C. Aubrey Hall's Blog, page 2

The Power of Setting

This post launches a new series of tips and strategies for handling fiction locales.

In the realms of science fiction and fantasy, the setting–or story world–is so important that it’s considered a character.

But what about other genres? How important is setting to the success of romances, mysteries, thrillers, horror, or westerns? Won’t any old backdrop do? After all, it’s the story people and plot that matter, right?

Uh, not entirely.

The backdrop matters a great deal. It should not be bland and generic, interchangeable, or forgettable. Balance is important, of course. You don’t want your story’s setting to overwhelm everything else. It’s fiction, after all, not a travelogue. However, the vague, one-setting-fits-all location will bring nothing to your fiction party.

Therefore, consider the following questions:

How will your setting affect the plot?

How will your setting affect your characters?

How will your setting affect the imagery, tone, and mood of the story?

Is your setting bland or vivid? Why?

Is your setting stereotypical or fresh?

How much research will your setting require?

In the posts to come, I’ll be addressing each of these questions in further detail.

Swamp Survival Strategy 7: Incorporating Multiple Story Lines–Part B

The last technique I want to address in this series on coping with a book’s second act has to do with Hidden Story. This is the third of three story lines that books contain. It’s not a subplot. It is instead what’s happening among your characters who are offstage.

You dramatize the Ongoing Story (your main plot line) in successive scenes and present them onstage for readers. But while that story action is happening, what is going on behind those scenes?

Hidden Story runs parallel to and simultaneously with Ongoing Story. Consequently, it’s far more challenging to handle than Back Story. The Back Story is about character secrets and motivations. It’s invented as needed. Hidden Story is about staging the next conflict that will take place. It’s about the trouble that will hit your protagonist next. Most of the time, Hidden Story is far more important to a book’s progression than Back Story. Hidden Story should be plotted with as much care as the Ongoing Story.

Don’t let this intimidate you. In your first few learning-novel manuscripts you may not deal with Hidden Story other than indirectly as you keep track of what your antagonist is doing, plotting, scheming, and planning when not confronting the protagonist in scene action. It can be sufficient to focus on the central, dramatized plot and simply figure out where and when the antagonist will throw a plot twist at your hero.

However, you may find yourself with that empty stretch of pages in the middle where nothing seems to be happening the way you planned. You may find your ongoing story action stalled while your protagonist waits passively for plot developments to unfold. You may feel that you’ve lost your way. You may worry that the excitement of your opening is fading.

When you start to want more from your book idea, when you find yourself eager to add dimension, when you feel ready to stretch and grow a bit, then it’s time to take on the strategy of where and when you’ll reveal glimpses of Hidden Story to your readers. Doing this in the book’s swampy, dismal, gloomy, dark middle can spark new interest in moving the plot forward.

Handling Hidden Story can be managed in either single viewpoint or in multiple viewpoint. Most of the time, Hidden Story involves tracking the movements of the antagonist, although the POV shift can move focus to any secondary character capable of carrying a subplot.

If you choose to write from a single POV, the Hidden Story will be much more hidden. Readers don’t know what’s going through the villain’s mind. They have to settle for allusions through character action, behavior, reaction, and dialogue.

If you choose to shift viewpoints, Hidden Story becomes much easier to handle because the characters are onstage more often. Readers gain the privilege of seeing much of the antagonist’s plotting and planning against the protagonist. Readers are privy to actions which serve to raise new threats over the hero or endanger people the hero cares about.

Of course, if you’ve never tackled multiple POV before, you may not feel ready to take it on. That’s perfectly okay. Remember that I’ve shared six other strategies for keeping your book’s middle from sagging, bogging down, or drowning. However, if you decide to shift viewpoint to try this strategy, please remember that changing viewpoint effectively requires adept story sense and timing. You need to set hooks and switch clearly from your protagonist’s perspective to follow story action that doesn’t involve your primary character.

Please understand that if you stick to one viewpoint, your story’s plot twists will be less predictable and more surprising to readers.

On the other hand, if you choose multiple viewpoints, you can raise threat and generate suspense, but it’s possible to reveal too much Hidden Story and thereby undermine your plot twists.

The proper handling and management of the three story lines can make a vital difference in whether your manuscript seems to flow plausibly from character goals and motivations instead of featuring puppet characters being moved too visibly by the author’s hand.

The proper handling and management of these three story lines will also affect your decisions of how to order your scenes and their reactions for the best dramatic result. Just remember that although Hidden Story often will be revealed for the first time in the dismal middle, you should have plotted it carefully in your initial outline. You will also wait for the revision process to best determine where you’ll allow Hidden Story and Ongoing Story to intersect.

And so this wraps up the seven strategies for dealing with the dismal swamp. Using one or several of these techniques should help you navigate the most challenging section of a novel and make it as much fun to write as it is to read.

