I = Indignation

Welcome, A-Z Blogging Challenge friends. This year, my theme is Prompt-a-day, with fun or thought-provoking writing prompts to use as a story start, warm up, or creativity stretching exercise.

Indignation

What makes your inner child holler, “That’s not fair!”?


Discover how writing prompts can be a helpful tool, no matter where you are in your writing journey: 5 Reasons to Write with Prompts.

Need some more writing inspiration?

Check out my latest release, 1001 Evocative Prompts for Fiction Writers. It will stimulate your thinking wherever you are in your writing journey and get you writing today. It provides story starts and writing inspiration for a wide variety of genres by focusing on emotions, character development, and pivotal moments.

You can face a blank page with confidence when you use these prompts to warm up, beat writer’s block, develop and maintain a writing habit, change up your routine, start a new project, experiment in a new genre, deepen parts of an existing story, or overcome burnout.

What are you waiting for? Dig in and get writing right now!

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Pocket paperback (5"x 8", 114 pp.) Amazon / Barnes and Noble / CreateSpace
Workbook (8"x 10", 426 pp.) Amazon / Barnes and Noble / CreateSpace


Q4U: How might you spin this prompt in an unexpected direction? How about as political thriller or literary fiction?

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Writing Compelling Fight Scenes

by guest author Jenelle Leanne Schmidt

image by Earl35 for morguefile

Let’s face it, one of the best things about reading fantasy fiction is the big, epic battle sequences we get to participate in from the safety of our own homes and imaginations. Unfortunately, these can often also be one of the most difficult aspects of the story to write.

The first time I set out to write a fantasy novel, I was 19 years old. I sailed through the story and came at long last to the final, climactic battle, the crux of the plot I had been building to for over 300 pages. The stage was set, the stakes were high, and ... I had no idea how to go about actually putting this enormous and important ending into the story. It wasn’t something I had covered in any creative writing class I’d ever taken, nor would it ever be included in the curriculum of any writing class I participated in. A friend of mine told me, “Go re-read the chapter on the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers! Tolkien does a fantastic job with this.” So I did. It seemed like helpful advice at the time. And it was a good starting point... unfortunately, the chapter Helm’s Deep is fairly short, and the descriptions of the battle only encompass a handful of paragraphs, interspersed with information on what Aragorn is doing or dialogue between various characters. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for with regards to a formula for writing a compelling and epic battle sequence.

I read battle scenes in other fantasy novels and sort of fumbled my way along. I would later do a lot of editing and rewriting on that particular portion of the book. Several novels later, I was still wrestling with this question: just how does one go about writing a compelling fight scene?

One day, many years later, I was writing a new story with a scene that involved a sword-battle on a ship. My first inclination was to go through it step-by-step. My main character slashed, took a few steps, parried a blow, ducked under his opponent’s swinging sword, which connected with the main mast and got stuck, giving my MC a chance to whirl out of the way and thrust his own sword at his opponent... I stopped. There was plenty of action, but I was bored writing it, how could I expect a reader to enjoy the experience?

I tried acting it out. My husband helped me with the sequence of events. I talked to friends who had taken fencing classes and were in martial arts. I did research. My grasp of the movements was sound, but translating it onto paper turned it into a choppy mess. It sounded like I was writing choreography for a play, not an intense or exciting battle scene. My husband then suggested a different course. Instead of writing a series of movements and recording all the ducks and blows and parries that an actor has to think through when making a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean, I should try to think through what the battle actually looks like to someone in the midst of it. It is chaos. It is loud. Any participant is rarely going to get the luxury of dueling a single opponent at a time. I scrapped the scene and re-wrote it, this time focusing on the feel of the battle, rather than the actual steps. I detailed the overwhelming clash of sounds and colors, the swirling confusion of trying to determine friend versus foe as the MC made his way through the fray while struggling to survive.

And this time, it worked. For me, the answer came not from telling my readers every step of the choreography, but rather from giving them a sense of what it was like to be there next to the character. In other words, writing a compelling fight sequence meant not writing much about the fighting itself! This might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it goes back to the age-old “show, don’t tell!” rule. Though sometimes overused, because narrative is still an important aspect of most stories, this is one of those times where it is a good rule. This is one of those wondrous places where the reader’s vast imagination is the author’s best friend. A few tantalizing glimpses and a fantastic use of descriptive adjectives in which to immerse the reader’s senses will go a lot further in developing a gloriously epic battle scene in your reader’s mind than ten pages of “character A swung his sword, while character B raised up his dagger, catching the blade just before it passed through his defenses, then character A spun 360 degrees and....” wouldn’t you agree? I guess Tolkien had it right all along.

About the Author

Jenelle Leanne Schmidt grew up the oldest of four children. Every night before bedtime her father read to her and her siblings, and it was during these times that her love for adventure and fantasy were forged. While she adored the stories of the Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Prydain, the Wheel of Time, and the Chronicles of Narnia; it wasn't long before her imagination led her to the creation of a world and story all her own.

Connect with Jenelle: Blog / Facebook / Twitter

About the book

King’s Warrior
Book 1 of The Minstrel's Song

When Dark Warriors invade her country, it is up to Princess Kamarie to seek out the legendary king’s warrior and request his aid. The feisty princess has spent her life dreaming of adventure and is thrilled to be tasked with such a quest. There’s only one thing that can dampen the princess’s excitement: Oraeyn. The squire views his task of protecting the princess on her journey as an inglorious assignment and makes no attempt to hide his disappointment.

Despite a rocky start to their journey – in which Oraeyn throws the obnoxious princess in a river just to get her to call him by name – the travelers soon learn that they must depend upon one another if they are to locate the man they have been sent to find.

The adventure merely begins when they meet Brant: a warrior with a mysterious past. He joins their cause readily, his heart smoldering with a vendetta Kamarie cannot completely understand. But whether she trusts him or not, the hope of their world rests on the steel he wears at his side….

Available at Amazon

Which authors do you emulate when writing battles? How might Jenelle's impressionist technique improve your fight scenes? 

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Fleshing out a thin story: thin conflict

In my previous post in this series, "Fleshing out a thin story: thin characterization," I discussed the ways in which manuscripts drafted hastily, such as during NaNoWriMo, can have some areas of underwriting that need to be fleshed out in revision.

Today's post on underwritten conflict is related, because you first need to have developed characters before you can fully suss out the many potential forms of conflict in your story.  Conflict in fiction involves more than just the surface problem that drives the plot. It also involves interpersonal conflict between characters, not only the hero and antagonist, but also the hero and other often well-meaning allies who block him/her in some way. And further, to develop the hero's inner arc, your story must also involve internal conflict between some of the hero's own desires, be they aspriational, like a desire to love and be loved, or protective, such as a desire to never be made to look a fool. (Both are typically tied in some way to the hero's wound.)

I would argue that to have a compelling plot--that is, a surface problem that appropriately fits these characters, that challenges their particular moral and psychological issues--it's helpful to approach conflict from the inside out. That is, you first develop the hero's internal conflict, then from there it will be clearer what kinds of other conflicts s/he'd naturally get into. Who would push her buttons? How would he respond to the antagonist's goading or to sudden perilous circumstances? I cover this idea pretty extensively in that previous post on thin characterization, so I'll merely point you there once again.

Plot conflicts

Once you've got your hero's inner world established, consider how to bring to the fore the inner arc. What kinds of annoying people and circumstances will most challenge the hero's key weakness?

