying to solve is that the other guy needs him dead, beaten, thwarted, to win.

A good fight starts by making those stakes clear. A simple sparring contest still might be a merry rivalry, or a chance to show off. A good rescue is life and death, while catching up with a long-standing, well deserved enemy…

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die.”

Stories are appreciating the choices people make. One side of that is getting into those decisions and how they shape the struggle now – but the other is that they’re made by people, by the sense of what they’ve already chosen and been shaped by.

Revenge isn’t the only emotion that’s “best served cold.” And even that one dish can go into so many flavors – one story could be a tragedy of an anti-hero’s obsession with vengeance for its own sake, another could use it as one of many markers about why the enemy continues to need stopping.

Better yet, what made those people enemies at all? How much of that conflict have we seen forming before our eyes? One enemy could share a mutual hatred with the hero, but another could be a former ally who’s watched our hero break more and more rules and feels forced to shut him down.

Maybe the most popular manga and anime in Japan’s whole vast, rich storytelling history is Naruto, and it’s hard to picture that tale without recalling how ninjas Naruto and Sasuke go from classmates to team rivals to a much deeper conflict. This is called not pulling punches, and having over a thousand chapters to tell it all.

If a fight embraces that… anything’s possible.

Let someone tremble with fear, and use every moment between punches wishing he was somewhere else. Capture how one fighter’s struggling not to win but to hold off her enemy, protecting something she truly puts above her own life.

Or the hope that if one can push the other into the right corner, he can prove that they don’t need to fight after all. Even though the story’s shown how many times they missed the chance for something better.

There’s always another chance, even in something as inescapable as a fight that’s already broken out. Because a good story uses everything.

 

 

What I Write

If you look through my stories, you’ll see there are certain things I try to provide. Here are seven of them.

 

“What do you want?”

–That’s such a marvelous question. It can be the seed to a beautiful memory, or the offer that calms a terrorist. It can delight, seduce, or reassure… and of course it can map out which of thousands of genres and styles each of us want to spend our nights curled up reading.

It’s also the defining question for a story itself. A quest, a mystery, or even a slice of life are all brought together by the struggle for some goal the characters want. (When someone writes a slice of life story, or just anything with a slow start, that’s the time to check Kurt Vonnegut’s blessed rule “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.”) So saving a kingdom is not the same as unmasking one killer, or trying to make the person in the next cubicle laugh before the workday begins.

And when I start defining one of my character’s goals, I like to cut the ground a bit further out from under him:

  • In Shadowed, Paul was searching for the answer to his own mysterious power, and the hole in his memory that had him give up his ordinary life to live in secret.
  • In the Spellkeeper Flight books, Mark wanted to save the people he loved from enemy magic—but he’d also lived his life in the shadow of his best friend (she’s so much more capable than he is), his older cousin, and his criminal father. Not someone who’d see himself as a hero, even before the story took a few hard twists.

When my heroes want something, I try not to make it simple.

 

Struggling on All Sides

The one piece of writing advice that’s stuck with me more than anything is: a strong story leaves the character no choice except what he has to do.

(And that last choice is still the hardest he has to make.)

After all, the basic question of how we all get through our days is “What do I do next?” It unfolds into the step-by-step journey that makes a character unique, AND builds a plot that’s specific and convincing. What are the options, the allies, the limitations that someone’s world is made up of? How do they see its shortcuts, and what blind spots do they miss?

If my hero doesn’t try bargaining with the opposition, or avoiding them, or asking for help… then I want to think I’ve shown solid reasons why they wouldn’t. Which ways are closed off really can be what defines a strong story concept: the increasingly implacable enemy, the inescapable problem, or the isolation that forces a hero to struggle alone. And those blind spots of the answers that another person could have used, and this one took too long to see.

