Organic Structure (the backup copy)

The Good and Bad of Prologues

2010-02-24T01:01:00.001-08:00

It's been a long week and it's just going to keep getting longer until finals are over. For the longest time I wondered if this post would turn into something along the lines of my "openings" post, caught in a lack of time loop until I finally forgot, and trashed it.

I got two hours of sleep last night, so I might be a little incoherent, but for what it's worth--Jodi's very abbreviated take on prologues.

When prologues work, they work well. When they don't, they give the whole technique a bad name. A prologue is simply a voice issue. People who like them tend to use them.

A bad prologue usually happens when the writer wants to cut to the chase without putting too much effort into layering or simply wants to start at the interesting bit without a firm grip on how to integrate back-story.

An example of the first kind would be the one in Kenyon’s Devil May Cry. In less than three pages, it goes over the history of the Babylonian pantheon, does a breakdown of the different gods, what the hero’s problem is, how he was betrayed, what he thinks of it and how he’s going to fix it, along with a couple of brooding, vengeful thoughts. Although, imho—it’s probably because she was under contract and writing too fast.

The second kind, where the person isn’t good at integrating back-story, is probably the reason for the saying, “prologues don’t work”

An example of that would be a story where the author depends on the prologue to explain who the characters are, what they’re doing and why, without ever mentioning it again. The hero does stuff that don’t make sense, and has powers or some kind of motivation that we don’t “see”. But…was mentioned in the prologue.

Maybe the prologue explains the war in Heaven, the fall of Lucifer, and ends with the formation of Hell. Then the first page opens with some guy walking down the street looking for a cup of coffee. Five pages later we find out the guy’s name is Starr, he lives in Boston, and someone is killing prostitutes. It doesn’t connect.
It might, if the author wanted to set Lucifer up as Starr. But simply focusing on a couple of events in the prologue doesn’t necessarily make the entire story one big connected whole, and who is Starr? Is he Lucifer? The prologue talks about Lucifer, but the beginning is some guy walking down the street looking for coffee.
If the story is really about a minor angel who got caught up in the war, decides to hang out with humans, and became a cop or detective and the plot involves human trafficking—the author probably figured the prologue made sense since it’s what caused Starr to become a cop. He Fell.

It's a trigger, but not “the” trigger.

A good prologue should show the inciting incident so chapter one can begin with “what happens next”.

If I opened the Starr prologue with a demon in a truck of illegals—all of whom were really hot women, and ended with a shot of the doors opening, and a makeshift brothel, it would be the inciting incidence for a story about dead prostitutes, demons/fallen angels and human trafficking. If I changed the focus in my prologue and opened with a shot of Starr cutting his wings off and walking out of Hell, it would be the inciting incident for a character-driven story about Starr, and the prostitutes would be my “vehicle” to show his transformational arc.

Where and how you start your story is a matter of voice. But if you're going to use a prologue it should do one of two things—show the inciting incident, or a change which then leads to this particular story happening.

Whether it’s the one with the prostitutes or the one with Starr—it still opens the same, with Starr walking down the road looking for coffee. In the first one, you already know the story is a murder-thriller-paranormal, so it’s pretty obvious if we open with Starr he’s going to play a large role in the investigation, and curiosity makes us turn the page. In the second one, you already know who Starr is, what he’s capable of, and something about his attitude. So Starr walking down the street means something is about to happen to start him on his journey. Plot-driven vs. character driven.

It’d be just as easy to cut the prologue and start with the inciting incident, or a little set-up and then the inciting incident. It’s all a matter of personal style and focus. Prologues work if they’re a logical part of the story, and provide either a reason for--or a jumping off point to-—the rest of the story.

Chaos theory for organic writing

2009-12-23T19:48:00.001-08:00

And yeah, while this is a re-post of my article for the paranormal chapter, I'm just totally geeking out at the idea that I can be as random as I wanna be on this particular blog because it's an archive. Totally cool.

(...and I can use "any" title I want, lol.)

I wanted to start this post with chaos theory, or maybe stuff about Chatman’s work on kernels and satellites, but after three beta readers gave me the virtual equivalent of a long, hard look I figured the best thing was to call this post what it is.

Three dimensional thinking for organic character-driven stories.

Structured pantsing works, but doesn’t go far enough.

Sort of like if I’d said, “I’m going to create this really fabulous character and shove him in a department store, with two floors and an escalator, so full of balloons, getting to the exit means he’s going to have to step on, shove out of his way, push, pull and pop hundreds of balloons.” The floating equivalent of a McDonald’s ball-pit--loose enough for your character to breathe, but tight enough to make “down” the only thing he knows for sure.

Organic writing is a little messy, not because it doesn’t have internal logic, but because it has chaotic elements. In other words, character-driven stories grow, using a non-linear system that’s easier to “see” in multiple dimensions--up, down, underfoot and rolling up the escalator in little ripples.

Whatever your character does--no matter how small--can make those balloons, like story events, move in significantly different ways. In a two character story like a romance, pushing the heroine in at another entrance creates more waves, ripples and eddies, all of which--in some way--will touch those of the hero.

A good example of this story-style would be Leon the Professional. A character-driven movie written and directed by Luc Bessom. (Transporter and La Femme Nikita)

Synopsis:
Mathilda and her little brother live in New York with their dysfunctional family. Her father stores drugs for dirty cop, Norman Stansfield. When Stansfield takes revenge on her father for stealing drugs and kills the entire family, only Mathilda, who was out shopping, survives by finding shelter in her neighbor’s apartment. Matilda finds out Leon’s a hitman and asks him to teach her so she can avenge her brother.

….given Leon’s background as a hitman, tiny variations in his first meeting with Matilda have the potential to send balloons shooting off in wildly different directions. He’s on one side of a door, she’s on the other, and once the villains kill her family, they’ll find her.

--if he doesn’t let her in.

Because Leon is a fully fleshed character, he can only react to Matilda’s desperate whisper in ways which are true to his internal logic. He can shoot her and go back to bed, ignore her and go back to bed, come out shooting and try to kill the bad guys…

...or

he can open the door.

Each action is a thought away from each other and starts out the same—with Matilda on the other side.

When Leon finally turns the knob, every action he didn’t take is still there, as things that “could” have happened, but didn’t, although “the path taken” creates ripples of its own. Just like in a real person, just the fact that Leon considered the other three options says something about him and enriches the emotional layering, because only “this” person, in this place at this time can drive this particular story.

As a writer, I can focus on the plot as a whole and hit every plot point from A thru F in alphabetical order. An emotionally repressed hitman needs to open the door so he can connect with a little girl and kill a dirty cop.

Goal, motivation and conflict.

Part of the reason organic writers might run into a wall is because in a character-driven story overall GMC is easier to see “after” the rough draft. Initial goals don’t start out as the story goal, and motivation shifts and changes. If there’s conflict, it might be one of many conflicts or something that grows into “the” conflict.

Your characters choose, as a result of the actions they take…their own destiny--like life--free from caricature, archetypes, predictable drama and simple solutions.

Organic writing is a belief system--chaotic, unpredictable and personal. You are the only one who can define it. Believe.

Emotional structure for the self-contained writer

2009-12-23T19:43:00.000-08:00

A running in the dark post

A few weeks ago, I asked if anyone had something I could answer for them and Kaige came up with a question so hard I've been circling around it for days.

