by Sacha Black
Up the ante, baby
Keep raising the stakes by adding in other elements to the conflict, whether it be more emotion or time pressure. Upping the ante creates tension, and that drives pace. Or maybe isolate your hero from all his allies and resources. Make the situation look hopeless. Repeatedly bring the antagonist into contact with the hero in tense situations.
Step 7 - Crafting Conflict Summary
The existence of a goal + prevention of the goal being achieved = conflict. Or even more simply: create a goal and stop the goal coming to fruition.
Conflict should be specific to both the hero and villain in order to get them to invest in fighting each other.
Macro conflicts are large scale world wars — society against the hero.
Micro conflicts are more interpersonal as a form of conflict — the battles the hero has with personal relationships.
Inner conflicts are the smallest unit of conflict as it’s internal only to the hero. It’s the conflict the hero has over his own flaws, emotions and values.
Layer conflict to keep pace and raise the tension and emotion. Vary the type of conflict when layering.
Link conflict to your hero’s flaw and your book’s theme.
Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The higher up you go, the more internal the conflict. The lower more basic the need is, the more global the conflict.
Add doubt, lies and misunderstandings to make the conflict more acute.
At its core, hero sacrifice really means the hero sacrificing a part of her inner self in order to become whole and unflawed.
Questions to think about
What’s your hero’s goal?
What are you going to do to stop him getting it?
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STEP 8 – Clichés vs Tropes
Clichéd villain spotting ought to be an Olympic sport. They’re so common it’s frankly painful. But spotting clichéd heroes is different. It’s harder to identify a heroic cliché because heroes are universal and cover a much broader range of possibility.
But what exactly is a cliché and how is it different from a trope?
Clichés are words, phrases, expressions or scenes that have been overused to the point they’ve become predictable and unoriginal.
Classic examples include:
‘Objection’ used in a court scene when the prosecutor is losing
A priest marrying a couple and saying ‘Does anyone object?’ and the protagonist’s true love busting into the church, having run the last mile to stop the wedding
A villain or a witch with a ‘muhahaha’ laugh or a cackle
‘They all lived happily ever after’
‘And then I woke up and realized it was all a dream.’ (If I read your book and it says this, I will burn it.) Clichés are cheesy, rotten, stinkin’, mold-covered fleapits. And I don’t mean the good blue cheese kind of mold; I mean the powdery mildew kind that would make you gag if you swallowed it. Does that mean I’m saying don’t use clichés? Yes. But also, no. Let me explain.
See, everything in moderation is fine. One cliché in your hero can be easily forgiven or masked. But only if the rest of the time, you have a well-rounded character with decent motives and depth.
Historical context and your get-out-of-jail-free card
Another quick note on clichés is that sometimes they’re actually needed. Take gangsters. Today, a gangster puffing a cigar with a whiskey tumbler in hand, sat by an open fire is a cliché, but back in the 1920s and 1940s it wasn’t. Clichés develop over time. If you’re writing a story set in a particular historical or societal context, there will inevitably be some clichés you need to use in order to keep your story realistic.
Some classic cliché examples:
The perfect hero with no faults, also known as Mary and Gary Stu. Nobody likes Mary and Gary. Don’t invite them to play.
Knights in shining armor are equally annoying.
And, much as I hate to say it, the dashingly handsome, naturally muscled, don’t-have-to-work-to-look-good type of hero is also clichéd.
How do you avoid using clichés?
Realism. That’s how.
Ensuring your world, characters and wars are a realistic representation of humanity and the choices humanity makes is the fastest way to avoid creating clichés.
More specifically, ensure your characters have motives and justifications for their behaviors. Knowing the root cause (or the reason why) your character does something instantly creates meaning to their actions. That creates depth of character, which leads to realism. And that, dear writer, dispels the cliché.
If you write stories where good and evil are on opposite sides of the battlefield, then realistic portrayals of humans are even more vital. It’s like oxygen to the lungs. If the line between black and white or good and evil is too clear-cut, it goes against our basic heuristics. As we grow and develop, that baby caricature of what’s good or bad fills with shades of gray, and we no longer accept such simple explanations.
What this comes down to is creating real characters. Your hero is going to fuck up and make bad decisions because he is, like we are, fallible. If you create a picture-perfect hero who has no flaws and knows how to save the world from the start, you haven’t got much of a story and you certainly haven’t got a character arc for him to develop over.
People aren’t all good or all bad. So don’t make your constructs of good and evil purely good or purely evil either. It’s not midnight here, Cinders. We all like raving until the wee hours, pen in hand, laptop on fire… and if you don’t, what kind of unnatural morning monster are you? 1
In summary, for the most part, clichés ought to be avoided, but there’s another little literary device that shouldn’t be: tropes.
What are tropes?
