In my line of work...(Did I mention I am a writing coach? I help writers become authors every day. Shameless plug, I know. But they did let me put my name on the cover of the book, after all.)
In my line of work, I talk to a lot of literary agents. When we’re not talking about baseball and the stock market (just kidding; we don’t talk about any of that), we talk about writers and books. I ask what they’re looking for, what’s trending now, and what trends they see in the submissions they’re getting.
Now lean in, because I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
(Did you just lean into a book? Silly.)
The number one frustration I hear over and over and ov—well, you get the idea, from agents is writers not knowing their craft.
Now, you don’t have to worry about being one of those sloppy types, because you’re reading this book, and that tells me you’re not only committed to learning the craft, but to submitting a quality manuscript. You have just increased your chances of acceptance by at least 10 times.
Pat yourself on the back.
No. Really. Do it. Now.
Not only do you need to know the principles of craft, but you need to know how to apply them to your manuscript.
Well, if that’s true, Annalisa, why didn’t we just start with craft on page one?
Excellent question. (Have I mentioned that you are full of excellent questions?)
Here we are on page 94. That’s a lot of pages and I haven’t even gotten into the nitty gritty of craft yet?
Why?
Sloppy writing?
Lack of clarity?
Oh no, my friend. If there’s one thing I am crystal clear on, it’s what is most important to facilitating quality writing—the kind agents are looking for, the kind that’s rooted in craft.
Mindset.
Working with your brain, the way it’s intended to function. Writing from a place of grounded confidence. (Not some “Aw, honey” kind of lovey dovey fest, but a solid place of knowing what works, what doesn’t, and where you sit.) Finding the kind of quality feedback that accelerates your writing.
Without the right mindset and support, a writing library the size of the universe isn’t going to help you to become a published author.
If all we needed was knowledge, wouldn’t we all get published after attending our first class or conference, or at least the hundredth?
The problem isn’t “If only I knew more” for most would-be authors. It’s “If only I had the confidence that would lead me to find the time to finish my book.”
Are we going to dig deep into craft?
Heck ya.
Are there craft techniques that can accelerate your manuscript to publishable?
Heck ya.
But none of this craft information means anything if it’s not built on a solid foundation of confidence, time, and support.
And that, my dear, dear writer, is why I have spent the better part of the first half of my book nurturing you into the right place to jump into technique—because that mindset is the foundation of all the work I do with writers, and the heart of my philosophy.
CHARACTER AND CONFLICT WITH A LITTLE BIT OF SETTING THROWN IN
THE PARTS OF A story are like moving gears in a machine. All the parts need to be working, and working together, for the story to move forward, but it’s hard to isolate the functioning of just one.
Even though it’s hard to isolate, we still need to start somewhere, because, after all, this is a book on storytelling. I’d better hop to it and talk about storytelling. Character makes sense as a starting point because:
You can’t set action into motion without someone to do it. Right, right, right. I hear you. What if we have objects do it? Well, the objects are still acting like characters. One has only to think of the dancing cartoon dishes in a certain kids’ film to know how objects can act as characters. Someone or some thing acting as a character needs to do the doing.
Some plots are character-driven, and so the character’s story is the main story of the plot.
Even in a plot-driven plot the character’s personal struggle will dictate his or her choices, and, as a consequence, the overarching plot arc.
We’ll talk more about plot types in, well, the plotting section. (I can be so logical sometimes.)
How pantsers get to know their characters
The most important thing for you to know as an author is that what you need to know about your characters and what your reader needs to know are two entirely separate planets.
Life is like an analogy
Photograph by by Joellen Fraizer
Here we have an photograph of a glacier, and you can see that there’s only a small portion of this glacier sticking out of the water, but there’s a whopper of a chunk of ice under the water.
Character is like this glacier in that you, as the author—you, as the creator of the piece—need to have this full ice and snow picture of your character. You need to know everything that’s beneath the surface, but what you’ll show in your actual story will only be that teeny, tiny piece that you see poking out above the water’s surface.
So, what do I, the author, need to know, and what does my reader need to know?
I’m so glad you asked. Follow me.
In your novel, you’re likely to have four-ish characters the reader will need to know in depth: certainly the protagonist, and perhaps an antagonist—and then there might be some other supporting character(s) that you’ll need to know at great depth.
Of utmost importance to this Getting to Know You process is not to waste too many pages or hours trying to figure out who your characters are in the abstract—making lists of hair color, tattoos, and the brand of bike they had as a kid.
If you’re a pantser (and you probably are since you picked up this book), then you are more likely to succumb to the temptation to fill an entire notebook waxing poetic on the dreams and aspirations and favorite brand of toilet paper for each character.
Look, I don’t know why we do it; we just have this thing for needing to understand the setting, the plot, every quirk and motivation.
Step away from the candy bowl! You’ve had enough.
