Creating Conflict with a Crucible

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

It's human nature to avoid conflict. Certain characters (ordinarily bad guys) may seek conflict as a tactic for aggression, but most of your characters won't. In fact, even when confronted with conflict by a bad guy, it's often in your character's best interest to turn his back on the conflict and walk away. If the reader asks herself why your character doesn't just walk away, you're in trouble.

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Creating Conflict with a Closed Environment

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

A simple device for keeping your characters locked in conflict is the Closed Environment. No bond/relationship is necessary to keep the characters in it. It's simply a situation with little or no connection to the outside world.What goes on in the closed environment is hidden from the outside world. Characters within the closed environment cannot readily receive help or escape. So, a closed

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Conflict

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Lajos Egri, in his classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, calls conflict the "origin of action" and "that titanic atomic energy whereby one explosion creates a chain of explosions." But perhaps James M. Frey puts it best in How to Write a Damn Good Novel. He says that story is struggle and that conflict is the "gunpowder" of storytelling.Conflict and struggle go hand-in-glove with each other. No

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Wordiness creeps into everyone's writing.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Wordiness creeps into every writer's work. Here are just a few examples of common wordy phrases and their potential concise alternatives.Wordy Phrase >>> Potential Alternative(s)is able to >>> candue to the fact that >>> becausein an effort to >>> toin order to >>> toin regard to >>> about or onin the course of >>> during or inin the near future >>> soonin view of >>> sincein view of the above >>

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What Fiction Readers Want

Monday, December 19, 2005

Though a novel is a commercial product, like a drug or the performance of a stage play, it provides a service. So, the writer should think of novel writing as a performing art and a service industry. The key to success in any service business is a keen sense of what the customer wants. What he really wants — which isn't necessarily what he says he wants. For example, a tennis pro knows that his

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The Role of Decisions in Conflict

Saturday, December 17, 2005

As I tell tennis players, the best way to pressure people is to confront them with choices. That's because they fear making the "wrong" one.If a person's fear of making decisions is greater than his desire, that fear extinguishes desire.Have you ever known a person who cannot make a decision? I knew a woman once who couldn't even decide how she wanted her coffee. I kid you not: before ordering it

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The Bait-and-Switch Trick

Thursday, December 15, 2005

The opening scene you tease the reader with must be relevant. If your opening hooks potential readers, they buy the book. So, they hate the old Bait-and-Switch trick, which makes readers feel cheated. It can really hurt sales of future works.In Technique in Fiction, Lanning and Macauley say that... a writer has to discriminate wisely between the attention-getting device that soon becomes fairly

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Inner Conflict

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Inner conflict is the most powerful conflict, and it's the key to creating memorable characters.Inner conflict is opposition from an antagonist within, in the form of doubts, misgivings, guilt, remorse, or indecision. Since a character's wants won't interest a reader unless the reader views them as important, inner conflict is usually moral conflict with the character's self-worth (self-concept)

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The Adavantage of Opening Story Questions About the Core Conflict

Saturday, December 10, 2005

When you begin reading a novel, you begin a journey, not a bout of wandering. Opening story questions about the core conflict are like road signs that tell you whether you're headed toward Topeka or Timbuktu. Would you follow anybody on a journey if he didn't tell you where it lead? Of course not, because you know there are only bad reasons for him to withhold that information. At best, he does

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Hooks: Opening Story Questions

Friday, December 9, 2005

The most important story questions are the first ones, the ones you plant in the opening. Story questions posed in the opening are called hooks. Get your hooks in the reader immediately.Why? Remember that prospective readers pick your novel off a shelf in the bookstore and start reading the first page. Make them take it to the cash register.They are as fussy as trout, who have countless offerings

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Suspense by Hanging

Sunday, December 4, 2005

The old movie Thirty Seconds over Tokyo illustrates the power of suspense. Released in 1944, the title hinted that it was about the daring bombing raid the United States conducted less than six months after Pearl Harbor. This, of course, was a historical event that the audience already knew the outcome of. No suspense there.The purpose of this bombing raid was to cheer American morale and to set