What do you suggest doing to deepen emotional punch in scenes? Especially if you're not an expressive person yourself and are afraid it will come out too purple or melodramatic.

The pat answer would be "--use emotions common to the human condition. Like the love of a child, or situations that are emotional in themselves."

But y'know? The reasons cliches exist are because they're common. Hot pregnant women, cute babies, precocious 6 year-olds--the angry teenager who just needs the mother/father love of the man/woman the hero/heroine is hot for. It's been done.

The question is more complex than it appears. Back when I was studying the Meyer-Briggs personality types, extroverts and introverts fascinated me. The way they interact with each other, and how "what" they are influences their perception of others. In a lot of ways, we're introverts--not too many extroverts like sitting at a computer all day creating worlds in their heads. But y'know? We write about people who show emotion because that's what we've been trained to do.

Show, don't tell. Be visual.

I have a lot of storyboarding books and stuff on shot set-up. In some ways screenwriters do it better, because screenwriting is the written interpretation of a visual medium.

In my stuff--in case anyone's been reading the excerpts I've pulled from Kill Velocity? I do shot set-up to figure out where the people are and what they do, and go back into layer the visuals on the second pass. The last couple months I've had summer school, and much as I want to go in and clean and layer, I ran out of time. I rarely bring up my own stuff, because I hate people who talk about themselves, so bear with me.

Tris is not a visual person. He's one of my favorite characters, but he's hard to write because I'm an introvert and he's an introvert. I could write him differently, but then he wouldn't be Tris. He'd be someone else.

He doesn't "allow" himself to feel emotions. He "processes" emotions and sometimes has the wrong response to something because of his background, but the story is about how he learns to feel. In other words. You don't always have to layer. As shallow as it is, his emotional layering is where it needs to be for where he is in the story.

The same thing with people who aren't overly expressive. It's not that the emotion isn't there, but that being all introverted and contained, it doesn't show. There's a disconnect between feeling something and expressing it in a way that "other" people would interpret as being that particular emotion.

ie.

Cowboy is an extrovert. If something happened to him he'd have no problem telling you how he felt. His gestures would get big, his voice would get loud. He'd connect with other people because he would be using body language and cues that other people--who use the same cues, would recognize as tagging that particular emotion.

If something happened to me, I'd think about it first--which right off would create distance and depending on how it impacted me, or how strongly I felt about it, I'd either talk about it, or express myself, but since it'd be a subdued version of something Cowboy already did ten minutes ago, I'd appear to care less, or have issues.

The extrovert would see me, the introvert, being all cold and overly controlled. But as an introvert I'd interpret the extrovert as being all bouncy and loud.

But he isn't--he's simply acting true to type, in a manner consistent with his personality.

To sum up what's probably meandering all over the place by now--emotional depth depends on your characters and how you built them. Shallow emotional depth is just as important a tool in showing character as constant 24/7 deep pov.

Emotional layers are actually emotional clots. Pretend a scene is a piece of paper. There are edges where they connect with transitions or other scenes, a few inches the eye skims, and the center, where the really interesting stuff is.

Pick out the stuff that is important to "this" scene and check out where each important character is at this stage in the book.

ie?
Belle and Danton are at a ball. They've been friends for years. Now that Belle has to marry--so her younger, prettier sister can marry (it's a regency)--she thought he'd offer.

She's falling in love with him, and because he's her friend, she's open to him. He feels "something", but because of his background--shuts it down. So in this scene the emotional clots form around Belle's interactions with Danton and her emotions. Because it's very difficult, if not impossible to write a story where both people are shut down.

The ball itself? The border of the paper? Belle's feelings toward the room, her family, the heat, the food, whatever textures the scene, aren't all that important.

The paper that connects the clots is important (give me a second to get to that).

If the emotion isn't already there growing out of the characters and how they've interacted to this point, then it needs to be dissected still further.

What exactly is Belle feeling? Is she feeling betrayed or lost? Angry? Confused? Pick out the "top" emotions, the emotions that show and write them on the top half of a paper. Draw a line horizontally in the middle of the paper and write her internal emotions.

I'm going to say Belle appears angry and mad. Her internal emotions are betrayed and lost.

Now do some free association. Angry, red face, open mouth, narrowed eyes, flush, stomping, big gestures. Stuff that shows visually. Things your reader will connect with.

Now do the same thing for the internal stuff. Stomach hurts, can't breathe, want to cry, want to touch Danton, afraid to touch Danton. Thoughts circling like leaves in a hurricane.

Whatever you want to write. Don't worry about what it is, simply get down stuff you know you'd feel or want, or think. Internal stuff. Needs and fears, all the grotty stuff you've felt yourself. Write it all in section you saved for those emotions, and keep going until you can't write anymore. If you simply can't figure it out, ask someone.

"If you saw an angry person, how would you know they were angry?" "If you felt lost, how would you feel?"

Scared? Write it down. Clingy? Write that down too.

Now take another piece of paper and write down all the "things" in the scene that could point up those feelings, visuals and emotions.

Angry? Maybe the room they end up in has red wall paper, or there's a statue of Medusa on the mantel. Betrayed? Maybe there's a porcelain heart on the mantel, and when Belle waves her arms, she knocks it over and it shatters. If she can't breathe, maybe the ball is a squeeze.

Lost? Maybe the host has children who wander out on the terrace and get lost. A nursemaid comes running after them, terrified she'll lose her job.

Now take all that and use it.

It's only melodrama because as introverts that's our perception of it.

Belle corners Danton, with a flush running up her chest, beet-red, eyes narrowed, and so incredibly hurt. She can't breathe, her stomach hurts and as she swings around after confronting him, she knocks over a delicate porcelain heart and it shatters on the cold white marble floor.

The more free association you can include in the scene, the deeper the emotional clot you form around Belle.

It'd work the same way with Danton if he wasn't (imho) cold in this scene (which you just pointed up with the cold marble floor breaking the porcelain heart). If you create a scene in which he's also angry on top and hurting underneath, maybe he has a cold kind of anger which manifests in stiff lips, or a pale white face. And maybe all he wants to do is escape because he can't deal with "her" anger. So it's like someone keeps punching him and he gets whiter and whiter, and finally turns to leave.

And that Medusa? The reflection of Belle's anger? The red wall paper? Mood setting? Maybe a storm is rising and a cold wind rattles the windows and breaks a pane.

Layers. Lots of layers.

In a very deliberate kind of way.

Wussing out on Emotions

2009-12-17T05:59:00.001-08:00

I know it’s a pet peeve, but I can’t stand characters who don’t know why they’re falling in love. And I don’t mean stupid people, but a smart hero or heroine on the verge of committing right here and now—irrevocably forever moreover to die for the other, or kill themselves, or do some horrific act they wouldn’t do otherwise.

She didn’t know why she loved him? He didn’t know what drew him to her?

Seriously--somewhere deep down inside, your character knows what’s going on.

In all fairness, it might interrupt the story flow. A fast scene shouldn’t slow down for introspection. But if they’re just standing around with nothing to do, wondering what it is about the other person that makes dying for love a viable option, it wusses out on the emotional understructure of the story.

