Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

by Donald Maass

  A larger-than-life action can be even more effective when it is something that the character involved does not want to do. In the last chapter, I discussed Laurell K. Hamilton's series heroine, vampire hunter Anita Blake. Anita hunts and kills law-breaking vampires; despite that, her long-term lover is the Master vampire Jean-Claude. Anita has steamy sex with Jean-Claude, yet does not fulfill Jean-Claude's desire to truly go "all the way," as we see early in Blue Moon:

  He tried to turn my head to one side, nuzzling at my neck. I turned my face into his, blocking him. "No blood, Jean-Claude."

  He went almost limp on top of me, face buried in the rumpled sheets. "Please, ma petite."

  I pushed at his shoulder. "Get off of me."

  He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, carefully not looking at me. "I can enter every orifice of your body with every part of me, but you refuse me the last bit of yourself."

  I got off the bed carefully, not sure my knees were steady. "I am not food," I said.

  "It is so much more than feeding, ma petite. If only you would allow me to show you how very much more."

  I grabbed the pile of blouses and started taking them off the hanger and folding them in the suitcase. "No blood; that is the rule."

  No means no to Anita Blake, obviously, particularly where it involves further blurring the lines between her mortal self and the vampires she both hates and loves. As Hamilton's series progresses Anita gains magical powers and authority over other creatures, but a girl has to have some limits, right?

  But limits are made to be exceeded, and that is what happens toward the end of Blue Moon when one of Anita's vampire helpers, Jean-Claude's old friend and facially scarred second-in-command, Asher, is fatally wounded. There is only one thing that will save him: blood. Anita has vowed never to let a vampire feed on her, but Asher is near death. And so . . .

  I put my right wrist, encased in white bandages, in front of his mouth. "Take my blood."

  "To drink from you is to give you power over any of us. I do not want to be your slave any more than I already am."

  I was crying, tears so hot they burned. "Don't let Colin kill

  you. Please, please!" I held him against me and whispered, "Don't leave us, Asher." I felt Jean-Claude all those miles away. I felt his panic at the thought of losing Asher. "Don't leave us, not now that we've found you again. Tu es beau, mon amour. Tu me fais craquer."

  He actually smiled. "I shatter your heart, eh?" I kissed his cheek, kissed his face, and cried, hot tears against the harsh scars of his face. "Je t'embrasse partout. Je t'embrasse partout. I kiss you all over, mon amour." He stared up at me. "Je te bois des yeux." "Don't drink me with your eyes, damn it, drink me with your mouth." I tore the bandages away from my right wrist with my teeth and put my bare, warm flesh against his cold lips. He whispered, "Je t'adore." Fangs sank into my wrist.

  Thus, in an act of self-sacrifice (see High Moments in chapter twenty), Anita does something that previously she would never, ever have done. Larger-than-life actions like these make Hamilton's Anita Blake the kind of heroine that readers return to again and again. She exceeds her boundaries in ever bigger ways.

  Harshest of limits are those we impose upon ourselves in our heads. Our inner censors probably are more powerful than any censorship board any dictatorship could devise. Breaking through to new ways of thinking, however, is the foundation of growth. To change, we must first change our minds.

  Karen Joy Fowler's short stories, teaching at the Clarion workshop, and general association with the science fiction community leaves many thinking that she is a writer only of speculative fiction. Fowler's subtle, finely-crafted novels are far more than that, however, as she proved with her third novel, Sister Noon, a study of character transformation set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. A critical success, the book also was a finalist for the PEN/ Faulkner Award.

  Sister Noon's heroine is conventional and colorless Lizzie Hayes, a forty-year-old spinster who is the treasurer of the Ladies Relief and Protection Society Home, an orphanage. With tiny, careful strokes, Fowler paints a picture of a woman whose world and personality constrain her as tightly as a Victorian corset. Passive and biddable as a child, Lizzie was prone to over-stimulation from books and sermons. Childish romanticism gave way to adolescent melancholia, expressed through diets and music. Even so, Lizzie abided by her mother's strictures, down to the last hated pea. A self-conscious adult, she gains strength from her religious faith and unswerving adherence to her chosen course.