Or just in a single scene, how many arguments, ideas, or maneuvers can there really be, and how does the chess match play out? Including, how many moves does the other side have planned? A battle like the ones the Spellkeepers have (“this city’s not big enough for the four of them”) ought to be worth losing ourselves in the whirl of action, that always leads to the conclusion it needs to.

 

For Joy

Mark can fly. He only needs a moment to fling himself up past the rooftops, and every time he looks at his city from above, he sees something new. Even if it’s another pattern about where his enemies might be hiding.

Paul’s story is more earthbound, and Shadowed was mostly about looking into the darker corners of his world. But the core idea of that world is that power and hope can make a difference in people’s lives—even when there isn’t a conspiracy to fight. “A nice place to visit, and maybe I would want to live there.”

Paul has a long way to go before he understands that. (Though my followup short story for him “Passengers” is one moment of him getting closer.)

But whatever stage one of my stories is at, I try to look for moments of peace or pleasure. If I can’t immerse myself and the reader in how those moments keep a character going, the road ahead would look pretty dark.

 

Suspense

It’s in my motto: “Whispered spells for breathless suspense.” My favorite scenes are usually the ones where every twist and every image pull me deeper into the moment, until I’m screaming inside to know what comes next. I want that when I write, every time.

Some scenes are playful or restful, but I still want them to find something to tease the reader with, and make each moment flow into the next. The further I look into what makes suspense work, the more I see that the same twists work for any moment and any style.

And sometimes I have a man with a flying belt being forced down into sewers and grabbing one last desperate look at what ought to be familiar surroundings above ground. By the time Mark erupts back into the open air, we should all be soaring with him—and his night’s still just getting started.

 

What’s love got to do with it?

Many writers treat “paranormal” as one half of “paranormal romance.” But a writer I know once asked who preferred their love stories hot and who wanted a slow burn, and my answer was that I best remember the ones that take their time. Better yet, the stories that genuinely play their relationships against everything else at stake, and make us wonder which should be more important.

A mystery fan could “cherchez la femme” in my books, and find women and men at the root of some of the most powerful drives each other has. I hope you’ll like who the story ends up putting with who. But that doesn’t mean you’ll know how it’ll get there.

Mark would be the first to admit that knowing Angie has shaped half of his life. Paul and Sarah and Lorraine and Greg… it’s been complicated.

 

Nothing will be the same

More and more, I like a story to put some weight into the steps it goes through. True, I’ve written searches, chases, and confrontations that only reinforced what the story had already shown was going to be the challenge… but more and more, I like the moments that change that up.

Truths are turned upside down. Loyalties break. New strengths unlock. People die, sometimes.

So often, those are the moments we remember in a story. Again and again, I find writing comes down to building a tale around pieces that could truly tear something loose if they changed, plus the journey that makes them important. Then, being willing to push the detonator.

Is this the scene where things just got real? How many more of those can a story take?

I always want to find out.

 

To the Truth

Purposes and possibilities, joy and fierceness and heart and heartbreak… But like the philosopher cowboy on City Slickers said, all that really matters is “one thing,” meaning it’s all a journey to find what that thing is.

All my stories come down to some final truth, that I’ve been working toward from the beginning. It might be who can be trusted and why, or it might be what a character can trust in themselves. Everything else is exploring why that has to be the answer.

I like to think that makes the twists along the way more than tools for suspense. That the glimpses into the reasons why someone can’t take an offer, or how they look at someone they’ve never understood, might stick with a reader after the last page is turned.

 

If those are the stories you want to read, I hope you’ll click here and take a look.

On Google+

Review: Between Two Thorns

How many sides should a story view a conflict from?

I’ve just finished reading one that takes a challenge as simple as winning freedom, and spins out a whole set of different viewpoints—Between Two Thorns by British Fantasy Society Award winner Emma Newman. The book’s had me scratching my head a couple of times, about what it takes to make a single conflict feel like a larger, perilous society.

