Dear O'Abby: I'm stuck. Can you help?

Dear O’Abby,

I’m doing NaNo and I’m stuck.  I’m at a point where there are multiple choices for my MC and I can’t for the life of me figure out which way to make her go.  I’ve tried skipping beyond this point, but because it’s a crucial decision, what happens next depends on this choice and I can’t write what happens next without her making this decision.  I’ve been going back and forth with different ideas for days, but I’m not happy with any of my choices.

Any ideas how to get past this?

Yours,

Stuck.

Dear Stuck,

I know this feeling all too well.  When there are 155,000 options for your character and you’re not sure which one is the right one. 

Well, my advice is to choose the wrong one.

Fiction is better when characters make mistakes.  So whenever your character is faced with a decision, make her pick the one that is going to create the most trouble for her.  Pick the thing you would never select personally if you were faced with the same dilemma. 

I’ve had the same problem with the book I’m writing this month.  As a grown woman, I know the right thing for my protagonist to do in his particular situation is to call the police or some other authority figure and tell them what’s going on.  There will be a whole string of consequences from this choice of course, but all of them lead to the main problem he is facing being dealt with.  So as a writer, I’ve made him stubbornly refuse to go to the authorities, preferring to deal with the tricky, illegal situation on his own.  And of course making that foolish decision will lead to a whole lot of other, trickier situations for him to deal with. On his own.

That's important too.  To be interesting, your character needs to be active and really driving the outcomes from any decisions she makes.  If doing something one way puts the outcome into someone else's hands, choose another direction, one that forces your MC to solve her own problem, or places another one directly in her path.

So be decisive.  Never let your character dabble in her options.  She needs to pick the wrong path and navigate it, however feels natural for her.  And each time she reaches another branch in the road, she needs to choose the direction that leads to the most trouble, the most conflict.  It’s hard, I know.  We grow to love these characters like our own children and it’s hard to send them off in the wrong direction, especially when we know their choices are going to lead to them or someone else getting hurt.

I hope that helps!  Now, I’m off to give my MC some unexpected consequences for his poor decision making. Poor guy!  He doesn't know what's coming at him...

XX 

O’Abby

Edited prose falling flat? Check your inner critic

Ernest Hemingway said, "Write drunk, edit sober." The problem with editing sober, though, is if it goes too far unchecked, it can turn into "church lady" sober. The inner critic taunts your loopy, messy prose, making you feel stupid for writing it in the first place. Sort of like this:



The unfortunate result of this, at least for me, is prose with all the life sucked out of it, leading to flat characters and a weak plot. Yeah, the sentences go together, but if there's no life in them, they're not worth reading.
I ran into this with a recent short story I wrote for my MFA class. It explored what might happen if our bad ideas didn't come from us, but from external, invisible beings who planted them to ensure we learned from our mistakes. (Much like an inner critic, no?) My protagonist is one of these invisible beings, and the seed she plants backfires. Forced to confront her lizard boss Roebuck, she finds out the whole system is rigged. 
Here's the scene as I turned it in for class:

I can’t move. Can’t think. I stare, feeling like I’m seeing Roebuck for the first time. “Why control us this way? Make us do this if it doesn’t help the humans?”   

He flicks his tongue. Irritated. “Ignorance keeps the system healthy. Don’t question it.”

This isn’t right. My entire being buzzes with a new clarity. One that allows me, for the first time, to see into his brain. His memories.

There’s a silver medical table, with his former lizard self, much smaller, and squealing in pain. A human in a white lab coat injects him with a red fluid.

My mouth gapes, and I can’t speak. Zorg was right about pawns. I wonder how much he knows. How much he wanted to tell me, but was afraid of what Roebuck would do if he did.

I narrow my black eyes. “You don’t do this to help the humans. You do it because you want revenge on them.”

He growls, and pulls me toward another wall. An invisible door, one I didn’t know was there, opens. “They need to know the harm they cause others. Be accountable for it.”

The room seems to elongate. I stare at the empty elevator pod at the other side of the room, starting its countdown to leave.