Another key question: how can I make things worse for my hero? Be wary, however, of just throwing random problems at your characters, or your story will become unintentionally comical. (Farce is the resulting genre when every possible thing that could ever go wrong does...and then gets worse and worse and worse, essentially to make the point that life is a big joke. Ha.)

So how can you make things worse in a way that enhances the story?

• Block the hero's progress toward a goal with small inconveniences that would naturally happen in his/her environment: weather changes, injuries, illness. equipment failure, uncooperative underlings, punishing authority figures, family crises, work deadlines 

• Add a "ticking clock"--some sort of deadline that adds urgency.

• Undermine the hero by shaking his/her confidence or applying pressures that will make him/her behave badly--make a mistake, do something mean, defy his/her own inner rules.

• Create a hardship that forces the hero to learn a new skill or build relationships that will be needed later.

• Add complications to an existing problem, or raise the stakes of failing to solve it.

Interpersonal conflict

Many underwritten stories limit the interpersonal conflict to an antagonist character or two, while everyone else seems to get along pretty well. This is not only unrealistic, it's also a hugely missed opportunity to portray the rich depths of your characters and their relationships.

Because no matter how loving and dedicated people are to one another, they will come into conflict about little irritating habits, differences in taste or opinion, and personal goals. Two wholly good characters can easily squabble about the best method of doing good and when and for whom. How they squabble reveals a great deal about them.

In addition to allies who scuffle with the hero, consider adding in other characters who act as forces of antagonism in addition to, or even in place of a single arch-villain. I describe eight different kinds of "everyday antagonists" who can join your story, or perhaps be recruited from your existing ranks of characters.

Perhaps you have some interpersonal conflict, but it isn't quite well working yet. Many underwritten stories suffer from "jumping conflict" in which characters are calm or simpatico one moment, then inexplicably shouting at each other the next.

Granted, there are some people with extremely short fuses. They're perpetually angry and fly into a rage with little provocation. But those types are usually pretty easy to spot. They exhibit signs of being short fused in how they carry themselves and their tone of voice. If such a character exists in your fictional world, be sure to make those warning signs clear from the moment you introduce the character. Otherwise, his fits of rage will seem simply melodramatic, and he'll be a caricature rather than a character.

Most characters have longer fuses. They shift from calm to angry in gradual stages--slow burn. Negotiation or conflict avoidance should be more common than out-and-out fights. And when those fights do occur, they need to be appropriately paced. How?

• Have the characters in conflict chip away at one another.

• Have one try to back off or refuse to rise to the bait.

• Repeatedly provoke a character with other, exterior conflicts so that she's ripe to burst with a little more pressure. 

• Establish a trait such as worry or paranoia, so that his response to this trigger seems reasonable.

Most of all, try to think creatively about complex emotional responses. Straight-up anger is easy to write, and we can get lazy. In most conflicts, several emotions are at war. The mom who has to pick up her drunk teenager from a party can be as much worried and afraid as angry. The bullied nerd desires acceptance as much as revenge.

Explore those layers of emotion, and conflicts will become more interesting and more tense.

In every instance where characters get into conflict, stop and consider the mixed emotions that might reasonably be in play. Remember that not every character is prone to fist-fights or verbal sparring. Some people, when at cross-purposes with others, use soft, more positive tools to achieve their aims--they  might flatter, plead, or joke. This, too, is dramatic. Story-moving.

In The Scene Book, Sandra Scofield uses the term "negotiation" to describe how most characters experience conflict. She defines it as "an exchange of character desires and denials and relenting, until some sort of peace is carved out, or else the interaction falls apart."

Negotiation is a way of approaching conflict as power plays, in which each character tries to get what he or she wants.

I find this a helpful concept, because "conflict" is a pretty wholly negative term, whereas negotiations are often a mixed bag, and frankly, mixed bags offer more interest and diversity. Instead of one-note characters in one-note plots, negotiation helps you build character complexity and plots with organic twists and turns.

The power plays of negotiation depend first on the kind of relationship characters have--whether based on hierarchy, intimacy and equality, or a mix--and second, with the way each character tends to relate to and use power. Some will approach wresting power using negative tools like attacking, blame-shifting, lying or threatening. Others will use positive tools like begging, making promises, or truth-telling. (For an deeper look at the tools of negotation, see "The Secret to Complex, Compelling Conflict")

Interior conflict in underwritten stories often goes hand in hand with an overall thinness of the character's inner world and representations of interiority, so I will tackle this issue in a future post.

Which area is trickier for you to write, plot conflicts or interpersonal conflicts?

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Developing story conflict when you are conflict averse

Some writers are just the nicest people. So nice, in fact, that they write fiction that bores you to tears. Why is it that all nice all the time makes such terrible fiction?

Readers don't worry about the characters, aren't curious about what will happen to them.

Think about the cars  you see pulled over on the highway. If you slow and see they've stopped for something innocuous-- to walk the dog or switch drivers--you'll speed up and go along your merry way. Nothing to see here.

If the pulled-over car has smoke billowing out of the engine and little kids howling in fear in the back seat, you'll slow down. Maybe even stop. Trouble! Will they be okay? Do they need help? Should the kids be taken a safe distance away?

Adversity, loss, mistakes, arguments, fights, dilemmas--these are the pieces of life that actually make it interesting. A healthy dose of each of these things added to every story will make for a gripping reading experience. Diffuse or remove every one, and you'll have a yawn-fest.

So how do you overcome a bad case of Nice Writer Syndrome?

Understand that running from conflict has serious drawbacks

Painful rejections and traumas from the past that bleed through into the present can become emotionally immobilizing. You might believe you're safer to clam up when others hurt you, or to flee when the going gets tough, but in the long run, these habits increase one's isolation and can simply reinforce a shaky sense of self worth.

In the Psychology Today article, "The Perils and Advantages of Being Conflict-Avoidant," Dr. John Amodeo notes:

There are notable pitfalls to avoiding potential conflict. We may conceal our genuine feelings, desires, and viewpoints because we’re afraid of how we’ll be seen or received by others. We shut down rather than take the risk to show our real self. Rather than be courageously authentic, we might cling to lies, deceptions, and omissions that make it difficult for people to trust us. We may withdraw emotionally or change the subject, fearing that if we reveal our honest feelings or wants, we’ll be rejected or shamed.

Consider also this perspective for getting resolution (instead of the endless push/pull cycle): Stop Avoiding It: Why conflict is good for you.

Determine the source of the nice-at-all-costs message you have internalized

Was there an influential person in your life who demanded complete compliance with rules and suppression of negative emotions? Rewarded only angelic behavior? Or conversely, was your childhood filled with such toxic people, you've walled off anything that reminds you of that time?

Perhaps it was an influential event in your life that cemented the idea that you must be sweetness and light all the time or something truly terrible will happen. Are you compensating for some past mistake or loss that threatens to overwhelm you with guilt or shame?

Perhaps you simply had poor role models of engaging in normal conflict and resolving it. Your family  members might have stuffed their feelings until someone exploded--then everyone pretended nothing was happening. Or perhaps one family member with poor personal boundaries--or even a narcissistic, borderline or histrionic personality disorder--manipulated and emotionally blackmailed everyone in order to feel okay themselves, making authentic relationships impossible.

