Randy Ingermanson's Blog: Advanced Fiction Writing, page 6

NaNoWriMo is Coming Soon!

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins November 1. Are you excited? Are you ready? 

Amanda posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’ve decided to do NaNoWriMo next month! Any advice?

Randy sez: First, let’s make sure everyone’s on the same page. 

What’s NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo is an annual event in which tens of thousands of writers try to write a novel in a month. It costs nothing to enter, and the main value is that by the end of the month, you should have at least 50,000 words written on your novel. That’s hard, but doable, and it’s worth doing. So it makes a great goal.

You can learn all about NaNoWriMo on the official NaNoWriMo website.  

Now to Amanda’s question—what advice can I offer to writers planning to enter? I’ve never entered NaNoWriMo myself, but I think it’s a great idea, and a number of my author friends enter it every year because it’s a great motivator to get some words written.

So here are my thoughts on NaNoWriMo:

Know why you’re entering. What do you hope to get out of this exercise? 
Work out your schedule now.
If you’re a planner, then plan your story in advance. 
Know what you’ll do after NaNoWriMo is over.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

What Will You Get Out of NaNoWriMo?

One of my guiding principles in life is this: “Never do anything without a reason.”

What’s your reason for wanting to enter NaNoWriMo? I can think of a number of good reasons a writer might enter. Here are a few of many possible answers:

“I think it’ll be fun.”


“It’s a challenge. I want to see if I can write a novel.”
“I’ve been meaning to write a novel for a long time and I need some accountability. This will motivate me to keep putting words on the page.”
“I was about to write a novel anyway, and entering NaNoWriMo will keep me disciplined through the holidays.”
“All of the above.”

So what’s your reason? Write it down on a piece of paper and tape it to your monitor or the wall or wherever you’ll see it every day. It’ll help you keep on track after the glow of the first few days wears off. Try to come up with a good strong reason why you’re entering. The stronger the reason, the more likely you are to succeed. 

Planning Your Schedule

If the goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, then you need to average 1667 words per day. 

If you know you can write 1000 words per hour, then that works out to an hour and forty minutes every day for 30 days.

So the first step is to schedule that time. It’s not going to schedule itself. Look at your calendar and figure out when you’re going to put in the time. 

You might decide to take weekends off. If you do that, there are only 22 weekdays in the month, which means you’ll need to average 2272 words per day, so you’ll need a bit more time each day. 

You might also decide to take off Thanksgiving and the day after. That leaves 20 working days, which bumps up your required daily word count to 2500 words.

My guess is that there’ll be 2 days in the month where something utterly unexpected will come up and cut into your schedule. So if you want to be safe, you might want to plan for only 18 working days, which means you now need 2778 words per day.

Don’t be daunted by these numbers. Those are doable word counts. But it’s going to take some serious commitment to write them. You’ll need to be tough. You’ll need to stay on course. 

You can do it, but you need to really want to do it.

I’ve written 90,000 words in a month, once. It wasn’t easy. It was brutal, in fact. I worked every single day of the month. But it was fun and I wrote some good words.

You can do this. 

Optional: Planning Your Story

Some writers like to plan their stories in advance. Maybe they’re outliners, like the late great Robert Ludlum. Maybe they’re Snowflakers. Maybe they use the Story Equation. Maybe they use some other system. 

If that’s the way your brain is wired, then October is a fine month to plan out your story, so you’ll be ready to roar on November 1, when NaNoWriMo officially opens.

And if your brain isn’t wired for planning, that’s okay too. If you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer, you can spend your remaining time before NaNoWriMo clearing your plate of things that might distract you.

After NaNoWriMo, Then What?

I think it’s important to know what you plan to do after NaNoWriMo is over. On December 1, you can expect to have 50,000 words written. Maybe more. That may be all or most of a novel. 

Then what are you going to do with it? Put it on a shelf? I hope not! I hope you’ll try to get it published. I hope you’ll actually get it published. 

You don’t have to know exactly how you’ll get your novel published now. That can wait until you have something to be published. 

But it won’t hurt now to be thinking past NaNoWriMo. Because writing a novel is a real achievement, something to be proud of. And writing a novel that people read and enjoy and talk about is an even bigger achievement.

As you probably know, there are two main ways that authors use these days to get published. 

Sell the rights to your novel to a publishing company. (This is called “traditional publishing” and it’s been used for well over a hundred years by authors.)
Act as your own publisher and put your book up for sale independently on Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, B&N, and any other online retailers. (This is called “self-publishing” or “indie-authoring” and it’s exploded in popularity in the last decade.)

Either of these approaches will work. They each have pluses and minuses. You get to decide which approach is best for you. My view is that it’s wonderful to have more than one option. If you subscribe to my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, you’ve seen my 5-day series of email on how to get published, which now covers both options in more detail. 