I can’t let it. 

Here's the same scene with some deleted lines added back in, more showing instead of telling, and some sentences combined:

My joints stiffen. I can’t move. Can’t think. “Why control us? Make us do this if it doesn’t help the humans?”   

He flicks his tongue, irritated. “Because it works. Ignorance keeps the system healthy.”

I stare at his hooked face with its sinister scales and needle-sharp teeth. And for the first time, I don’t trust it. Fueled by anger, my mind buzzes, allowing me access into the deepest part of his brain, where his memories live.

On a silver medical table, his former lizard self, much smaller, squeals in pain. A human in a white lab coat injects him with a red fluid.

So that’s why. He doesn’t want to help the humans. He wants revenge on them.

Zorg was right about pawns. I wonder how much he wanted to tell me, but couldn’t, afraid of what Roebuck might do.

I narrow my black eyes, scathing. “You’re using us. All of us. To hurt them.”

"I don't have time for this." He growls, and pulls me toward another wall. An invisible door, one I didn’t know was there, opens. “They need to know the harm they cause others, and be accountable for it. Someday, you'll understand.”

The room elongates, and I stare at the empty elevator pod at the other side, starting its countdown to make someone else’s life unnecessarily miserable.

I can’t let it. 

  The scene still needs work, but at least I've gotten hold of the emotional heft needed to carry it forward. I took a overly telling sentence that involved "seeing Roebuck for the first time" and showed how she perceives him differently instead. I also inserted more of Roebuck's reactions to her. But most importantly, I allowed my sentences to be a bit messier, inserting more cadence and variety within the prose by default.
So what about you? What kills your prose, and what have you done to spruce it back up again?

A Little Culture Goes a Long Way

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Which brings me to the question...

Do you have cultural events mingling with the events of your novel? I'm not suggesting your plot should be centered around cultural traditions, but that you consider using events (real or imagined) in the finer details that follow your existing plot.

Cultural events are the world-building results of a society. They add a sense of depth and realism for the reader, and the reader might even gain a new appreciation for something they didn't know (if your events are accurate). They can reveal a character's personality and upbringing, and the level of tolerance, understanding, and maturity of sidekick characters. They map the passage of time, season, and weather. They create a calendar deadline that can't be changed, even if your mc hasn't finished saving the world.

They can also instigate conflict and moral dilemmas. Would your mc pick a family tradition/gathering over a first-year anniversary? Does the significant other respect that decision? And on that note, did the mc even warn his date that there might be an issue when he brings her to a family event for the first time? Did he explain the expected customs so she could be prepared?

While your mc is actively saving the world, would his/her mother call to remind him/her that it's Mother's Day, and that a phone call would have been appreciated?

Does an unusual attempt at meal preparation reveal the fact that the in-laws are coming for Memorial Day weekend, and one spouse neglected to tell the other?

Does your mc care if the family doesn't approve of his/her friend for racial or religious reasons? It'd be kind of sad if the mc was just rebelling the family standards, and didn't take the long-term effects into consideration because the relationship wasn't supposed to last. (Character growth!)

Does your mc buy decorations/gifts at the dollar store the day of... or have they been prepping all year? Oh the stress if all that work was suddenly lost. How will they handle the holiday without the "things"... How would they handle a holiday they love in a society where that holiday isn't recognized?

Cultural events and holidays happen in all societies, no matter how much stress your character is trying to handle at the time. Don't let your plot get off track, but don't forget the calendar!

Cankering Conflict

It's sickie season, and just about everybody I know has been touched by it in some form or another. When you're a parent, your child getting sick is just about the worst thing ever. The helplessness you feel can be heartbreaking, especially if it gets worse before it gets better. And your relief when a lingering illness finally subsides is beyond description. *angels singing*

Today I want to talk about cankering conflict, the slow, inevitable, heart-wrenching kind. In the novel my sister and I are co-writing, the catalyst character is motivated by his father's ALS, by watching him deteriorate slowly. My sister and I can understand him because we had a glimpse (blessedly short at about six months) while our dad was going through chemo for fourth stage lymphoma.