Get appropriate help

Not every conflict-avoidant person has a borderline personality parent who manipulated and emotionally blackmailed them to such a degree they'd rather throw themselves in front of a train than argue with someone. Extreme cases like this--and ones involving ongoing abuse--do call for professional help.

Others simply grew up with an authoritarian parent, and must re-parent themselves to a degree--gradually introducing themselves to freedoms that had been curtailed in childhood, and working to grow in self confidence.

Perhaps simply reading and doing exercises from a self-help book or joining an online forum will be enough to address some of the underlying issues.

Become a student of conflict

Obviously, you'll be most easily able to study conflict at a remove, in fictional settings. Taking forays into viewing films you wouldn't normally watch because of the interpersonal conflict squirm factor can be a way to do "exposure therapy" like phobia patients often do--having small, controlled experiences getting close to the feared thing.

Start with comic conflicts, as found in films for the younger set, such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Freaky Friday and Mean Girls.

Move up to dramas with low-simmer conflict like The Spectacular Now, Metropolitan, and Persuasion

As you get more comfortable, take on films with explosive interpersonal conflict, like The Talented Mr. Ripley, Closer, and The Celebration/Festen (Danish with subtitles).

As you watch each film, consider what each character wants and why. Note also what each character values, and how those values clash with others and within itself.

Begin building conflicts

All conflict has one of two positive roots: a desire or a value.

Before you consider any of the nasty stuff that scares you, answer these happier questions:

• What does your protagonist want, crave, or long for?
• What does your protagonist value?

Chances are, too-nice writer, you do know these things about your character. After all, you like everyone to be happy.

Now comes the tough part--consider how these positives might be harmed, thwarted, or cause problems. Here are some helpful questions to do that:

• What are some reasons your protagonist does not yet have what he/she desires?
• What are some ways your protagonist might try to gain the desired thing that will fail?
• How does pursuing this desired thing thwart the desires of other story characters?
• How could satiating this desire have unintended negative consequences?
• In what way might his/her desire conflict with important values s/he holds?
• Do any of your protagonist's values potentially clash? How can you reveal it?
• How can you delve into the complications or clashes within one of his/her values?
• How might these values clash with the values of other characters?

Don't settle for easy answers here. See if you can come up with three to eight answers for each question. The longer you consider each question, the better the chance that you'll move past the cliches and tropes and come up with fresher, more interesting ideas.

Congratulations! You're on your way toward bravely tackling character conflicts.

Further reading:
James Scott Bell's Conflict and Suspense
Cheryl St. John's Writing with Emotion, Tension, and Conflict

Do you struggle with Nice Writer Syndrome? What steps will you take to tackle your conflict aversion?

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Thoughts on motivation and change arcs

We're entering the Lenten season today, a time when some of us prepare for Easter by committing to putting off something--whether it be fasting from desserts or TV. or taking a break from a vice--in order to put on a new spiritual habit.

Image by Seeman, morguefile.com

There's something useful to be learned for character arcs in this.

Making changes in one's life doesn't happen by accident for the most part. There is almost always some volition involved. One commits to change when staying the same becomes uncomfortable and when those with whom we have important relationships require it.

Willpower alone is usually inadequate for lasting change to happen. Lenten practices have built in rituals and community support, two key elements you also find in 12-step programs to break cycles of addiction.

Change involves replacing one behavior or habit with another one. If a positive behavior or habit isn't intentionally chosen, focused on, striven for, human nature is such that change won't happen--or a different bad habit will take the place of the one left behind.

The fact that change is so hard is why it is so appealing, so very necessary for us to see embodied in stories.

Behavioral science researchers have been hard at work to uncover some other helpful tidbits about what does and does not motivate change. As you create and refine those "inner arcs" in which a character grows toward change, keep in mind the following:

• Giving someone information can make them defensive instead of receptive

• A person entrenched in a habit needs to be invited to reexamine the stories they tell themselves about it. 

• We can be blind to why we're stuck, often fixating on only one motivation without seeing the whole picture. 

• Quick fixes--plowing ahead with a one-sided approach to change--tends to fail or simply not last

• Change happens when multiple sources of help and motivation come into play:

• Personal motivation -- the good for me needs to be powerfully appealing, moreso than other things
• Social motivation -- other people give me positive attention or shame
• Structural motivation -- there are powerful "carrots and sticks" (rewards and punishments) tied to this
• Personal ability -- deliberate practice increases skill, just like learning an instrument
• Social ability -- seeking help from mentors, teachers or friends adds encouragement and accountability
• Structural ability -- create an environment that aids success, create "carrots and sticks"--especially carrots.

More on the behaviorist approach, which I parsed here, can be found in The 3 Most Powerful Ways to Change People Who Don't Want to Change.

If you're struggling to make a character's inner arc dynamic and believable, take into account these truths of change, and use them to balance forward movement with setbacks.

What aspects of character change do you find most tricky to portray, forward movement or setbacks?

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Eight everyday antagonists

We hear again and again that without conflict, you have no story. So what kind of conflict should you have? How will it arise? One obvious way is to toss in a bad guy and mean girl or two and let them make trouble. Alas, bad guys and mean girls can become cliched and cardboard, sucking away energy and tension rather than adding it.

Who really wants to write generic bad guys, let alone read them? Ya-awn. And who says you really need a traditional villain anyway?

Here's another concept, from Nancy Kress's Dynamic Characters: "...you don't actually have to have a villain in your story at all. Many novels flourish without any bad guys. The conflict in these books comes from wrongheadedness, moral muddles, human confusion and incompatible goals of basically sympathetic characters."

What you might have instead of villains are simply characters who play an antagonistic role, blocking your character, causing her doubt and anxiety, influencing her to do out-of-character risky things. We all have people in our own lives like this. Here are a passel of traits that can make some of your characters become causers of conflict.

Good at 101 things your protagonist is not
This is the shiny, perfect person who makes your otherwise competent protagonist become a babbling idiot. And if the good-at-everything person is also humble and nice, all the better for highlighting your protagonist's neuroses and insecurities.

Curious to the point of being nosy
Whether it's the neighbor who logs your protagonist's comings and goings, or the geeky guy who stalks your teen MC or that annoying little kid who can't hesitate asking "whatcha doin', mister?" every time your lead tinkers with his car, a nosy antagonist can quickly change your protagonist's habits and behaviors to avoid the scrutiny.

Em, they're watching. Go on, do it. Prove how cool we are.

Acceptance obsessed
It's good to have friends, but when social climbing becomes a ruling passion, watch out! This kind of antagonist might drag your MC into some strange new worlds he'd never normally go near in the endless quest to get close to the "right people." The acceptance hound also might drop your MC at the moment of greatest need because he's "not cool" anymore. And this behavior is certainly not limited to the under-22 set (though it's perhaps overdone in YA).

Ambitious to an extreme
On the job, he's "the yes man" who everyone thinks is "so nice," until he betrays co-worker after co-worker on his climb to the top. In school, she's the girl who is so determined to have "leadership quality" singing all through her transcript that she joins every club and pulls strings to get officer positions. The trick of making ambitious antagonists not become bland is to make their motivation for success complex and fraught with inner tension. Some of their reasons should be noble.

