How does Story create a powerful emotional experience?
By putting a Character in a Crucible.
A Character is somebody your reader can relate to. At the beginning of the story, your reader steps inside the Character’s skin. During the story, your reader feels like she is the Character.
Your reader sees what your Character sees.
Your reader hears what your Character hears.
Your reader feels what your Character feels.
That could be really boring, if you showed all the everyday parts of your Character’s life.
But Story is not boring because it only shows your Character in a Crucible. And a Crucible is never boring. A Crucible is terrifying.
A Character in a Crucible can’t help but feel a rush of emotions.
And your reader feels those emotions right along with your Character.
Those emotions lock that experience tight into your reader’s neurons.
So Story needs exactly those two parts, a Character and a Crucible.
Without a Character, you don’t have a Story.
Without a Crucible, you don’t have a Story.
What’s a Character?
A Character is a person who wants something desperately. She wants one of these three things:
To have something.
To be something.
To do something.
That something is her Story Goal, and as your novel progresses, your Character comes to understand better and better what she wants, and to pursue it harder and harder. In this book, we’re going to look at three examples from major novels that I’ve found helpful in my teaching over the years. We’ll dive deep into these examples as we move through the book.
To start with, let’s look at the Character in each example.
Example 1: Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Katniss is a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a futuristic dystopian America in which the wealthy Capitol holds all the outlying districts in poverty. Katniss and her family live just on the edge of starvation, and all Katniss wants is to survive. When Katniss’s younger sister’s name is drawn to participate in the Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She’ll be put in an arena with twenty-three other teens. They’ll fight to the death, and the last one standing gets to live. Katniss desperately wants to live.
Example 2: Claire Randall in Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
Claire Randall is a young nurse in 1946 England. The war has just ended and she’s getting to know her husband again on a vacation in Scotland. She accidentally steps through a time portal in an ancient stone circle and finds herself trapped in 1743, in the hands of the suspicious local Scottish laird, who wants to know who she is and where she came from. Claire can’t possibly tell him she’s a time traveler. All she wants is to get back to the stone circle and return to 1946.
Example 3: Michael Corleone in The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
It’s 1945, and Michael Corleone is the youngest son of a Mafia godfather, Don Vito Corleone. A few years ago, against his father’s wishes, Michael volunteered for the Marines and fought bravely until he was wounded and released from service. Now Michael is in college. He wants to finish his education, marry his girlfriend, Kay, and get an honest job. More than anything, he wants to escape the criminal family he grew up in.
What’s a Crucible?
A Crucible is the reason your Character can’t have what she wants. The Crucible is partly the story world and partly the cast of other characters and partly what’s inside your Character.
Your reader can relate to your Character because your reader doesn’t get everything she wants either. Your reader may not want exactly the same thing your Character wants, but your reader knows what it is to desperately want something she can’t have.
Your reader is in her own Crucible, and reading about your Character makes your reader’s life more bearable.
Your Character’s Crucible prevents her from getting or being or doing the one thing she believes would make her happy. The Crucible is what makes your Character miserable, and it’s what makes your story worth reading.
Now let’s have a look at the Crucible in each of our examples.
Example 1: The Crucible in The Hunger Games
Katniss just wants to live. What’s preventing her? Twenty-two of the other teens in the arena are desperate to kill her so they can live. Some of them have been training all their lives to fight in the Hunger Games, hoping to win fame, wealth, and glory. These “Career Tributes” are powerful, fast, and lethal. The arena is well stocked with weapons. Cameras are everywhere, televising the games to a bloodthirsty public. The Gamemakers have complete control of the environment and can force the kids together where they’ll have to fight each other. But one of the other teens doesn’t want to kill Katniss. Peeta Mellark comes from Katniss’s home district. He’s been in love with Katniss since the age of five. Peeta doesn’t want to kill Katniss. He wants to kill her enemies so she can live. But Katniss doesn’t believe anyone could be such a fool, and she thinks Peeta’s her worst enemy. Can Katniss teach her own cynical heart to trust Peeta—before the other tributes slice her to bits?
Example 2: The Crucible in Outlander
Claire Randall just wants to return to her own time. What’s preventing her? First, she’s held captive by the local laird, Colum MacKenzie, who thinks she may be an English spy or a French spy, or worse. Claire is an Englishwoman, and she was caught prowling around with no good explanation. Clearly, she’s up to no good. But Claire has a worse enemy than Colum. Not far away in Fort William, there’s an evil English army captain named Jack Randall, who just happens to be a distant ancestor of Claire’s husband, Frank. Jack Randall is a vicious sadist, and he has his reasons for hating Claire. Claire has one real friend—a young Scottish outlaw named Jamie Fraser. Jamie is tall, handsome, and robust, and he’s got a crush on Claire. Six weeks after Claire arrives in 1743, she’s forced to marry Jamie. It doesn’t take long before Claire finds herself returning Jamie’s love. And it’s an amazing love. There’s an extraordinary soul connection between Claire and Jamie that she never had with Frank. But she did marry Frank first, and that means something to her. Can Claire find a way back to the time portal so she can return to Frank—and more importantly, can she leave Jamie?