Chronic illness is a cankering conflict because it just eats away at everything it touches - the actual sick person, the family morale, relationships between siblings and parents and lovers. It's the kind of conflict you can't just push through and deal with because it won't move any faster than it wants to.

You. just. have. to. wait. 

And watch.

And dread.

That's cankering conflict. It doesn't always have to be illness. It can be an arranged marriage, the end of a job contract, the military reservist's report date, the space between nomination and award ceremony.

Similar to the power of absence, the power of time, of inevitability, drives people to act in ways they otherwise wouldn't. 

In Dear John by Nicholas Sparks, Savannah makes a marriage choice that betrays her heart and her true love because of a cankering conflict that's ever-present in her life. In fact, the entire love story is a cankering conflict because of his duty to his special forces team and the physical distance between them.

People who are surviving cankering conflicts - whether they are ill, about to be deported, or just watching a loved one suffer from the sidelines - all they want is some immediate relief.

Their pain is nearly constant.

And this is something all of us have to deal with in some way during our lifetimes. I guarantee your reader understands cankering conflict on a personal level.

Does your favorite book have a cankering conflict? How about your current work-in-progress?

Inciting Incidents: You can take the girl out of the suburbs...

We're moving farther into the city tomorrow. It was set before the election in response to what has become the economic reality for many people.

Inciting incident: Rising costs across the board. Gas prices in CA are crazy right now. That makes food costs more expensive, as well, which we can definitely feel in the tightening of our belts. And the renewal letter we got from our apartment manager proposed raising our rent by $200/month. At that moment, it was clinched. We had to move.

The adventure or quest novel always begins this way. Something happens. It can be a gradual build-up, but often it happens all at once--something that changes everything. For your hero, it should color everything gray. It should make the need to change inevitable.

And, as Donald Maass says in Writing the Breakout Novel, it should be gut-wrenching. He calls it "gut emotional appeal," but whatever you call it, it should be like a punch in the chest to your character, something so tangible your reader is reeling from the sympathy pains.

I don't think I've ever written an inciting incident so powerful, but I can tell you that I'm living one right now. And it's something I'll take with me into my writing going forward. Because my family of five is now on a quest, to make the city our new home.

A suburban girl who really prefers the open skies of Arizona and the open breezes of the southern Utah red rocks is going to be living in a tri-level attached to a hundred other tri-levels. I'm a character in my own story, and I know this is going to change me because... how could it not?

I have a lot of worries. Thanks to the economy, theft is on the rise. Youth unemployment has led to a rise in teen gangs just walking the streets looking for trouble. I'm reading every day in the news about random acts of violence that seem to have no real motive other than boredom combined with evil. As a mom, I keep these stories in my worry-chamber, storing them up so I'll be prepared for anything. But you can never prepare for everything.

My oldest is only five, but those of you who write YA could easily write me in as the mother who worries too much and tends toward the dramatic. Or I could be Bella, leaving her home with nothing but a tiny cactus to take Arizona with her to the rainiest place in the country.

Change is powerful. A change of location, the introduction of a stranger, or a group of strangers, the loss of someone beloved -- it's transforming.

What's the catalyst in your adventure? Does it break your character's heart? Break it. Because the path toward wholeness is the whole story.

Your Main Character Doesn't Want To Be Liked... And That's Okay

 

Some of you may know that I'm a huge fan of realism. Not only is contemporary YA my favorite genre to read (and the trickiest for me to write), I also fall head over heels for fake people who are multidimensional. My absolute faves are the so-called unlikeable main characters. The more my beliefs clash with theirs, the more intrigued I am by them. 

Exhibit A: Emily Thorne from ABC's Revenge. 

I'm the kind of gal who let's fate deal with people. I don't make it a point to bring down anyone (unless they badmouth Jensen Ackles. Because that is a SERIOUS OFFENSE, folks!!). Emily Thorne, whose actual name is Amanda Clarke and is seeking to avenge her father's death and wears awesome clothes and I think is Batman's illegitimate daughter, disagrees with me. She's like, "Pffft! Amparo, you are LAME. Someone does something bad to you? GET EVEN. *cackles*". 