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post NaNoWriMo is Coming Soon! appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Can You Start With a Disaster?

Can you start your story with a disaster? Does that violate some rule? Does it violate common sense? What can go wrong?

Don posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I am attempting to write my first novel. I know that you advocate the idea of three disasters in a story. The first one should go after the first 1/4 part of the book I believe I read. My idea for my book involves opening with a huge disaster,at least within the first chapter or two, that throws the protagonist into the storyline. My questions are these “Are there any apparant downfalls or pits to be aware of when doing this?” , “Is it so bad of a thing to do that it should be completely avoided or is it possible to pull off?”

Randy sez: I don’t see any problem with starting a novel with trouble. I’m not sure what you have in mind here for your huge disaster, but I recall that The DaVinci Code had a museum curator being shot and killed in the first scene, and that book did all right. Getting killed is a disaster, especially if you’re the person catching the bullet.

But let’s review the notion of “three disasters” first to make sure we’re all on the same page.

The Three-Disaster Structure

Many novelists work from a Three-Act Structure. Act 1 covers roughly 25% of the book, and ends on a disaster that commits the lead character to the story. Act 2 covers roughly 50% of the book. Right about the midpoint of Act 2, there’s a second disaster that causes the lead character to reevaluate his approach to the story. At the end of Act 2, there’s a third disaster that causes the lead character to commit to some final confrontation. Act 3 then works up to that final confrontation, which ends in either victory or defeat for the lead character (or possible a bittersweet ending where the lead character has both victory and defeat mixed together).

There is a lot more to be said about the Three-Act Structure, and I say quite a lot of it in my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. I won’t try to cram in a whole book’s worth of thoughts in this blog post.

I’ll just make two points here about the Three-Act Structure:

It’s punctuated with three disasters, placed roughly at the 25%, 50%, and 75% marks in the story.
The reason for the placement of these disasters is that readers are expecting major psychological turning points at roughly these locations. So there’s not a lot wiggle room on these. If you tried to move these to (for example), the 1%, 5%, and 95% marks, the story would feel out of whack to your readers. 

There’s Nothing Sacred About Three

There is no rule that you can have only three bad things happen in a novel. Most novels have dozens or even hundreds of bad things happen to their characters (depending on how you count).

As far as I’m concerned, the more bad things that happen, the better. 

But the three disasters I mentioned earlier are special, because each of them marks a psychological turning point for the lead character—getting into the game, changing your approach to the game, and getting out of the game. So those are fundamental.

Of course, there are other turning points in the story. One of those is the point at which the lead character actually steps into the story.

Don’s question is whether he can introduce his lead character with a disaster.

I’d say yes, you can do that. It’s fairly common to introduce the lead character of a story with trouble. But it’s also fairly common to introduce the lead character without trouble. Either way works.

What Can Go Wrong With An Initial Disaster

Don asked if there are any potential pitfalls in introducing his protagonist with a huge disaster.

Yes, sort of. You’ll face the same pitfall that you face whenever you introduce any new character—the terrible possibility that your reader won’t care. 

The solution is just to make sure that you introduce every character in a way that makes your reader care. Do that, and it really doesn’t matter whether you’re leading with a massive disaster or a massive victory or anything in between.

Now, if your initial disaster is really huge, there’s some possibility that, by comparison, your lead character will look small. But that’s the same issue you face when you write any disaster, so I wouldn’t call that an extraordinary problem. 

And how do you make your reader care? The short answer is that you put your reader inside your character’s skin and show your reader what your character desperately wants. The long answer turns out to be very long. All of my books on fiction writing try to provide that long answer. Every book ever published on fiction writing also tries to provide that long answer. 

But even though the long answer is very long, it’s well worth learning because making your reader care is what fiction writing is all about.

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post Can You Start With a Disaster? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

About Cliffhangers

Is it true that every chapter of your novel needs to end on a cliffhanger? If so, then what exactly is a cliffhanger? And if not, then why does everyone say you should end on a cliffhanger?

Nancy asked: 

How can I make readers keep reading? 

One thing that I’ve really struggled with is understanding what my teachers mean when they tell me that I have to keep my readers reading. They always tell me to try and have some sort of cliffhanger so that the readers don’t put the book down.

First of all, what exactly does that mean? Second, how can I achieve that?

I really do want to keep my readers interested, but I don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to do that, or what I’m supposed to do to not make my readers expect the next cliffhanger.

Randy sez: If you’re writing an over-the-top action-adventure novel, then typically most scenes end with a cliffhanger—your protagonist is figuratively hanging from a cliff by his fingertips. The key word here is “figuratively.” Most novels don’t have cliffs. If you want to get more literal, the scene ends with the protatonist in some sort of life-or-death situation with no obvious way out. That’s what we mean by a cliffhanger.

And that’s fine, if you’re writing an over-the-top action-adventure novel. That’s what your target audience wants. 