Example 3: The Crucible in The Godfather
Michael Corleone just wants to live a decent, honest life. What’s preventing him? His father, Vito Corleone, has recently turned down a lucrative deal offered by Virgil “Turk” Sollozzo, a heroin smuggler backed by one of the rival Families in the New York underworld. Sollozzo orders a hit on Vito Corleone, and it nearly succeeds. Vito is barely alive and unable to make decisions, while his battered Family enters an all-out war with Sollozzo and the Tattaglia Family. The odds are long against the Corleones. Michael has two older brothers, but neither is a good leader. The Corleone Family has plenty of foot soldiers, but they need to knock out Sollozzo if they want any hope of staying alive. Michael agrees to kill Sollozzo—but this sucks him into the criminal world he detests. And now he’s on the run, because in killing Sollozzo, he’s also killed a captain in the New York Police Department. Can Michael find peace and safety in this life, ever again? And what’s to become of his girlfriend, Kay, who comes from a decent, honest, hardworking family like the one Michael always wanted? Will Michael become the one thing he most desperately doesn’t want to be—the new Godfather?
How Stories Create Powerful Emotional Experiences
Your story tells what your Character does to break out of her Crucible. Your Character is going to fight and fight and fight. Not necessarily physically. Most of the fights will be emotional or mental. Your Character may lose a lot of fights, but the only one that matters is the last one. There are three ways this can end:
If your Character wins in the end, that’s one kind of powerful emotional experience, a happy ending.
If the Crucible wins in the end, that�
��s another kind of powerful emotional experience, a sad ending.
If your Character and the Crucible split the win, that’s a third kind of powerful emotional experience, a bittersweet ending.
Those are the three main options for your story as a whole. That’s how you deliver a powerful emotional experience for your main story.
But it’s not enough to do that just once at the end of your story. A story can be very long. Your reader isn’t reading for just one powerful emotional experience at the end of your tale.
Your reader is reading for a whole string of powerful emotional experiences, over and over and over again.
Your job is to deliver those powerful emotional experiences, as many as possible.
You do that by breaking up your story into a long string of scenes. And by making every single scene in your story a dynamite scene that delivers the goods.
There’s a simple secret to make sure every scene packs a powerful punch.
We’ll find out that secret in the next chapter.
Chapter Three
Every Scene Is a Miniature Story
We just saw that you need to give your reader a powerful emotional experience in every scene.
But how do you do that? What’s the secret?
The secret is simple. You have to make sure that every scene is a miniature story.
Let’s be clear what we’re saying here. We already know that a story is made up of a long string of scenes.
The crucial point is that each of these scenes is its own miniature story, complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end that delivers a powerful emotional experience.
A scene is a story within a story.
That’s the secret to making sure that every scene gives the reader a powerful emotional experience.
The logic is simple. Every scene is a miniature story. Every story gives a powerful emotional experience. Therefore, every scene will give a powerful emotional experience.
This may seem obvious, but go to any critique group and look at the scenes that writers bring to be critiqued. You’ll be astonished how often they bring a scene that isn’t a story in its own right. Maybe it fills in some backstory. Maybe it develops one of the characters. Maybe it just kind of wanders. All too often, it’s not even close to being a story.
If a scene isn’t a story, all on its own, then it’s a bad scene.
Make that your mantra and you’ll see an instant jump in the quality of your writing.
Every scene is a miniature story.
Every scene.
Every Scene Needs a Character in a Crucible
If every scene is a miniature story, and every story shows a Character in a Crucible, then every scene needs a Character in a miniature Crucible.
Let’s be clear on this. You have a main story you’re writing and it has a main Character in a main Crucible.
But that main story is composed of a number of scenes, each one a miniature story. So each scene puts one of your Characters into a miniature Scene Crucible that will last only until the end of the scene. That Scene Crucible is nowhere near as big and demanding as the main Story Crucible. The Story Crucible will last for the length of the main story. The Scene Crucible will last only until the end of the scene.
With every scene you ever write, or every scene you ever edit, ask yourself immediately,
Who’s my Character for this scene?
What’s the Crucible for this scene?
Those two questions are gold.
The rest of this book will work out the details. Right now, let’s look at some example scenes from the example stories we looked at in the last chapter.