Character is always true to him or herself, which means in any given situation, there are a limited amount of outcomes--to go back to the ball pit analogy; there are only so many balls. True chaos, despite sounding messed-up, is a “determined system”, which means minor changes create huge numbers of totally different paths, but every path must make some kind of sense when looked at as a whole. In other words, the balls are in a confined area—even if it’s a really big confined area—courtyards and hallways can’t just appear. They’re either there and accounted for, or not. There are limits to what can and can’t happen.

Character-driven stories are about characters, what they’re doing and how they feel. Sometimes they don’t want to face their feelings and that’s significant in itself. I had a “something about him” scene--and so do lots of people. It’s only recently I’ve started breaking them down into "the writer knows what’s going on and is really deep in the character’s head", and "the only reason these two characters are in love is because the author said so."

Back that up—

--this is not about rough draft.

If anything it’s a layering issue for when the writer goes in to tighten the story.

ie?
Rough draft:

She didn’t know what it was about him that drew her, but she was desperately afraid she was falling in love. TAKE ANOTHER LOOK MAYBE EXPAND

Maybe when the rough is finished, a good hard look says the best way to get Keira’s emotional state across is to leave her oblivious, because you “want” her to be pole-axed at a later date. In which case, this works with a little polish.

Or maybe you want her to be a little more self-aware and throw in a little foreshadowing to make a coming scene crank emotionally? Then you’d take another look—this time at the actual words.

“…she was desperately afraid…”

On some level, even if the author won’t admit it, she knows what’s up.

Desperately afraid? Of what?

Why is the growth of this relationship a bad idea? Is there something about the hero that terrifies Kiera, even while it draws her close? Is she protecting someone, is she worried she might betray her family? Is the hero a bad influence on someone she loves? Does he touch something in her that’s outside the norm or wrong for her time period?

Maybe Keira is a werewolf and her dad is the alpha. Maybe she’s falling in love with the alpha of the pack moving into their territory. Maybe leaving to follow her heart will start a war with the potential to kill everyone in her family.

Why not— (warning. I am not good at writing paranormals, but for some reason I've been feeling the urge, lol...)
John's strength drew her. (what pulls her to him) He crossed into the Pack’s territory and watched her with hot green eyes. (a little bit of foreshadowing. He’s trying to take over the territory and now he’s not just right up against Keira, he’s inside her family’s boundaries) She stepped closer (she’s drawn) and lifted her chin (submission and defiance because she’s torn). “Promise to leave the Valley and I’ll go with you.”

…her big issue. Need and desire vs. loyalty and fear of losing the people who—until now—have meant everything to her.

Exploring the issues behind not-knowing takes time and thought. Even making the deliberate choice to leave it short right now, still leaves a hole for exploring the issues later. Being deliberately blind, or unwilling to put in the work cheats not just your characters, but your reader.

A little bit on subtext...

2009-12-08T00:02:00.001-08:00

Part Six

Recently, I've been doing a lot of work on subtext. I like to think I don't have problems, but I'd be lying. Subtext is one of those craft problems where knowledge doesn't help because it's a control issue.

You have to be able to trust yourself. Trust your writing. And trust your reader to get what you're trying to say. It's sorta like...

...four bads for one. 1) back story 2) telling 3) passive voice and 4) godawful-horrible dialog tags.

i.e.

Jane sat in the airplane she had boarded back in Boston. Her hair was long, curling in glorious waves of apricot touched with gold as people told her. She pushed it back with her long elegant fingers as the beverage cart came down the aisle that she had walked down earlier to get to her seat.

"Excuse me," she said yawningly to the attendant in the blue uniform. "I need some coffee to stay awake. This plane trip is taking forever."

Unless you can pull a rabbit out of your hat, this is an instant reject.

Jane sat in the airplane( she had boarded back in Boston).--this is back story, and needs to go. Unless her coming "from" Boston has something to do with the action right up front, it can be worked into the story later.

I'd also suggest bringing it in tighter by adding sensory details.

Jane threw her head back and stared at the control panel. Even at full blast, the air did nothing for her nausea. She covered up a yawn. She was so tired, she felt sick.

Her hair was long, curling in glorious waves of apricot touched with gold as people told her. (...and that's why this is called "telling". Instead of showing us Jane's hair through another person's pov, or in dialog...)

"My God, Jane--what did you do to your hair? It's orange."

lol...

Or if you really gotta do it, at least make it short?

She leaned forward and apricot colored hair spilled across the fold out tray.

She pushed it back with her long elegant fingers >>>more telling

...as the beverage cart came down the aisle that she had walked down earlier to get to her seat.---not even important back story. Just tacked on in case you missed that Jane was on a plane, and had walked down the aisle of...right, a plane.

"Excuse me," she said.

...yawningly to the attendant in the blue uniform. "I need some coffee to stay awake. This plane trip is taking forever." ---explains what should be written into the scene.

She's tired. It's taking forever and there are airline attendants. This is your subtext. The whole bit underneath.

Writing is not a two dimensional craft. There are more than words on paper, there's another world. Subtext is troubleshooting the invisible.

The Zen of Pantsing

2009-12-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

I'm not trying to chase off people who get itchy when self-examination comes up, but ever since the Black Diamond class I've been thinking about pantsing. I always pictured my workshop as random thoughts on structure, but after the umpteenth person told me, "I thought something was wrong with me," I realized I'd always thought something was wrong with me, too.

I plotted and outlined, used index cards and turning points. You name it, I studied it. I must have listened to every RWA lecture for the last five years at least six times, and read every book I could find before branching out into screenwriting. I've wiki'd and spread-sheeted, interviewed and story-boarded. But like the U2 song--I couldn't find what I was looking for, and while I had ideas I'd been working on over the years, none of them had gelled into cohesive theory because it was too radically outside the box.

There are pantsers who talk and write articles, but it's usually "my journey" or "how I do things." Nothing solid on how the field works as a whole. Grammar is there for a reason, but rules were created by people, and like all "current best practices" are subject to change. Knowledge and "school" are not necessarily the same, like plot and structure aren't necessarily the same.

Back in the days before RWA, we were isolated. We learned through trial, error and desperate fumbling. As a group we've evolved into the biggest teaching organization in the world, and in the process grown rigid and intolerant. Telling new writers and people who haven't sold, "Take what you can use, and leave the rest, but remember--if you do this, you can sell that," is bad.

Gina once said the good thing about romance writers is they're nice. And the bad thing about romance writers is--right, they're nice.

Nice people create crit groups whose individual members take lectures and workshops and create peer pressure.

Do "this". Think "this" way. Listen to me, just the other day a New York Times Bestselling author told me that she always scratches herself with her right hand and uses a broad felt tip as she storyboards. You have to scratch yourself too. Everyone does.

Everyone plots. Everyone uses the "W", everyone colors description in red and internal dialog in blue, you've got to have white space, you've got to use third-person.

It's your process.

No one can tell you how to write. Some people don't need a plot starting out, and that doesn't make them wrong. It makes them different. Multi-dimensional thinking is "polyphonic." The definition (from PC aka personal computer magazine) of polyphonic is "The ability to play back a number of musical notes simultaneously. For example, 16-voice polyphony means a total of 16 notes, or waveforms, can be played concurrently."

In other words, some people can multi-task books and some people prefer to work on one thing at one time. If you can see all sixteen notes, that's pretty cool. If you like the purity of a single note--that's cool too. Character-driven books appeal to certain people, and plot driven books appeal to certain other people.