It starts with a fine hook: a woman in hiding from her family, whose knows her escape is over at just the sight of their fairie patron. When the creature casually mentions that Cathy will have only a few days to impress him or he’ll pull that independent spark out of her head, we know how high the stakes can get.

Then there’s the rest of the ancient families, humans that live between worlds on the whim of those fae. Cathy’s family can’t understand why anyone would want to leave, and they’d beat her if it didn’t leave so many marks before the next ball; her arranged fiance Will seems nice enough but can’t wrap his head around it either. And then there’s the sorcerous Arbiter who’s investigating other mischief the fae-touched have inflicted on us mundanes, and the poor computer programmer who’d be a witness to it if his memory hadn’t been wiped.

All those views do give the story the full sense of being a true hidden world. And Cathy stays an appealing main heroine, trying to save the human boyfriend she stayed too long with, and only sometimes swallowing her regret at all she’s pulled back into. And she plays Mass Effect (would Dragon Age hit too close to home, even though the elves are refugees there?).

And you have to love the world-building in just family names like “Gallica-Rosa” and “Alba-Rosa.” Their fae patron herself is the timeless Lady Rose, but the family keeps the older phrasing “Rosa” and what seems to be the family’s French-based and English-based branches. Elegant.

I have to say there’s one thing I would have liked more of: more sense of the good side, or at least the appeal, of life in the Nether. On the one hand their schemes mean a polite enslavement for Cathy, and murder for some mundanes in their way. But what’s placed beside that is most likely to be only patriarchs and petty sisters sniffing at anything that reduces their social standing—with less sense of what that actually means to them. An Anne Rice would have made these nobles conflicted, compelling figures that are just as dangerous; a Seanan McGuire would have given us moments of the sheer glittery joy of fae-charmed Society that make us all the more leery of its seduction.

Of course to Cathy, all it is is a prison. Will and some of the other nobles do show some kindness to each other, and even to her, but it would be nice to get a more revealing reaction than “you embarrassed us” from someone. What’s behind those barbs that makes people cluster press up against them?

It’s a constant question for any writer: how much to stick to a single viewpoint and the threat to that, and how much more of the world around that peril show—and how to do that larger canvas justice.

So I wonder what I’ll find in the next Split Worlds books.

Photo by Elsie esq.

On Google+

Babylon 5’s One Key to Character Arcs

One way.

There just might be one irresistible way to track and reveal how a character evolves—and make the most of how that arc drives the whole story.

In my last post, I said the key I found was setting up other characters as markers so we can follow a lead’s changes as compared to them. And, I dropped a fun little phrase we can ask our characters: “What do you want?”

On the one hand, asking that really can find the essence of what a character is. Especially, it can be the key to turning someone’s inner nature outward, where we can start matching that desire up against other characters that share the same goal. Or want some prize that puts them in our hero’s way. Or, they want the same thing and want all of it, or all the other degrees and combination of conflict that can come. (I’ve written about conflict types before, both a complex post and a simpler one, but so much of it does come down to What Do You Want.)

And on the other hand, that line is a catchphrase from a master class on storytelling: J. Michael Straczynski’s spectacular show Babylon 5.

After all, when a mysterious figure actually starts asking that question of a wildly varied cast, and then uses the answer one gives to start a galactic war..

 

Character Arcs – the Descent of Londo Mollari

Londo’s pretty much a clown. Just a washed-up, puffed-up alien ambassador who thinks his fading empire deserves more respect, and always scheming against his rival G’Kar from the world his empire had once enslaved. So when the smiling Mr. Morden asks “What do you want?” he growls “I want it all back, the way that it was!”

(You can watch his answer for yourself, here, including Morden’s reaction: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLijOyZ0GtN42ZtegVNYRV4aBRaTnZ0oVw)

Cue the star-spanning power grab.

