Bruises

As a writer, I like things to be tense. I appreciate conflict and go out of my way to inflict damage. Interior and exterior bruises are the sweetness of fiction.

As a person, I like smooth sailing. No sharp corners. I don't run with scissors and I put plastic bags in places where they're hard to get to. Boring routine is something to be treasured.

A good friend of mine lost her father yesterday morning. He'd fallen the other day and fractured a hip. According to the doctors, he made it through surgery with flying colors. My friend was flying to San Francisco early yesterday to spend some time with him and spell her sister.

I don't know yet whether she got there in time to speak to him, or if he died while she was on her way. I would write it one way as a writer, and hope for it another way as someone who's trying to keep emotional bruises to a minimum.

Since this isn't part of a story, but real life, I pray for an ease for my friend. For comfort. For minimal bruising that can heal quickly. For solace.



CR: House Rules by Jodi Picoult. (And Shirley, I'm really liking it!)

It's all better with friends.

Secrets

In the Writer's Digest book, Writing Mysteries, edited by Sue Grafton, with Jan Burke and Barry Zeman, Phyllis Whitney talks about pacing and suspense. (Anything attributed to Phyllis Whitney gets my attention.)

. . . give every character a secret. As a writer you need to know about the hidden goals, the past guilts of every character. Such secrets can be used to make your story people behave in mysterious and suspense-building ways. As we think about and develop these secrets, the characters become more real to us, as writers, and thus to our readers. Conflict is likely to grow out of these concealed matters, and of course, this is a main weapon in our suspense arsenal.

I'm an old snoop from way back. My desire to know usually outranks my desire for decorum. I want to know the secrets of all of my characters. Even the secrets they've forgotten about. I want to know what they've got locked away in a trunk somewhere.

Heck, I want to know your secrets. I consider this desire a result of being a student of the human condition. My husband considers it a sickness. I'm counting on more than one reader being similarly afflicted.

Secrets are tantalizing. They can drive characters to do amazing things. If those amazing things create conflict? Well, then . . .


Still reading Kill Me.

It's all better with friends.

Conflict

From Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Edition: Con•flict: the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in a drama or fiction.

I'm getting ready to start a new scene. I have some general ideas but what I need to nail down before I get started is the conflict.

In Debra Dixon's GMC: Goal, Motivation & Conflict she has a couple of warnings regarding conflict:

• Unrelenting conflict or throwing "everything but the kitchen sink" at the character can numb the reader.

Okay, I need to be selective. I need to pick the worst thing, not every thing. Got it.

• We've all seen movies that we thought would never end. By the time the hero kills/arrests the bad guy, we don't care anymore.

Get in and get out. Make my point (maybe I'll build it up a little) then let go. Also, don't resolve this conflict, then hit my character over the head with another one. Ad infinitum. Got it.

• Another pitfall, which stems from fuzzy conflict, is erratic or slow pacing because you wander through scene after scene trying to get a handle on what the real battle is, what the character's real problem is.

Thus this little period of time for me to focus and identify and know for sure this is what my character doesn't want the most, even if they don't know it yet. Hope to get it.

Dixon also makes this very good point: Let me warn you . . . if conflict makes you uncomfortable or you have difficulty wrecking the lives of your characters, you need to consider another line of work.

Donald Maass reminds us in Writing the Breakout Novel to pick a story world that isn't safe. It's hard to write a great novel about the suburbs. Try and pick a place steeped in conflict. Where there is conflict, there is rich soil in which to plant a story.

Continuing later in Breakout: . . . the conflict must matter to us; equally, our interest level will decline in ratio to how removed we feel from those involved in a conflict.

In other words, I need to make sure my character is likable and that the conflict is more than an in-grown toenail. It has to matter. It has to be big. It has to hold my reader's interest.

I think there's one more thing to add about conflict. It has to be relevant. It needs to be believable. No one is going to believe my bookstore owner in Aspen Falls is conflicted by an automobile accident in Amsterdam involving people he doesn't know. Okay, that's a little far-fetched. I'm just saying. . . .