But not every novel is over the top, because there are all different kinds of target audiences.

And it’s not true, even in an action-adventure novel, that every single scene needs to end with a cliffhanger.

The Two Ways to End a Scene

Yes, you want to end every scene in a way that gives your reader a reason to turn the page and read the next scene. But you’ve actually got two options here:

End your scene with your point-of-view character in trouble. 
End your scene with your point-of-view character making a risky decision.

I discuss these two options in my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. If you want all the details, with examples from several best-selling novels, you can check that out. 

In this post, we’ll consider only the case where the scene ends with trouble.

The Right Kind of Trouble

Ending a scene with your POV character in trouble is good, but it needs to be the right kind of trouble. The right kind of trouble will make your reader worry about your character.

If your POV character is a sleazy, vicious gangster trying to rob a bank, and the robbery goes wrong, and the cops arrive and arrest him at the end of the scene, that’s certainly trouble. But your reader probably won’t worry about that character, because the creep is going to get what’s coming to him. Your reader might keep reading to see justice served. But then again, maybe not. 

But suppose your POV character is a decent guy who was coming to the bank to ask for a loan to send his daughter to college. On the way in the door, he’s grabbed by gangsters who put a gun to his head and use him as a human shield. They force him to hand over the note to the teller. Then the SWAT team busts in, there’s a shootout, and the gangsters are all killed. By some miracle, your POV character is left alive, but the cops don’t know he’s a good guy, so they arrest him. Now your reader has to turn the page.  

What’s the difference? 

In the first case, the gangster deserves trouble, and gets it. That’s justice, and it’s no cause for worry.

In the second case, your character doesn’t deserve trouble, but gets it anyway. That’s injustice, and it’s great cause for worry.

If you’re going to end your scene with trouble, make it the right kind of trouble.

Who’s in Trouble?

Every scene has a POV character, but that character might not be the protagonist of your novel. The POV character might be the novel’s villain Or your protagonist’s love interest. Or the village goofball. 

If your POV character is the villain of the story, then as we saw above, it’s not all that interesting to get him in trouble. That’s not going to force your reader to turn the page.

But what if your villain ends the scene with a success? Suppose your POV character is a vicious gangster who robs a bank and runs out the door with a big bag of cash, intent on jumping in his getaway car. Then he sees the cops coming, so he grabs an innocent bystander and drags her into the car with him to prevent the cops shooting.

That’s not trouble for your POV character. But it’s trouble for the woman they hauled into the car. And it’s trouble for the cops. Once again, that’s an injustice. And your reader’s going to worry. Your reader will turn the page.

If you’re going to end your scene with trouble, make it trouble for the right person.

But How Much Trouble?

One issue here is that most novels are not over-the-top. Not all readers are looking for a bank robbery in every scene. If you’re writing a novel at a lower level of tension, that’s fine.

But you still need to end your scenes with trouble. Scale the trouble down to the level of tension your target audience is looking for. 

And this is where I have a problem with the term “cliffhanger.” That word implies a high level of tension. High tension may not be appropriate for your novel.

But trouble is always appropriate. Seeing your characters in trouble is one of the reasons your readers read. 

If you’re going to end your scene with trouble, make it the right level of trouble for your book.

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post About Cliffhangers appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Multiple Viewpoint Characters

How do you split out the air-time between characters in your novel when you have multiple viewpoint characters? Does your protagonist need to get more than 50%? 

Steve posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Thank-you for the serious time and effort you’ve devoted to helping aspiring writers! Your site is a treasure trove and your snowflake method gave me a significant boost.

I’ve been searching & reading through your older blog posts related to writing multiple POVs and this one hit home:

https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/2010/12/02/having-multiple-protagonists-in-your-novel/

Based on the cranky responses from other readers, I’m guessing it highlights a common trap… Specifically, I was drifting into multiple protagonists and hit the exact obstacle you called out: Emotional impact turns into 1 + 1 = 1/2. (I ended up with a protagonist even I didn’t care about.)

The proto-protagonists were conceived to independently uncover and feed puzzle pieces to my hero. I was hoping you’d provide some thoughts on a good balance.

For example, if two POV characters each get 50% of your novel, the emotional diffusion is obvious. Would you always try and give your hero 70%+ of the novel and let the others fight it out for the rest?

Thanks again!

Steve

Randy sez: I’ll first answer Steve’s question, then talk a little about the question of “multiple protagonists,” since this seems to have confused some people over the years.

It’s not easy to decide who should be the point-of-view character in each scene. I discussed this in my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. One of the core questions I ask for each scene is: who has the most to lose in this scene? Often, that person will make a good viewpoint character. But there are other questions, and it’s sometimes just a judgment call when picking the viewpoint character.

