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Writing Lesson 19 – Conflict of Values

melinda — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:00:06 +0000

Creating Unforgettable Characters, Part 4

In my last post we explored Internal and External Goals. Each of us has things we value. It makes us ‘tick.’ We don’t always recognize, though, what our values or goals are. We roll on in life doing what we believe is right and never stop to ask why we act the way we do or if our actions are correct.

When you create characters, spice things up with conflict. Your story and the characters become more interesting when life isn’t normal. Giving your characters conflicting values is one way to do that.

Let’s say your hero places money above everything else in life. That may seem selfish, but it’s who he is. Money is his ‘core value’ or his ‘internal goal.’ Place him in a position to lose his money and you have a conflict. Give him a reason to spend his money on a worthy cause that he would normally ignore. You’ve created a deeper conflict. Now he’s in a position that requires a choice. It will challenge his core value and could bring about a change in the way he thinks and behaves.

Example: Mr. Rich loves his money. He meets a person who touches his heart. This person needs money and is in a desperate situation. Mr. Rich’s money would change their life. Nothing has ever tempted him to part with his money. He has a huge internal conflict. Will Mr. Rich keep his money and ignore this person? Will he follow the leading of his heart, change his core value, and share the wealth? What would it take to make him change his attitude? If he shares, will it cause a permanent change or will he go back to life as usual?

Did you recognize the story of Scrooge in the example? Tiny Tim created a conflict that forced Scrooge to make a choice. This “internal conflict” propelled the story. It forced Scrooge to make a choice and it uncovered a deeper value. He learned that people are more important than money. His core value changed. Scrooge learns some hard lessons before he lets go of his money. In his case, it’s a permanent change.

Writing lesson

Examine the internal goals of a character you’re creating. Insert something that will challenge their core value. Choose something that forces him or her to make a hard choice. Some people don’t change when the conflicts come. They remain the same and never grow. And there could be a time when their core value is correct and the conflicts they face confirm this.

Choose one of the following items for your writing lesson.

Show by his or her actions how the conflict makes a positve change in their core value. Show how they fail to change when the conflict arises.
Show how your character faces a conflict that proves their core values were correct. Show how they maintain that value when it’s challenged.

Writing Lesson 13 – Digging for Goals

melinda — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:04 +0000

Creating Unforgettable Characters, Part 3

Dig up a goal to motivate your characters into action. They will have depth and your story will come alive. Delve into each character’s personality and ask about the hidden fears, secrets, and the values. Find out what makes them tick.

Interview the characters you’ve created. Ask about their external goals first. What is their desire? What do they want in life? Example: Would he seek wealth at any cost? Does she wish for a home and a family? Is his dream to be the first man on Mars? Does your villain long to crush his former boss?

If you’ve followed my other lessons, you’ve gone past the external appearance. You created physical traits and gave each character personality traits in previous lessons. Digging deep into their hearts will help the reader relate to your characters.

List an external goal for each of your characters—the thing they want most in life.

For example, I created a shy, nervous artist in the last lesson. Let’s say her ‘external goal’ is to sell her paintings. That simple goal is an important part of the story but it is only one layer of her personality. There may be a gold mine of information hidden beneath her desire.

Dig deeper and discover the ‘internal goals’ in your characters. What is she honestly seeking in life? What is her greatest fear? Are there things in her life she needs to change? What keeps her from reaching the external goal? Is her goal what is best for her and those she loves? Is she hiding secrets? Do these affect her or her loved ones? Example: Tracy may say she wants to sell her paintings. What she truly wants is acceptance, because she believes she isn’t worthy of love.
List some of the ‘internal’ things you discover about your characters as you get to know them.
Look at some of your favorite books and identify the internal and external goals of the characters.

We’ll talk about these goals and adding conflicts that expand the character’s personality in our next lesson.

Writing Lesson 12 – Creating Inner Conflict

Teri Dawn Smith — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:00:35 +0000

Creating Emotion in Writing

Almost every writing class or craft book will tell you the same thing: fiction must create a compelling emotional experience. The problem is these teachers also let you know that if your character cries, the reader probably won’t.

So how do you build this emotion? Simply writing highly emotional phrases such as her heart pounded inside her chest won’t do the trick. Naming the emotion won’t work either. (She was angry.) You need instead to build warring emotions inside the character.