Still reading: Kill Me. I really like this book.

Working on: Off to do a bit of brainstorming about the conflict in my scene and . . . how it moves the story forward.

It's all better with friends.

Layers

I thought adding layers had to do primarily with the five senses. You know. Making sure each of my scenes incorporate smell, sight, touch, sound, and oh yeah . . . taste. Some combination of those.

Man, was I wrong.

A section of the course being taught by Colleen Coble through ACFW deals with adding layers to our stories. And she's not referring to cake. Darn. Any excuse will do . . .

The concept, on the surface quite clear but difficult for me to work through once I got into it, is that layers have nothing to do with feelings. Nothing to do with character. Nothing to do with history or backstory. Nothing.

Layers in the writing world are the elements in life that are edgy. Burdensome. Problems. Little blisters that pop all over my otherwise pristine world. Poking and jabbing sticks that threaten my supreme focus. Layers are external conflict that mean I'm alive. Or rather, that my character is alive.

These external conflicts, not associated with my main story, create a full life for my character. One readers can identify with. Unlike subplots that eventually must tie in with my main plot, layers for my characters are uniquely theirs.

A layer could be the brother-in-law who is having an affair but expects my character to keep it a secret. Or the constant call from an old flame, bent on "re-connecting." It could be an ill parent, or a sibling who is constantly in trouble. It could also be the car that is constantly breaking down, or the rental unit that is a cash sucker-upper.

How my character handles these layers will end up building her credibility in the eyes of my readers, but that's as internal as they get.

So today, after continuing to work on my plot evaluation, I have extra stickies that have been added. Many of them say "Add layers."

Now I'll know what I mean.

For those of you who thought my initial concept of layers was too funny for words, you should've been around when the idea of POV first came up. Point of view? Well, duh. What's complicated about that? Everything I write is MY point of view.

Sheeshkabobalino.



Still reading To the Power of Three.
You know what I'm working on.

It's all better with friends.

Hang 'em High

The term "suspense" comes from the Latin word, suspendere, which means "to hang." (Yes, that's an elephant up a tree. Not exactly "hanging", but I do sense a certain amount of suspense, don't you?)

Readers of suspense enjoy the feeling of anxiety and apprehension they experience from the genre. How do they get there? Uncertainty.

The worst thing you can do as a suspense novelist is to bore your reader. Heck, the worst thing you can do as any kind of novelist is to bore your reader. And there are so many ways in which to bore . . .

Some ideas to keep your readers hanging:

Delete areas where you are supplying too much information. This often comes disguised as the internal thoughts of your POV character. Give your readers the opportunity to wonder and worry.

Foreshadowing is a wonderful tool, but remember it's a shadow and not a detailed picture. Don't be obvious.

Create characters your reader will care about. Then threaten them with something. It can be physical, psychological or emotional. Oh heck, why not all three?

Give your protagonist intense motivation. Connect to their basic human needs and understand what drives them. Your protagonist should be strong, not wussy. Their desire should be powerful, overwhelming, and completely believable.

Repeat the above for your antagonist. The more chance you give your villain to win, the more chance you have to build suspense.

Keep raising the stakes. Don't let up. Remember that elephant up a tree? Imagine a sleeping baby lying under the tree. And then, a poacher who sees some easy prey in an unlikely spot. And then . . . you get the drift. Never make things easy. (For more, see my post on the science of scenes.)

Give the reader more information than you give your hero. This is done by using multiple points of view. Your reader will have the sublime pleasure of worrying about things even more.

Build the momentum by winding up the ticking clock. Urgency fuels suspense. Make sure your reader understands the race and everything that's at stake.

Did you hear that limb crack?

It's all better with friends.

Goal Setting Without Fear

One of my favorite sayings is "It doesn't matter where you start out. What matters is where you end up."

Are you ready to plan your route to the finish line? Do you know what that looks like for you?

And what happens if you fail?

That's the simple question. Here's the simple (though not always easy) answer. You start over. You pick up where you left off. You change the idea of failure to one of education. You understand you're that much further ahead.