So I don’t decide in advance what percentage of scenes my protagonist gets to be the viewpoint character. He or she gets as many scenes as they deserve to make the story work. Normally, I work with 3, 4, or 5 viewpoint characters, and each gets somewhere between 10% and 40% of the total air-time. I don’t think I’ve ever had any viewpoint character who had more than 50% of the scenes.

As Steve mentioned, I wrote a blog post back in 2010 that has gotten a fair number of responses over the years. I suppose my original post could have been longer. At the time, I didn’t think it required a long response. Part of the problem was a confusion in terminology. Not everyone was clear on the difference between a “protagonist” and a “viewpoint character.” 

So let’s talk about that.

About Protagonists

The word “protagonist” comes from a Greek word meaning “player of the first part.” 

So the protagonist is effectively the #1 character in terms of emotional interest—the so-called “good guy”—the character the reader is rooting for.

You might think that there can be only one character in a novel who is #1. Because that’s what it means to be #1—it means that you’re the one at the top of the heap.

In most cases, you’d be right, but it’s possible to think of exceptions. Here are a few:

The story might start out with one character who is #1, but then he or she dies and another character becomes #1. In this case, there are two protagonists in the novel, but they are protagonists at different times. At any given time, there is really only one. (I’m thinking of Ken Follett’s book The Pillars of the Earth here, and also The Godfather, by Mario Puzo.)
The story might not really focus on any single character as #1. In this case, it’s not sensible to talk about the novel having a protagonist at all. (Who is the protagonist of Downton Abbey, for example? Or Lost? Or Friends?)
The leading character in the story might actually be the villain, and it’s possible that there is no single “good guy” character who could be called the protagonist. The reader is not rooting for the villain; the reader is rooting against the villain. In this case, again there is no protagonist.

Can these work? Yes, of course they can work if the author is good enough. The goal of a novel is to give the reader a powerful emotional experience. You can do that with two or more protagonists. You can do it without having any protagonist. It’s just harder than if you have one protagonist. But a really skilled writer can do it. Beginning writers generally can’t.

But that raises another issue.

About Viewpoint Characters

We need to be clear that a “protagonist” is not the same thing as a “viewpoint character.”

As I said above, the protagonist, if he exists, is the #1 character in the story, the one the reader is rooting for.

A viewpoint character is the person through whose eyes we’re living a particular scene. (So the viewpoint character can change from scene to scene.)

You can have a protagonist who is not a viewpoint character, and vice versa. (Example: Sherlock Holmes is the protagonist in the Holmes stories, but Watson is almost always the viewpoint character.)

You can let the villain of your story be the viewpoint character in some scenes. Any character in your story can be a viewpoint character. Even walk-on characters who only have one scene.

Most novels have multiple viewpoint characters, and that’s a good thing. I’ve never discouraged anyone from writing a story with multiple viewpoint characters. Beginning novelists can easily write a multi-viewpoint novel. All of my own novels have used several viewpoint characters.

As an example, The Lord of the Rings has numerous viewpoint characters. But it only has one protagonist, and that’s Frodo. (Gandalf and Aragorn might have worked well as protagonists, but they weren’t chosen. Tolkien chose Frodo to be the protagonist.)

Most Novels Have One Protagonist 

The reason most novels have one protagonist, and only one protagonist, is that it’s easier that way. It’s easier on the author. It’s easier on the reader. 

Authors who have the skills to write a novel with multiple protagonists (or none) should feel free to do so. But they’ll have to work harder to make it work.

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post Multiple Viewpoint Characters appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

What if Your Best Book Comes Last in the Series?

What if you’re writing a series and it looks like the last book in the series will be more exciting than the first? Is that bad? 

Will posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m working on the first of what I plan to be a series of fiction novels. I’ve used the Snowflake method to craft outlines for three novels so far. My question is: what to do if I think the most exciting story is in the third book? It’s kind of like George Lucas debuting the Star Wars series with Episode 4, because he wanted audiences to meet Darth Vader as a fully formed villain, rather than the conflicted boy he was in Episodes 1-3. Should I skip ahead to write book 3, which will probably change parts of books 1 & 2, or stay patient and keep building?

Randy sez: Just to make sure everybody’s on the same page, Will is referring to my wildly popular Snowflake Method of writing a novel. He’s used it to plan out a whole series, which shows some serious dedication to planning.

Kudos, Will, for mapping out three whole novels in advance! That’s hard work, and it’ll pay off for you as soon as you start writing.

It’s hard to give advice when I haven’t seen your Snowflake documents and don’t know all the details of your story. 

My view is that a lot depends on the answer to this question: “How good is Book 1 in your series?”

There are a lot of ways you could answer that, but let’s look at two possible extreme cases. You might respond:

“Book 1 is wretched. My target audience isn’t going to like it.”
“Book 1 is pretty good. If it was a standalone book, it would still make my target audience happy. But it just isn’t as good as Book 3.”

Now let’s look at those two cases.

What if Book 1 is Bad?