I am both appalled and fascinated by this woman.

I love her even when I dislike the crap out of her.

I want to slap her across the face and hug her at the same time.

And that's what makes Revenge such an awesomesauce show to me. Emily/Amanda feels the same things I feel when someone does me wrong (anger, resentment, a need to wear awesome clothes), but we choose to react differently. We choose to be who we are to the fullest (I am slightly fierce while she is OH SO FIERCE). At the end of the day, Emily/Amanda isn't asking me to like her. She wants me to understand her, which I totally do. 

So pretty please, writing buddies, don't write the characters you wish you were. Write real people in a world that doesn't exist. Even if that means writing about real people you disagree with. 

 *hides from Emily/Amanda*

Now tell me: are you writing--or have you ever written--an unlikeable main character? If so, what were the most difficult things about him/her? AND ARE YOU WATCHING REVENGE BECAUSE OMG???

Character Ouchies

I read my first postpartum novel the other day. This:

Read my Afterglow Review here

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to read all night and get that awesome emotional pay-off at 3:00 in the morning! 

I'd also forgotten how painful it is to see your favorite main character get hurt, possibly irreversibly. It reminded me about my own personal struggle with conflict and pain when I'm writing. 

Conflict drives story, but it kills me to put my characters in any kind of permanent pain. Killing off characters is almost impossible (unless there's some magical afterlife in the story). The severing of limbs, blinding, or developing terminal illness all make me queasy, and have been the stuff of my childhood nightmares. 

My characters live the easy life. It's something I really need to work on.

The meanest thing I've ever done to a character is zap him with artificial lightning, which is pretty mean, I think. I've also shot my characters with bullets, but never in a way to cause permanent damage. 

me <--- wuss

How about you? Any reservations about knocking your characters down, cutting off toes, or giving them a terminal disease?

What's the meanest thing you've ever done to a character?

(In case you missed it yesterday, Kell Andrews just revealed her incredibly intriguing book cover for DEADWOOD.)

Never Say Never: When You Won't Do Something Until You Do It And It's The Best Thing Ever

So. A few years ago, I learned of a new TV show premiering on AMC. 

After hearing about the show's focus (advertising heavyweights in the 60s), I said a polite "no" to Mad Men. I like to consider myself an open-minded gal, but boy, I didn't see the enjoyment of watching a show like this one. You see, I have a tendency to gag in the presence of douchebags. Now picture those douchebags in fancy suits, cheating on their housewives, belittling their secretaries, and earning a lot of money by selling things you don't need. 

Yep. That's what I thought Mad Men was all about.

"I have nothing to gain from that show!" I told everyone who recommended it to me. "It is sexist and bigoted and lame! I don't care how many awards it's been nominated for! LAME!"

Then I caved in.

I watched the first episode last Monday. As of today, I'm one episode away from finishing the first season. 

My initial instincts about the show weren't 100% wrong. The show does contain the sexist/bigoted/lame elements I scoffed at. But, holy wow, it is so much more than that, folks. SO. MUCH. MORE. It's basically a tutorial on character depth, conflict, dialogue, and pacing. The show wrote the book on unlikeable protagonists (even more than The Sopranos). Mind you, I'm still on Season 1, so I have no clue if it jumps the shark later on or not. *crosses fingers*

Here's the thing Mad Men taught me: the minute you think something has nothing to offer you as a writer, you're wrong. There's always something you can learn. Whether it's from that thing's awesomeness or suckiness. Sure, I also learn things about myself on a personal level, but as a writer, Mad Men forces me to see the craft in unlikely ways. 

Never say never, folks. You'll be robbing yourself of greatness. 

Now tell me: have you ever said LAME! at something, then ended up swallowing your words??? 