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Type 1 & Type 2 Suspense

Friday, December 2, 2005

There are two types of suspense:Type 1 Suspense: suspense characterized by reader curiosity (i.e., wonder)Type 2 Suspense: suspense characterized by reader anxiety and apprehension (i.e., worry)Type 1 Suspense can be created with a few words any time. No reader involvement is necessary. Type 2 Suspense can be created only if the reader is emotionally involved in the story. The reader is then

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Story Questions

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Suspense is uncertainty, a state of being undecided or undetermined. So, at bottom, suspense is a question.For example, a person on trial hears the verdict — guilty. Sentencing will be in three days. For the next three days the convicted criminal is left in suspense about what her sentence will be. In other words, the story raises the question What will her sentence be?Therefore, to create

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The Role of Decisions in Conflict

Sunday, November 27, 2005

As I tell tennis players, the best way to pressure people is to confront them with choices. That's because they fear making the "wrong" one.If a person's fear of making decisions is greater than his desire, that fear extinguishes desire.Have you ever known a person who cannot make a decision? I knew a woman once who couldn't even decide how she wanted her coffee. I kid you not: before ordering it

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Milieu Stories

Friday, November 25, 2005

In some stories the milieu is sketchy, while in others it is presented in great detail. A milieu story is a story about its milieu.Examples of milieu stories are: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan SwiftTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through a Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark TwainThe Time

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Engage your reader -- Part 2.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Step 2 in the process of engaging your reader is to organize your writing to meet your reader's needs.People read to get answers. Anticipate the questions your readers bring to the work, and organize your material to respond to those questions. Also think through the questions your readers are likely to ask while reading, and further organize your material to answer each question immediately.When

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Engage your reader.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Reading your words is spending time with you. So, make the persona you project engaging.To engage your readers: Speak to them directly and clearly.Organize your message in a structure that reflects their interests.Use an appropriate tone.And, before you even begin writing, identify your audience. You must grab and hold your readers' attention if you want to get your ideas across. They aren't

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But aren't character-driven stories the best?

Friday, November 18, 2005

Tell me who's fit to be the judge of that, and I'll go ask her or him.The literati describe fiction as either character-driven or plot-driven. They lump Milieu Stories, Idea Stories, and Events Stories into the plot-driven category. They regard plot-driven fiction as inferior, lowbrow, preferred by the uncultivated masses and therefore "transient" because it isn't worthy of a hard cover.The only

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The Importance of the MICE Quotient

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

To demonstrate something about the MICE Quotient, I'm going to use an an example of a story's opening. Here it is...I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month's sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John Cavendish. I had seen very

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The Elements of a Story

Monday, November 14, 2005

Stories are comprised of four elements. If one predominates, it shapes the story.The elements that comprise a story are: milieuideacharactereventsA story's milieu is its world, the environment of its characters. It encompasses both the material and moral spheres of action. That is, it encompasses both the inner and outer landscapes/spaces surrounding the characters, as well as the surrounding

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Put statements in positive form.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

In his Elements of Style, William Strunk wrote,Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.Here are examples to show the difference ...John was not very often on time. >>> John usually came late.Lisa did not think that was a very nice thing to say. >>> Lisa thought that a

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Readability

Friday, November 11, 2005

Writings' readability is its ease of understanding. Under-standing is mental weight lifting and requires effort. As tested, understanding therefore requires two things: the ability to understand and the effort to understand. So, readability is a function of both complexity and the average reader's willingness to make the required effort to understand.Readable writing is considerate of the reader,

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The President's English

Thursday, November 10, 2005

On a forum of technical writers a Brit once corrected me, as though Americans are ignorant and making grammatical errors by using American English, which he arrogantly viewed as somehow "incorrect."Thinking he would surely have to hear himself if I dropped a subtle hint that 400,000,000 people throughout North America say different than instead of different from, it made no dent in his obtuseness

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Omit needless words - Part 2

I could give you a mile-long list of wordy phrases to avoid, but that wouldn't be as helpful as giving you some important patterns to watch out for. The left side of the list below shows examples of the main patterns of phrasing that result in wordiness. The right side shows potential alternatives.the question as to whether >>> whether or the question whetherthere is no doubt but that >>> no

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Omit needless words.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