If Book 1 in your series is bad, then nobody is going to read Book 2 except your mother, and even she won’t read Book 3.

If that’s the case, then you need to rethink your series and figure out how to make Books 1 and 2 better. 

It sounds like you’re still in the planning stage and you haven’t written any of them yet, so there’s no high cost to revising your plans. It’s much quicker and easier to revise a Snowflake document than a four-hundred-page manuscript!

What if Book 1 is Solid?

If Book 1 in your series is in good shape, and the only problem is that it’s not as good as Book 3, then that’s a wonderful problem to have.

Remember the Harry Potter series? Book 1 was very good. Book 2 was even better. Book 3 was way better. Book 4 was massively better. And Book 7 was the best of all. That makes for a wonderful reader experience. Every book is better than the one before. 

I can’t see a downside in this case. By all means, think about how you might make Books 1 and 2 stronger. I’m a big fan of always writing the absolute best work you can write today. But once you’re done with today’s work, let it go. Then try to do better tomorrow. 

I’ve tried to do that in my own novels. (And in my blog posts. And in my e-zine.) I may not succeed in always doing better with every effort. That’s not under my control. The only thing under my control is whether I do my best work on any given day.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to start with Book 3 and then go back and do Books 1 and 2. Since Will mentioned the Star Wars series, I’ll just say that I liked Episodes 4, 5, and 6, and I thought they made a complete series. Having seen those first, I found that Episodes 1, 2, and 3 didn’t work for me, because I was comparing them to 4, 5, and 6. 

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post What if Your Best Book Comes Last in the Series? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

How Do You Decide Who Your Protagonist Is?

What if your protagonist starts acting like a jerk? Should you try to make him or her behave? Or should you change to a different protagonist?

Emily posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

How can you tell who your protagonist is?

I began writing my novel a couple years ago and I am still incredibly new at writing fiction. I have been kind of all over the place with it and haven’t really had a good method until I found the snowflake method and so far it seems to be the method for me. But I have now come to a new problem and that is that I am wondering if my Protagonist may be misplaced. The story is in the time a bit before the Protestant Reformation and the first disaster is that my “protagonists” wife becomes a Protestant and my protagonist feels obligated because of his values to send her away despite the fact that he loves her to death. Eventually some time later she discovers that she is pregnant with his child and to her her husband gets really upset. For some reasons he doesn’t seem to be very likeable and I am wondering if maybe it sounds like his wife should be the protagonist. Or does he have hope of being likeable if I write it right?

Randy sez: Glad to hear you’re finding the Snowflake Method useful, Emily! I don’t know much about your protagonist, but already I don’t like him. And I suspect most readers won’t like him either. Of course I might change my mind after seeing some of your novel, but as it stands, this guy is a jerk. 

So what are you going to do?

As I see it, you’ve got three options:

Change your protagonist’s behavior to be more likeable. 
Change your story so the wife is the protagonist/lead character.
Change the story so that your current protagonist remains the lead character but now becomes the antagonist.

In a minute, we’ll look at those three options, but let’s talk first about what a lead character is.

Your Lead Character

Your lead character is the person the story is focused on. Your lead character generally gets the biggest share of the air-time in the story. Your lead character is the person your reader is watching.

Your lead character is usually the protagonist of your story. Usually, but not always. 

As an example, in Frederick Forsyth’s novel, The Day of the Jackal, the lead character is a ruthless assassin code-named “the Jackal.” Nobody knows his real name, but a French terrorist organization hires him to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.

The novel tells the story of how the Jackal buys fake ID, gets a brilliantly disguised sniper rifle, crosses the border into France, makes his way to Paris, chooses his killing ground, and …

You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens next. The novel is brilliant and was a major best-seller in its day. I can’t justify calling the Jackal the protatonist of the story. That honor would go to Claude Lebel, the French detective leading the effort to catch the Jackal before he strikes. 

But Lebel gets comparatively little air-time. The Jackal gets more of the action than any other player. 

So in my view, the Jackal is the lead character and Lebel is the protagonist.

Let’s be clear that usually the lead character is the protagonist. It’s just not an absolute requirement.

That’s why I think you have three options, and not just two.

Now let’s look at those options in a little more detail.

Option 1: Make Your Protagonist More Likeable

Why would you choose this option?

Maybe because when you started writing the story, you liked your protagonist. You thought he had some good qualities that more than balanced out his flaws, and you hoped to write a story with a good redemption theme. That’s very reasonable. We can all think of any number of flawed people who, like Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice, turn out good in the end. 

If that’s what you intended, then it sounds like you’ve let your protagonist drift a bit. He’s done things you didn’t intend, or else you intended to show a better justification for those actions.

And if that’s what’s happened to your novel, then the solution is to work through the novel, find the bad things he does, and either soften them, or show his moral dilemma more starkly and give him a stronger reason for making the bad decisions he makes. And then show us the guilt he feels and the efforts he makes to turn things right again.