Invasive and clingy
These Velcro types don't have clear boundaries about where they end and another begins. Clingy folks like this love in a smothering way. They need to be needed. They take unprecedented pride in their beloved's accomplishments and take it as a personal attack when their beloved doesn't mind read and live up to their unspoken expectations. When your protagonist attempts to get needed distance, the clinger just pursues and clings even more. When a Velcro-type is in the picture, every outside relationship suddenly becomes a tug of war for the protagonist's attention.

Change averse
When inertia rules for a key player in your protagonist's life, it will require a lot more than bribes or whining for your protagonist to get to her goal. She'll have to evade and work around the stuck antagonist's habits. To make any major change that includes this person--a move, job change, having kids, getting an education--will require mustering every resource the protagonist has at her disposal. Change-averse types can be very charming in their stuckness, if you can overlook the wardrobe that's 40 years out of date.

True believer
A character who is certain of his moral rightness can become a fearsome opponent to your protagonist. When this antagonist's cause is just, but blocking or hindering your protagonist's goal, it can lead your protagonist to doubt and founder. Proselytizing is common from this type too, though the cause may be ecology or veganism or Marxism rather than religion.

Addict
Whether it's an alcoholic, workaholic or shopaholic, the addicted antagonist is often in the grips of a drive she can't control with willpower. She'll desert your protagonist, take away resources, and in some cases, add chaos to your protagonist's life. Yet addictions are often a kind of mental illness that need treatment, adding a layer of guilt when your protagonist gets fed up.

What kinds antagonists are making life difficult for your protagonist? What other traits would you add to the list?

Photo credit: taylorschlades from morguefile.com

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Need to raise more questions in your fiction? Try starbursting

Journalists are trained to always ask six core questions when developing a news story: Who? What? Where? When? Why?  How? The corporate world has a clever way of visualizing them: on a six-pointed star. For corporations, the center of the star would list a new product or service, and executives would use the “starburst” to develop key questions to help them think through the practicalities of creating it: Who needs it? What do they want from it? Where do customers ask for this kind of thing? Why might they want it? When can we develop it? How would we manufacture it? The point of the exercise isn’t to develop answers, but merely to generate as many quality questions as possible.

How might starbursting help you generate ideas for your fiction? One of the most effective ways of developing tension in a story is to continually raise questions. Starbursting can help you figure out the kinds of questions to raise for readers, as well as sort out which are the most compelling. From there, you can begin to shape your material around raising those questions and artfully and parsimoniously providing answers.

Here are some examples of questions you might generate:

Who questions

• Who has the most to lose in this situation?
• Who might be secret allies?
• Who would have the most trouble keeping this secret?
• Who should the protagonist trust?
• Who should the protagonist suspect?
• Who would be the best eyewitness?
• Who might sabotage the protagonist?

What questions

• What does my protagonist most want in this scene?
• What outcome does s/he most fear?
• What usual coping mechanisms will s/he draw upon?
• What emotions will s/he hide?
• What skills does s/he need to achieve his/her goal?
• What tools does s/he need?
• What connections will s/he need to make to achieve his/her goal?
• What traits could bring him/her into conflict in this scene?
• What traits, good or bad, could hinder the protagonist in his/her quest?

Where questions

• Where could I set this scene to maximize the tension?
• Where would readers least expect this kind of scene to take place?
• Where does the protagonist feel most comfortable and confident?
• Where does the protagonist feel most uneasy or incompetent?
• Where might my protagonist hide something valuable?
• Where would s/he most naturally seek for the lost thing or person?
• Where would s/he go for advice?
• Where would s/he most stick out as an oddball?

Why questions

• Why would the protagonist choose this course of action?
• Why does s/he feels so passionately about this cause?
• Why does s/he fear this person, place or situation?
• Why would s/he trust or distrust this character?
• Why might s/he choose to keep this information secret?
• Why might s/he let this character get away with wrongdoing?

When questions

• When might this argument happen?
• When could this scene be set to add the most potential for change and growth?
• When does the character’s normal world change?
• When is this character apt to be most stubborn? Most pliable?
• When might this character most naturally first meet my protagonist?
• When should I place the “ticking clock” deadline?
• When would my character reach a decision?
• When would forces in the story most fittingly come to a head?

How questions

• How does this situation follow what came before?
• How could I best set up the next plot action?
• How might these characters hinder each other?
• How will characters obtain the skills and tools they need?
• How will the protagonist escape?
• How will s/he win back another’s trust?
• How will s/he attempt to hinder the antagonist?
• How will the antagonist react to this event or action?

If your critique partners frequently point out lack of tension in your stories, it might be due to a failure to keep curiosity piqued. Stop and think like a journalist (or detective). Starburst any big plot point you have planned. You’ll have suddenly have questions to raise as you build up to that moment.

Does raising questions come naturally to you? How might starbursting help you enhance a scene you need to revise? 

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The secret to complex, compelling conflict

The prevailing wisdom is that conflict is the core of every story, advice that can be a bit perplexing. Not every character is prone to fist-fights or verbal sparring. Some people, when at cross-purposes with others, use soft, more positive tools to achieve their aims--they  might flatter, beg or joke. This, too, is dramatic. Story-moving.

In The Scene Book, Sandra Scofield outlines a new way of thinking about conflict that helpfully addresses this range of real human approaches, from violent to passive.

She uses the term "negotiation" to describe how most characters experience conflict. She defines it as "an exchange of character desires and denials and relenting, until some sort of peace is carved out, or else the interaction falls apart."

Negotiation is a way of approaching conflict as power plays, in which each character tries to get what he or she wants.

I find this a helpful concept, because "conflict" is a pretty wholly negative term, whereas negotiations are often a mixed bag, and frankly, mixed bags offer more interest and diversity. Instead of one-note characters in one-note plots, negotiation helps you build character complexity and plots with organic twists and turns.

The power plays of negotiation depend first on the kind of relationship characters have, and second, with the way each character tends to relate to and use power.

How characters relate

Power in relationships can be about hierarchy. Private to sergeant. Novice to expert. Citizen to leader. Subject to king. Within hierarchical relationships, certain rules govern how the more powerful can exert his power. Power plays in these relationships will often revolve around these rules to uphold what is just and good.

Other relationships are based on equity and intimacy--friends, colleagues, partners, lovers. These, too, will at times become out of balance because of something internal or external to the relationship. A lover grows bored. A friend becomes popular and hip. A colleague cheats. A partner gets lazy. One party will often try to take the upper hand and exert power temporarily in order to restore or create balance and intimacy in the relationship.

Somewhere in between are relationships that are both hierarchical and intimate: parent and child, mentor and protege, teacher and student, older and younger sibling. In these relationships, restoring intimacy will at times trump restoring justice, or vice versa.

Keep this in mind as you build character conflict: is the relationship hierarchical, equitable, or mixed? It will make all the difference in how the characters will wield power.

How one wields power

The tools of exchange in a negotiation will vary among relationships and temperaments. Some exchanges will use mostly negative tools, others mostly positive. The most compelling exchanges will use a mix of both.

Negative tools

En garde, scoundrel! (Photo: Grafixar from morguefile.com)

accuse
attack
badger
blame-shift
clam up
compare to enemy
complain
defy
exert authority
indebt
intimidate
lie
name-call
outwit
refuse
remind of past failure
shame
taunt
threaten
twist truth

Positive tools

Pretty please?? (photo: morguefile.com)

apologize
beg
call in a favor
compliment
compare to hero
distract
downplay
expose inner self
flatter
joke
reason
reassure
remind of goal or dream
remind of past triumph
request help
share
truth-tell

What are your common approaches to conflict? Which type of relationship in conflict do you most enjoy writing? Least enjoy or struggle with?