Ok, ok, but how do I know?
My, you are persistent, aren’t you?
The trick here is not to get lost in listing and profiling. The most important thing you can do to get to know your characters is to see them in action. If you’re not spending most of your time figuring out how your characters act or acted, you’re probably wasting your time.
Consider this: You meet the perfect hottie on DreamDates- NowNowNow.com. The profile is perfect: hard-working, good-looking, down home values and even a dog (ooo, responsible). First date goes great, this dream date says all the right things at all the right times. Perfect. Sign me up, buy the ring, I have found love, baby.
Until not-so-dream-date tells off the waitress, slams the door, and has no money to help foot the bill.
Wait, this was so perfect. The behavior doesn’t match the profile. What happened?
You didn’t see Dream Boat in action before you made plans.
So many authors get deceived by their characters in the same way daters get let down. These are the writers who complain like chain-smoking nannies in back rooms about “misbehaving characters.”
What did you expect?
You put all these expectations on them before you even knew them. If you just asked, if you just spent a little more time observing their behavior, they would have shown you everything.
So, how do we get the 411 before we pop the question? (If you follow my analogy; remember I did say life is an analogy.)
The number one thing
(This is really important, which is why I made it number one. Genius, right?)
The number one thing that you need to know about your character is what his or her goals and motivations are.
What’s the main goal, and what’s getting in the way? What is his or her greatest need?
; Because the goal, and the struggle to get it, is what’s going to drive the story, right? (We call that conflict, and we’ll get to that in a bit.)
We must know: What are they seeking? What are they trying to get, and what’s getting in their way?
We understand goals and the struggle to reach them as a fundamental of story; on some level we understand that the goal paradigm is the most essential element to know about a character. It might sound really obvious, BUT a lot of times, especially for pantsers, the ultimate goal isn’t particularly obvious when you start out a piece. Or it might change as time goes on. You think that your main character wants to find love, but really what they wanted to find was a sense of belonging.
You can put down the tissues. No, really. There, there, it’s all right.
I know. Writing is frustrating, and if we didn’t love it so much we’d take up knitting or jai alai.
But since we do love writing, and we’re going to keep at it, we have to accept that sometimes it gets to decide how it wants to get done.
For many pantsers that means that the character’s motivations, goals, and ultimate journey may change completely from the beginning to the end of the process.
Remember that “change your perspective” thing from a few chapters ago? Well, let’s try that here.
Let’s see this writing journey to discover character motivations as a gift. So, we don’t have all the answers at the beginning. That can be freeing, an opportunity to let our imaginations run wild, and get into creative flow.
We pantsers aren’t totally off the hook, of course, because we’ll have to do catch up work in the revision. We are never free from the obligation to know the protagonist’s main goal and what’s getting in their way, but the timing of that knowledge is flexible.
So, pantser: It’s ok if you don’t know the goals and the motivations and the needs and the impediments right at the beginning, but—and this is really important—you need to go back in subsequent drafts until you figure it out. Being a pantser who finishes and publishes a novel means being committed to repeated revision.
We’ll talk more about this later, but just know that you’re going to have to go back, and go back, and go back, to make sure that everything is consistent in your novel, so you can’t have a character who was seeking love at the beginning and then ends up finding a job—unless you’ve done some work in the middle, through revision, to explain how that goal or motivation changed for that character.
Pantsers are the kind of writers who just have to start somewhere and then allow themselves to be comfortable with the change that will happen. Over time, you’ll know when you can let your characters misbehave a little (and drive their cigarettepuffing caretakers mad), and when it’s time to step in and tell them how it’s going to be.
For pantsers, a lot of the discovery happens in the writing. In other words, we must write to discover and this writing must be through setting the characters in motion.
What might this look like?
Let’s jump in Arthur the Author’s brain for a moment and take a listen. Shh. No, it’s not illegal. This is just pretend.
So, I wrote this book because I saw on the news that someone had won the lottery but not claimed the prize, and I thought: Why would anyone do that? Were they deceased? Had they lost the ticket?
And I figured that losing the ticket was the most likely— some people are so disorganized, right? It would be easy to lose a ticket. There’s a lot of tension and a lot at stake in that situation, so I decided to write about this man who loses a lottery ticket.
That’s my outline: After years of playing the lottery, a man wins, but then loses the ticket.
I started with the moment he found out he’d won. He and his wife are sitting on the couch eating TV dinners on their little TV trays, watching the news. Now, Frank plays the same lottery numbers every time, so he has them memorized. His teeth nearly fall out when he sees them on the screen.
“Margie, we’ve won.”
He stands to pull the ticket out of his wallet where he always puts it, but it’s not there.
What happens next? How does his wife feel? Does he find the ticket? Well, I don’t know, so I keep typing.
He reaches into all his pockets hoping it’s a mistake.