That could work.

Option 2: Make the Wife Your Protagonist

This could be a lot of work, so why would you want to choose this option?

Maybe because you were actually more in tune with the wife from the beginning, even though you didn’t realize it. 

It may be that, all along, your theme has been about repression of women by male authority figures and patriarchal power systems. In a year like this one, that could play extremely well. 

It may be that you didn’t realize this was your theme. It may be that the theme developed organically and now you’re seeing that it’s at odds with the story you started telling. 

If that’s what’s happened, then it completely makes sense to make the wife the protagonist. You may need to give her more air-time. You may need to rewrite a lot of scenes. 

Or it may turn out that you don’t actually have to change very much, if that’s the story you’ve subconsciously been writing all along. Writing a novel has a way of bringing out things from your core that you didn’t know were there.

In any event, this approach could work quite well.

Option 3: Leave Your Lead Character the Same, but Change the Protagonist

This is a lot like option 2. The wife (or some other character) would now be the protagonist, while the lead character remains this cruel man.

Why would you want to choose this option? 

Maybe because your novel is about the hidden cruelty in all humans, and you want to take a deep look into evil, using a person who thinks he’s a paragon of virtue. Could play well or play poorly, depending on who your target audience is.

This option might not take that much work. Your lead character has been getting most of the air-time and he gets to keep that. But now you just need to adjust the tone so that your reader empathizes with the wife and watches in increasing horror as the lead character turns more and more to the wrong. 

If you take this tack, I’d advise you to write the first scene in the point of view of the actual protagonist. I’d recommend you give the reader a strong emotional attachment to the true protagonist early on. And you’d need to find some compelling reason why your villainish lead character gets most of the air-time. If you can’t find that compelling reason, then this probably isn’t your strongest option. (In The Day of the Jackal, the compelling reason to give the Jackal so many scenes is because he’s really quite a fascinating person, meticulous in his preparations, making it look like a dead certainty that he’s going to succeed. And that makes for a great suspense novel.)

In any event, if you go this route, you’d have a strong novel about the nature of evil.

That could work.

You Have Options; Take Your Pick

So you have several good options, Emily. They all require a bit of work, but any one of them could make a good novel.

You get to decide how you’ll play it. 

Make your decision based on who you are, what you value, and what you want to say about life.

Good luck, and have fun!

Got a Question for My Blog?

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The post How Do You Decide Who Your Protagonist Is? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Can You Start Your Novel With a Minor Character?

If your novel begins with a minor character, is that bad? What if you need to do that to make your plot work? 

Bruce posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

i began writing a novel whose first chapter is from the POV of an unimportant character but writing so is important for the plot. the rest of the novel is in third person narrated by the author, i feel that this is complicating things. what should i do?

Randy sez: I don’t see a problem with it. 

There are any number of reasons why you might want to start a novel using some minor character.

If there’s a good reason, then do it. If there isn’t, then don’t.

Usually my blog posts are much longer than this. Usually, there’s a good reason to write a longer post. Today, there isn’t.

Got a Question for My Blog?

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The post Can You Start Your Novel With a Minor Character? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Changing Your Novel’s Genre

Can You Change a Novel’s Genre After Writing It?

Is it possible to change the genre of a novel you’ve already written? If so, how would you go about it? 

Ann posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Dear Randy,

Re: shifting genre of story from romance to crime – advice needed please!

Your Snowflake Method helped me to plan and write my first book(working title:”A Darker Burgundy”) and I submitted the early chapters for a First Novel competition in a UK women’s magazine and it was listed as a runner-up. The story is a romance where love turns to hate in Nazi-Occupied France. I have edited and re-drafted the work many times and I’m now thinking of switching genre from romance to crime, hoping this way to lend the story more pace and momentum in the hope that this may make it more appealing to readers/agents.

Please can you kindly advise me how to go about this daunting task?

Many thanks

Randy sez: this sounds tricky, at least on the surface. A romance novel is written for one target audience. A suspense novel (I think that’s what you’re really asking about, although I can’t be sure) is written for an entirely different target audience. 

A Tale of Two Genres

Let’s talk about these two genres first.

In a romance, the protagonist is the relationship between the two main characters. This relationship is in great danger of being killed. Usually, the reason the relationship might die is that one or both of the characters might pull out of it. Typically every scene (or almost every scene) includes one or both of the main characters. The story usually ends with the relationship blooming into a lifelong commitment.

In a suspense novel, you typically have one character as the protagonist. That character wants to do something or prevent something that would put some person or some group of people at high risk (possibly a nation or even the entire world). A suspense novel can have a large cast of characters and a large stage and you aren’t required to show the protagonist in every scene. 

So the problem here is that there’s not a lot of overlap between these two kinds of stories. It’s possible that you’d need to rewrite the entire story to make it conform to the suspense pattern.