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Emotional arcs: the teaspoon problem

"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.
--J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (chap 21)

That line almost always makes me laugh out loud. But once it also kicked me in the teeth.

I'd been trying to figure out what isn't quite working in a story opening, and this idea of "emotional range" was a wallop to the incisors.

I realized that by the second scene, my protagonist was already deeply entrenched in her dislike of another character. And yet, by story's end these two will reconcile. But how would my reader even want that to happen? I've given no space for the possibility that my protagonist desires reconciliation. By starting at the wrong place emotionally, I'd left no room to grow beyond simply intensifying that one emotion. In other words, I'd given her the emotional range of a teaspoon.

For conflict to work well in a story, it needs space to escalate over chapters. This might mean rethinking the emotional starting place for your protagonist. In my case, my protagonist needed to start out motivated to have a good relationship, only to have her desire thwarted. With that change, I had the emotional pulse needed to carry the story forward, and more potential for escalation. I'd added range for her emotions to follow a larger arc:

desire for closeness > confusion and worry > hurt > frustration > anger > rage > explosion > despair > surrender > renewal.

See how starting at anger would cut my emotional arc in half?

Anyone else ever tackle this problem in a manuscript? What worked for you to widen the emotional range and stretch out the arc?

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The ties that bind: adhesive in conflict

Conflict should be at the core of what drives a story forward. Ah, but here's the rub: being conflict-averse and passive aggressive is far more common in real life than shouting matches, car chases and fisticuffs. Given the choice, most will flee from conflict rather than stay locked in it.

Unless there's glue.

In Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell gives one of the better explanations for this aspect of characterization he calls "adhesive." He defines it as "any strong relationship or circumstance that holds people together" (81). In other words, adhesive is the compelling reason opposing parties can't just peaceably part ways.

© libertygrace0, Flickr Creative Commons

What's the strong reason for your lead to stick around? What keeps her going in spite of obstacles and motivates her to reassess and take new action with each set back? How about the antagonist? Why doesn't he just go pick on someone else?

Adhesive is usually found in the reasons behind your lead's pursuit of her goal and your antagonist's opposition of your lead. Bell lists some broad categories:

~Life and death. If the opponent has a strong reason to want to kill your lead, that's a powerful glue. Your lead's struggle to stay alive is a powerful motivation to keep on keeping on.

In some genres, fear of losing one's identity, autonomy or reason for living--in other words, fighting to escape a psychological death--are the driving force. The lead must change and grow or die inside.

~Professional duty. Readers can understand how a doctor won't give up on a patient, for example. Our professional lives are often tied up in our sense of purpose and reason for living. To fail professionally means a kind of psychological death.

~Moral duty. A husband whose wife and child are kidnapped won't sit idly by. Nor will a pastor who discovers one of his parishioners is being abused. To give up on doing the right thing would mean letting evil prevail--a spiritual death.

~Obsession. Someone who has lost touch with reality may become powerfully locked to something they desire--whether it's the celebrity they stalk, and object they believe will empower them or a family member they need to control and dominate.

~Physical location. This is a setting-based twist on the life-and-death adhesive. Opponents might become stuck in a place that would be more deadly to flee from than to stay in. Think of the family snowed in at the haunted hotel in The Shining.

What's the glue in your story conflict? How might the applying concept of adhesive make your story stronger?

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What's your glue?

Conflict should be at the core of what drives a story forward. Ah, but here's the rub: being conflict-averse and passive aggressive is far more common in real life than shouting matches, car chases and fisticuffs. Given the choice, most will flee from conflict rather than stay locked in it.

Unless there's glue.

In Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell gives one of the better explanations for this aspect of characterization he calls "adhesive." He defines it as "any strong relationship or circumstance that holds people together" (81). In other words, adhesive is the compelling reason opposing parties can't just peaceably part ways.

What's the strong reason for your lead to stick around? What keeps her going in spite of obstacles and motivates her to reassess and take new action with each set back? How about the antagonist? Why doesn't he just go pick on someone else?

Adhesive is usually found in the reasons behind your lead's pursuit of her goal and your antagonist's opposition of your lead. Bell lists some broad categories:

~Life and death. If the opponent has a strong reason to want to kill your lead, that's a powerful glue. Your lead's struggle to stay alive is a powerful motivation to keep on keeping on.

~Professional duty. Readers can understand how a doctor won't give up on a patient, for example. Our professional lives are often tied up in our sense of purpose and reason for living. To fail professionally means a kind of psychological death.

~Moral duty. A husband whose wife and child are kidnapped won't sit idly by. Nor will a pastor who discovers one of his parishioners is being abused. To give up on doing the right thing would mean letting evil prevail--a spiritual death.

~Obsession. Someone who has lost touch with reality may become powerfully locked to something they desire--whether it's the celebrity they stalk, and object they believe will empower them or a family member they need to control and dominate.

~Physical location. This is a setting-based twist on the life-and-death adhesive. Opponents might become stuck in a place that would be more deadly to flee from than to stay in. Think of the family snowed in at the haunted hotel in The Shining.

In some genres, fear of losing one's identity, autonomy or reason for living--in other words, a psychological death--are the driving force. The lead must change and grow or die inside.

What's the glue in your story conflict? How might the applying concept of adhesive make your story stronger?

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Top 7 of 2010: #3 Where have all the adults gone?

Welcome back to the final week of my countdown of top blog posts of 2010. This one appeared in January and generated some great discussion. I'd love for my new readers to chime in.

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What’s the deal with adults in books for teens? Seriously? Is there some rule I don’t know about that says the grownups need to disappear or your teen readers will? If there is, I’d like to know how it came about, when and why.

The more YA I read with absent, distracted or downright neglectful parents, the more this bothers me. It’s not realistic, especially for the Gen-Y millennials. If anything, these kids are overparented. The term “helicopter parent” came into vogue while today’s college students and their younger teen sibs were growing up. Why isn’t fiction reflecting this reality?

I wonder how much the absent parents thing is us Gen-X and Boomer writers assuming that adolescence hasn’t changed that much from when we were kids. Because it has in some pretty surprising ways. We were expected to learn to adapt to adult ways of doing things. The parents and their marriage were the center of the family. That’s not the case with the parents of today’s teens. Whether it’s because of the skyrocketing divorce rate, or the culture of achievement or the increasing influence of “child-rearing experts,” parents’ lives revolved around their kids, especially in the 1990s. (The trend is swinging away from this, I think, based on the advice I hear child-rearing experts spouting now: nix the family bed, put a lock on your bedroom door, have a regular date night, vacation sans kids.)

The teens I know have tighter relationships with their parents than I had with mine. They respect and even like the adults in their world who treat them fairly and care about them. It bothers them deeply when adults aren’t fair or don’t care. They don’t just shrug it off as normal.

On the college campus where I work, I often see an extreme result of overparenting: enmeshment and immaturity. These 18-23 year olds call mom the moment they leave class. They can’t make decisions or do scary adult things like job hunt without a lot of hand-holding. They expect to be rescued when they screw up. Cell phones have added to this culture of learned helplessness.