FICTION FORMULA FIX-IT error

It’s been brought to my attention that in the print version of my book on revision–FICTION FORMULA FIX-IT–the end of Chapter 3 duplicates the same DOs and DON’Ts box that ends Chapter 2.

Chapter 3 should instead end with the following:

—

TASKS

*Make and keep a separate document file of your original rough draft for reference. Do not work directly from this file.

*Secure extra copies of your work for safekeeping.

*Organize your notes for changes you wish to make.

*Answer the questions in this chapter and use your answers to form a checklist of revision tasks. Add as many tasks as you deem necessary.

*Divide your revision tasks into categories of EASY, CHALLENGING, and TOUGH.

—

I’m not sure if everyone’s print version contains the error, but my original file shows no problem. That means somewhere in the mysterious workings of Amazon, a goof has occurred.

If your print copy has this error, I apologize. How ironic that a book on revision should need such a “fix.”

Swamp Survival Strategy 7: Incorporating Multiple Story Lines–Part A

This method of keeping the middle of your book from sinking involves how you manage potentially three differing story lines and where you allow them to intersect.

No, I’m not referring to subplots.

Novels can have up to three story lines. These are

the ongoing story,

the back story,

the hidden story.

Although the midsection of your book is not really the place to start thinking about them, it’s often where one of them may appear or where more than one will connect.

So let’s define them before I elaborate on how to put them to use.

Ongoing story is your book’s main plot. It’s the central line of events built on your protagonist’s story goal. Ongoing story features the plot events you’ve been working with from the beginning of your manuscript. Sometimes referred to as the “present story,” the ongoing plot is what’s happening onstage in front of the reader, and it’s dramatized in plot units called scenes or sequel/reactions. It’s part of the story’s present in that it doesn’t deal with past events.

Back story involves past history or events that have already occurred. Back story may center on old feuds and quarrels, on past relationships, on secrets, on long-resented troubles. These are part of your story’s background or part of your characters’ backgrounds. What’s most important to remember about back story is that if you don’t need it for your main, ongoing plot to make sense, don’t use it.

Hidden story is the action taking place out of sight while your dramatized scenes are played for readers. It’s happening simultaneously to the ongoing story, but it’s not shown.

Back Story

Some plots simply don’t need a back story. Sometimes, what’s occurred before a story opens has no significance whatsoever. As an example, John Grisham’s legal thriller, The Firm, represents a highly successful novel almost totally lacking in back story. The book contains a brief reference to the protagonist’s brother who’s serving a prison sentence for an unspecified crime. That information informs readers of why the hero Mitch probably went into law, but otherwise it has no bearing on what follows.

The book also mentions a prior FBI investigation into two unexplained deaths of attorneys, and that’s all. Grisham’s fast-paced thriller doesn’t need meandering through old family histories or in-office squabbles. He wisely keeps his story focused on the present plot events.

So what is back story good for? It’s the source of character motivation. It can provoke extreme character reactions–extreme, that is, for whatever is happening in the ongoing story. Characters who overreact can inject drama, unpredictability, and added texture. Readers’ curiosity is piqued as to what lies behind such an overreaction.

Back story can also turn a moderately interesting plot into an exciting one. Even in plots where the action/conflict is almost entirely in the ongoing story, injecting a plot twist or some complication arising from the protagonist’s past can heighten the drama.

The swampy, dismal middle of a book project is a good place to inject trouble from the past. Very often, the shocking central event comes straight from back story when a terrible secret is revealed, or violent action is taken in revenge for a past wrong, or a character springs into drastic action due to motivations stemming from old history.

With all that in mind, how do you determine how much back story is necessary? How do you know if you should use just a little or a lot?

Genre affects this decision. For example, a mystery is all about delving into back story to uncover motive and opportunity, to break alibis, to sift old hurts and rivalries, and to bring truth out into the open. A thriller, depending on whether it’s an action-heavy techno thriller or a psychological crime book about serial killings, may depend heavily on the back story for understanding what drives a killer to strike again and again or may not need to delve into the past when there’s plenty of present-day danger for the protagonist to cope with.

If your story hinges on back story and your plot relies heavily on dredging up past secrets, then you need to plot and outline that past history with care. That will take time and thought to ensure it makes sense and is plausible. After all that work, however, understand that you won’t share all of it with readers.

The back story outline is a tool to assist you the writer. It will help you decide exactly which secrets will be revealed. You’ll select which old conflicts can be hashed out and finally resolved.

The middle of the book can be where action slows down and explanations are shared between characters, revealing some relevant pieces of the past that help make what’s happening in the ongoing story more understandable. It doesn’t mean you will bring your ongoing story to a halt while you dump endless pages of background on your hapless reader.

I’m always advising fantasy writers to avoid showering background explanation on readers in the opening pages of a book. Therefore, after all that restraint, the middle is an appropriate place to share it–but only a little.