Remember the goal and motivation from Lesson One? Write it down again. Make sure the goal is concrete and difficult to reach. You need the concrete goal so the reader will know whether or not the hero obtains it. Sometimes students tell me their hero just wants to live a peaceable life. Personally, I think they need a more precise goal. Dig deeper.

Now that you’ve got a strong goal, write the opposite of that goal. How could your hero want these two opposite things? Suppose your hero wants to stop a villain from robbing a bank. Why might he not want to stop it? What if the thief was his younger brother? He wants to stop the robbery, but he doesn’t want to expose his own brother. Now you have warring emotions building inside the hero. Force him to make a choice: do the honest thing and stop the robbery or betray his own brother.

Forcing your hero to take a journey he dislikes, such as Finding Nemo or Shrek, causes conflicting emotions. They have a pressing need to go, but they don’t really want to. Or sending him on a journey he really wants, but placing road blocks that make him want to give up creates an emotional war inside. He wants this, but he doesn’t. Now he not only has to overcome the outer obstacles or the antagonist who hinders him, but he also has to struggle with himself.

The inner conflict of the character keeps a reader turning pages. Try it with your own hero and see if the story gains strength.

Exercise:

Pick one of your favorite books. Think about the hero’s goal. Do they have strong motives for wanting their goal? Is there also a reason for not wanting it? Can you identity the conflicting emotions within the main character?
Write down three reasons why your protagonist wants to reach his goal.
Write down three reasons why he might not want to reach the goal.
Tell me about the warring emotions of your character in the comment section below.

Writing Lesson 10 – Know Your Enemy

michelle — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:00:11 +0000

Create Villains as Real as Your Heroes

When you’re planning a story, it is natural to pour your efforts into developing your protagonist’s character. You may spend a lot of time imagining his or her history, strengths, weaknesses, physical appearance . . . even, perhaps, what he or she eats for breakfast!

What if you spent just as much time thinking about your story’s antagonist? This person is the one blocking your hero from achieving his goal. For instance, if Red Riding Hood is the protagonist in the fairy tale, then who is her antagonist?

Yep. The hungry wolf!

We know a lot about Red Riding Hood: how she dressed, her goal in the story (to deliver a basket of goodies to her grandmother’s house), her strengths (friendly) and her weaknesses (not always good at following her mom’s instructions). Most of us see the wolf in the story as a single-dimensional character. He’s sneaky. And he’s ravenous.

What if you took a few minutes to ponder the wolf’s character? What might you say about his appearance? His history? His motivations? His strengths?

Perhaps you’d discover that this intelligent but desperate creature had chosen to ignore doing the right thing (not lying to Red Riding Hood) because he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Now . . . what might happen if you spent some time getting to know your story’s antagonist? If you give your story’s conflict-causing “bad guy” a good trait or a believable reason for his poor behavior, the conflict between your hero and your antagonist will be more believable – and your fiction will be more truthful.

Exercise: Spend some time developing your story’s antagonist.

Writing Lesson 7 – Your Hero’s Outer and Inner Journey

Teri Dawn Smith — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:00:43 +0000

The Hero’s Outer Journey

A compelling hero takes two journeys in a story. The outer journey follows the plot line. It includes the goal, motivation and conflict we’ve already discussed. It begins with his goal and the steps he takes to reach that goal. Make sure you make the goal a seemingly impossible objective. A desire to have a great stamp collection isn’t strong enough to sustain an entire story. If the goal isn’t almost unattainable, the reader won’t care.

The outer journey continues with all the obstacles the hero faces during his quest to reach his goal. Make it difficult for him. Give him setbacks. Take away his resources. Make his time run out. Throw a powerful antagonist in his way. When you’ve done all this, make it even worse.

These goals we keep talking about usually fall into four categories.

To win: a job, a war, a competition, custody, love, etc.
To escape: from villains, from imprisonment, from any bad situation.
To stop: the terrorists, the thief, the bad agenda, etc.
To retrieve: the Holy Grail, the lost treasure, the kidnap victim, etc.

The outer journey ends when the hero either obtains his goal or realizes that something else was even better than his original goal. If you take your hero on this outer journey, you’ve developed your plot.

The Hero’s Inner Journey

Your hero also needs to take an inner journey. Far too many stories lack depth because they only follow the outer journey.