The Story You Want vs. The Story You Need

Confession: I love writing funny scenes. The funnier, the better. And more often than not, they end up being my favorite scenes in my WIPs, as well as in published books. 

We all have our favorite scenes to read/write. Personally, I think this is super healthy. You either discover (and exploit) your strengths when writing, or buy books in the genre you enjoy the most. 

But not every scene you love is worth keeping.

You see, I believe there are two types of stories out there. They are:

1) The story you want

2) The story you need

#1 is easiest to spot. At the drafting stage, here's what this story will look like for me:

1) Witty banter 

(or an overload of sarcasm) (or both)

2) Lots of awkward internalization 

(Example: "I am a shy person. Parties make me anxious. Therefore, I stay home every Friday night and play Scrabble with my cat. It makes me very happy. Parties? Not so much. Because I am a shy person.")

3) Fast-paced action sequences 

(with lots of blood) (yes, I'm that girl...)

4) Zero backstory

Guess what? 99.9% of all that goes kaput during revisions. 

But they pave the way for Story #2, which should include three primordial things:

1) Your MC's goal

2) Your MC's conflict

3) How your MC resolves that conflict 

(or not)

To me, any scene is better when those three things are present. If your MC's goal is to defeat her nemesis, I'm pretty sure she won't do it with witty banter. Anything you find yourself loving to the point of obsession, cut it. You don't need something cute or witty or funny for the sake of something cute or witty or funny. You need something that makes sense for your story. 

And trust me, you'll end up loving the scene even more when it makes sense for the story.

Now tell me, blogging buddies: which scenes do you love writing/reading the most??

Gotta Love a Little Torture

Someone once asked me what I did to amp up the conflict in my stories? What did I do to create drama, to torture my characters?

It was a great question :) It tends to be the drama, the conflict, that drives a story…and you just can’t get that if your characters get everything they want and are happy all the time.

So how do I amp up the conflict, torture my characters? Simple...I take away whatever it is that my character wants the most. I throw up as many obstacles as I can. I tease her with it and then take it away. :D I let her be happy for a few short moments and then I crush all her hopes and dreams *mwahahahaha*

Okay, so it's not always so horrible (though really, it kinda is). I am actually in the process of rewriting my very first book. Back then, I wanted to write a book where the girl got her guy, kept him throughout the book, had an adventure that was scary blah blah blah, but where there was no real internal conflict. I thought it would be fun to have my book be different than all those other books out there where characters were being tortured all the time.

Guess what? It was boooooring.


Stanley Elkin said, “I would never write about a character who is not at the end of his rope.”

This is such a great piece of advice…a person at the end of their rope has no where to go but up….but there is always the threat of crashing down…and that makes a great story. If your characters never go through any kind of conflict or “torture,” then you have a story in which nothing happens. A happy person who has everything they want, and continues to be happy with everything they want…Where is the story in that?

Ernest Hemingway, in a book of advice to writers, said that a writer should…“find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement.”

I LOVE that quote. And it made me think, “What is it that gave me emotion? What gave me excitement?” Sure, I am happy when a character gets the guy at the end, or finds the treasure, or gets to live in the big pretty castle and lives happily ever after. But that isn’t what keeps me reading the story. What keeps me reading, what gives me goosebumps and makes my heart pound, is when the heroine cradles her dying love in her arms…when she is on the back of a thundering horse, shooting a gun over her shoulder at the villain chasing her….when she made some stupid mistake and screwed up the good thing she had going….THAT kind of stuff makes me want to turn the page.

Did the love interest really die? Will she get away? (Or will the retort of the gun knock her on her butt?…because that is always fun) :D Will she be able to fix her mistake and get the good thing going again, or has she just completely screwed up her life?

So, that is what I do to my characters. I give the reader a reason to turn the page, by giving my characters a reason to keep going, giving them something to fix, to resolve, to get over and move past. Death, pain, despair, torture, emotion, threat, danger….these all get the blood pumping, the tears pouring…and make that happy ending all the happier for the mess they had to go through to get there.

What do you do to torture your characters? How do you create your drama?