Maybe she has some project to help in the Lake Country’s defense (or the defense of Ori Réon). I don’t want her to be all female warrior, but I don’t want her to be a damsel in distress either. Maybe she rides to the various cities and settlements, recruiting soldiers and warning the people? She would take her bodyguard along, of course (except when he’s busy training Chris).
I think Tireus’s army needs to be drawn up against Mactalde’s even before Chris crosses the worlds. No safe and secluded castles—I want dangerous battlegrounds, thank you very much. So Allara can be very involved in her father’s war effort.
Few skills are inherent to the writing life. Most are learned along the way, as they become necessary. But the one absolutely necessary trait is an unabated sense of curiosity. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it’s the life’s blood of a writer. Even when you think you have a plot problem all figured out, push a little farther by asking a few more questions. What if something else happened in this scene? What would change as a result? Would the resultant shifts be for the better or the worse?
As we’ve already discussed, one of the reasons outlining is so valuable is because it gives us the opportunity to explore every possibility in sight, with minimum effort and words expended. In writing a first draft, it might require weeks and thousands of words to experiment with a different slant on a scene. An outline takes only minutes and a couple dozen words to follow a scene to its logical end and figure out whether or not an idea will work.
Chapter Four Checklist
Summarize or list all the scenes you’re aware of.
Use a highlighter to mark any area in need of further development.
Fill in the blanks between scenes (connect the dots) by asking questions.
Free write, ignoring spelling and grammar mistakes.
Identify your physical reaction to good and bad ideas.
Ask questions (instead of making statements) whenever you’re stumped.
Asking the Authors: Roz Morris
Bio: The author of Nail Your Novel, Roz Morris is a bestselling ghostwriter and an editor for a top London literary consultancy. Visit her at http://www.nailyournovel.com.
Can you describe your outlining process?
First, I write my ideas for the story on index cards and shuffle them about to get them in the most dramatic order. This means I don’t have to make decisions about where I’m going to put an event or a revelation until I have seen the whole story and how every element works together. I make lists of what I need to research—which will give me more ideas for story events or characters. I also might write a detailed synopsis to allow me to experiment with some of my themes and make the story richer.
What is the greatest benefit of outlining?
Planning before I start writing means I can engineer the story so it has maximum impact and explores my themes in the way I want. I can choose the best place to introduce a twist or plant a clue, and build the tension. A lot of the power of a story is in its structure—what characters do and what that means to other characters—rather than the moment-by-moment details and the language. So I establish the framework, and then when I write the text I can concentrate on enjoying the words. I find doing it this way makes for a much more satisfying story—and I enjoy the writing more.
What is the biggest pitfall of outlining?
Some writers feel outlining can make you stale with a story. But a first draft is usually very rough. Even if you have labored to make each sentence beautiful, you usually need to go back and polish the dialogue, structure, pace, descriptions, and so on. You might go through the manuscript as many as ten times, in detail—and after that, questions of spontaneity seem rather laughable.
However, it’s worth keeping your very first draft. The first time you write a scene may be rough, but it will also be fresh. Sometimes if you feel you’ve worn the story out or polished too far, go back and look at the words you used when it was unfolding on the page the first time. You often find it contains an energy you may have forgotten.
Do you recommend “pantsing” for certain situations and outlining for others?
I did once write without an outline. I got fired up by a setting and an inciting incident. I got a flash of inspiration about the characters I would throw in. I couldn’t contain myself, so I started writing. I threw in more and more ideas, some good and some dreadful. But the biggest problem was I didn’t have any clear idea where I was going, so eventually I ground to a halt. And by that time I hated it because trying to think of new stuff was such a chore.
However, I wouldn’t say I’d never write without an outline. If I had a strong idea of the story in my head I might set sail and write a proper draft without any outline. It might work if you’re writing a novel with a clear and obvious structure—for instance a journey. But that is still, in a way, following a plan. I think most writers need guidance of some kind because once we start writing we get too creative and keep inventing new things. An outline helps keep that creativity within boundaries—and you end up with a slicker, more dynamic story.
What’s the most important contributing factor to a successful outlining experience?
Prepare beforehand. To write an outline, I need to already have a sense of my characters, the story’s geographic setting and some ideas of key scenes. Outlining for me is joining the dots between these points, inventing what needs to go in the holes between the ideas I already have, and checking which order the events will be most powerful in. I can’t do that if I’m inventing it all from scratch as I go because then I’m worrying about generating material instead of assessing how to use it. So I need to know my story in a vague sort of way before I start outlining.
Chapter Five
General Sketches, Pt. 2:
Key Story Factors
“Good writing is: A combination of risk and craft.”
