When you are first thinking about your protagonist, the main character, the hero of your story, you will have some impressions of him/her. You may have some idea what he/she wants to accomplish in the story, what obstacles stand in the way, and how things will turn out. You should know these things, in detail, in depth, before you start writing your novel. Your understanding of them can grow and change while you write, but you will get better results while you write the more you know before you write. Here are some questions or points to consider while thinking about and planning your novel, before you start writing. Refer back to your answers while you write: they will surely evolve over time.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STORY IN ONE SENTENCE?
This means reducing your story to its simplest terms. Your sentence would sound something like this:
"This is a story about a man who wants to build a house by the river."
Specify who the main character (MC) is ("a man" is good enough, unless you need to be more specific, such as "an engineer" or "a fisherman"), and specify what he/she WANTS or NEEDS.
WHY DOES THIS PERSON WANT OR NEED THIS THING?
This is very important. It is ultimately what will make your story compelling. There must be a reason why this person wants or needs this thing. There can be some background, another story that happened long ago, that you will not tell directly, but you may give hints about it, or have a character tell us about it in some scene, so that we will understand what happened before that makes this goal so important now. Whatever it is, the person must really want or need, not just sort of want or need. Why?
Human interest, human interest, human interest!
WHAT OBSTACLES STAND IN THE WAY?
Brainstorm a list of various things that might stand in the way of the MC achieving the goal that you stated. There could be a long list. Some will be minor things, easily overcome, more irritations than serious obstacles. Others will be more challenging. Some will be very challenging. And one or more might even be "make or break", the sort of stuff that could totally stop the MC from achieving the goal.
Pick the main obsctacle, the thing that could serve as the main conflict at the end of the story, the final conflict, the big climax. The MC will fight this obstacle at the very end, win or lose, winner take all. What is it?
WHAT STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES DOES YOUR MC HAVE?
Now, consider how you conceived of your main character. What sort of person is he/she? You have some idea. Flesh him/her out further. Get a clearer sense. Most importantly for plot purposes, look at the list of obstacles. Who would find those things to be obstacles?
If one obstacle to building a house by the river is having enough money to do it, then it helps if your MC is poor, so that having enough money is more of a struggle. Or, if your MC is well-off, maybe something happens first that puts him/her in a position of not having the money.
Look at the main conflict that you identified, the one you may use for the climax. What sort of character would find that obstacle challenging? If it's a fist-fight, then a body builder would probably fare well, while a 90-pound weakling who just recovered from a serious illness after a 3-month hospital stay would probably find the fist-fight much more challenging.
Thinking about the conflicts and your basic conception of the MC, make a list of strengths and list of weaknesses that you might apply to him/her in your story. Can you pick the one main strength necessary to overcome the one main conflict?
And, very interestingly, can you take that same strength, flip it over, and turn it into a weakness? For example, a person who is very strong-willed will have the inner strength to face a difficult circumstance regardless of what others think (a strength when confronting difficult circumstances). However, this is also a weakness because it means the person will be so strong-willed that he/she may not really listen to others, work well with others, take others into account. That strong will may make intimate relationships more difficult. We've all heard the story of the workaholic who had an amazing career with great success but lost his wife, the kids, the house, and everything that truly mattered to him because he spent way too many hours at the office. What is the flipside of the MC's greatest strength? This will be his greatest weakness relevant to the plot.
TIP: GREATEST WEAKNESS = LESSON TO BE LEARNED
Once you know the greatest weakness, you have identifed the lesson your MC must learn. As surely as his/her strength is great, it is brought down by this weakness. He/she must overcome this weakness, learn some way to overcome it, in order to finally be able to use that greatest strength to overcome the main obstacle in the climactic scene. The hardworking office guy? He has to learn that success at work is not the only success. His family matters, too. Once he learns that, you can bring things together for him, and enable him to use his strength to overcome whatever obstacle he faced. Maybe his goal was "success" but he wrongly thought it would come from so much hard work. Now he knows real success is when he comes home at the end of the day to a family that loves him. Once he reduces his workload, repairs his relationships, reclaims his place in the family, he comes home from work a real winner.
USE YOUR ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS TO DRIVE YOUR STORY PLANNING!
This stuff drives your story. It drives character development (your MC grows, learns, changes) and plot progression (list of obstacles in ascending level of difficulty = steps in your plot!). Use your answers to these questions when you contemplate your story. Apply the same basic concepts to your other primary characters, the antagonist (villain), the "love interest" (husband, wife, lover), and any other characters important enough to deserve attention, such as in subplots.
Use these concepts to help you build your 12-Step Outline!