Like a faith journey, organic writers grow through stages--the joy of writing you experience when you first start out, affiliative writing, with its emphasis on community and belonging; searching writing with its doubts and critical judgments, and owned writing, writing that has been fully examined and is fully lived as part of one's personal identity.

Some people don't get faith journeys, and prefer you talk of, look at, or think about your journey in ways that don't work for you. Hailey is right, sometimes people can mess you up, not out of spite or cussedness, but out of love. Knowing and sharing what's right for them doesn't make it right for you. And trying to conform is like rejecting God. If you truly believe, saying you don't is a betrayal of your soul.

For someone to say, "this" is good when you can see something else--something intangible is better, doesn't have one answer. There are many answers, just like the many actions your character might or might not take.

Plot Threads and Subplots

2009-11-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

...or why the hell am I talking about weird stuff so late at night?

I dunno. Probably because it's just been bothering me. I read this book awhile ago. Screenwriting, right? Or maybe just Dwight Swain, but more than likely not. I read Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer a long time ago. Anyway this book talked about how to tell if a story line is a subplot or a plot thread. Maybe it was a lecture? I listen to bunches of them.

In my current wip I started out with the hero (his name is Tris) coming in full throttle to a fire which guts the place his family stores their crazy relatives. Then he finds a clue to his father's whereabouts. He hates his father and wants to kill him.

Now I thought this was a plot thread. A plot thread is a part of the plot, which if taken out, can not stand on its own. It is an integral part of the story in that it forms part of the structure you're building on. Sort of like that steel framework you stick inside poured concrete buildings. You need it, or the building would fall over.

So...enter plot thread two. Merlin wants to take over the family and Tris is in his way. I know, seriously--this is part of the story. I want it to be about Tris and his battle to accept who and what he is, and part of what he is the head of StallingCo Intelligence. Merlin and Tris need to be there. The thread in which Merlin runs his power play can't be taken out of the story or the story wouldn't go forward.

BUT, Tris's dad can be removed without much hassle, and his departure to subplot land won't affect the original story.

Which makes him a subplot. Something that can be removed, and while the original story might be weaker, it won't collapse, which makes for a true definition of subplot.

A subplot runs alongside the story, a story thread runs inside the story.

Subplots should always have some element of reinforcement to them. Like for example, if Tris has issues with control, (which he does), Merlin should have issues with control taken to a higher level. Your villain should reflect all that is bad about your hero. If Tris is a control freak, the reason Merlin resonates should be because his drive to control his surroundings has exploded into uncontrollable paranoia and murder.

That way when Tris has his ah-ha moment and stops himself from rushing headlong off the cliff of control-ism, and finds out love is the right answer (it's a love story, sorry. No...not really. It's a love story. That's just the way it is...see above. Romance writer. Struggling. My description. To thine own self be true, and I like my HEA's.)It's counterpointed in Merlin's failure to see the answer.

Which means it works on lots of levels, and I think the more levels you operate on, the greater chance of creating "buy-in".

Subplots and continuing series.

This changes if you want to use the subplot over a course of books. Then having Tris's dad show up would be a legit subplot, in book one. Or three. It doesn't have to be here and now. Having more than one book in a series planned out helps to divvy up with plot points and subplots.

boy, I'm tired. I'll probably write about this again when I can think...

Plot Threads and Subplots: Part Two

2009-11-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

...or why do my thoughts come in twos right now? They should be a long, organized train with little ramifications and fences--and divisions and stuff. Probably REALLY tired.

So anyway, never did answer my own question.

If Tris's Dad, over the course of my world building, becomes superfluous, and...er, a subplot--is he really needed in this book? Does the subplot, in other words, reinforce the theme of the book? Oh, hell no. He doesn't, and it doesn't, and I'm up sh*t creek sans a paddle because now I need some way to make Tris move into the position I need him to be in to make the story run and I've go to back to thinking. *shudder* horrible thought. Yeah, that was a run on sentence.

I guess this is about letting go.

How important is it to keep what you wrote?

Not really.

Maybe it's better to open a separate file and stick all the bits in there. I keep paper, and it's getting messy. I should take my own advice. I'm such a twerp sometimes.

Books grow and change. Whatever you write about plot and structure growing into what needs to be there to make the whole work. It's like that team thing. Sometimes, you need all the people, sometimes you need to get rid of a certain person, or he'll (she'll? I'm not gender specific) drag down the group and cause problems.

Maybe I just wanted Lance to be in there somewhere. I mean, I have this whole world in my head and that backstory is killing me trying to get out.

Sometimes less is more.

Convergent Plot threads

2009-11-28T19:13:00.001-08:00

...and if this sounds like another riff on my old blog-post about plot threads--well, yeah--it is. About a year ago I put a lot of thought into figuring out how plot threads worked versus subplots. To make a long post short, a plot thread is a line of actions done by a specific character which is integral to the story. A subplot contains actions--which if removed, would not hurt the overall story. In other words. Threads, yes. Subplots? Personal choice. They're good for things like reinforcing theme, pointing up and reflecting stuff and adding depth by giving the reader another way to look at the h/h. Imho--if it's not doing at least one of those things, putting it in might be personal choice, but sometimes choice needs to step aside.

Convergent threads on the other hand, are something I've been thinking about because they come out of organic plotting.

In a normal Action-A causes Action-B, and that causes Action-C kind of plot, everything is pretty linear. What the hero does here, directly influences what happens next and together they influence the next whatever-happens. Like turning points? Opportunity, Change of Plans, Point of No Return, Major Setback and Climax.

I've always been iffy on turning points. The concept is strong, but what makes it work for one type of story and not the next? Sort of like Action-reaction units and GMC. What if the goal is so deeply buried, the hero isn't operating on "goal" but simply motivation? What if to get to the goal, you have to get past the "external" goal to the "inner" goal, and by laying it out you lose the journey?

ie?

John is determined to find a fabulous treasure. He's heard it's up in the Cascades, locked in an ice cave that never thaws. Gold, right? And jewels.

So John's external motivation is to find the treasure. It's easy enough to plug in the formula. Turning point one is a surprising development that radically changes the Protagonist's life, and forces him to confront the Opponent. Which means you have to have an Opponent, and more turning points to spin it around in another direction later in the story. Each turning point locks the action in one direction until the next turning point. Then finally, big climax and resolution.

Everything you need for a plot-driven novel. John is simply the vehicle.

But if we take John again, and work from character out--why does John want to find the treasure? What kind of person did you create? Maybe he's a loser. A good person with decent skills who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he wants to find the treasure to prove himself, and maybe--he's not real physical.

To slot him into a plot-driven story, he needs all that other stuff--an opponent or something to get in his way, a clear reason he won't stop. Maybe the villain can point out John's a loser and that makes John even more determined to find the treasure. From Point A, where John makes the conscious decision to go after the treasure, until Point C where he finds it (and conquers the villain), every step must make sense to the overarching plot.

And to layer? You strip mine John's creation. He needs to prove himself, to show them. He goes on the journey naked to our eyes and wins because he's a good person with decent skills who this one time, refuses to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Good story.

But not really about John. The story is about John finding the treasure. We're the person standing behind him--with a baseball bat--forcing him to run. Turning point here, turning point there. Villain, conflict, poor John with his sad past. We're going to root for him because he's the hero, and he's an underdog, and there's a villain, and he's out to stop John. From--right--finding the treasure.