Are we removing authority figures from our stories thinking this will open the way for the most high-stakes, zowie-wow plots kids will love? But is this merely laziness? Have we assumed that the only way to show kids learning to grasp their own competence is to remove all other sources of competence from the picture?

What does adult-less fiction do for overparented millennials? I’m not sure if they think it sounds cool or find it deeply terrifying. I suspect the latter. The process of individuation is going to look different for them than it did for a Gen-Xer like me. What they could probably use is more fictional pictures of cross-generational relationships that are balanced—not one extreme (the orphanhood and neglect they see in books) or the other (smothering enmeshment they experience in life).

J.K. Rowling is one of the few YA authors I’ve read recently who incorporates adults well in her stories. I think the balance of cross-generational relationships is an aspect that resonated with Gen-Y and made the Harry Potter series such a phenomenal bestseller. Sure, Harry is an orphan, but he craves parenting. Ron is a bit of a doofus, but his parents love him so fiercely, he never falls into despair about it. Harry’s maturation process is one of learning to trust the caring adults around him, to lean into their strength, to use their wisdom and make it his own, to follow their example and to innovate, building on their knowledge. Rowling is never preachy about it, but it’s clear that she understands kids have to be equipped to face real, adult challenges. This equipping process is a prime task of adolescence.

Tell me what you think of portrayals of adults in YA. Who do you think does it well, or not, and why? What’s your take on the “adult-less world 'rule'”?

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Top 7 of 2010: #6 Antagonists of Many Flavors

Welcome to my countdown of my most popular posts of 2010. The entry reposted below originally appeared in March.

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We hear again and again that without conflict, you have no story. So what kind of conflict should you have? How will it arise? One obvious way is to toss in a bad guy and mean girl or two and let them make trouble. Alas, bad guys and mean girls can become cliched and cardboard, sucking away energy and tension rather than adding it.

Who really wants to write generic bad guys, let alone read them? Ya-awn. And who says you really need a traditional villain anyway?

Here's another concept, from Nancy Kress's Dynamic Characters: "...you don't actually have to have a villain in your story at all. Many novels flourish without any bad guys. The conflict in these books comes from wrongheadedness, moral muddles, human confusion and incompatible goals of basically sympathetic characters."

What you might have instead of villains are simply characters who play an antagonistic role, blocking your character, causing her doubt and anxiety, influencing her to do out-of-character risky things. We all have people in our own lives like this. Here are a passel of traits that can make some of your characters become causers of conflict.

Good at 101 things your protagonist is not
This is the shiny, perfect person who makes your otherwise competent protagonist become a babbling idiot. And if the good-at-everything person is also humble and nice, all the better for highlighting your protagonist's neuroses and insecurities.

Curious to the point of being nosy
Whether it's the neighbor who logs your protagonist's comings and goings, or the geeky guy who stalks your teen MC or that annoying little kid who can't hesitate asking "whatcha doin', mister?" every time your lead tinkers with his car, a nosy antagonist can quickly change your protagonist's habits and behaviors to avoid the scrutiny.

Acceptance hungry, and willing to do anything to get it
It's good to have friends, but when social climbing becomes a ruling passion, watch out! This kind of antagonist might drag your MC into some strange new worlds he'd never normally go near, or might drop him at the moment of greatest need because he's "not cool" anymore. And this behavior is certainly not limited to the under-22 set (though it's perhaps overdone in YA).

Ambitious to an extreme
On the job, he's "the yes man" who everyone thinks is "so nice," until he betrays co-worker after co-worker on his climb to the top. In school, she's the girl so determined to have "leadership quality" singing all through her transcript that she joins every club and pulls strings to get officer positions. The trick of making ambitious antagonists not become bland is to make their motivation for success complex and fraught with inner tension. Some of their reasons should be noble.

Caring to the point of being invasive and clingy
These Velcro types don't have clear boundaries about where they end and another begins. Clingy folks like this love in a smothering way. They need to be needed. They take unprecedented pride in their beloved's accomplishments and take it as a personal attach when their beloved doesn't mind read and live up to their unspoken expectations. When your protagonist attempts to get needed distance, the clinger just pursues and clings even more. When a Velcro-type is in the picture, every outside relationship suddenly becomes a tug of war for the protagonist's attention.

Change averse
When inertia rules for a key player in your protagonist's life, it will require a lot more than bribes or whining for your protagonist to get to her goal. She'll have to evade and work around the stuck antagonist's habits. To make any major change that includes this person--a move, job change, having kids, getting an education--will require mustering every resource the protagonist has at her disposal. Change-averse types can be very charming in their stuckness, if you can overlook the wardrobe that's 40 years out of date.

True believer
A character who is certain of his moral rightness can become a fearsome opponent to your protagonist. When this antagonist's cause is just, but blocking or hindering your protagonist's goal, it can lead your protagonist to doubt and founder. Proselytizing is common from this type too, though the cause may be ecology or vegetarianism or Marxism rather than religion.

Addict
Whether it's an alcoholic, workaholic or shopaholic, the addicted antagonist is often in the grips of a drive she can't control with willpower. She'll desert your protagonist, take away resources, and in some cases, add chaos to your protagonist's life. Yet addictions are often a kind of mental illness that need treatment, adding a layer of guilt when your protagonist gets fed up.

What kinds of villains and antagonists are making life difficult for your protagonist? What other traits would you add to the list?

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Bad beginnings: the teaspoon problem

"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.
--J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (chap 21)

That line almost always makes me laugh out loud. But recently it also kicked me in the teeth.

I've been trying to figure out what isn't quite working in my story opening, and this idea of "emotional range" was a wallop to the incisors.

I realized that by my second scene, my protagonist was already deeply entrenched in her dislike of another character. And yet, by story's end these two will reconcile. But how would my reader even want that to happen? I've given no space for the possibility that my protagonist desires reconciliation. By starting at the wrong place emotionally, I'd left no room to grow beyond simply intensifying that one emotion. In other words, I'd given her the emotional range of a teaspoon.

For conflict to work well in a story, it needs space to escalate over chapters. This might mean rethinking the emotional starting place for your protagonist. In my case, my protagonist needs to start out motivated to have a good relationship, only to have her desire thwarted. Now I have the emotional pulse needed to carry the story forward, and more potential for escalation. I've added range for her emotions to follow a larger arc:

desire for closeness > confusion and worry > hurt > frustration > anger > rage > explosion > despair > surrender > renewal.

See how starting at anger would cut my emotional arc in half?

Anyone else ever tackle this problem in a manuscript? What worked for you to widen the emotional range and stretch out the arc?

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Time is running out to enter my Too, oh too cool prize drawing!

Click HERE to enter today!

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Lengthen that fuse

Are you familiar with the term "jumping conflict"? It means your characters are calm or simpatico one moment, then inexplicably shouting at each other the next.

Granted, there are some people with extremely short fuses. They're perpetually angry and fly into a rage with little provocation. But those types are usually pretty easy to spot. They exhibit signs of being short fused in how they carry themselves and their tone of voice. If such a character exists in your fictional world, be sure to make those warning signs clear. Otherwise, his fits of rage will seem simply melodramatic, and he'll be a caricature rather than a character.

Most characters have longer fuses. They shift from calm to angry in gradual stages--slow burn. Negotiation (see this post and this one) or conflict avoidance should be more common than out-and-out fights. And when those fights do occur, they need to be appropriately paced. How?