—V. Joshua Adams15
As your outline begins to take shape, it’s important to keep in mind several key factors: motive, desire, goal, conflict, and theme. The earlier you can identify these things and ensure your plot is capable of properly incorporating them, the easier your job will be in the long run. Every so often, take a mental step back from the creative whirlwind you’re scribbling onto the page and evaluate these elements. Sometimes these things can be easy to overlook as you’re summarizing your plot, but the last thing you want to do is spend months on your outline only to start writing your first draft and discover you’re missing a key element. I’ve been there, and I can tell you nothing is more frustrating or demoralizing. Take a little extra time in the early stages to make sure all the building blocks are there.
Motive, Desire, and Goal
As people, we’re often judged by what we do. To a large extent, we are what we do. However, because others’ perceptions of our actions don’t penetrate to the reasons behind our actions, we’re often judged incorrectly, or even unjustly. Our characters are no different. In a book, as much as in life, a person’s actions are crucial. Readers want to understand this person by seeing what he does. Often, however, it’s what a character wants to do that matters even more. Humans aren’t always able to act upon their good or bad intentions, but does that make those intentions any less powerful—or any less defining? And, even when we do act upon them, our actions can be misconstrued by others. What we intend for good may be viewed as evil by others; what we do with selfish intent may be seen by others as something valiant or altruistic. Orson Scott Card points out that a “character is what he does, yes—but even more, a character is what he means to do.”16
In Behold the Dawn, I made a list of the main characters and their various motives for their various actions:
Annan wants to die on the battlefield, because he feels the guilt for his crimes is too great a burden to go on carrying.
He wants to avoid an altercation with Bishop Roderic, because he knows Roderic’s sins aren’t his to punish.
He wants to put Mairead in a convent, so that he can go bac
k to fighting in the tourneys.
Mairead wants to escape the horrors she’s endured in the Holy Land.
She wants to reach the convent, so she can start a new life after her husband’s death.
She wants to find Matthias of Claidmore because Gethin the Baptist told her Matthias would save her from Bishop Roderic and Hugh de Guerrant.
Roderic wants to have his enemies assassinated to save his own neck.
Gethin the Baptist wants to force Annan to find Matthias of Claidmore, so they can wreak vengeance on Roderic for what Roderic did to Gethin back in the Abby.
Marek wants to finish his term of indentureship to Annan, because Maid Dolly is waiting for him back in Scotland.
Hugh de Guerrant wants to find Mairead and force her to marry him, because he’s obsessed with her.
He wants to find Annan and kill him, because Annan humiliated him in a tourney fight.
Creating a character who acts in exciting and larger-than-life ways is wonderful, but unless this character also has a reason for these actions, he will ultimately fail to capture readers’ attention. Giving a character a motive (which inevitably extends to a goal, which hopefully inspires an immediate obstacle, which fortunately creates innate conflict) is vital.
Without an awareness of Raskolnikov’s motive, reprehensible as it is, for killing the old woman in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, readers would never have stuck around for 600 pages. If we didn’t understand Jane Austen’s titular Emma’s good intentions for her blundering interference in her friends’ lives, we would have abandoned her after a few chapters. Even characters whose actions are definably good, such as Luke Skywalker or Clark Kent, become boring unless we understand the motives behind their behavior.
It’s not enough to create a character who does interesting things. He must also do them for interesting reasons. This principle allows authors all kinds of exciting space in which to play. We can match motive to action to present a straightforward character (such as Luke Skywalker), but we can also create infinite layers of complexity and intrigue by presenting a character whose actions and motives don’t always seem to align (such as Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies).
Unlike fiction, in which we have the tendency to generously dole out black and white designations, motives and actions aren’t always clear in real life. Becoming aware of, and taking advantage of, these complex dichotomies can raise our fiction to a new level by deepening our characters, creating subplots, and, perhaps most importantly of all, offering readers stories they can sink their teeth into and chew on for a while. What reader wouldn’t admit that one of the chief joys of fiction is the ability to look into the hearts of the characters, where we can learn about them through their motives as well as their actions?
Your character’s motive is what fuels his desire for something, and his desire is what gives him a goal to strive toward. For example, in Gone With the Wind, much of Scarlett O’Hara’s actions in the second half of the movie are the result of her motive to “never be hungry again.” Her desire is for safety and security, and her resultant goal is to gain wealth and status.
If we boil fiction down to the essentials, what we find at the core of a story is the main character’s desire for something. What your character wants is what fuels him through page after page of conflict. We’ve all heard the saw that without conflict, there is no story. But without frustrating the character’s ability to get whatever it is he wants, there can’t be any conflict. Your character must want some-thing and want it badly. Otherwise, he’s not someone readers will find interesting enough to follow around for hundreds of pages. He should have one strong goal, usually inspired directly by the inciting event and often motivated further by strong beliefs or past experiences, that will carry him throughout the book, probably right up to the end (although sometimes it’s necessary for characters to completely change their goals at some point in the story). This is the goal the author must frustrate at every turn throughout the book.