A story that flows out of character is less about the end goal than the journey.

John wants to find the treasure to prove himself.

In a story with convergent threads--actions that all together seem pretty random, but connect at Point C, we don't need a villain. John--with his sad past--is his own worst enemy. Nothing holds him to the search. Watching John--a guy who'd get in his car to travel across a parking lot--hike out into the snowy wilderness says more than a book of Bourne Identity-like thrills. Time slows down.

The first time we see him start a fire, the first snow cave he explores--the day he discovers how wonderful it is to wake up in the outdoors, is a journey we take with him. Everything he does isn't straight-lined toward the goal, but each step he takes is another action that together with the other actions "builds" to the goal.

In the first story, we want John to find the treasure. It's vindication. In the second, we want to spend time with him and watch him grow. The treasure simply got him to where he could.

Trainspotting and the Breakfast Club versus The Bourne Identity and Die Hard. Each movie has a happy ending (although in the case of Trainspotting, a sorta happy ending), but the method each uses to get there either puts the focus on the people--or the plot.

Breaking that crazy glue structure

2009-11-27T01:41:00.000-08:00

I’m not always the most concise person, but I kept looking at my notes on structure during the workshop and thinking—this is way too short. There’s got to be something more, some other way to explain it so it clicks faster.

The trouble was that I was looking at it full-on. It’s not just how plot fits into structure and how to pick the right one for your story (although I need to expand on that), but the reasons they’re confused with each other.

Even shorts take more than a day to write, and it’s normal to write them in the order events occur. If I write the opening, I’ll probably write the stuff that comes right afterwards. And over the course of days or months, I’m going to get attached to the way things are. Especially if I have a plot (in this post I'm using the word "plot" as what happens in your story) that says, “this” happens here, and “that” happens there. And in a lot of ways, it’s like baking. You need to do certain things to get a set of given results.

To get a a decent chocolate chip cookies you have to follow the recipe, but what if after you pull the cookies from the oven, you look at them and say, “They're edible, but what I really wanted was chocolate-chip shortbread?”

Since you know the basic framework of a cookie, and how the ingredients go together you simply take your basics and combine them in a different way. The ingredients are the same, but the way they’re put together produces a different result, and that’s a good definition of structure—knowing how to get a certain “effect”.

In other words, scenes, the basic units of a book are movable, but sometimes scenes don’t need to be there, are missing, or in the wrong order.

Looking at your story as a whole, after it’s been roughed out is the only time you can evaluate for effectiveness—and let me back that up. If the plot of my book is John decides to go back to school, goes back, meets a girl and later, after graduation, marries her. It’s a good plot. It has rudimentary structure, because it has a beginning, middle and end.

But why does it begin where it does? What if it began in a different place? Is the plot good and tight, or does it drag? Would it be stronger if you used one of the major structures?

What if your story is about John going to school to find himself, meet that girl and marry her, but your gut feeling says you should put more emphasis on how John changes over the course of the story?

Then maybe Michael Hague’s six point structure—which closely parallels the transformational arc would be useful and take your story to another level.

Or maybe you like the idea the way it is, but have this feeling something is wrong, and realize you have scenes that seem like part of another novel. Then the straight arrow of Aristotle’s “rising action” or dramatic structure would work to keep your story focused on the end.

It’s like making a cookie. The end result can be whatever you want, but you have to use the right ingredients, not just throw everything in there. And you have to know the recipes, because sometimes, the right structure is the intuitive one that breaks all the rules, but works for you. Good cookie bakers know that once you learn how things work together, you can take that knowledge and create new cookies. That's why there are so many forms of structure. Someone got tired of chocolate chip cookies and using what she knew, went on to create Hot Peanut Butter Fudge shortbread bars.

Organic Structure, part three--or wow, I really am that murky

2009-11-27T01:38:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I took another look at my organic structure stuff. I’m not always clear and it’s good when people point that out. Over the course of many years, I’ve been trying to figure stuff out.

Whenever Jen tells people about me, she always says, “…her writer’s journey.” And I like to think that’s pretty much why I started this blog. The journey stops when I’m dead and I’m not dead yet. In the meanwhile I’m messing around in the hopes that something, somewhere will click and I’ll magically know the answer to why the hell I’m not writing to my full potential.

Deb Dixon—-(and if you don’t know who she is, you really need to read her excellent book, Goal, Motivation and Conflict) was kind enough to stop by the other day when I was struggling through organic structure. She clarified how GMC covers both internal, external motivation, and the importance of character--and y’know, I had to pull out my copy. That’s the trouble with the internet; it’s like a big game of telegraph. Things get messed up in translation.

I’ve spent so much time talking to people who whip her out like a baton, (or like she says, “a hammer”) I mistook the garbled message for what she’s actually about. Mea culpa.

I’m also a believer in helping people to find what they’re about, so my apologies (general and hopefully all-encompassing) if anyone feels I’m trying to tell them what to think. As people say at the beginning of RWA lectures (and I really should put in my header). Take what you can use and leave the rest.

I’m an INTJ and--God help me—can no more stop myself from spouting theories than prevent myself from eating chocolate. I wasn’t as clear as I should have been, and on a second look, think what I was trying to say was that linear plot doesn’t work for an organically written character-driven story because the logical progression in such a story doesn’t work on a conscious level.

Although the story has GMC, I don't think it can be seen from the inside during the process of writing this particular kind of rough draft. It can only be seen afterwards during revision/edits or layering.

It’s not really plotting or pantsing--it’s more like flux that flows outward from the characters, and at the point of contact with another character changes to create a story event. Like “a jump” from A to D, instead of the more commonplace A-B-C-D. “A” is a given, and so is “D”, but “B” and “C” are more like a leap of faith that it can’t “not” work if the characters are acting true to themselves and their creation. Sort of like directed fumbling in the dark, if that makes any sense?

Think of a skein of yarn where the “creation” of character is the beginning of the strand--now pull the skein out to where it’s sort of like a big moebius strip, lay it down and cut it on each side. You have a lot of strips that are of equal length.

Organic structure is like that.

A lot of ends that intersect at point “A”, travel in a mostly straight line “toward” point “D”, and then end when they “become” point “D”. BUT, at the same time remain a bunch of ends with the potential to become their own skein, and something totally different when another color or fiber/character gets added.

Multi-layered GMC strands? Or like Zan and Jayna (yes--I'm flying my geek-flag) from Super Friends, saying "shape of..." a cloud that looks like a cloud from the ground and mist when you’re in a plane. Intangible.

Organic Structure, Part 2

2009-11-27T01:34:00.000-08:00

You told me what it was, but you didn't tell me how it works...

Let's talk about GMC, Motivation-Reaction Units and Turning Points. GMC is Goal, Motivation and Conflict.

1) What do they want? 2) Why do they want it? 3) And why can't they have it?

Dwight Swain did something similar in Techniques of the Selling Writer, but called it motivation-reaction units.

1) What causes something to happen? 2) What happens in reaction to that stimulus?

Mckee, in his ground-breaking structural work, Story, talks about how turning points spin the story and increase momentum.