But Babylon 5 isn’t about ships firing lasers (mostly). It’s about making us feel every step of the journey that Londo and others take. So if Londo wants his people to take power back from the other stellar empires, the story might chart his arc through characters like:

  1. The obvious enemy that he escalates his conflict with.
  2. Would-be peacekeepers who see he’s going to be trouble.
  3. An unlikely friend who’s seen sides of him that others never do.
  4. A confidante who stays near him but sees everything he’s losing…
  5. His people’s leaders that give him everything he wants. At a price.

Otherwise known as:

  1. G’Kar
  2. Commander Sheridan (and most of the human cast)
  3. “MIster GariBALDI!”
  4. Londo’s assistant Vir,
  5. and… well, a whole parade of backstabbing Centauri nobles, including the Emperor.

Brilliant.

Londo’s whole storyline is measured through his dwindling bonds with those people, in sequence. The further his goal of Centauri glory pulls at him, the more his conflicts with the earlier people of that list grow, and the more he’s dragged into the camp of the latter ones.

All because the first have the least in common with his goal, and the last ones have the most, at least in theory. And all the way Londo moves down that list, he (and we) can feel what he’s losing and what he’s risking to go on.

That’s the basic pattern of Londo’s arc, brought to excruciating life by how these people define it. That’s how simple it can be to pick stepping stones for a powerful story.

 

To B5 and Beyond – Crossing the Character Arcs

At least, that’s the basic pattern. Of course every step on Londo’s or any character’s journey is also another chance that they might see what’s coming and find the strength to pull back—but what would it cost them? Or, a writer could twist up something to change the pattern or someone’s place in it. A character could give up one goal for another, or find a way to reconcile them, or simply lose his reason to keep pushing. (Come on, fans will be talking for generations about Londo’s crazy friendship with Garibaldi, they can’t split those two up… can they?)

And a story would have more than one thread to tangle together. G’Kar has his own journey in their rivalry, and so do the shadowy forces Morden tempts Londo with, and I haven’t even mentioned their opposite number. Or almost anything about the human plotlines that actually are the series’s center, or the last seasons in the aftermath of all this…

–Trust me, Babylon 5 was Game of Thrones years before the first Game-move was ever played. And its people survived long enough to stand for something.

But any story can begin to build some of that power, with three steps:

  • Know a character’s goal.
  • Compare it to other characters, for who’s more in conflict with who.
  • Lay the plot out so that key character’s arc goes past the others, in a pattern of similarity and conflict.

Then twist that character’s course and combine it with the others.

 

Speaking of twists… One last thing about B5 is that its story didn’t twist, or even move, so much in the first season. (Yes, it did all of the above and more in four years, with one to spare just for setups.) Not the first season was weak, but it did have a whole different pace.

More like, say, the slower arc of Harry Potter’s Severus Snape.

 

Next time: To Arc or Not To Arc?

 

On Google+

Photo by gilipollastv

Writing a Character Arc – Through Other Characters

If the heart of a story is the conflicts it puts a character through, and especially the choices he has to make… could there be a pattern underlying that to guide a plot into deeper insights and keep them clear all the way to the end? Working out my plans for The High Road’s sequels, I’ve found something that looks a lot like just that.

Looking at an unwritten book is enough to dizzy you with the possibilities. Maybe add more action, more scale, build the thunderstorms and the body count to a whole new level—or swing wider into the maneuvers people haven’t tried yet and just how different this hero’s options are? New characters unlike anything before (a hacker! there has to be one!). Or push back into people’s histories, with whole chapters crafting the perfect setup for someone?

Or, dig deeper. Take what a character thinks he is, and tear all of that apart until even he knows better.

A story can juggle all of the above—and the best ones do—but I’ve always found that last goal was the most inspiring. And the hardest.

After all, anyone can say their hero’s ultimately driven by guilt… or learns to put family over friends… or has to find his courage… We’ve all read books that picked a theme like that, and went through the motions until they fetched up on the ending they wanted. But what does it take to find what’s actually true for him, and develop it through a whole book into something worth reading?