But what about setting goals in the first place?

Before I throw out some strategies to think about, think about this first: carefully consider that the goals you are setting are what you want to accomplish, not what someone else thinks you should accomplish. Do not set your goals based on the expectations of others, or just because they sound good.

Man, it took me forever to figure that one out. (I'm such an approval seeker--or at least I used to be.) Sheeshkabobalino.

Most of us have heard about SMART goals. This is a great tool to keep in mind when you're sitting down to start clarifying what you want to achieve. Make each goal as Specific as possible. Details. Make them Measurable. Quantify what you're going for. Think carefully about whether or not each goal is truly Achievable. Are they Reasonable? And are they Timely?

Here's where I think people can get tripped up--your goals must be consistent with your values--without conflict. Not only must you look at where your heart is, you need to understand what makes it tick. For example, if your heart is set on getting that huge promotion, but you value time with your family, you need to make sure you can accomplish both. If not, which are you willing to sacrifice? Conflict will surely impact both goals, and your quality of life will suffer.

Another piece is to strive for balance in your life. Set goals for all six areas: Family, Spiritual, Social, Career, Physical, Educational. Don't pump up one area at the expense of another--and don't forget to check for conflict.

When you write your goals down (and that in itself is important) write them in the positive rather than the negative. Our subconscious minds focus on the written word. Make it good. Rather than saying, "At the end of the year, I don't want to still be writing my novel", say "At the end of the year, I will have a completed novel ready to be shopped." And of course, be detailed. Even to the point of recording how you will FEEL when that happens.

Take an assessment. Check your heart--your values. And take a chance on writing down some goals for 2008. If you fail, you're no further behind, and maybe even a little ahead. But if you succeed? Zowie.

It's all better with friends.

CONFLICT!!!

This is a picture of my husband standing in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 2004. Certainly not filled with conflict on our visit, but very few people (who are old enough anyway) have forgotten what happened in that place in 1989.

To me, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was an external conflict directly resulting from internal conflict.

Huh?

It's very clear what the external conflict was in 1989. Threat of death will do it every time. But what about the guy who stood up in front of all of those guns and tanks? Do you think he didn't have any internal conflict going on? Zowie. He had to have struggled (at least a little human-bit) between staying safe and doing what he knew in his heart was the right thing. Could there be any greater internal conflict?

Every novelist needs to make sure there's struggle. Otherwise, what reader will be interested?

There's an old writer's adage of picturing the gorilla in the phone booth to understand the idea of conflict. I would add to that. The gorilla in the phone booth is supposed to be picking up his daughter from daycare at that very moment, and his wife doesn't respect him anymore because he did "x", and he's not sure he's got the moxy to fix it.

We were in Russia a few years before we went to China. The people of Russia are amazing, and both their internal and external struggles are easy to figure out, at least superficially. Make sure your conflict can, at some point, be easily understood by your reader. Make sure it matters to them, and that they can identify on some level.

What are the internal and external conflicts in the story you're writing? The one you're reading? Thinking about these things can only add depth to the experience to both you as the writer, and the person you're engaged to entertain.

Just remember . . . if you're writing a story, until you put the words to the paper, the conflict doesn't exist.

It's all better with friends.

Breakout Premise - Part 4

Inherent Conflict

Donald Maass suggests one way to create conflict in your story is to place it somewhere that isn't safe. Generally, suburbs are considered comfortable, not conflicted. But a courtroom? A mountain cabin in the middle of a blizzard?

Like many of you, my prayers are settling over the people of California now as they battle fire. Have you put yourself in their shoes? Imagined their fear and pain and anger? Their faith? Talk about conflict.

Maass stresses: "If your place is lacking trouble, dig deeper. It is there. Your job is to bring it out. Drilling into deep wells of conflict is a fundamental step in constructing a breakout premise."

As a suspense novelist, you may think your reader should automatically feel the conflict because of the idea of your story. But remember, until you write it, it doesn't exist. Don't run from conflict. Create it.

It's all better with friends.

Next: Originality