Example 1: A Scene in The Hunger Games
Before the Games begin, Katniss and the other tributes spend several days in training. Now it’s time for each tribute to have a private session with the Gamemakers to show off his or her special skills. The Gamemakers will give each tribute a rating that may help them get sponsors during the Games. Katniss is determined to make a good showing and is delighted to find some bows and arrows. She’s spent years hunting for her food, so archery is her superpower. But these bows are different from the one she has at home, and she misses her first couple of shots. By the time she gets used to the new equipment, the Gamemakers have stopped paying attention. They’re crowded around the buffet table, where there’s a gigantic roast pig. Katniss is furious. She’s not big or strong or fast, but she has this one remarkable skill to show off and they can’t be bothered to watch? In a blind rage, Katniss puts an arrow on the string, pulls it back, and shoots straight at the Gamemakers. The Gamemakers scream and scatter. When they come up for air, they see that Katniss has put her arrow right through the apple in the pig’s mouth.
In this scene, the Character is Katniss.
The Crucible has several parts to it:
Katniss has only a few minutes to impress the Gamemakers and possibly give herself a bit of an edge.
The equipment is unfamiliar, and she blows her first chance to make a good impression.
By the time she’s got things figured out, the Gamemakers just don’t seem to care.
Example 2: A Scene in Outlander
Claire Randall has just stepped through some stones in a standing circle and had a weird experience she doesn’t understand. She’s very disoriented and wanders down the hill to the plain below. There she sees a half-dozen Scotsmen having some sort of battle with some red-coated soldiers. She assumes she’s wandered into a movie and backs into the woods, where she’s grabbed by a man who looks exactly like her husband. Only he isn’t. He says his name is Captain Jonathan Randall, and he demands to know who she is. She tries to escape, but he’s too quick and strong for her. And he seems to think she’s a prostitute, based on the way she’s dressed. Which is weird, because she’s dressed in normal clothes. Captain Randall interrogates her hard, but she can’t give a good explanation of who she is or what she’s doing here, and she can’t escape. Claire is terrified. Will he kill her? Rape her? Claire is rescued by a small, wiry Scotsman who knocks out Captain Randall and drags her away into the bushes, pulling her to the ground. She bites his hand, and then something smashes her in the head, knocking her out cold.
In this scene, the Character is Claire.
Her Crucible has several parts:
She’s in 1743 and doesn’t know it yet.
She’s captured almost immediately by the evil Captain Randall, who’s in the middle of a skirmish with some local Scottish outlaws.
She is dressed in a thin modern dress, which makes her look like a floozy by the standards of 1743.
She has no good explanation for why she is here, and Captain Randall suspects her of being a spy.
Example 3: A Scene in The Godfather
Michael Corleone’s father, Vito, was shot just a few days ago, and now Michael’s whole life has gone nuts. His family is on high alert. They’re talking about vengeance. And they’re worried about what their enemy Sollozzo will do next. They’re also treating Michael like he’s an outsider, a civilian in a war zone. Which he is. Michael’s father lies sedated in a heavily guarded hospital room in the city. Two armed police detectives are right outside his hospital room. Dozens of the Family foot soldiers are stationed in the Godfather’s room, the hospital lobby, and the street outside. Late at night, after visiting hours are over, Michael takes a taxi to the hospital to visit his father. He’s aghast to find none of the Family soldiers in the street. None in the lobby. None on the Godfather’s floor. None in his room. And the police detectives are gone. The Godfather is completely defenseless. Michael learns from the nurse that everybody was cleared out just minutes ago. He sees immediately that another hit is coming, probably in the next few minutes. Michael calls his brother to send in reinforcements as fast as possible. He persuades the nurse to move his father to a new room. He tells his father to keep quiet, no matter what he hears. And then Michael walks downstairs and out onto the street to do whatever he can to prevent the hit men from finding his
father. Michael is alone and unarmed. But at least the other side knows he’s a civilian. Can he outwit them long enough for the Family foot soldiers to arrive?
In this scene, the Character is Michael.
His Crucible is as follows:
His father is weak and sedated and can’t be moved.
All of the Family guards have been cleared away by the cops.
The police detectives have also been called away.
Another hit is coming within minutes, and there isn’t time to wait for reinforcements to arrive.
Breaking the Scene Crucible
Each scene in your story tells what one of your Characters does to break out of the Scene Crucible. Once the Character has broken out, that Scene Crucible is finished and the scene is over.
Then it’s on to the next scene with a new Scene Crucible. Some parts of the new Crucible may be the same as they were in the old. But at least one part of the old Crucible will be broken. At least one part of the new Crucible will be different.
Let’s see how each of our Characters breaks their Scene Crucible in the examples we just looked at.
Example 1: How Katniss Breaks Her Scene Crucible
Katniss’s Scene Crucible is her fifteen-minute private session with the Gamemakers, where she’s been set up to make a bad impression. She breaks her Scene Crucible by shooting an arrow into the group of Gamemakers. She will never again be in the situation of trying to impress them. They’re impressed! Her next Scene Crucible will be the result of the smashing impression she just made.
How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method Page 2