As I said in the last post, I've been applying my "checklist" system to scenes in the stories I'm working on, and have come up with a couple of amendments. The first had to do with conflict; this one has to do with purpose.
Purpose is now the sixth category on my checklist. It's different from the Goals category, which is about what the characters are trying to achieve in the scene; purpose is about what you are trying to achieve. It's where you ask yourself: why am I putting this scene into my story? How does it fit into the overall narrative?
Is it there to grab the reader's attention and hook her so she has to read the rest of the story? Is it there to reveal a character's personality, or demonstrate conflict in a relationship, or to show that a character has grown in some way? It might be there to introduce a setting or to give the reader some important information. Or it might serve several purposes at once.
These are, of course, questions I ask myself all the time. NOT!
Nah, usually I just dive in and start flailing. And that can be okay; sometimes you can discover amazing things by flailing. When it comes to actually putting the story together, though (or revising it), there's a place for purposefulness. After all, if you don't know what you're trying to acheive with a scene, you can't really know if you're achieving it.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
more about conflict
I've been using my checklist system for the last few scenes I've worked on, and have been finding incredibly helpful. Even for scenes that aren't a struggle to write, taking a few minutes to go through the checklist and answer the questions seems to give me a better, more organic "feel" for what's going on between the characters and where things need to go.
After I'd applied the checklist to three different scenes, I noticed that a couple of amendments are in order. The first has to do with conflict, since only one of the three scenes I "checklisted" actually fit my definition of conflict. I assumed conflict usually comes from characters clashing over competing wants or needs, as in the example of the guy who wants bus change getting in a fight with a coffee shop owner.
One story I'm working on has where a group of characters are meeting to discuss how they're going to solve a crime, though. They don't have competing wants or needs because they all want the same thing: to solve the crime. Instead, the characters are in conflict with whoever committed the crime, a person who isn't present in the scene.
In another story I have a scene with only one character in it. Is there conflict? Yes! He's in conflict with himself as he tries to rationalize his own behavior, so he has competing wants and needs within himself. Internal conflict, in other words. Thinking it over, I realized that it's this internal conflict that makes a scene interesting (to me, anyway). It gives a sense of depth that you can't get from external conflict alone.
In the example of the guy arguing with the coffee shop owner, we could say that the main character is really yelling at the coffee guy because he's mad at himself for leaving things 'til the last minute. Like most of us, he finds it much easier to blame the other guy for being such a jerk than to face up to his inner motivations.
Maybe his leaving things to the last minute is a form of self sabotage. He might not really want to go on that date because he's still in love with his ex. Or perhaps he's late meeting his parole office because he doesn't trust himself or feel equipped to deal with life "on the outside." By adding the internal conflict he suddenly seems more real and interesting than if he was just some guy yelling in a coffee shop.
So going back to the checklist, I think it's useful to think about what kind of conflict your scene has, and not just whether or not your scene has any. And maybe ask yourself if it could be made even more interesting by adding internal conflict to an externally focused scene--or vice versa.
Next post, I'll talk about the other amendment I want to make to my checklist: Purpose.
After I'd applied the checklist to three different scenes, I noticed that a couple of amendments are in order. The first has to do with conflict, since only one of the three scenes I "checklisted" actually fit my definition of conflict. I assumed conflict usually comes from characters clashing over competing wants or needs, as in the example of the guy who wants bus change getting in a fight with a coffee shop owner.
One story I'm working on has where a group of characters are meeting to discuss how they're going to solve a crime, though. They don't have competing wants or needs because they all want the same thing: to solve the crime. Instead, the characters are in conflict with whoever committed the crime, a person who isn't present in the scene.
In another story I have a scene with only one character in it. Is there conflict? Yes! He's in conflict with himself as he tries to rationalize his own behavior, so he has competing wants and needs within himself. Internal conflict, in other words. Thinking it over, I realized that it's this internal conflict that makes a scene interesting (to me, anyway). It gives a sense of depth that you can't get from external conflict alone.
In the example of the guy arguing with the coffee shop owner, we could say that the main character is really yelling at the coffee guy because he's mad at himself for leaving things 'til the last minute. Like most of us, he finds it much easier to blame the other guy for being such a jerk than to face up to his inner motivations.
Maybe his leaving things to the last minute is a form of self sabotage. He might not really want to go on that date because he's still in love with his ex. Or perhaps he's late meeting his parole office because he doesn't trust himself or feel equipped to deal with life "on the outside." By adding the internal conflict he suddenly seems more real and interesting than if he was just some guy yelling in a coffee shop.
