What If I Just Flip A Coin?

Decisions...decisions...they drive your plot forward. They keep your characters from stagnating out with everyday minutia. They give the story conflict. From Luke choosing to find old Ben Kenobi and ask him what the hologram princess meant to Neo’s decision to, “follow the white rabbit” choices are the kindling that ignites a story.

When I was younger, I used to love those Choose Your Own Adventure books. The kind where you read a chapter and then choose either page 78 if you engage in a shoot out with Ugly Pants Pete, or page 89 if you’re a yellow bellied loser and run off before high noon. The premise behind the books is a great one that I use when I’m stuck in a story.

I write a few strands of “what if” scenarios based on various decisions at a specific moment in my character’s journey. For instance, if my MC is faced with a threat do they run away, run towards it, run a scam on the aggressor? This helps me to see what will happen next…and gives me a bit of insight into my character’s personality as well.

There is a famous author that uses Tarot cards as sort of out-of-the-box brain storming. A friend of mine does her main character’s star chart and figures out what moon is in what house of whatever cusp. A member of a critique group I went to acutally rolled those dice from the Dungeons and Dragons games...I'm telling you - - writers are an eccentric group.

The point is that there are myriad of ways to get over a logic hump or restart a stalled storyline. What works best for you? What was a total disaster? I’d love to hear what you have to say.

By the way, don't forget to sign up for The "Secret" Blogfest over at Tara's- Midnight Ink blog. It takes place on June 30th and should be really interesting.

Until next time…Go Write!

Photograph by dearoot.  Photograph by cometstarmoon.

Conflict

the fight
Originally uploaded by alicepopkorn

This week I am exploring conflict in the fiction novel. Conflict is the driving force behind any great drama. Conflict in the form of an internal struggle, an opposing force, even nature can take a serene scene and turn it into something surprising and compelling. Great stories have conflict in its many forms accost the main character and by extension, the reader.

One form of conflict is confrontation. Not the boring confrontation in a typical family, but the unusual, unexpected, the can’t-look-away type of family drama that keeps the reader hooked. Or maybe its confrontation in the form of a rivalry, for example, competing with your new boyfriend for a coveted job, or your father to win a case. Confrontation can be your main character against a destructive part of themselves, an addiction or a phobia. Perhaps they’re suffocated by the thought of enclosed spaces and they have to go spelunking to solve a crime, or save a loved one, and everything goes wrong.

This brings me to my next point. The conflict has to occur early on in the story. Some successful novelists say that they try to introduce conflict within the first two or three pages. It’s called in medias res, Latin for “into the middle of affairs”. It means dropping the reader in the thick of things. Star Wars is a great example of this literary device. We meet the young Luke Skywalker in the middle of a rebellion, during an epic battle his father helped ignite.

Its this device that made me love all those old detective novels I used to read. These books open on a courtroom and a contraversial verdict sends the crowd gathered into a rage. Two men, ready to shoot each other, each with their hand on a manila envelope. A meteor rockets into a field sending plumes of acrid smoke that downs anything living near it…these are great openers from some of my favorite stories. I got hooked immediately because the writer threw me into a conflict early on.

Conflict compels the characters to act, and the underlying motivation or drama gives them a reason to act outside of their comfort zone. And that, hooks the reader. It gives them the chance to hope for the heroine to face her demons, overcome the obstacle, and triumph. That’s what a good read is, an opportunity to take a journey with a compelling character. Whether it’s a race through the jungle, a frantic search for a missing child, or a desperate plea to stave off an execution, the reader has to care what happens and that only happens if you draw them into the story from the get-go.

Until next time…Go Write!