All valid ways to look at plot. In a plot-driven story, event B is always caused by event A. So GMC is pretty much A>B>C>A>B>C, Motivation-reaction units are A>B>A>B and Turning Points are A>B>C>XX>A>B>C>XX2.

Plots are linear and look a little like algebra.

In other words, if I want John back in school, I need a reason.

In organic structure, we start at point A, but how we get to point D is different. In a linear plot, you'd see John get a pink slip and walk past a Workers Retraining poster. In an organic, character-driven story, you'd see John in a crappy job, staring at the ceiling in bed, a stack of bills on the counter, his kids in a rundown second rate school and his fear that maybe that's all there is, maybe he can't get his kids out of poverty.

By the time John walks into the admission office, you know why he's there, but there's no one specific goal or motivation because his goals are as complex as his motivations.

Linear-John is easy to flesh out because his character only needs to be developed to the point of supporting the plot. I can easily give John gorgeous blond hair, dazzling blue eyes and an Armani suit, because for the purpose of the plot, he's a blank slate.

Organic-John is defined by his circumstances and character. He's got kids, he's got a crappy job--they live in a ghetto. That means he might wear a suit, but if he cares about his kids, it's the Sears clearance suit and his gorgeous blond hair is shaggy and unkempt, or military tight so it can go longer between cuts. Maybe he cuts it himself and messed up one side. Maybe he's too proud to ask for help, so he's always hungry.

The difference is depth.

It's not easy to write an organic story. The underlying structure is logical, but that logic is the result of many plot threads coming together that don't always appear logical on the outside--although they are true to your character's internal logic.

John might not get to school because of a pink slip--but he does get to school. In an impressionist painting kind of way.

Hey and Welcome

2009-11-26T21:46:00.001-08:00

Until people get used to this blog being here, I think I'm going to keep this intro-post. Welcome to Darkness and Angst, my blog-archive. The titles and posts are the same, and I'm moving things as fast as I can, however--the comments are still on my main blog.

Thanks for stopping by.

Organic Structure: Part one

2009-11-26T21:44:00.001-08:00

What is it, why should I care--in other words, gimme a definition.

You know...I've been thinking about this and googling it, and looking everywhere for a damned definition. But I can't find one. Every time I come up with something I "think" might be organic structure, it turns into some obscure, overly academic or mystical touchie-feelie riff on finding plot in what you "see" in your head or channeling your emotions.

Three triangles in a row over a fulcrum, exploring your inner voice...? C'mon--anything with exercises is a turn-off. I don't want to light candles or get out a sketchpad.

My definition of Organic Structure:

Writing from inside your characters.

Pretty simple.

In genre fiction it's another way to say character-driven. Definitely the one-eighty of plot-driven.

Plot is what happens "to" characters. High concept. Elevator pitch. If you can explain it in ten seconds, you've got plot.

In other words, characters are interchangeable. Archetypes work well in plot-driven stories because they're a listing of character traits that tend to go together, sort of like saying, "I'm a Leo" rather than, "I'm a slightly chubby middle-aged birdwatcher with a fixation on crows and Trader Joe's chocolate-covered orange sticks."

General versus specific. Organic writing is specific to your characters. Plot in organic structure can't be taken out and used somewhere else because "those" characters produce "this" plot.

If I take John (from my posts on Emotional Structure) out of his story, there's no way I can replace him with another guy, because if I do the story changes. A well-thought out, multi-dimensional character in an organic story can't be removed without serious damage to the story structure.

In a plot-driven story, the story events drive the characters--so if I remove John and insert Rob, a twenty year old with acne and a brand new truck, his "Rob-ness" doesn't really matter, what does matter is the "weight" of the story.

To carry Rob, the plot would have to override personal details.

ie.

First Blood.

In the first Rambo movie, Rambo is a drifter. Everything that happens builds on both his backstory and who he is because of that backstory. When he heads up into the mountains and does his whole poncho-survivalist thing, it's understandable because--yeah, well--he was Special Forces. It's concentric and circular.

All actions are based on who he is, what he did, what he became, and what's happening to him because of that. Because he was Special Forces he did "this", which produced this reaction, which is triggered by "that". Circles inside circles, unlike the more linear structure of a plot.

Organic structure is a bulls eye of concentric rings, each spreading out like ripples from a central character. An organic plot happens when the rings of one character hit the rings of another character.

The later "Rambo" movies are plot-driven. Although Rambo is still at the center of each movie, he can easily be replaced by Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.

David Morrell, the writer of First Blood, and an excellent author, gave an interview about the last movie:

This is the first time that the tone of my novel FIRST BLOOD has been used in any of the movies. It's spot-on in terms of how I imagined the character—angry, burned-out, and filled with self-disgust because Rambo hates what he is and yet knows it's the only thing he does well.

He doesn't mention plot, because it's all about character.

Organic Plotting

2009-11-26T21:41:00.001-08:00

Recently, I've put a lot of thought into plot structure. I have most of Dead Gorgeous, but there's this...gray area that won't come in, no matter how hard I squint. I had the same problem with Hot Contract, and I think it's because some plot elements don't come into focus until ninety nine percent of the WIP is written.

In other words--it's a by-product of layering.

For some reason I thought I'd heard the phrase "organic plotting", but every time I looked for it, it was more like a riff on organic writing, which is a nice way of saying, "hey--I'm a pantser."

I started out as a pantser, moved to plotting, and being the totally anal retentive person I am--spent a lot of time researching why plots worked and in what circumstances. Plot is important to stories that have to go somewhere. Tech-thrillers. Mysteries. Psychological suspense? In other words--books where every thread needs to go over and under in exactly the right space, because otherwise--you get holes.

Organic plotting, on the other hand, might as well be called "structured plotting", because it's a cross between flying by the seat of your pants and filling in a twenty page outline. Many character driven novels are organically plotted. Not pantsed, but organically plotted. There's a difference.

Plotting is pre-work, and organic plotting is work that happens in the polishing process. ie? If you have a story where the hero--pstd, overly controlled, bad background ends up in circumstances that trigger one or more of his character traits, you automatically get plot points where the guy acts a certain way, or consciously fights the desire to act a certain way. But until you put your hero in exactly that circumstance, it's hard to tell what he'll do. It's obvious, but not until after the fact.

Not pantsing, because a well constructed hero can only act true to his nature. And not character arc. Character arc is how your character reacts and changes over the course of the story. If your character sleeps through the book, it's not going to be interesting. Something has to happen. Something unique and tailored specifically to this character.

The way this boomerangs is when well meaning writers force a plot on characters who wouldn't logically be there if they were being true to themselves.

Say you want your hero to stand his ground, despite all odds, rescue his lady love from the villain, drop to his knees in a burst of old fashioned chivalry and ask the girl to marry him. What'd you do to create this guy? Is he hot? What does hot have to do with the internal characteristics your hero needs to act in the only way he "can" act? You start from the ground up with a guy who is physically active, read Le Mort d'Arthur as a kid and believes, way down deep inside, he's a knight errant.

I've seen a lot of writers get stuck because their GMC is off, or the plot says point C happens here, and the guy isn't getting in line. Most of the time people won't even admit they "have" a goal or that the goal changes halfway through the novel. It is pantsing within the overall external framework to the point of a logical progression of facts, but also filling in holes like a drywall expert in the second layer.