But there is some overlap. The romantic suspense subgenre works as both a romance novel and a suspense novel. As in any romance novel, the protagonist is the relationship between the two main characters. And as in any romance novel, the relationship is in danger of being killed. But the reason the relationship is in danger of being killed is because one or both of the two main characters are in danger of being killed. That’s what makes it also a suspense novel.

So How To Make the Transition?

How would you transition your story to a new genre?

The first thing to do is to decide exactly what genre you want to write. Nobody can tell you what genre to write. You get to decide. What do you want the book to be? Romance? Suspense? Romantic suspense? Something else? Pick one. Amazon has hundreds of subcategories. Browse around until you find exactly the one that you can envision for your book.

The second thing to do is to make sure you know the “rules of the genre.” There aren’t any written rules, of course. You learn the rules by reading current books in your genre and learning what’s done and what’s not done. The rules will tell you what kind of story structure you can have and what the tone of each scene should be. And lots of other things.

If you’re very lucky, the manuscript you’ve reworked many times will be pretty close in structure to the new genre you’ve chosen. In that case, just tweak what you’ve got to fit the genre.

If you’re not lucky, you’re going to have to make structural changes to your novel to fit the “rules” of your new genre. Since you’re a Snowflaker, you can just make a copy of your existing Snowflake document and tweak that document. Then use that new Snowflake document to guide you in adding, deleting, and moving scenes around in your manuscript.

Finally, you will probably also have to adjust the tone of your writing. (Or maybe not. It sounds like you’ve already got a suspense-like tone, which is the reason it’s not having success as a romance. So if you’re lucky, the current tone of your novel is already appropriate for your category.) But the point here is that you should work on the tone of each scene after you’ve already fixed the structure of the novel. It would make no sense to change the tone of scenes before fixing the structure, because you’d be reworking scenes that you might eventually end up deleting.

Ouch, That’s a Lot of Work

Of course, this might end up being a lot of work. That’s not fun, but it’s your reality. If you’re stuck in a swamp, the only way out is to press ahead and get out. So grit your teeth and do it. 

And the lesson to take away from this for your next book is to define the category of your novel very early in the process of Snowflaking it. That’s a lesson that will pay big dividends for the rest of your writing life.

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

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Can You Use MRUs Everywhere?

And more importantly, should you use MRUs everywhere? What if you don’t want to use MRUs everywhere?

Not sure what an MRU is? No worries, I’ll explain that before I answer these burning questions.

Kimbra posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

HI Randy, great site. I’m enjoying reading your blog.

My question is: How do you approach the MRU pattern rule when building in back story and providing character introductions? I understand the need for a constant driver pushing the story forward, and I try to integrate backstory into motivations and reactions, but sometimes I have a hard time forcing an MRU onto a brief exchange that conveys needed information–especially in the early chapters. There are other times that seem to require “quiter” moments, breathers almost in the rhythm of the story. I believe these can still be broken into MRUs, but they stretch. Can you give me an example of an MRU from a more mundane part of a novel than the moment a tiger attacks?

Randy sez: First a quick note to explain what MRUs are, since not everybody knows. (And if you want a more detailed explanation, I’ll point you to my long article on this site, “Writing the Perfect Scene,” which covers MRUs in much more detail than I can cover in a single blog post.)

What’s an MRU?

MRUs are Dwight Swain’s abbreviation for “Motivation-Reaction Units.” And what’s a Motivation-Reaction Unit? That’s the finest-grained level of storytelling that novelists use. You might guess that it’s a “motivation” followed by a “reaction” and you’d be right. But what are “motivations” and what are “reactions?” 

A “motivation” is the term Dwight Swain uses to refer to anything that happens external to your Point-of-View character. 

A “reaction” is the term Dwight Swain uses to refer to anything that the POV character does.

You might say that this is confusing terminology, and I whole-heartedly agree with you. But Dwight Swain was the master, and he created the language, so we’ll use his terms because his ideas are really, really good. 

Here’s an example of a “motivation,” taken from my perfect-scene article:

The tiger dropped out of the tree and sprang toward Jack.

This short paragraph is all about what the tiger is doing. Jack is mentioned in the paragraph, but he’s not the one doing the action. 

Here’s an example of a “reaction,” taken from the same article:

A bolt of raw adrenaline shot through Jack’s veins. He jerked his rifle to his shoulder, sighted on the tiger’s heart, and squeezed the trigger. “Die, you bastard!”

This short paragraph is all about what our POV character Jack is doing. He’s feeling emotions. He’s acting. He’s speaking. He could also be thinking, but in this particular MRU, we don’t show his thoughts. 

Why Should You Care About MRUs?