Have the characters in conflict chip away at one another, perhaps. Or have one try to back off or refuse to rise to the bait. Establish a pattern prior to the fight scene--repeatedly provoke a character so that she's ripe to burst with a little more pressure. Or establish a trait such as worry or paranoia, so that his response to this trigger seems reasonable.

Most of all, try to think creatively about complex emotional responses. Straight-up anger is easy to write, and we can get lazy. In most conflicts, several emotions are at war. The mom who has to pick up her drunk teenager from a party can be as much worried and afraid as angry. The bullied nerd desires acceptance as much as revenge. Explore those layers of emotion, and conflicts will become more interesting and more tense.

One of the scenes I plan to revise today has bugged me for a while. My CPs said it felt "off" when I asked them about it. I now realize jumping conflict is the issue. So, I'm off to lengthen the fuse of my MC's uncle, and let his complex emotions come to the page.

Have you struggled with jumping conflict? How did you know? How did or will you repair it?

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Eleventy-one Winner: Grand Prize

Welcome to the final day of my Eleventy-one awards program, celebrating my 111 followers (plus quite a few more) and their wonderful writing. Day by day, you've had a chance to see different approaches to persuasive dialogue in action. Today I reveal the top prize winner!

As in the previous days, I provide a short commentary after the winning entry that includes take-home tips to try in your own work. Today's winner, as you'll see, shows us how negotiation can be complex, yet still FUN. There are some great techniques to see here, and try at home!

Without further ado, my grand prize winner is...

Janet Johnson!

Janet won a fifteen-page critique. You can read Janet's winning novel excerpt from The Other Prince HERE.

(My publishing copyright arrangement with winners was a one-time short term use. All rights reverted to the respective authors after one week.)

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What I noticed immediately is how natural Janet's dialogue sounds. I found I could read this aloud in two distinct voices without any effort, just based on the word choices and cadence. I feel Bob's somewhat whiny petulance, and yet I like this guy from the beginning. He's insightful and witty about his predicament and really humble. Briann exudes a no-nonsense approach to life, and yet she, too, is insightful and a good listener to boot.

Some of the details tell us we're in a fantasy setting, but the lingo here is lighter and more contemporary feeling. It's fantasy that doesn't take itself too seriously, very like Rowling in tone. That's a plus as far as I'm concerned, because I can't read much of the "forsooth, my lord," sort high fantasy nowadays without snickering. But I digress....

Janet's piece is a persuasion you'll see in almost every genre--creation of an alliance. I learned a lot about what goes into trust-building by studying what she does here.

Trust surely comes when one feels understood and heard. Notice how Briann draws Bob out, getting him to talk about his specific fears. I love how she pulls up a bucket and sits. It's a nonverbal cue that says "I'm available, I'm invested, talk to me." She asks questions initially, but doesn't interrogate. As he opens up more, she simply reflects what he's saying to show that she's processing, taking it in.

She waits to press him to action, first by teasing, then by offering a solution. Because she has heard him out and because of the earlier teasing, he doesn't get angry at her suggestion. He instead shifts the conversation's tone to a humor sparring. It's a way of getting back onto familiar territory. Bob's more comfortable with his self-deprecating side than with the guy Briann suggests he might be. That, my friends, is some solid characterization. Go and do likewise!

Briann knows just which buttons to push to get Bob to agree to her plan. It's an interesting mix of attack, shaming, name-calling, plus compliments, reassuring, and even exposing inner self. Janet grabs many tools from the negotiation toolbox and works them to great effect in a very small space. It impressed me greatly.

What totally kicked me in the throat here, though, was Bob's inner thoughts near the end of the scene. He's sensed that not only does he have a plan for dealing with his problem, but that his relationship with Briann has subtly shifted. Or at least he's aware that he wishes it would. He reads back meaning into what just transpired and hopes intensely for just a moment, caught up in the dream of being that guy, the one Briann sees in him. That guy that Briann could love. Then...THUD, he's back to being humble old Bob. Wow. I've just seen the larger story arc play out in his head in just a handful of words. Nice. Very nice.

Technically, I think the piece would be just as effective with fewer dialogue tags. Feel free to weigh in about that in the comments.

What do you appreciate about Janet's winning entry? Which of her techniques do you want to try in your own work?

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Eleventy-one Winner: first runner-up

Welcome to day three of my Eleventy-one awards program, celebrating my 111 followers (plus quite a few more!) and their wonderful writing. Day by day, you'll have a chance to see different approaches to persuasive dialogue in action. As your ever-analytical host, I provide a short commentary after each winning entry that includes take-home tips to try in your own work.

Without further ado, my first runner-up winner is...

Victoria Dixon!

Victoria won You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation by Deborah Tannen.

You can read Victoria's winning novel excerpt from Mourn Their Courage HERE.

(My publishing copyright arrangement with winners was a one-time short term use. All rights reverted to the respective authors after one week.)
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Elegant. That word sums up this delicious bit of tense dialogue. What makes it so is Victoria's use of milieu and balance.

By milieu, I mean more than just setting. Victoria draws on the larger cultural mores of her Asian setting--how the characters dress, move, gesture, emote, establish hierarchy and express intimacy is formed by a larger culture. That culture pours meaning into the deepness of a bow. Power plays in this environment happen with the flicker of an eyebrow. Friendship is given or withdrawn in the inches between to two people on a bench. In this rigid social structure, so much deep conflict is expressed in the slightest gesture or inflection or turn of phrase.

The words these two men say to one another seem, on the surface, rather bureaucratic and even dull. But the tension ripples nonetheless. How does Victoria do that? She interprets the data through Xiongli's thoughts. His interpretations guide us so we know what to make of Wu. In the West, we might see a look in the eyes as honest, a confident stride as ease. Not in this culture. These things make Xiongli uneasy. We quickly pick up that Wu's manners mark him as cocky--a force to be reckoned with.

If your writing involves any kind of world-building, whether it's a contemporary non-Western culture, an historic culture or a futuristic non-earth world, you need to establish milieu. Victoria demonstrates an important aspect of how you present the particulars of your milieu: use of a protagonist interpreter guide. Without Xiongli's hints about how to understand every gesture, this piece would have quickly become incoherent.

Victoria also balances three narrative elements very well: dialogue, action and inner thoughts/emotions. The dialogue takes on greater weight because the movement through the scene and Xiongli's reactions work alongside to heighten tension. While no actual fighting takes place, there is a constant threat of violence, from seeing a face "covered with scars," to "guards...within sword range" to a dagger clutched inside a sleeve. The constant reading of nonverbal cues also puts us on edge. We quickly realize this meeting is more than two men talking--these are representatives of two large powers, with the ability to back up any threat made.

I think I was most wowed by the insertion of Wu's fish feeding in this scene. This gesture that seems innocuous is anything but. It's a delay and diversion tactic on one hand, and a show of power on the other. It makes Wu appear calm, unruffled by this government heavy. And yet Xiongli's description of "gasping" fish and "waiting mouths" undergirds the impression that Wu holds power over his guild and can call upon them when necessary.

In the midst of all these small gestures, these men exchange threats and negotiate a way for the empire to capture an enemy that Wu's guild has been traitorously harboring. The give and take is so very diplomatic and coldly calculating, you can picture how the enemy Zhang will be brought to justice--in a swift, stealthy ambush. Chilling and powerful and incredibly page turning!