Sunday, April 29, 2007
HOW TO FIND AN ANTAGONIST
I blogged some time ago about "How to Find an Antagonist". I wanted to provide a link here to that posting, which was on my main blog, Chronicling the Novel. I faced a problem of choosing one main antagonist when more than one was possible. Remember, the antagonist is the "bad" guy", AKA the "villain", the one who most stands in the way of the protagonist (ie, "hero") as the he/she tries to reach his/her main goal.
You can find that posting by clicking here.
You can find that posting by clicking here.
THE 12-STEP OUTLINE
I use a twelve-step outline, based on three acts. This outline is the key to my being able to see my way through, work my way through, write my way through, a complete manuscript of 120,000, even 130,000 words.
I actually start with a four-step outline of main pillars, which I write down to describe the key story points in one sentence each. You can also add a fifth item at the start, the "inciting incident". When you are finished with this, you have a list of five sentences that give an overview of your story. I believe they will work just as well for shorter stories and novellas as they do for novels.
Here are the main pillars of your story:
You can then take these five sentences and use them to form a paragraph, which you edit as needed, and which forms the basis of your back-cover blurb!
Using those pillars, I then take the same outline and flesh it out to twelve steps, a beginning, middle and end toward each of these key points, themselves also significant plot events. They can be looked at this way:
ACT I
ACT II Part A
ACT II Part B
Act III
When writing, keep your outline handy. You can write from this, or you can take this and do more with it, developing a list of scenes, separating those and grouping them into chapters. You can add as much support in the form of notes, tables, lists, etc., as you need, or use very little, but no matter how much formal planning you do, you really should THINK about your story before you start to write it, and the basic structure above calls upon you to ask yourself the important questions.
If you don't know this stuff, you can't write your story. This stuff IS your story: your story is the stuff that happens in your story, right? What happens in your story? You decide. But if you don't know the beginning, middle and end of your story, you don't have a complete story, do you? THINK your way through. Use this template to help you do that.
It's your story. Write whatever you want. But you must know what you are going to write at some point in the process. If you start with a plan, you can always meander and change it as you go. If you don't have a plan, you may get lost and have no clue where you are headed, or where you are, or how you got there.
"Look before you leap" or you may find yourself getting stuck in the mud, and that ain't no fun!
I actually start with a four-step outline of main pillars, which I write down to describe the key story points in one sentence each. You can also add a fifth item at the start, the "inciting incident". When you are finished with this, you have a list of five sentences that give an overview of your story. I believe they will work just as well for shorter stories and novellas as they do for novels.
Here are the main pillars of your story:
0. What is the event that sets everything in motion?
1. What happens at the end of Act I? (This is where the MC makes the commitment to the situation, or the situation is now unavoidable.) [Step 1 below]
2. What happens at the Mid-Point? (This is the end of the first half of Act II, the mid-point of the story, the point where a key decision by the MC moves him/her toward a path that will lead to the final confrontation/climax.) [Step 6 below]
3. What happens at the end of Act II? (This is the big disaster or circumstance that now requires the road to turn into the final approach to the final, big conflict that provides the climax in Act III.) [Step 9 below]
4. What happens in the final conflict at the end of Act III? (What is the final outcome?) [Steps 11/12 below]
You can then take these five sentences and use them to form a paragraph, which you edit as needed, and which forms the basis of your back-cover blurb!
Using those pillars, I then take the same outline and flesh it out to twelve steps, a beginning, middle and end toward each of these key points, themselves also significant plot events. They can be looked at this way:
ACT I
Step 1: The Call To Action (something upsets the order of things)
Step 2: Refusal of the Call
Step 3: Turning Point 1 (the "Quest" or adventure is now unavoidable)
ACT II Part A
Step 4: Strategy 1 (first attempt to solve problem, or gathering friends/resources)
Step 5: Pinch-Point #1 (a crisis that reminds us of the main conflict, a complication to the first strategy)
Step 6: Mid-Point (another conflict with a decision that turns path toward the climax -- this will be like a pinch point, reminding us of the main conflict)
ACT II Part B
Step 7: Strategy 2 (another major attempt to solve the problem)
Step 8: Pinch-Point #2 (another crisis that reminds us of the main conflict)
Step 9: Turning Point #2 (another conflict that now turns us toward the final conflict -- this is usually a massive failure for the MC, the worst now seems to have happend, yet somehow we know it will get worse still)
Act III
Step 10: Low Point (the MC is reeling from the disaster in the last step, finding inner strength to go on, devising a strategy to fight back, suffering from a terrible loss in some way)
Step 11: Final Confrontation / Climax
Step 12: Resolution, Denoument (order restored)
When writing, keep your outline handy. You can write from this, or you can take this and do more with it, developing a list of scenes, separating those and grouping them into chapters. You can add as much support in the form of notes, tables, lists, etc., as you need, or use very little, but no matter how much formal planning you do, you really should THINK about your story before you start to write it, and the basic structure above calls upon you to ask yourself the important questions.