So going back to the checklist, I think it's useful to think about what kind of conflict your scene has, and not just whether or not your scene has any. And maybe ask yourself if it could be made even more interesting by adding internal conflict to an externally focused scene--or vice versa.
Next post, I'll talk about the other amendment I want to make to my checklist: Purpose.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
what's wrong with this picture?
So, you know how it is when you're writing a scene and everything's just humming along with dialogue, setting and characters just kind of clicking in place? Right. Well that's not what's happening with the scene I'm working on now. It's been a bitch to write, but the good news is, I figured out why. The scene has two fundamental problems that I somehow didn't notice right away.
First of all, I had a huge coincidence where my secondary character just happens to show up at around the same time my two main characters arrive on the scene. The guy has a reason to be there--he's visiting the grave of a family member--but what are the odds that he'd turn up just when my two heroes do?
Second, I didn't give my secondary character a clear goal. Sure he's got a reason to be where he is, but that didn't give him a strong motivation to interact with the main characters. So, when I got the three of them talking to each other, the dialogue kept coming out all rambling and stilted. No wonder!
The thing that bugs me the most about this is that I spent literally hours plugging away on this scene, patiently rewriting in hopes that it would suddenly start working. So, I hereby promise myself that from now on, whenever I find myself slogging away on a scene that doesn't work, I will step back and go through the following checklist of super-basic questions:
1). Logic: Does the situation make sense? Do the characters have a reason to be in that particular place, at that particular time, doing the things they're doing?
2). Coincidence: Does anything in the scene happen by chance? Not that coincidences are always bad, but they should be there for a good reason. (Hint: laziness on the author's part is not a good reason.)
3). Goals: Does each character (or group of characters) have something that they're trying to accomplish? This doesn't have to be saving the world; maybe your character just needs bus change.
4). Conflict: Are the goals of one character (or group) in opposition to what the other side wants? And this doesn't have to involve explosions; maybe the character who wants the bus change could get into an argument with a coffee shop owner who doesn't want to give it to him.
5). Stakes: Do the characters care about the outcome? If the bus-change-seeking character misses his bus, will he be late for something important, like a date or an appointment with his parole officer?
Pretty obvious stuff, you say? Well, yeah. But it's the obvious stuff that tends to slip my attention when I get caught up in the minute details of writing a scene. And when I run into difficulty, my tendency is to just work harder at the thing that's not working. Sometimes that's okay; sometimes I do just need to plug away at it. But even then, taking five minutes to run through the checklist couldn't hurt. In fact, I think I'm going to change my resolution: from now on I will run through the checklist *before* I start writing a scene, and maybe I won't run into so many snags in the first place!
First of all, I had a huge coincidence where my secondary character just happens to show up at around the same time my two main characters arrive on the scene. The guy has a reason to be there--he's visiting the grave of a family member--but what are the odds that he'd turn up just when my two heroes do?
Second, I didn't give my secondary character a clear goal. Sure he's got a reason to be where he is, but that didn't give him a strong motivation to interact with the main characters. So, when I got the three of them talking to each other, the dialogue kept coming out all rambling and stilted. No wonder!
The thing that bugs me the most about this is that I spent literally hours plugging away on this scene, patiently rewriting in hopes that it would suddenly start working. So, I hereby promise myself that from now on, whenever I find myself slogging away on a scene that doesn't work, I will step back and go through the following checklist of super-basic questions:
1). Logic: Does the situation make sense? Do the characters have a reason to be in that particular place, at that particular time, doing the things they're doing?
2). Coincidence: Does anything in the scene happen by chance? Not that coincidences are always bad, but they should be there for a good reason. (Hint: laziness on the author's part is not a good reason.)
3). Goals: Does each character (or group of characters) have something that they're trying to accomplish? This doesn't have to be saving the world; maybe your character just needs bus change.
4). Conflict: Are the goals of one character (or group) in opposition to what the other side wants? And this doesn't have to involve explosions; maybe the character who wants the bus change could get into an argument with a coffee shop owner who doesn't want to give it to him.
5). Stakes: Do the characters care about the outcome? If the bus-change-seeking character misses his bus, will he be late for something important, like a date or an appointment with his parole officer?
Pretty obvious stuff, you say? Well, yeah. But it's the obvious stuff that tends to slip my attention when I get caught up in the minute details of writing a scene. And when I run into difficulty, my tendency is to just work harder at the thing that's not working. Sometimes that's okay; sometimes I do just need to plug away at it. But even then, taking five minutes to run through the checklist couldn't hurt. In fact, I think I'm going to change my resolution: from now on I will run through the checklist *before* I start writing a scene, and maybe I won't run into so many snags in the first place!
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