What do you appreciate about Victoria's winning entry? Which of her techniques do you want to try in your own work?

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Eleventy-one Winner: second runner-up

Welcome to day two of my Eleventy-one awards program, celebrating my 111 followers and their wonderful writing. Day by day, you'll have a chance to see different approaches to persuasive dialogue in action. As your ever-analytical host, I provide a short commentary after each winning entry that includes take-home tips to try in your own work.

Without further ado, my second runner-up winner is...

Tricia O'Brien!

Tricia won an eight-page critique. You can read Tricia's winning story excerpt from
"Princess Charming" HERE.

(My publishing copyright arrangement with winners was a one-time short term use. All rights reverted to the respective authors after one week.)
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Tricia's use of detail and description is important for cluing you in that this isn't a contemporary setting, but a fairy-tale-esque one. But she doesn't belabor the point. There are just enough "telling details" for the reader to sense the wealth, pomp and especially the MCs discomfort. The contrast of Charming's colloquial inner voice with the formality of the situation shows us she's being forced into a defensive position.

Looking for a way to make your antagonist more formidable? Have him force a meeting somewhere he is comfortable and in control and your protagonist is disadvantaged and out of her comfort zone.

The way father and daughter attempt to chip away at one another is clever indeed. King Ormond presses again and again by calling upon lofty themes of destiny and duty and calling. Charming refuses to play the game on his terms. She acts at her "maximum capacity" (as James Frey calls it in How to Write a D**n Good Novel) and uses every skill in her arsenal to defend herself. Charming's feistiness is what makes this piece sing. Nothing irritates me more as a reader than the helpless wimp who capitulates without putting up any resistance. Even Jesus wrestled with God in Gethsemane about facing the cross. Give your characters a spine, please!

Charming openly defies the king, first by questioning the validity of his interpretation. Seeing that her mother is sympathetic (and a potential ally), she highlights the personal risk she'd face on this quest. In doing so, she's shifted the ground under the king. He can stick with his line of argument, but he risks losing the queen's goodwill.

When you find your characters' arguments becoming a little too predictable or boring, consider following Tricia's lead. Add a third party witness who isn't actively taking sides and see how it can add complexity and alter the techniques your characters use to try to get their way.

The more the king tries to boss and bully, notice how Charming emphasizes her own unfitness. Her hope is to gain advantage in her cause by showing herself weak. This kind of move might seem counter-intuitive, but it's effecting and real. It tells you a lot about what kind of girl she is--quick-witted and self-deprecating and likely to approach problems creatively.

Once her father stops bullying and instead appeals to her uniqueness, he reclaims the superior position of sympathy. She must take on the quest because no one else can--and people are counting on her. To continue to defy at this point will no longer earn Charming any sympathy from the queen or the courtiers. Her options for escape are cut off. She capitulates.

What do you appreciate about Tricia's winning entry? Which of her techniques do you want to try in your own work?

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Eleventy-one Winner: third runner up

The happy day has arrived to begin announcing the winners of my Eleventy-one Celebration Writing Contest, in honor of making 111 blogging friends.

Contest entrants submitted a short piece, 700 words or less, that was dialogue-driven and displayed and instance of characters negotiating or persuading. I've selected four winners out of the thirteen entries: a grand prize and three runners up. Winners were selected based on how well they followed the prompt. Here are the questions I asked when evaluating each piece:

~Does each character have a clear point of view and emotional pulse?

~How skillfully does the persuader work his or her tools of persuasion?

~Does the persuaded character convincingly defend his or her ground before capitulating?

~Is the story coherent and smooth?

~Is the dialogue paced well for the situation?

~Does each character have a distinct voice?

As I post each winning entry over the next four days, I plan to include a short commentary afterward with some analysis and take-home tips to try in your own work.

Without further ado, my third runner-up winner is...

Jenna Wallace!

Jenna won The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer by Sandra Scofield.

You can read Jenna's winning novel excerpt from The Shadow Scribe HERE.

(My publishing copyright arrangement with winners was a one-time short term use. All rights reverted to the respective authors after one week.)
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I really like the economy of this interaction between MC Lara and Isobel. We pick up pretty quickly that they're in a restaurant without getting bogged down in excessive description. Just a few well-placed cues like pointing with food and the waitress interrupting. The setting is somewhat incidental, but not irrelevant--being in a public place puts certain constraints on how heated a conversation can become.

Jenna uses almost no dialogue tags, the "she said, I said" sort of thing. Instead, she makes each character's voice unique enough you can quickly distinguish each speaker. Isobel's speech is more formal and nuanced, while Lara's is colloquial and straight forward. A few actions sprinkled in keep us anchored.

This act of persuasion is very light-touch. Isobel builds her case in little increments, always starting from points of agreement with Lara, then pressing against Lara's areas of resistance with questions. This is an excellent way to shape a negotiation.

When Lara presses back, note how Isobel tries to appear nonchalant, as if she's willing to back down, when in fact she's just dodging a blow. Lara's internal thoughts show where and how the persuasion is working. Nice, huh?

I think Jenna's most compelling technique here is drawing in an off-stage character and building an alliance against him. She's subtly moved the line of conflict. Not longer is it Isobel vs. Lara, but Isobel and Lara vs. David.

What do you appreciate about Jenna's winning entry? Which of her techniques do you want to try in your own work?

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Negotiation toolbox

I use the term "negotiation" the way Sandra Scofield does in The Scene Book. She describes it as "an exchange of character desires and denials and relenting, until some sort of peace is carved out, or else the interaction falls apart." Negotiation is a way of approaching conflict as power plays, in which each character tries to get what he or she wants.

In an earlier post, I analyzed a negotiation in process to give you an idea of how it looked in practice. Today, let's look more broadly at power play.

How characters relate
Power in relationships can be about hierarchy. Private to sergeant. Novice to expert. Citizen to leader. Subject to king. Within hierarchical relationships, certain rules govern how the more powerful can exert his power. Power plays in these relationships will often revolve around these rules to uphold what is just and good.

Other relationships are based on equity and intimacy--friends, colleagues, partners, lovers. These, too, will at times become out of balance because of something internal or external to the relationship. A lover grows bored. A friend becomes popular and hip. A colleague cheats. A partner gets lazy. One party will often try to take the upper hand and exert power temporarily in order to restore or create balance and intimacy in the relationship.

Somewhere in between are relationships that are both hierarchical and intimate: parent and child, mentor and protege, teacher and student, older and younger sibling. In these relationships, restoring intimacy will at times trump restoring justice, or vice versa.

Keep this in mind as you build character conflict: is the relationship hierarchical, equitable or mixed? It will make all the difference in how the characters will wield power.

How one wields power
The tools of exchange in a negotiation will vary among relationships and temperaments. Some exchanges will use mostly negative tools, others mostly positive. The most compelling exchanges will use a mix of both.

Negative tools
accuse
badger
blame-shift
clam up
compare to enemy
complain
defy
exert authority
indebt
intimidate
lie
name-call
outwit
refuse
remind of past failure
shame
threaten
twist truth

Positive tools
apologize
beg
call in a favor
compliment
compare to hero
distract
downplay
expose inner self
flatter
joke
reason
reassure
remind of goal or dream
remind of past triumph
request help
share
truth-tell

What are your common approaches to conflict? Which type of relationship in conflict do you most enjoy writing? Least enjoy or struggle with?

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