George Eliot’s masterpiece Middlemarch is a hefty tome of 800 pages. Most modern readers stand agape at the mention of a book so large, especially one about quiet town life in 19th-century England. No explosions or high-speed car chases in this book, and the hero isn’t out to save the prime minister from assassination or prevent another war with France. So how does Eliot keep her readers’ attention for so long? Quite simply, her book is a superb example of delayed gratification. Eliot endows her characters with strong motives, desires, and goals—then absolutely refuses to give them what they want. Most of the characters’ goals and desires are simple enough. Dorothea Casaubon and Will Ladislaw want to be together. The banker Bulstrode wants to keep others from learning about his criminal past. Dr. Lydgate wants to pay off his debts and live in harmony with his wife. Mary Garth wants her quasi-fiancé Fred Vincy to start acting like a responsible human being. Eliot tantalizes readers by allowing the characters to get close to their goals, only to be pushed back again and again. The result? Readers keep turning page after 800 pages to discover if, when, and how these characters will accomplish their goals and get what they want.
Fiction is a journey of many words, with the inevitable destination being the seemingly out-of-reach desire of one or more of the characters. Sometimes that desire is a thing (a valuable statuette in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon), a person (Ashley Wilkes in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind), a state of mind (peace in Milena McGraw’s After Dunkirk), a victory (the defeat of the Shuhr in Kathy Tyers’s Crown of Fire), an escape (from the oppression of the Japanese in Pearl S. Buck’s Dragon Seed), or a place (the Inkworld in Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart). Your characters’ goals will be unique to your premise, but what isn’t unique is the necessity of the character’s burning, undeniable urge to reach that goal.
What a character wants is bound inextricably to the arc he will follow over the course of the book. The changes that transform him from who he was at the beginning of the book to who he is at the end will be the direct result of how he goes about getting what he wants, or perhaps how the course of the story changes what he wants. Character arcs are linked to the catalyst of change. You can chart a character’s arc through the progression of the story by comparing his personality, his behavior, his personal values, and his beliefs at the beginning and end of the book. How have they changed? (And they must change, not just on the surface, but also within the character’s personal mores.)
Creating a solid, memorable character arc requires several important ingredients:
• Start out with a clear idea of who the character is at the beginning of the story. What does he care about? What does he believe? How does he behave in certain situations?
• Open with the character beginning from a place of imperfection or incompleteness. Usually (but not always) a main character’s arc will show him growing into a better person.
• Give the reader concrete examples throughout the book, but particularly early on, of the behavior and beliefs the character needs to change. If he’s a selfish jerk, maybe he goes out of his way to be cruel to a bum on the street. If he’s a coward, maybe he cringes in a closet while someone else is beaten and robbed.
• Give the character the tools he needs to improve himself. This can come in the form of a mentor’s advice or even just the character’s actions creating a situation he recognizes as untenable. Growth needs to be slow and steady throughout the middle of the book.
• Save the moment of revelation so it coincides with the emotional and physical climax. This isn’t always possible, but when you can bring the climaxes of the outer and inner journeys together, the result is explosive (see the section “Inner and Outer Battles” below).
• Prove the character’s inner changes through his actions. It’s not enough to have him vow to be a better person; he has to prove it to the reader. Sometimes you can find a nice parallelism by reversing his earlier actions. If he was cruel to a bum on the street in the earlier scene, perhap
s he could go out of his way to buy a meal for a bum at the end of the story.
Conflict
Who says conflict is a bad thing? Who says world peace is the most important goal of humanity? Who says arguing with your little brother when you’re a kid means you’ll grow up to be an ill-mannered ruffian?
Not a writer.
You can break every rule and still have a whopper of a story—so long as you remember to throw in a dash of conflict. Or, actually, a heaping tablespoon or two would be preferable. And yet many inexperienced authors forget all about conflict when planning their stories. One of the most common problems I encountered in editing unpublished authors’ manuscripts is a complete lack of conflict. Authors allow their characters to wander aimlessly about their pages, hardly speaking to other characters and rarely encountering any obstacle except (usually) a dreary world view. No matter how marvelous your character, your plot, or your writing, no reader is going to be able to resist yawning in boredom over the lack of conflict.
The simple fact is: fiction has its very basis in conflict. If the main characters aren’t clashing, if there are no wars, if the aliens are content to stay unobtrusively in their own galaxies—then we really don’t have much of a story, do we? If Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy hit it off from the beginning, we never would have experienced all that wit and sizzle in Pride and Prejudice. If the North and South had resolved their differences over a handshake, Scarlett O’Hara would never have needed to escape a burning Atlanta. And if the Martians had minded their own business back on Mars, Orson Welles could never have made history by freaking out thousands of people with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast.
Outlining Your Novel_Map Your Way to Success Page 6