I could have stated this advice as Omit unnecessary words, but that may not say to you exactly what I mean. I could have said Omit superfluous words, but superfluous is a big word and just vague enough to be interpreted as "Leave out any word you can." So I chose to state this guideline exactly as Professor William Strunk Jr. did nearly a century ago in The Elements of Style: Omit needless

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Core Conflict & Scenic Conflict

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Look at the diagram below. It represents a story in five scenes, showing:the relationship between the (overall) core conflict and the (particular) conflict in each scenethe relationship between a character's (overall) main goal and his (particular) purpose (a mini-goal, an immediate goal) in each scene. In the begining your hero, confronted with the core conflict, sets a (main) goal to overcome

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The Importance of Conflict

Monday, November 7, 2005

Perhaps James M. Frey puts it best when, in How to Write a Damn Good Novel, he says that story is struggle, and conflict is the "gunpowder" of storytelling. Conflict not only moves the plot, it brings characters to life. For, in the light of conflict, character is defined. That's because the way people respond to obstacles, resistance, barriers, and conflict sharply characterizes them, telling us

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Subgenres

Sunday, November 6, 2005

A genre is often broken down into subgenres. For example, there are more than a hundred subgenres of romance.Genre fiction defies any classification scheme you try to impose on it though. That's because classifying novels is like classifying living things: since they evolve, they don't fit neatly into artificial categories superimposed on their evolutionary tree. Therefore, just as you find

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Genre Fiction

Saturday, November 5, 2005

Some examples of genres aremysterysuspense (thrillers)horrorscience fictionromancefantasywesternYou can see from this list that milieu stories, idea stories, and events stories fall into the category of genre fiction. Since they aren't about a character, they aren't character driven.These novels are conventional. Readers have many specific expectations of them. So many that, to fulfill the

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Nonsexist Language: The Pronoun Problem - Part 2

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

As I mentioned at the end of Part 1, he (a subject pronoun) is easier to avoid than him (an object pronoun), and both are easier to avoid than his (a possessive pronoun).To avoid him, your options are:Switch to the plural.Substitute a noun for "him."Reword the sentence to eliminate the need for "him."Substitute "him or her" for "him."Here are examples of all but the last method.Eliminating the

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Types of Premises

Monday, October 31, 2005

There are three types of premises:Chain Reaction PremiseOpposing Forces PremiseSituational PremiseIn a novel with a Chain Reaction Premise, something happens to a character that initiates a series of events leading to a climax and resolution. Examples of Chain Reaction Premises are:Purity of heart achieves salvation.Passionate love leads to death.In a novel with an Opposing Forces Premise, two

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Literary Fiction, Mainstream Fiction, and Genre Fiction

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Publishers, critics, and academics classify fiction into three broad categories: Literary/Academic FictionMainstream/Popular FictionGenre FictionLiterary fiction, or academic fiction, is supposed to be character driven and is regarded as "highbrow." It has few other conventions (i.e., no formula). The story is almost always a character story, because other types of stories are regarded as

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Sympathetic Fictional Characters

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Our human sensibilities can be turned on and off like a light switch. For the most part they are off for people we don't know. This is adaptive. Can you imagine what life would be like if we became as emotionally involved in the death of a stranger as in the death of our mother? What if you lived in Africa, where there are a thousand ways to die and by the time you're twenty, dozens of people you

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The Importance of Character

Monday, October 24, 2005

One important reason people read fiction is to read about people. Daily we encounter people saying, doing, and experiencing things we don't understand. Human nature puzzles and intrigues us. The desire to get into other people's heads is universal, and fiction is a portal. This desire is more than curiosity. It is true interest, programmed into us by our genes. For, understanding human nature is

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Nonsexist Language: The Pronoun Problem

Saturday, October 22, 2005

The problem is English's third-person-singular personal pronouns: there's no gender-neutral one, except it.In the Nominative Case (when we use them as subjects), they are he, she, and it. In the Objective Case (when we use them as the objects of verbs), they are him, her, and its. In the Possessive Case, they are his, her(s), and its. Other languages, like French, have this problem too. But in