“What’s going on?” Margie asks.
Frank is so upset, he can’t even speak. He’s reaching frantically into all his pockets. How could he have misplaced it?
So I’m watching these two and I think, what makes sense? What would happen next? “Margie, I just lost ten million dollars.”
“You mean...you lost the ticket?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry.”
Frank falls into Margie’s arms in tears.
What’s going to happen to this couple as a result of this moment? Will it split them up? Bring them together? Or something else entirely?
I don’t know. I keep watching and typing.
Margie is sitting on a kitchen stool the next day; she’s on the phone. “Yes, he says he lost the ticket. Well, I never liked his gambling anyway—you know that. I just don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
Who’s she talking to? Doesn’t matter. As I’m writing, I have no idea about the big picture. I’m just writing, exploring, finding what’s interesting and asking questions.
Does Frank find the ticket under the seat of his car? No, that feels too easy, too cliché. Something else is going on here. Let’s set them in motion again.
Margie is in her bedroom now. She’s looking around as if she hopes no one sees her, which is weird because she’s in her own bedroom. Why would she do that? Let’s watch.
She opens the small sock drawer at the top of her dresser, rifles around like she’s looking for something, and pulls out a single sock. She reaches into the sock and pulls out a folded lottery ticket that looks worn, as if it could have been in a man’s wallet.
Just then, Frank walks in and sees his wife holding the ticket he’s been frantically looking for for over 24 hours.
“Margie, Margie my love, you found it. We’re rich. You found it.”
“No, Frank, I hid it.”
“What do you mean, Margie? What are you talking about?”
“Frank, I’ve a good mind to rip this ticket to shreds. I’ve told you all these years how I feel about your gambling and now you’ve gone and done something stupid and won.”
Is she going to rip the ticket? Why does she hate gambling? What’s going to happen next? I don’t know.
“Sweetie. Sugar pie. Do not rip that ticket. It’s our future. It’s our…”
“Frank Doherty, don’t Sweetie Sugar Pie me. Let me tell you right now, you can have this lottery ticket or you can have me, but it ain’t going to be both.”
Wow. That story changed fast and it got more interesting than just a lost lottery ticket. Which will he choose, his wife or the ticket? Why? What’s at stake for him?
That’s the fun of pantsing. It’s like watching a movie that is taking shape right now and you get to step in and contribute. My outline was about a lost lottery ticket and what happens when a ticket gets lost. I started there, but my story roamed into something far richer and far deeper.
I just want to take a moment to highlight some of the things Arthur the Author said here and to reflect on his process.
Arthur the Author: That’s my outline: After years of playing the lottery, a man wins, but then loses the ticket.
Please channel your fourth grade teacher. S/he’s standing right here, right now, with the roll of gold stars, the A+s, and she’s grading this outline. Does little Artie get one? No—and GOOD!
Notice that this accomplished author went in with an idea, a concept, and that this concept was to set the characters in motion.
Quick Quiz: What color hair does Margie have?
Again, Arthur the Author for the win. He doesn’t waste time figuring out what his characters are wearing or whether the walls are painted or wallpapered. It’s not important. And, if I
can put words in the mouth of the illustrious Good Ole Arthur, I would guess he would say that if those details became important, he would fill them in later.
Arthur the Author: What’s going to happen to this couple as a result of this moment? Will it split them up? Bring them together? Or something else entirely? I don’t know. I keep watching and typing.
Notice how he’s asking himself questions throughout the process. The characters drive a little while, then he drives, then they drive, then he drives.
He’s a great turn-taker, our friend Art.
If you are a writer who complains of unruly characters, take note. Characters drive sometimes, but you’re that calm driver’s ed teacher who ultimately has control of the car.
Arthur the Author: My outline was about a lost lottery ticket and what happens when a ticket gets lost. I started there, but my story roamed into something far richer and far deeper.
Notice this clever move.
(I feel like I’m doing a play-by-play on SportsCenter. He dashes to the right, dribbles, pivots. He shoots, he scores.)
Arthur does score here, and here’s why: He allowed his idea to evolve over the course of the writing. He came to a better idea through the writing process. He crafted a little, the characters crafted a little. He pushed, they moved. They acted, he followed. Through this give and take, the story became better (for what Arthur wanted to do) than his original concept.
A good scientist does not enter an experiment with any presuppositions. In fact, bias can ruin an experiment entirely. We writers could learn from this approach; there’s power in setting action into motion, and practicing careful observation.
Pantser Peril
Sometimes pantsers can feel up to their necks in what’s going on with the characters. That’s peril for pantsers, or, if your prefer: the Pantser Peril. In following your character, as happened to Arthur the Author (who could be any of us, right?), you might end up in a place that you hadn’t anticipated. You might end up in a place where suddenly your story changes completely.
Storytelling for Pantsers Page 6