  Lizzie's life begins to change when an odd orphan girl, Jenny Ijub, is delivered to the Brown Arc (as the orphanage is nicknamed) by a colorful and scandalous San Francisco denizen named Mary Ellen Pleasant. Through Mrs. Pleasant, Lizzie is drawn into the orbit of the "House of Mystery" of Thomas and Teresa Bell, who puzzlingly "employ" Mrs. Pleasant as housekeeper, even though she clearly is wealthier than they are. Lizzie's first visit to the house hints at her inner longing for change:

  Sometime after Lizzie finished her tea [See Low Tension Fixes Part I: The Problem With Tea in chapter twenty-two], Mrs. Pleasant asked if she was happy with her life. She should have said yes. She rarely felt unhappy. Daily association with the downtrodden kept her keenly aware of her advantages. She knew the pleasure of doing good. She knew moments of great joy, often in church during the high notes of particular hymns. She would open her mouth to sing them, and her heart would leap with her voice up to where the sunlight filtered through the colored glass, igniting the motes of dust above her head. So many pleasures. The sight of red tulips. The little buzz of life in the grass. A letter with her name and foreign stamps. The smell of rain. The taste of pomegranate jelly. Reading novels in the afternoon, with no corset and her shoes off and her feet on a chair. . . . And yet she answered that she was not.

  Through seances, drink, and exposure to the confusing mysteries of the Bell household, with its unnumbered brood of ill-matched children, of which Jenny Ijub apparently was one, Lizzie's granite foundation begins to shake. She begins to walk outdoors at unsafe hours, imbibe rose-hip wine, and care less for appearances. The news that Jenny was purchased (and may in fact be another child of Lizzie's own father), along with the effects of a diphtheria outbreak that quarantines the Brown Arc and takes six young lives, further shifts Lizzie's perception of herself. Lizzie notes the change:

  Are you happy with your life? Mrs. Pleasant had asked her on that first afternoon in the House of Mystery, and ever since the question, and only since the question, the answer had become no. How did she used to do it, take such pleasure in small things? How would she ever be able to do so again?

  Looking backward, Lizzie reviews her limited experiences of sexual stimulation, and wonders at her resolution that she could do without. One evening she loses her way and finds herself on notorious Morton Street. As she walks past the houses where prostitutes display themselves in bay windows, she contemplates the small pleasures of the flesh with which she has satisfied herself, realizes that they are from God, and carries her thinking further:

  None of this belonged on Morton Street. Lizzie tried to imagine a looking-glass alley where men sat in windows and waited for women with money. She pretended she was entering a door, making a selection, demanding who and what she wanted. Money on the dressing table. The man like a puppet in her arms.

  The fantasy was ludicrous. And upsetting. She didn't have a word for the combination of horror and thrill and buffoonery and sadness it gave her.

  These are thoughts that the Lizzie Hayes of the novel's opening would never, ever have had. The change in Lizzie's thinking finally leads her to uncover the secrets of the House of Mystery.

  How do you build a larger-than-life character in your current manuscript? What does your protagonist say, do, and think that he, or we, would never, ever venture? The following exercise will help you develop these qualities, but do not rely on that alone. Look for opportunities throughout your story to heighten these qualities.

  ___EXERCISE


  Creating Larger-Than-life Qualities

  Step 1: Write down the following:

  What is the one thing that your protagonist would never, ever say?

  What is the one thing that your protagonist would never, ever do?

  What is the one thing that your protagonist would never, ever think?

  Step 2: Find places in your story in which your protagonist must say, do, and think those very things. What are the circumstances? What are the consequences? Make notes, starting now.

  Follow-up work 1: Find twelve more points in the story in which your protagonist can break through his boundaries.

  Follow-up work 2: Find a single point in the story in which your protagonist pointedly lets go an opportunity for a larger-than-life gesture.