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Avoid sexist language.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Sexist language is language that gives priority to the male, usually disregarding the female. Since language is what we think with, and since language enters the brain to affect how we think, the widespread use of sexist language causes sexism. But notice the difference between using sexist language and being a sexist. By itself, writing in sexist language isn't sexism. Indeed, most writers using

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The Fictive Dream

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Though a novel is a commercial product, like a drug or the performance of a stage play, it provides a service. So, the writer should think of novel writing as a performing art and a service industry. The key to success in any service business is a keen sense of what the customer wants. What he really wants — which isn't necessarily what he says he wants. For example, a tennis pro knows that his

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The Power of Suggestion

Monday, October 17, 2005

The mysterious power of suggestion is the tool of the copywriter (ad writer), the con artist, the preacher, the propagandist, the magician, the hypnotist, and the fiction writer. The copywriter, the con artist, the preacher, and the propagandist or politician or fanatical pied piper use it ultimately to delude or persuade. The magician, the hypnotist, and the fiction writer use it merely to alter

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Keep It Simple

Friday, October 14, 2005

Prefer short, simple sentences and common words.Your sentences should average 14 to 20 words. In fiction with many short lines of dialog, the average sentence length is deceptively low, so aim low.This guideline doesn't mean that all long sentences are bad. In fact, you should vary sentence length. But long sentences should be infrequent and simply structured. For example, a long sentence

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Suspense

Thursday, October 13, 2005

In both criticism and ad copy, we often hear novels described as "compelling" and as "page turners." This is a novel's chief selling point. It promises readers a book they will not be able to put down.What makes the reader unable to put a book down? The desire to know what happens.So, your main goal is to arouse your readers' curiosity and anticipation and keep them aroused. You want to glue

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Don't smother verbs.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

A buried, or smothered, verb is a nominalized verb. It buries the action of a sentence in a noun. The examples below show how to resurrect them, making the sentence less abstract and more concise.We had a discussion about the matter with the staff director.We discussed the matter with the staff director.She issued an announcement that the program would begin at seven o'clock.She announced that

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The Rule That Your Main Character Must Change -- Part 2

Monday, October 10, 2005

As I said yesterday, what must change about your main character is his or her emotional state. This change is a natural result of rising conflict.The hero decides on a course of action to fix his problem. Obstacles frustrate his efforts. Each intensifies the conflict, causing him to choose a new course of action. In other words, "the plot thickens." If he gave up, you would have no story. So,

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The Rule That Your Main Character Must Change

We often hear that characters are changed by the events of a story. James N. Frey holds that your characters must "grow from pole to pole." These are often misunderstood statements. By them, we do not mean that a character's "character" must change in the same way we would mean that a person's "character" changes. A behavioral or attitude change may occur, but that isn't necessary.For example, in

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What exactly IS a premise?

Saturday, October 8, 2005

A premise is simply a proposition that serves as the basis for doing something. For example:Science is based on the premise that we can understand the world without recourse to supernatural explanations.You smile and greet a co-worker on the premise that doing so will win goodwill and regard in return.Notice that a premise serves as a mission statement, a statement of purpose, an end:The mission

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Why do I get asked what my story's premise is?

Thursday, October 6, 2005

Writing fiction isn't just fiddling with imaginary characters in an imaginary world till you stop. Writing dramatic fiction, for example, is composing a narrative of consequential events involving authentic characters whose lives are affected by them. It therefore has a subtext. That subtext is . . .Human nature is such that, with these characters in this situation, one thing will lead toanother

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Write in the Active Voice

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

Good writing is concise. There are many techniques for achieving conciseness, but the most powerful is writing in the active voice. Use the passive voice only when a particular sentence calls for it.For those of you who need it, here is a review of the active and passive voice:Active Voice: The shopkeeper called the police.Passive Voice: The police were called by the shopkeeper.Passive Voice with

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A Kind of Magic

Sunday, October 2, 2005

Fiction is a kind of magic, and a fiction writer is a magician. He creates illusions on a stage in the reader's imagination. Like any magician, his skill is the skill of getting an audience to focus attention where he wants it. If he can control their attention, he can create any illusion.His chief trick is to make things appear. He must keep the audience from noticing what he's doing. So, his

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