And I don’t mean the Stephen King approach, not for how most of us work. I read The Shining in one frantic day when I thought I was going to be writing, but I’ve never wanted to build a story out of that kind of small, personal steps down someone’s journey. For us lesser writers it’s too easy to get lost, or bring the second ghost in two chapters early or not at all… no, I’d say most writers need at least a hint of how to know the story’s on track. Anything else could leave us as confused as our characters, and more terrified.

So, back to basics:

 

“What Do You Want?” (and does HE?)

A character starts with a need, I think we all know. A set of goals and desires, and they play out through the story. Like my character interviews show, my protagonist Mark started The High Road just trying to keep Angie out of danger (when he really should have known better; it’s Angie Dennard!), but in the later books he’s searching for some combination of safety, answers, vengeance, and something more.

And yet… chararacter means more than one person’s path. Another basic rule I’ve learned: absolutely anything in a story is stronger if I use one of the other characters to embody it.

Including that first character’s growth.

Allies? Yes they’re there to open doors the hero can’t on his own, but they’re also living reminders of how not only the hero but other people with different perspectives can still have that need in common.

Until. They. Don’t.

For one example from The High Road, Joe Dennard is a former cop; in fact he left the force out of guilt for what he did with the flying belt that Mark and Angie find. He’s quick to protect them, but he’s also all too aware of how dangerous the belt can be to use. And then there’s Kate, Angie’s mother, who won’t trust anyone she cares for with it. They may be on the same side, but with Mark and Angie ready to use the magic, it was always only a matter of time until one of them is pulled away from the rest. The more the struggle edges beyond sheer survival, the more the new goals might leave one of them behind, unwilling to keep up—or trying to push the others back from something only they fear.

The more I look at that model of writing, the better it seems. Bring characters together based on their shared needs… and then move on to where those needs stop overlapping, so that friends step away, or seeming enemies turn out to have a common bond after all. Define those layers of a person using other people.

Call them human milestones, living reference points… except that all those “other” characters, being people, have the delightful habit of having their own layers too, and those layers keep changing. Just keeping up with those changes from both sides can keep a story arc twisting through multiple dimensions. It works for the story of a marriage fraying; it works for Lord of the Rings teaming up hobbits with heroes; it’s (one reason) why the Marvel movies’ most believable and beloved villain is Thor’s brother Loki.

And it’s given me a few ideas.

  • In The High Road, Olivia Nolan often seems like a “second front” to the heroes’ struggle with their hidden enemy, but in Freefall she’s willing to work with them… but that doesn’t mean she’s drawn by the same sense of outrage that they have. And I doubt her motives are going to stand still either.

Even the contrast between someone’s background and the way they actually act can let them enter the story in motion, and start us wondering what other changes they have in store.

  • That’s half the fun of writing Sasha Lawrence now. When a character’s been so close to the enemy, the last thing anyone would expect is for her to be as innocent as she seems. But even Nolan has to believe her—sort of.

 

So, the best way to reveal a character is with another character, and their own history. And whenever the contrast between the two shows they aren’t so similar (so as different) as they seemed, that’s a discovery worth making, and a plot point aching to be used.

In the next post, I’ll go further, to what’s starting to look like the simplest, strongest tool for keeping all those character conflicts on track.

 

On Google+           

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…

 

On Google+

 

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)

 

On Google+

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.

 

On Google+

 

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.

On Google+

 

Ten Writing Tricks from Gaming

The following are tricks I’ve learned from role-playing games, board games, and other gaming fun, that help me remember what works in writing.

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

#1: the Characters’ Viewpoint lets you write

For me at least, the best tool to help me write is getting into what it’s like to be a character– from bits of their background, signature skills or tactics, and all kinds of details, plus every plot twist that helps sweep me up in how he has to do what he does next.

Gamers can use each session to practice their sense of these, and see how other people do them too. The more in touch you are with what works for you, the more you’ll get written.