  Conclusion: A larger-than-life character is one who says, does, and thinks things that we would like to but never dare. This does not mean necessarily mean turning your characters into wise-crackers or pulp cliches. It does mean pushing them out of their own bounds, whatever those might be.

  Heightening Larger-Than-Life Qualities

  Sharpen larger-than-life qualities throughout your story. Fine advice, you may be thinking, but how do I know where to start? Larger-than-life opportunities can crop up anywhere; it only takes being alert to the possibility of sending your protagonist or point-of-view character beyond what is usual.

  For instance, it is not uncommon in novels to find a character remembering a lost loved one, such as a wife who has died. Nothing special in that. Happens all the time. Does it require big treatment? Not necessarily. But it is an opportunity.

  In Barbara Freethy's Summer Secrets, Duncan McKenna is a sailor who eight years before the action of the novel won a round-the-world race with his three teenaged daughters as his crew. Fifteen minutes of fame resulted, but even that fame and Duncan's fanatic love of sailboat racing cannot compete with his memory of his dead wife, Nora, as we discover when a reporter, Tyler Jamison, asks him about her:

  "What was she like?" he asked. "Your wife, Nora."

  Duncan lifted his face to the sun. "Close your eyes," he said.

  "What?"

  "Close your eyes," Duncan repeated.

  Tyler hesitated, then closed his eyes, wondering what was supposed to happen.

  "Feel that heat on your face?" Duncan asked.

  Now that he mentioned it, yes. "Sure." There was a warmth on his skin, a light behind his lids, the scent of summer in his nostrils. His senses were heightened with his eyes closed.

  "That's what she did for me," Duncan murmured. "She made me feel everything more intensely than I'd ever felt it before."

  Where a lesser writer would simply use words to convey a nostalgic feeling, Freethy uses an active demonstration; one that is big, surprising, and larger than life—yet a perfectly natural way for a seafaring man to look at it. By heightening this moment, Freethy makes Duncan McKenna a larger-than-life figure—though not always an admirable one, as we later discover.

  The second step in this chapter's exercise directs you to take a moment and make it smaller; that is, underplay it. In Dan Brown's best-selling thriller The Da Vinci Code, American symbologist Robert Langdon is asked to consult on the murder of an elderly curator, Jacques Sauniere, who was shot in the Louvre after closing and, before he died, left behind highly cryptic clues.

  What Langdon doesn't know is that the captain of Paris's homicide detectives, Bezu Fache, nicknamed "The Bull," thinks he is the killer. Langdon is warned by a beautiful young police cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, who is the murdered curator's niece. Sophie helps Langdon escape the Louvre—but not before they dispose of a GPS tracking chip planted in Langdon's pocket, misdirect the entire police force, solve several puzzling anagrams, and find two new clues.

  All that in twenty minutes or so. Free of the Louvre, they zoom away in Sophie's miniature car, and a chase across the nighttime streets of Paris begins. As they careen onto the broad Champs-Elysees, Langdon looks out the rear window at the police cars massing behind them at the museum. His comment at this moment?

  Let me ask you, what would you have Langdon say at a time like this? Something like, Holy Sh—/, perhaps? Maybe just, Step on it! Anything like that would certainly serve the purposes of the scene. Here is how Brown chooses to handle it:

  His heartbeat finally slowing, Langdon turned back around.

  "That was interesting."

  Langdon's sangfroid at this tense moment is far more effective than an excited outburst. James Bond would be proud.

  As you comb through your manuscript looking for ways to heighten anything your protagonist says, does, or thinks, look for ways to take things up in temperature, but also down. Play against the prevailing mood of a scene. A larger-than-life protagonist talks, acts, and reasons independently. Let your hero's speech, actions, and thoughts follow their own course, regardless of what is going on. Surprise us. That sounds hard, but it really is only a technique.