Tropes are reoccurring themes, concepts and patterns usually found embedded within genres. Tropes help you identify what genre you’re reading. What separates a trope from a cliché is that a trope can be used over and over again, as long as it’s told in a novel way each time and it won’t irritate your readers.
Hero tropes are much easier to identify. A little ruffling through the top 100 books in your genre and you’ll easily spot them. Tropes shift and change with fads and fandoms. Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles was one of the seminal books in the resurgence of fairytale retellings.
The expectations of a reader picking up a book in that genre will differ to the expectations of someone picking up a crime novel. Expectations are important. If you’re retelling a fairytale… you gotta actually retell the fairytale. Everything else around that is up for grabs: swap genders, swap locations, create a half-robotic Cinderella like Meyer if you really want. But the only way you get your reader to come back for more is by knowing what to give them. Give them the tropes they want and build a unique story around them.
Tropes move and change with societal trends and tastes. Find a new genre? You’ll find new tropes. But, thankfully, tropes are relatively slow moving. Here’s a challenge for you, whatever genre you write in. Go to Amazon and into the top 100 list. Pick five books: three from the top 20, one from the top 50 and one from the top 100. Read the books. See if you can identify at least half a dozen similarities in what will all be unique stories. Tropes are the patterns and maps we should follow in a genre to please our readers.
When you read the list of trope examples below, try and reel off half a dozen books in the relevant genre that uses them, and I bet each story you think of is completely different.
Some Classic Trope Examples:
Young Adult Tropes
Orphan protagonist or distant parents
Love triangles
A graduation ceremony
Fantasy
The chosen one
The one magical sword/potion/device that will save the world and is conveniently difficult to locate
Prophecy
Crime
A dead body discovered at the start of a novel
A crime fighting detec
tive overly dedicated to the job
A maverick detective
A murderer either arrested or killed at the end of the book
Serial killers
Romance Tropes
Boy meets girl
Enemies to lovers
Forbidden lovers
Matchmaker
Societal class divide between love interests
Happy ever after endings
One of the best online resources for writers wanting to study patterns in literature, film, TV and basically any other form of consumable media is TV tropes https://tvtropes.org. If you’re after examples or explanations, I highly recommend it. Be warned, though: while most spoilers are hidden (and only revealed with a click), some spoilers do occasionally appear on their site.
Non-clichéd but still equally irritating nuggets to avoid
Clichés are annoying, but they aren’t the only rookie mistake you should avoid when creating your hero. And before you send me angry emails about how your hero has aspects of the below, and you’ve sold a gazillion books… hush now, my wordsmithing babes. Remember ‘the rules’ chapter at the start of this book. All rules can be broken, except the ones that can’t…
Here are some non-clichéd but still painful character quirks to avoid.
Fishwife whiny-hero syndrome: No-one likes a whiny nag at the best of times, least of all a whingebag protagonist. There are limited occasions when you can craft a woe-is-me character and get away with it. 99.8% of the time your audience will scream Suck it up princess, you’re the hero.
Herosplaining: There’s a modern turn of phrase ‘mansplaining’ which refers to the occasion when a man explains something to a woman in a condescending way. I’m fully coining the term herosplaining as a new word.
Heroes don’t need to explain the following:
The book’s theme
A metaphor within your book
Their revelation or epiphany
Their feelings
The explanation for any of the above, should be inherent through the action, dialogue and descriptive thoughts and feelings the hero has. Don’t let your hero be a teacher with a cane at the board. Fiction is meant to be enjoyed in the peaceful heaven of a fine wine, a candlelit hot tub and… I lost my train of thought. Anyway, fiction readers don’t come to be taught. That’s what non-fiction is for.
Offensive mistakes: I’m going to be serious for a moment and say this exactly how it is. One of the most popular steps in 13 Steps To Evil is the step dedicated to mental health. I wrote it because I was sick of how many villains are characterized with mental health issues as the cause of their villainy. Um, no. Mental health is an extremely serious topic, as are many other topics that writers choose to write about. It’s a good thing that writers want to talk about and use fiction to dig into these topics. But what’s not cool is when an author doesn’t do their research. Two things happen:
The mental health disorder (or other topics like abuse, rape, etc.) isn’t always portrayed accurately.
It leads to myths, misconceptions and stigmatizing of a sector of society.
Please don’t think I’m saying this to make anyone feel bad. I’m not. And I don’t want anyone to shy away from these topics; it’s important that they’re written about. But if you are going to cover them, then it’s only fair to do the right thing and research the subject matter properly.
STEP 8 - Cliches V.S. Tropes Summary
Clichés are words, phrases, expressions or scenes that have been overused to the point they’ve become predictable and unoriginal. Examples include: ‘And then I woke up and realized it was all a dream’ or ‘objection’ used in a court scene when the prosecutor is losing.