If you don't know this stuff, you can't write your story. This stuff IS your story: your story is the stuff that happens in your story, right? What happens in your story? You decide. But if you don't know the beginning, middle and end of your story, you don't have a complete story, do you? THINK your way through. Use this template to help you do that.
It's your story. Write whatever you want. But you must know what you are going to write at some point in the process. If you start with a plan, you can always meander and change it as you go. If you don't have a plan, you may get lost and have no clue where you are headed, or where you are, or how you got there.
"Look before you leap" or you may find yourself getting stuck in the mud, and that ain't no fun!
TIP: The Q&A Method for Solving Problems
TIP: When you can't proceed, it's almost always because there are questions which you haven't answered, which you need to answer, in order to know how the story goes!
THE QUESTION-AND-ANSWER METHOD FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS:
If you're ever finding yourself too unsure which direction to proceed in, or how it all ties together, etc., then maybe try the "Q&A" approach I use. It helps me a lot. I make a list of all my questions, then I type out answers to each, brainstorming paragraphs or pages as needed. When I am finally ready to make decisions, then I write a summary of which choice I made and why. This helps me focus on just what I don't know that is keeping me from progressing, and helps me explore options in making decisions.
The value of this method is that it takes your problem, the question(s) that you need answered, and reduces them from some impossible-to-solve abstract notion in your head to a concrete question on paper (or on your computer screen).
The hardest part sometimes is actually writing the question down. I know sometimes I have a question but I don't even want to put it into words, in my head or otherwise, because I know I'll have to do some hard, serious thinking to figure it out. I know it will raise a lot of other questions. I know the solution is going to be tough, a lot of work, redoing what I have already written, etc. But the most important thing is to do it, to ask the question.
One time, I remember, it was all I could do on day just to write the question down. I then had to put it away immediately because I did not want to face it. But the next day I mustered the courage to look at the question in writing, and when I did I found the question wasn't so intimidating after all. I had to work for several hours, writing more questions that arose as I tried to figure out the major plot problem, working through the entire story in my head, talking out loud to myself, pacing the room, making various groans and whining noises, but in time, after a few hours, I did have all the answers I needed, and I was able to resume work later that day.
So, no matter how tough the problem you are facing in your work in progress, when you can't proceed it is almost always because there is something you haven't decided. A decision you have put off. You were able to write around it, to avoid it, but finally you reach that point where the story can go no farther until you answer it. That's what you have to do. No matter how painful, write it down, face it, and solve it. Once you do, the dam will be opened, the creative flood will wash over you and you will be swept away again to the joys of writing new stuff, which is what it's all about.
Good luck with it!
THE QUESTION-AND-ANSWER METHOD FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS:
If you're ever finding yourself too unsure which direction to proceed in, or how it all ties together, etc., then maybe try the "Q&A" approach I use. It helps me a lot. I make a list of all my questions, then I type out answers to each, brainstorming paragraphs or pages as needed. When I am finally ready to make decisions, then I write a summary of which choice I made and why. This helps me focus on just what I don't know that is keeping me from progressing, and helps me explore options in making decisions.
The value of this method is that it takes your problem, the question(s) that you need answered, and reduces them from some impossible-to-solve abstract notion in your head to a concrete question on paper (or on your computer screen).
The hardest part sometimes is actually writing the question down. I know sometimes I have a question but I don't even want to put it into words, in my head or otherwise, because I know I'll have to do some hard, serious thinking to figure it out. I know it will raise a lot of other questions. I know the solution is going to be tough, a lot of work, redoing what I have already written, etc. But the most important thing is to do it, to ask the question.
One time, I remember, it was all I could do on day just to write the question down. I then had to put it away immediately because I did not want to face it. But the next day I mustered the courage to look at the question in writing, and when I did I found the question wasn't so intimidating after all. I had to work for several hours, writing more questions that arose as I tried to figure out the major plot problem, working through the entire story in my head, talking out loud to myself, pacing the room, making various groans and whining noises, but in time, after a few hours, I did have all the answers I needed, and I was able to resume work later that day.
So, no matter how tough the problem you are facing in your work in progress, when you can't proceed it is almost always because there is something you haven't decided. A decision you have put off. You were able to write around it, to avoid it, but finally you reach that point where the story can go no farther until you answer it. That's what you have to do. No matter how painful, write it down, face it, and solve it. Once you do, the dam will be opened, the creative flood will wash over you and you will be swept away again to the joys of writing new stuff, which is what it's all about.
Good luck with it!
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