  Adjusting the Volume

  Step 1: At random in the middle of your manuscript, pick anything at all that your protagonist thinks, says, or does. Heighten it. Make it bigger, funnier, more shocking, more vulgar, more out of bounds, more over the top, more violent, more insightful, more wildly romantic, more active, more anything. Make the change in your manuscript.

  Step 2: Take that same action, thought, or line of dialogue, and make it smaller. Tone it down; understate it; make it quieter, more internal, more personal, more ironic, more offhand, less impassioned, barely noticeable. Make the change in your manuscript.

  Follow-up work: Select twenty-four more points in the story where you can heighten or diminish something that your protagonist does, says, or thinks.

  Conclusion: Larger-than-life characters powerfully attract us. Why? They are surprising, vital, and alive. They do not let life slip by. Every moment counts. Every day has meaning. How can you give that kind of life force to your protagonist? Turn up the volume on what she says, thinks, and does.

  Character Turnabouts and Surprises

  It's too bad that some novelists don't publish their early drafts. Or do they? Anyway, it would be interesting to compare early attempts at a given scene with what later is published.

  Generally speaking we don't get that opportunity, but even so one can sometimes see in some novels scenes that do not play the way we would expect them to. The whole thrust is a surprise, or perhaps the scene turns in an unexpected direction, or a character does something that we do not anticipate.

  Such effects come from trying different approaches to a scene. In essence, that is what Reversing Motives, the exercise that follows, is about: trying a different approach to see if it works better.

  Now, how would you handle the following scene? In an ancient agrarian society, one that is tribal and polygamous, women look out for and support each other. One day, a dissolute and cruel husband gambles away his concubine. The women of the tribe are upset. They want to pay the gambling debt and save her. Lacking funds of their own, they must obtain the debt price from the wealthiest man of their tribe—but how?

  What would your approach be? Would the women demand the money? Would they go on strike? Perhaps withhold sex? Would they trick or threaten or bribe the wealthy man in some other way? In Anita Diamant's The Red Tent this is the situation faced by the four wives of Jacob (who are also sisters) when their father's much-abused concubine, Ruti, is lost in a game of chance. The appeal to Jacob is headed up by the resourceful first wife, Leah, mother of the novel's narrator:

  Leah's cheeks turned red as she approached her husband. And then she did something extraordinary. Leah got down on her knees and, taking Jacob's hand, kissed his fingers. Watching my mother submit like this was like seeing a sheep hunting a jackal

  or a man nursing a baby. My mother, who never wanted for words, nearly stuttered as she spoke.

  "Husband, father of my children, beloved friend," she said. "I come to plead a case without merit, for pure pity's sake. Husband," she said,
"Jacob," she whispered, "you know I place my life in your keeping only and that my father's name is an abomination to me.

  "Even so, I come to ask that you redeem my father's woman from the slavery into which he has sold her."

  Leah's simple appeal for mercy works. Jacob pulls together enough goods to barter away the gambling debt. Leah's approach is a reversal of her usual way of working, and so takes us by surprise. Her appeal to her husband's higher instincts elevates both her and him; and, in a way, us as well.

  The exercise that follows is one of the most popular in the live Breakout Novel workshops. A majority of participants prefer the scenes yielded from the approach over their original scenes. If you do too, why use it only once? Do the follow-up work and reverse motives in six more scenes. You just might like what happens.

  _EXERCISE

  Reversing Motives

  Step 1: Pick any scene in your novel that features your protagonist. What is his main action in the scene? What is he trying to accomplish, obtain, or avoid? Write that down.

  Step 2: Write a complete list of the reasons why your protagonist is doing what she is doing. Write down as many of her motives as you can. Do not look at the next step until you are done.

  Step 3: Circle the last reason on your list, the last thing that you wrote down.

  Step 4: Rewrite your opening of the scene, only this time, send your protagonist into action (or avoidance) foremost and primarily for the reason you circled. Start writing now.

  Follow-up work: Reverse motives in six other scenes.

  Conclusion: You may wind up retaining the original motivations in many scenes in your novel, but it is likely that some of them will become more engaging after a motive reversal.