Internal Dialog

2009-11-26T21:38:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know, I'm pretty much my own pirate. I create posts and move them around--you know, something here in an e-mail, something there at RD--scoop them up and move them, so sooner or later I can archive them on my site.

Internal dialog is one of my evolving favorites. I used to think it was simply a variation on Suzanne Brockman's Deep Pov. But the more exposure I get to other people, the more I've come to realize that internal dialog means a lot of different things and should mean a lot of different things because the way it's used dictates a certain structure.

It used to be internal dialog sounded like this...

Jane started up the stairs. I'm tired, she thought, and it's a long way to the top.

Basically you were telling you reader that A) look here, it's in italics, so it's internal dialog and B) just in case they didn't know, you tacked on an internal dialog tag.

Many writers still do it this way and in most instances, it works because it works with the writers voice in a certain kind of story or certain circumstances.

Then came deep pov, which in Brockmann's words, put the camera behind the hero/heroine's eyes.

Jane started up the stairs. It was a long way to the top, and every step was a screaming agony.

And yeah--I cut it off. It's just the two sentences. Jane starting up the steps. Jane's internal dialog. The first one, the old-fashioned one, is okay depending on the circumstances. If it's a transition scene, and you just need to get Jane up the stairs and don't want to cut away and say, "At the top of the stairs, Jane--" then it's a good, workmanlike transition. Nothing shiny about it.

The second one, the deep pov one--can definitely be fleshed out. When you strip the "I" words from your heroine's dialog, it creates a more immediate feel. You don't see the heroine, you "are" the heroine. And it works great if the heroine has a damned good reason to be there on the stairs.

And that goes back to story proportion.

Not every event is important to your story.

Which means layering should be selective. You don't need to be in deep pov ninety-nine point nine percent of the time.

So let's back that up and go back to Jane. If the important story event happens after walking up the stairs, say there's a killer somewhere in the apartment on the third floor. But Jane is on the first and a very long hallway away from the killer, then Jane walking up the stairs doesn't need to be layered. Jane walking down the hall should be layered, because you are closer to the story event. The stairs are just a transition because, remember--you didn't want to cut away and start on the landing. So it's a style choice, and a proportion choice because if your reader knows the killer is in the apartment they aren't going to be too happy about Jane puffing and wheezing up the stairs when the real excitement is going to happen as Jane gets closer to the door.

Think of a horror movie. Remember the teenagers necking in the living room? Not really? Bet you remember them creeping down the stairs into the basement. The living room needs to be there to set the scene, but it doesn't have to have gobs of internal dialog because that distracts from when you slow the scene down and open the basement door.

Layering internal dialog creates a sense of slowing down and texture because you're stopping to smell the blood and feel the sweat trickle down your neck. Layering for the sake of layering makes the action in your wip blur. In a straight contemporary, too. Something has to draw your hero and heroine together. Putting emphasis on the heroine's bed-time ritual isn't important, unless it plays a part in the story.

If the heroine is running her hands along the silk sheets and lighting candles, then the whole event loses oomph and becomes filler if the hero doesn't show up in the scene. It'd be better for your story structure (if you don't want the hero and heroine in her bed) if you simply said, Jane turned out the lights. Or simply cut to the next scene where something happens to drive your plot forward.

Static and Transformational Character Arcs

2009-11-26T21:35:00.001-08:00

When I first put up my blog, I spent a lot of time looking for things that made me happy. Writing, food, screenwriting, candy--random stuff because, hey--I'm easily bored.

UNK's fourteen part series on the transformational character arc, and Joshua James work on "non" transformational characters helped a lot.

In the beginning when I set up Dead Gorgeous, I had a lot of issues. For some reason the plot kept falling through. Connor was static because I mistook minor external conflict and the needs of my plot for his arc. Jacey was boring because while she had back story, she was cardboard too.

A love story, or any other kind of story where people connect is a story where side by side arcs move toward a common goal. Jacey and Connor both change. I kept thinking, okay--this is who they are at the beginning, this is who they are at the end....uhm?

Which is pretty much a plain English explanation of arc. They're something different at each point which means change happens over the course of the story. And to show change,the character must be distinctly different at each point. Not polar opposite different, but a marked change that is noticeable to your reader.

A good example would be Zarek in Kenyon's Dance with the Devil. In the beginning you see how life experiences and family have shaped Zarek into someone with so much rage he's just a ball of walking mad. The only way to tell there is something "more" is through his visible actions, because he refuses to admit he might still have feelings. He's kind to animals, he's kind to people in an offhand way if nobody notices, but if you confront him about it, he'd probably kill you without a second thought. He's lonely and disconnected. By the end of his character arc, he changes on the inside--but, on the outside, to people in other povs--he hasn't. We see him because we're the reader, so does Astrid--because she's the heroine, but to everyone else, he's still the same.

Which means transformation can be internal, and not visible to people outside the story, and can happen "through" interactions with a static character.

Astrid has no arc. She's who she is at the beginning and who she is at the end. Sure, she has a few issues dealing with external plot, and Kenyon gives her a little angst over her lack of emotion, but it disappears so fast, you know it's just window dressing. She doesn't change. She's the catalyst, and a pov character, but despite being a pov character with a stake in the story, her role despite being fifty percent of the book--is minor compared to Zarek's. Zarek is the hero of the story because he changes, and in a character driven story, the person with the most change is the person the book is about.

And it's okay to have static and transformational in the same story. Older, more stylized romances, certain sub-genres, and other genres across the board have multi-character stories where only one person has arc.

The thing I've noticed about transformation is when you know the end and the actual transformation, you know the beginning. If Zarek becomes open and loving at the end of Dance with the Devil, that means he needs to be closed off and suspicious at the beginning, because to create a strong arc, you have to hurt your characters where they live.

When you give someone has a life experience at the beginning of the story to threaten their view of themselves, it must be integral to how they are built. Something, somewhere in their past must reject change, and the change must address that underlying issue. Zarek wouldn't work if Astrid didn't touch the part of him that thought he was worthless. Which means that all that back story Kenyon gave him had to be there. She needed to know who he was, to know how he'd react.

Astrid was story-specific. In other words, she was built, with her own back story--to be the only one who could change this one man. Nobody else would work. Only her. Something about her, spoke to something in him.

And that's why they belong together.

Sometimes I have answers--or least an answer

2009-11-26T21:29:00.001-08:00

AKA Jodi's highly personalized, severely opinionated riff on romantic and fictional character arcs and static characters.

Question 1--

How necessary/important is it to show the hero growing? Does he have to grow? Also, if the hero has to grow/change too, does it have to be the same depth as the heroine? Can his growth be on a smaller scale?

Yes and no, and I'm sorry if that's one hell of an answer. In other words, it depends on what you're trying to do. In stuff like Mills and Boon and Harlequin Presents, when you're king of the heap and top-dog, there isn't much room for growth because that type of story isn't about the man getting in touch with his inner self, but the woman growing to love the man for who he is--a fully realized guy, with everything in place before the story starts. There is a character arc on the woman's part, but it's in response to outside or internal events. In other words, it's not a journey where two people meet in the middle, but a single journey, where the hero is the end-goal. It isn't necessary to show the hero's growth, but it is necessary to show the growth of his emotional bond.

ie. Say the hero is a rich Greek Tycoon (funny how that got capitalized, lol)--as the heroine moves forward in "her" character arc, the hero needs to show a corresponding emotional growth arc which is revealed (in the heroine's pov) as a softening or vulnerability. Because the heroine is getting closer, and the hero--while not changing--is falling in love with her. It's a growth of the relationship.