#2: Conflict

No matter what a story is, gamers know the narrative should never get far from the conflict: why the hero has to do something, why someone or something else is in the way, and anything that helps or hurts his struggle.

Games show how the story is always better with a strong villain, especially when the story lets that villain impress the readers, and then tick them off. (Or if the obstacle isn’t a villain, the situation should still be a serious challenge, and sometimes seem like it’s “out to get” people.)

And, weakening the villain weakens the whole story.

#3: the Stake or Change

Role-playing games have both routine adventures and ones that changed parts of the storyline; the changes are usually the more memorable ones.

Also, role-playing games let characters gain power and equipment, for the excitement of getting stronger. Try writing to build a sense that your characters can only do so much– and then they learn to break some of those limits.

#4: Losing

Games have the thrill of actually being able to lose, instead of the jaded “the hero always wins.” But this works in games because you can still play another game, or resurrect or replace a dead character– it’s harder in stories where the hero’s life is on the line.

Some stories provide this by playing up the times the hero fails but survives to try a different plan or fight a rematch. These are less powerful than times the reader’s come to care about someone or something besides the hero’s life, and that is permanently lost (or really could have been).

#5: Choice

Games are built around players’ choices: the next move, when to attack or retreat, how to solve a problem.

Stories can be stronger by leading the reader into a sense of why the character has to take the choice he does: why he’s so driven, how many choices he has and why all the others don’t work, at least for the kind of person the reader understands he is. (Gamers choose their action based on a clear situation; readers want to see the situation so well they’d choose the character’s action too.)

(Then, be sure those choices have good pacing, variety, and sometimes lead to real losses.)

#6: Everybody’s Choices

Role-playing gamers are used to letting other people’s characters share the spotlight; this is good practice for writing a protagonist with supporting characters.

Board games also remind us: an exciting game has to be against a skilled opponent, so villains ought to be smart enough to challenge the hero.

More than that, hero and villain should be watching each other’s moves and reacting to them– especially if there’s a sense that one side makes the other escalate. Also, let the supporting characters react as if they had the freedom other players would: who tries to join up with who because of what’s happened, or who betrays them, or tries to step in at the last minute and steal the prize.

#7: Details for Choices

Games show how eager players can be to learn any amount of game rules and details, while writers worry about giving too much detail and bogging down the story.

The difference is that gamers use that information to choose their next moves. So, a writer can make the most use of any detail that’s a factor or hint about what a character chooses– what about the forest helps an ambusher hide in it? what traditions of the royal court help him win allies?

#8: Dialog

Gamers have a chance to practice dialog by listening to other players. Of course most speech patterns at a game table aren’t right for most stories, but a writer can listen for specific patterns: getting excited makes who speak faster and makes who babble? who says “Got it” vs “Okay”?

(And watch for any interesting catchphrases someone has, to inspire what you can give your characters.)

#9: Fun Now

Games are always at risk of going off on a tangent (side-discussions of what’s going on, or general chitchat), so gamers get practice in luring other players back onto course (eg with clues or immediate challenges). Develop the sense of when you’re losing the players’ interest, and apply it to writing.

As that sense improves, it can also help in planning a story or a chapter. What’s a good starting place, a fun arc, and a satisfying ending?

#10: People

Gamers get used to sitting with fellow players. A writer needs to get comfortable asking people what in a story works and what doesn’t.

Also, gamers learn different players just prefer different parts of the game; writers should keep in mind not all writing will appeal to everyone. But at the same time, the other people are still there because they want the story to be good, just as the writer does.

On Google+

 

Everything I know about evil I learned from Thunderbolt Ross

What does a villain want, or what drives character conflict of different kinds? Actually, with so many ways human beings can make trouble, we writers aren’t struggling to come up with a motive as much as choosing the better of many evils. So here’s one basic question I like to ask myself, as a first step to my Sides of the Dark Side questions: Who started it?