Tropes are the patterns and maps we must follow in a genre to please our readers. Examples include a maverick cop, boy meets girl and the chosen one.
Sometimes clichés are actually needed, particularly in the case of historical context.
Avoid clichés by having realistic motives, reasons why characters do the things they do and avoid black and white explanations of both good and evil.
Don’t herosplain. Just don’t.
Do your research on topics that could easily cause offense or marginalize a sector of society.
Questions to think about
Name three clichés and three tropes from your genre.
Think about your own hero and story. Have you used any clichés or tropes?
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STEP 9 - Start with bang, bang, kapow
Writing advice tells you to start in the middle of the action. But when they say ‘middle of the action’, they don’t mean it literally. The start of a novel is a fine art. Mix a cracking first line with a hook or question that pulls the reader through the rest of the novel. Add a dash of protagonist who’s interesting, and you’re partway there. I’m sweating even thinking about it. It’s hard. Like trying-to-create-a-Michelin-starred-meal-when-you’re-a-fifteen-year-old-apprentice-high-on-shrooms hard.
Here’s what starting with action doesn’t mean
It doesn’t mean blowing shit up and launching into epic battle scenes with no explanation.
What it does mean
Think of your reader as a date. You wouldn’t turn up on your first date, slide into the seat next to her, grin with your newly whitened teeth and slip your eager hand between her legs. That’s going to earn you a broken nose or worse. And your book? Well, the reader’s going to drop it faster than your date can drop a right hook.
So, what do you need to do? If we boil it down to the simplest parts, then three key things:
Establish your protagonist’s ‘normal world’
Tell the reader what the hero wants
Show (or imply) what the stakes are to the reader (which is, of course, predicated on what the hero wants)
There’s probably going to be a boatload of you tutting and waving balled fists at me for saying you only need to do those three things. And sure, I get that there’s a million other things you need to nail in your first chapter – a hook, making the reader care, setting the tone, including the theme, etc – but trust me, when you distill it down, if all you do is the above three things, you’ll nail the rest anyway.
Prepare yourself. I’m about to whip out my favorite phrase like it’s retro night and I’m big-fish-little-fishing it around the dancefloor.
It’s all about the web of connectivity.
If you convey the protagonist’s goal and the stakes surrounding it, the theme should be inherent. When combined, the goal and stakes are your magical reader-catching fishing hook. Together, they should give you a question, which reels your reader in until they get it answered. And that question generates enough initial care for your reader to keep turning those pages until the rest of the story can lull her into a reading binge long after the bat babies get tired.
Establishing the normal world
Establishing the normal world has two aspects to it:
Establishing what the ‘world’ itself is like
Establishing what the hero is like in it
Change is predicated on stability
Stay with me. I know that sounds like a contradiction, and it sort of is, but the reason you need to establish the above two points is because you can’t send a hero on an adventure (where he will change radically) if the reader doesn’t know what he’s changing from.
Understandably, if your novel is set in our world there will be less world-building to establish. But in genres like fantasy, science fiction and dystopian, it’s even more important to lay out the rules of the world, but without baseball batting your reader around the face with it. It’s no good having your hero say ‘oh I can’t go to Hogwarts because I’m human’. That’s preachy. No-one likes being preached at. Don’t preach at your readers. It’s bad for sales.
But how do you establish the world without ‘telling’?
Easy.
Your reader experiences your book world through your hero. They understand the rules and your s
ociety through the action your hero takes and the experiences she has in your story.
For example, everyone in my life knows not to talk to me unless it’s 11 am or I’ve had two coffees. They’ve experienced the other side of morning-me and learned when not to talk to me.
If your hero experiences your world naturally through the course of your story and his interactions with other characters, it will allow your reader to immerse themselves fully in your world, without being yanked out to have the five laws of Hogwarts and muggle magic shouted at them. Strike a balance rather than overloading your reader with world-building. The reader doesn’t have to know the ins and outs of your royal hierarchy (unless it’s relevant). If it’s not relevant then you’re information dumping. Avoid it like the plague, or herpes, whichever one you dislike more.
Allow your reader to dip her elegantly polished toe in the water, wading in tiptoed step by tiptoed step. Seduce them, woo them like the Victorians – a slip of fabric over the wrist, a flash of ankle. Let your reader discover parts of your world building at the same time your hero discovers them: that’s when it’s relevant, and not before.
Let me give you a couple of examples:
Example 1: Delirium by Lauren Oliver - a Dystopian novel.
“It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure. Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already. My older sister, Rachel, has been disease free for nine years now. She’s been safe from love for so long, she says she can’t even remember its symptoms. I’m scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days, on September 3. My birthday.” Delirium by Lauren Oliver, pg. 1.