I consider this story to be more hers than theirs. The majority of the scenes are in her POV. In the few that will be in his POV, he's not interacting with the heroine. The scenes serve to reveal info about him and sometimes the other character in the scene.

The other place where this kind of thing works is fiction. Fiction is a huge umbrella. If the story is not primarily about the growth of two people toward each other, and not where the woman starts out in the one-down position, then it's leaning toward commercial fiction. I would suggest, and it's just a suggestion, writing the male pov scenes and later switching them over into the heroine's pov to keep it consistent. The same kind of info can come from the heroine's observations and serves the same purpose because the story is primarily about the heroine and her journey. Not necessarily a love story, but a story where love is a subplots. How you can tell if it's a subplot or an integral part of the story is to take out all the hero-related stuff, and see if there's still a story. If what's left is tangled and makes no sense, then the love story is a plot thread and deserves a little more attention. One thing that would help both is to make sure whatever is forcing the hero and heroine to interact is something so strong they can't escape. A mystery? Some kind of action-adventure?

It can be something as simple as having children who are friends, or dogs who are mortal enemies. Or maybe one person's dad is going out with the other person's mother. Or maybe one person is a spy and the other is a terrorist. Or maybe they're just drawn to each other, or the heroine wants the hero so much, her character arc and what forces them together is her realization that she does want him.

Is there a "rule" that all major characters have to have a character arc (is that the right term?)?

Yes, it's the right term. Another way to put it would simply to say, "Do people have to change?" Some people think it's a rule, but rules are made to be broken. Imho, it also depends on how short your story is, and I'm not talking length, but time. How much actual real-time passes in your story? Unless the story is about someone else, maybe a mystery--or how someone overcomes something, and the heroine is a great part of it, then if the story has a short time frame, the focus should be on the heroine anyway. The heroine is going through the story--the others, no matter how major they are, can remain static unless they need to change because of something in the plot.

The Upside-down Transformational Arc

2009-11-26T21:26:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not the biggest Maas fan. I admire him for the tidbit I took away from his first craft book, "Writing the Breakout Novel", and I'd been avoiding his RWA lecture, because--I dunno. It seemed like everyone was on the bandwagon, and I don't like crowds.

But I was working my way down the list and finally got to the "special" lectures. I enjoyed the first ten minutes of "The Fire Within". It was a wonderful, pumped up go-get-'em tiger of an intro that made me want to break out a pen. Then it kind of petered out. I think...because it was person-specific and would work better in a book. Not everything translates to lecture-format. Especially if you're listening to it after the fact.

But then he said the one thing that caught my attention. It might have been a "throwaway" line, but it was a nuclear flash for me.

"People usually think of the hero's transformational arc as going up, but sometimes, it goes down", and I stopped.

Wow.

He is so right. And never more so when it comes to certain types of stories. The upside down arc is the anti-hero's arc.

A good way to look at it would be to compare two movies like Good Will Hunting and The Bourne Identity. Both Matt Damon films. Put aside the fact that Jason Bourne is a killer, because that's not the part I'm talking about.

In the first movie--the Bourne Identity, Jason is a disenfranchised amnesiac killer who meets this woman named Marie (and I promised myself I wouldn't talk about the difference between the books and the movies, so I won't, lol) and over the course of the movie, he moves from considering her expendable to trusting her, to finally finding something inside himself willing to take that final step and reach out to her. It's a good example of an upward driving transformational arc.

Jason moves from point A, through positive steps--accepting Marie as a person, starting to trust her, wanting to protect her--to point B, where he's grown into the person he needs to be so they can have a life together.

In Good Will Hunting, Will starts at point A, down a long shallow slope of un-positive, really stupid and outright counter-productive behaviors. He pushes people away, destroys everyone's illusions and messes with people for the hell of it. He can't open up to the girl, and he doesn't want help to pull out of his downward spiral. Watching Will is so horrible it hurts. It's so unrelentingly bad. Down, down down, until he hits rock bottom, and only then, can he start the long crawl back. Transforming as he goes.

It's the same arc, only upside down. A reflection of all the bad things that a person can do to get to point B, instead of all the good things.

In some ways, it's like UNK's stages-of-grief downward arc, but this particular arc works for people with unreformed rakes and demons, uber-alphas with ptsd, disconnected loners and vampire/shifters. Anne Stuart does the downward arc. Probably why I have so many of her books. I love watching the hero get worse before he gets better.

Maslow in action

2009-11-26T21:22:00.000-08:00

Day Two

I had a Maslow moment recently, in other words--I had stress hives, so the best topic for coming down is Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs because my biggest peeve has got to be stupid sex. You know how in a "hot" rs, where the hero and heroine are running from the villain and the bullets are flying, and they stop for a quickie? That's stupid sex.

While romantic suspense is a fantasy, it's got to make some kind of sense.

Back in the sixties and seventies, Abraham Maslow--who, to my surprise, I never knew about--did a lot of research into what I think should be standardized knowledge for writers of all sorts. In his hierarchy of needs, he covers how our needs both define and control us.

...to take his words almost verbatim--one of the many interesting things Maslow noticed was that some needs take precedence over others. For example, if you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to try to take care of the thirst first, because you can do without food for weeks, but you can only do without water for a couple of days. Thirst is a “stronger” need than hunger. Likewise, if you are thirsty, but someone puts a choke hold on you and you can’t breath--breathing is more important, and although it's still a physiological need--sex is less powerful than any of these.

Think about the last time you had to use the toilet--if you're stuck in traffic, suddenly you're obsessed about off-ramps and clean restrooms. The hot guy in the car next to you is simply in the way.

i.e--

The physiological needs. Oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other minerals and vitamins. Also the need to maintain a pH balance (getting too acidic or base will kill you) and temperature (98.6 or near to it). To be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid of wastes (CO2, sweat, urine, and feces), to avoid pain, and to have sex.

Safety and security When the physiological needs are taken care of, this is the second layer. Safety, stability, protection. Structure, order, and some limits.

In other words, once you have what you need to survive--you start to worry.

Love and belonging When physiological needs and safety needs are taken care of, a third layer starts to show up. Friends, lovers, children, affectionate relationships in general, community.

Or--maybe just loneliness and social anxieties, lol.

Esteem Maslow says there are two kinds of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, maybe dominance. The higher need is the need for self-respect, including confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.

The thing about this pyramid is that you can't try for self-respect--and you sure can't have confidence, if all your other needs aren't being met. If you "don't" have something from each of the lower levels, you have a deficit--or in other words, you're going to need whatever it is to move on. Needs must be satisfied in the given order

Motivation is what drives you to get whatever you're missing.

Under stressful conditions, when survival is threatened, we regress to a lower level--the hero and heroine dodging bullets aren't going to be thinking sex when their bodies are thinking breathing. Even within levels, certain needs are dominant.

If you are hungry, you scramble to get food. If you are unsafe, you stay on guard. If you are isolated and unloved, you need to satisfy that need. If you have a low sense of self-esteem, you're defensive or overcompensate. Lower needs--like the need for love and sex, definitely drive a story, but not at the expense of lower, but dominant needs.