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

Yes, we all know one thing that question leads to: how many people bully or attack someone because they think he did something to deserve it first. The trick is, that still has a useful difference from all the other characters who go after people for their own selfish reasons but think it’s the best response to an unfair world–many professional thieves, fanatics with their causes, or for that matter hotheads who make everyone suffer for their tempers.

Which brings us to Thunderbolt Ross.

Thaddeus Ross, in case you don’t remember the comic books and the movies, is the general who’s always led troops in pursuit of the Incredible Hulk, providing a constant supply of tank-smashing action for fans of all ages. He’s also become my favorite example of this point, when I discovered the character’s motives had changed a bit over sixty years:

Recently (such as, in the Avengers-era movies), Ross has been chasing the Hulk in hopes of dissecting him and creating his own kind of Army-green troops. But before that his goal was different: simply that the Hulk looked like a dangerous monster that needed to be destroyed. So that’s the question for writers to ask:

How much does a character see people as worth hurting to get what he wants, and how much is it that he thinks they have or might hurt him?

The one is the simpler motive, and can be as straightforward as “gimme your wallet” or expanded to a character whose goals ought to be harmless but can’t realize he’s putting others at risk. (Ross never seems to understand that Hulk-like creatures really can’t be controlled… but then, Bruce Banner took a few risks himself that led to creating the Hulk.) Or he might regret what he “has to do” and tragically do it anyway.

Those might be the keys to creating tension with these characters:

  • How aware is he of the damage he’s liable to do?
  • How much is at stake, both the trouble he’s causing and how close the good he’s trying to do (if there’s any) might come to balancing it? (A straight competition or rivalry might give both sides an equal right to win, though one side might be more deserving or just less nasty.)
  • For irony’s sake, how connected is the victim to the hero, and to the villain?

(From the last point: the simplest plot is someone who has to protect himself, while it’s more of a stretch to have to protect others, even more so if they’re close to the person at fault. The best mad scientists endanger their own sweethearts, or need to be saved from themselves.)

The other type allows for its own kinds of ironic unfairness: someone accused of what they didn’t do, or who has actual sins but is being chased well out of proportion for them–or even deserves his punishment but he’s been trying to atone on his own, or someone else needs his help first. It might be a combination of these, like the man who has to cover up a murder he didn’t commit for fear it would reveal the lesser crimes he has been part of. Or it might involve shadings of how unfairly other people see him: seeming dangerous, being any kind of unpopular misfit or shaking up society, or just being successful enough to stir up envy. (Strict jealousy, overprotectiveness, is even more obviously part of this than envy.)

Like those “I have to hurt them” enemies, the “You’re hurting us” foes can lead to plots of almost balancing the harm they’ll cause with the good they’re trying to do (in this case, the harm it might prevent or punish). And both have their own ways of escalating beyond the scale they started at: someone who’s willing to do damage can get more determined the further he goes, to be sure it wasn’t all a waste, while of course everything a “troublemaker” does except take his punishment only adds to the trouble he’s in.

So that may be the question, when you’re looking for a villain or other shades of antagonism: How much has the hero or victim done, or seems to be doing, to start the problem? As opposed to, how much could the villain want something himself?

Does he want to break the Hulk’s power, or take it?

On Google+

 

Conflict – or How Many Sides to the Dark Side?

Did The Phantom Menace have it right?

—Yeah, a cheap shot, nodding some less-than-stellar Star Wars. But if the question is what makes a character evil—or rather, what makes him move against other characters, whether it’s “villainy” or driving someone to turn on his friends or even pressure the hero—I always thought the movie’s (one) famous line had a lot to say.

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

Still, this is the Unified Writing Field Theory, where we try to sort out a lot of different ideas to see what our story options are, and where we can take them. So let’s start with the basic definition of conflict:

  • someone hurts someone.