The inner journey’s all about the hero’s personal fulfillment. It develops because of the obstacles he faces on that outer journey. He may travel from fear to courage or from self-protection to courage. During this inner journey, the hero faces obstacles from within.

There are three basic character arcs for this inner journey.

To risk being who you really are. The hero learns to stand up for who he is regardless of what others think.
To risk doing what is right. The hero does the honest thing in spite of the consequences.
To risk connecting with others. The hero opens up to relationships even if they bring trouble and sorrow.

We’ll show you in future lessons some important steps in this inner journey.

Exercises

Think about some of the Disney movies you’ve seen and analyze the outer and inner journey of the characters.

What inner journey did Shrek take while he went to rescue the princess? What did he overcome inside himself to journey to fulfillment? Which of the risks did he finally make?
Analyze the inner and outer journey of the main character of Ice Age.

What outer journey will your character make? What active steps will he take to reach his goal? What will hinder him? Who will try to stop him?

What risk will your hero be forced to take to go on the inner journey of fulfillment?

Writing Lesson 2 – Where In the World?

Teri Dawn Smith — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:00:36 +0000

Planning Your Story’s Setting

The Importance of Your Story World

If you’ve finished Lesson 1 and discovered the goal, motivation and conflict for your story, you need to think about the setting. The setting plays an important role in the story since it anchors the reader in a time and place and provides a foundation.

Several items factor in here: time, place, climate, and even weather. Let’s take a quick look at each.

You must choose a time period for your story. Will it be a historical, contemporary or even futuristic? Here’s where you can have fun. Imagine the basic conflict you thought about in Lesson 1 and try placing it in different time periods. Would a change enhance the conflict or motivation? For instance, what if you placed the character who wanted to find her long lost mother you thought about for a contemporary novel in the middle of the Civil War instead? Maybe the setting itself would add conflict to your story. When considering time, don’t forget to think about the time of day. Could the scene you have in mind be more vivid if it happened at night?

Think also of the place where your story will take place. Is it in the United States? Is it a rural or urban setting? What buildings are present? Some settings such as deserts or wilderness areas are so hostile they become the antagonist in the story.

The climate and weather also play a role. A thunderstorm at the wrong time can add to your character’s obstacles to overcome. Plan around the seasons too. Would that chase scene be even worse on snowy roads?

Exercises: Answer these questions about your setting

What details about the setting will your character notice that others might miss?
How might the hero’s sidekick feel differently about this place?
What problems already exist in this story world?
What makes this place risky?
What strong nouns and verbs can you list to show the setting and mood?
How will you bring out the five senses in this setting?

Writing Lesson 1 – What’s the Big Idea?

lynn — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:09:32 +0000

Have you ever heard of the shortest stories never written?

A Woodcutter’s Life by Tim Burr

Pirate Gold by Barry D. Treasure

Snakes in Tall Grass by Leva Malone

My Struggle with Insomnia by Anita Knapp

Pitfalls of Procrastination by Ida Dunmore

You get the idea…once you get past the title, there’s not much to say.

How do you come up with ideas for a story worth writing? One people would enjoy reading? One that might even make you famous?

Plotting with Goal, Motivation, and Conflict

The keys to a story readers can’t put down are goal, motivation, and conflict.

A goal is something you want—something you want so badly it feels like a hunger, and not just an “I could go for a pizza” sort of snack-y feeling. A real craving that gnaws at you. Something that will have serious consequences if you don’t get it.

Your motivation is the reason you want it. What’s at stake? Life? Liberty? Your future happiness? The continuation of the universe as we know it?

Conflict is what you’re up against. Why you may not get what you want. The almost insurmountable odds that you’re not going to be able to pull this off.

If you can give the characters in your story some serious goals, motivations that drive them, and conflicts to challenge their odds of ever living happily ever after, you’ve got the beginnings of a story of consequence that deserves to be written.

Exercise 1:

Think about your favorite books and movies. Try to identify the goal, motivation, and conflicts of the main character. (There may be several.) Use this sentence to help you:

(Character) wants (goal) because (motivation), but (conflict).

Start lists of big ideas for goals, motivations, and conflicts. Some may be quirky, and others may be almost universal. Don’t limit your imagination at this point. Then pick one of each at random and see what story ideas you come up with.