The reason you should care about MRUs is simple. In modern fiction, authors spend most of the story “showing” the story rather than “telling” the story. If you’ve ever gotten a critique from a professional editor with the words “Show, Don’t Tell” in big bold letters on your manuscript, and you  wondered how to know when you’re showing and when you’re telling, here’s your answer:

“Showing” means you’re writing in MRUs. 
“Telling” means you’re not.

Showing is usually a good strategy. Telling is usually a bad strategy.

But be careful.

“Usually” Isn’t the Same as “Always”

The problem is that “showing” is not always the best strategy. Sometimes you need to “tell” part of your story. Here’s why:

“Showing” is more fun for your reader, but it’s inefficient. It gobbles up page count like crazy.
“Telling” is less fun for your reader, but it’s efficient. You can “tell” something in a few paragraphs that would take many chapters to “show.”

As Kimbra noted, sometimes you might want to bring in part of the character’s backstory by “telling” it, rather than by “showing” it. (The way you “show” backstory is by using a flashback. The way you “tell” backstory is by using either narrative summary or exposition.)

How Do You Decide When to Show and When to Tell?

Here’s my almost-infallible rule for deciding when to show and when to tell:

Show the exciting parts.
Tell the boring parts.

The reason you show the exciting parts is because you want to spend as long as possible on the fun parts of your story. 

The reason you tell the boring parts is because you want to get through the boring parts as fast as possible.

Not exactly rocket science, is it? That’s fine. Not everything we do in writing fiction is deep. Sometimes it’s okay to be simple. 

The above rule is not an ironclad rule, but it’s a very good rule of thumb that will be right most of the time. There will be times when you violate this rule. Use your writerly instincts to guide you.

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

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Where Do You Place Your Inciting Incident?

Can you start your novel with the inciting incident? If not, how do you decide where to put it?

James posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have placed my inciting incident real close to the beginning, like 2 pages or so. In order for the reader to care about what happens to the protagonist in the inciting incident, my first scene has no conflict. It’s just some emotional stuff as he thinks about his girlfriend and proposing to her that night after work. I just didn’t know if I should have anything to overpower the inciting incident. Is this kosher. Given this, do ALL scenes have to have the three aspects: goal, conflict, and setback? If so, I’ll have to come up with something. I wanna do this right. Thanks for any help. If you happen to have time to answer this, will you answer Online or email to me?

Randy sez: First, let’s define our terms. The inciting incident is some “new thing” in your protagonist’s world. It marks the change that is ultimately going to pull your protagonist into your story. Usually, this is something external to your protagonist, but it’s possible it could be an internal change.

I don’t see a problem with starting the inciting incident in the first two pages of the novel. You can put it pretty much anywhere you want, so long as it’s reasonably early in the story and as long as it works. Some stories start fast out of the gate, and some take longer to get rolling. 

I do see a problem with a scene that has no conflict of any kind. Conflict doesn’t get in the way of your reader caring about your protagonist. Conflict is often the reason your reader does care, at least early on. When we see somebody in trouble, we instinctively care about them. We might later stop caring about them if we decide they aren’t worth caring about.

But let’s face it—when somebody’s in trouble, we care. The news this last week has been about twelve young soccer players and their coach in Thailand, trapped by rising floodwaters two and a half miles into a cave. The minute we heard about them, we cared. Because that’s what humans do.

I don’t know anything about your story, James, but I would think that “some emotional stuff” about a girlfriend your protagonist is about to propose to sounds reasonably interesting already. Fiction is about giving your reader a powerful emotional experience. I would also guess there’s some conflict here, even though only your protagonist is in the scene. Internal conflict is conflict.

James, you asked if all scenes must have a Goal, Conflict, and Setback. The answer is no. That’s one strategy, and we call that strategy a Proactive Scene. But another strategy is the Reactive Scene, where you have a Reaction, a Dilemma, and a Decision. (For much more on both of those, see my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method.)

I strongly recommend that all scenes be either Proactive or Reactive. These are solid design patterns that work well and that your readers are already primed to understand. If you have a scene that’s neither Proactive nor Reactive, you should be able to explain to yourself what makes the scene work—why is it giving your reader a powerful emotional experience? And then you should ask whether you can make the scene better by turning it into either a Proactive or Reactive scene. Because usually, you can.

Let’s circle back to the inciting incident. I don’t sweat the exact location of the inciting incident, as long as it’s in the first several chapters. Remember that the inciting incident is not what makes your reader start caring about your story. The inciting incident usually comes much too late for that. Long before your reader reaches the inciting incident, she should already care about your story.

My thinking is that you want to start pulling your reader into your story with a strong first sentence.

Followed by a strong first paragraph. 

Followed by a strong first page.

Followed by a strong first scene. 

If you do all that, then it really doesn’t matter when the inciting incident happens, because your reader already committed to the story from the very beginning. The inciting incident just gives your reader words to explain why she’s committed. 

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post Where Do You Place Your Inciting Incident?  appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.