Call it his hand swinging into our hero’s face, or into his pocket, or him speaking out against the hero’s plans, or anything that interferes with the hero or other sympathetic folk. And the obvious motive is just

  • he wants his __

but that’s only one type, and worse, “he really really wants it” doesn’t give us a lot of options to build on it in a story. So let’s mix in some other dimensions of evil: the Seven Deadly Sins, the famous Jedi warning, and the Unified Theory’s recent breakdown of plot elements.

The Deadlies include Greed, Lust and Gluttony, all more examples of simply Wanting things. But they also add Sloth (not much of a plot event, but slacker or stressed characters could be goofing off about something important), and Pride and Envy. (I’ll get to the seventh in a moment.) Could we see these as amplifying how much a character wants things?

  • Envy twists any sense of what he doesn’t have by fixating on what someone else does have, so he tries to drag his “rival” down more than trying to take things for himself. Envy’s nasty stuff if it goes deep, maybe the hardest evil of all to spot because it’s less direct. Think Iago scheming behind Othello’s back.
  • Pride, though, is about what he does have or thinks he does. And it can create two conflicts: refusing to consider other people’s needs and warnings (like that hero saying he needs to guard the gates), and being protective of things he hates to lose—like anyone from a first son to the angel Lucifer might resent someone new getting attention. They’re protective… as in afraid.

And here we get to Fear (which isn’t in the Deadly Sins) but also to the last of those Seven, Wrath, because of Yoda’s line:

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

I think the coolest thing about this line is that it lists its evils *in sequence*, showing that we need some thing to be worried for before we can get fighting mad to keep it. (Like Mom used to say, if you get angry at an insult, it also shows you think it’s a little bit true. Come to think of it, even the future Darth Vader had to start by losing his mother…) Then on the less specific end, hate is simply anger moving to a long-term burn, maybe hating the people who “wronged” him but maybe also being more ready to resent the whole world more the more he loses.

So, a budding antagonist could have desires on one hand, and on the other have things he fears and rages to hang on to, maybe stiffened by past losses’ grudges, or pride, or envies… You could have a whole spiral of how the hero’s noble goal is threatening what he values, and his response makes the hero push harder, until…

–Not a bad plotline, especially once we add how someone could be protecting an intangible thing like “a world where no peasant belongs in college,” or how “fear” might mean he attacks an innocent hero because of what the hero might do. (How many wars start because the nation next door seems too strong and angry not to hit first? Or consider the jealous boyfriend—real “jealousy” is very different from envy, less sneaky but more immediate.)

Or his “fear” could be of doing what he himself used to do. Guilt is a marvelous way to define a character as coming from a whole different viewpoint from what he has now; it really lets a story point out two sides of a tangled problem.

Yes, what he wants and what he won’t lose or do, good. Now let’s check that against this blog’s recent breakdown of plot elements: changing alternative choices that have Reward, Cost, and Difficulty.

Of course Reward and avoiding Cost are what we’ve been talking about, but there’s another side to this: what if what makes the difference is the cost to his victims, that instead of something driving him past restraints he just doesn’t realize he’s hurting people, or doesn’t care? Here we have everyone from sociopaths, to mad scientists who think their creations will help people, to the daily tragedy of seducers that don’t notice whose hearts they break.

And then there’s Difficulty. Plenty of storylines have hinged on people who have all the same goals and fears as the hero, and that becomes the whole problem: they still block him because they doubt he’s got the right plan or just the skills to pull it off.

So… desire (or envy), and fear (even paranoia, or maybe guilt) or anger multiplied by pride or old hate, and maybe ignorance or apathy or just a doubt about strategy.

That’s a lot of problems. And the more a tale explores these conflicts, the clearer it is how much they challenge our heroes—both with how many committed enemies can come out of the woodwork, and how hard it is for a struggling hero to keep his own soul clean.

Sounds like a story to me…

(For more on shades of villainy: Case Study: LaCroix and Everything I know about evil I learned from Thunderbolt Ross.)

On Google+