Keep your perspective and understand the difference between what readers need to know in order to understand your story versus what you need to know in order to understand why your characters are behaving the way they do. Only supply readers with the minimum to comprehend and follow your plot.

As helpful as back story can be, please heed this warning that it carries pitfalls. You can become caught up in past events and sidetrack yourself. If this occurs, you run the risk of splitting your book’s focus. You might not think that matters, but a split focus makes it nearly impossible to end a book plausibly.

If your back story proves intriguing enough to readers from the small bits and hints that you drop across the middle act of your novel, you could eventually be asked by an editor to write a prequel. Then you can really let yourself go and have fun developing the back story in enough detail for it to morph into an ongoing story line.

Remember that back story can be inserted into your manuscript’s middle in two or three paragraphs of swift narrative summary. You don’t have to make a long production of it, but it can keep readers hooked until you reach the third act and start plot dominoes tumbling toward the story climax.

Swamp Survival Strategy 6: Increase the Suspense Quotient

Usually most genre books have some degree of built-in suspense as to their eventual outcome. Romance is an exception, in that the outcome nearly always results in a relationship commitment between the two primary characters. However, the misunderstandings and tribulations they endure create a small degree of suspense over how they will work things out.

Basically, if a book is written with a goal-centered protagonist opposed directly by an antagonist, then readers turn pages with some degree of suspense/anticipation as to how, where, why, and whether the protagonist will succeed.

Thrillers, suspense, mystery, and urban fantasy books, naturally, employ additional methods to heighten suspense from start to finish. And therefore, as a swamp strategy, I strongly suggest that you borrow some of these techniques to help fill a sagging story middle. It not only perks up reader interest, but I have found that it keeps me more involved in my story. The writing process stays fun instead of becoming a monotonous slog.

Let’s look at some of the ways suspense can be generated or boosted.

Establish reader sympathy for the next victim. By the center of the book, you should have a strong bond built between your protagonist and readers. However, if your midpoint is going to feature the death of a secondary or minor character as a shocker plot twist, then make sure you put a brief spotlight on this individual and feature some action or personality revelation that makes him or her either likable, vulnerable, or poignant. Take care with this approach because you don’t want to telegraph the danger that’s about to strike. But if you can evoke reader sympathy–however briefly–then the shocker will carry stronger emotional impact. Sympathy can be launched in a sentence or two. No massive character background info-dump is necessary.

Set a clock ticking in the second act. Whether the deadline is a literal one or a psychological one, establishing that time is running out brings a sense of urgency that keeps plots from losing momentum. Ticking clocks can be a bomb detonator set to explode at a certain hour. It can be a slow-acting poison administered to someone the protagonist cares about, necessitating a race to find an antidote. It can be a looming hurricane approaching the coast and forcing people to evacuate. It can be criminals holding hostages in a bank.

Don’t open that door. The ancient Greeks created the myth of Pandora’s box to illustrate the dangers of curiosity. Without being curious, mankind can’t move forward or make discoveries. Yet curiosity can tempt the unwary into all sorts of difficulties. As a suspense technique, the “door” that shouldn’t be opened can be an address or locale that’s off limits. It can be an actual locked door within a spooky old house. It can be the questions asked by an investigator or the background check on a suspect. Is there a place in your story’s middle where your protagonist can prowl in forbidden areas? Secrets are always fascinating, aren’t they?

Set up a series of obstacles. Some thrillers put their protagonists through a harrowing ordeal of physical challenges. Think of every James Bond plot you’ve ever read or watched. Sooner or later, Bond must infiltrate the lair/stronghold/citadel/laboratory/mansion of the villain–working his way past guards, traps, sharks, pitfalls, attack dogs, and henchmen. Throw in a ticking clock or sense of urgency, add a dose of extra sympathy, and make certain your protagonist is trying to open a door that shouldn’t be unlocked, and your plot will benefit. However, if your story isn’t action-adventure, then a series of obstacles can be a series of riddles to be solved or optical illusions to master or a spellcasting to countermand. Cracking a code or deciphering the missing element in a chemical formula are variations of obstacles.

Isolate your characters. Whether your protagonist actually infiltrates the villain’s territory by venturing behind enemy lines, or simply remains behind to hold on while sidekicks are sent for help, the point of this tactic is to isolate your main character and thereby intensify the danger he or she is in. In Agatha Christie’s suspense masterpiece, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, the entire group of characters is immediately isolated by being lured to a remote island without any means of leaving. Their isolation casts an initial feeling of unease over the company, and when deaths start occurring, their entrapment with no way to get help adds to their danger. Although in contemporary fiction the invention of cell phones mitigates this effect, writers simply create dead zones, make Wi-Fi unreliable, or drop calls. Think how cut off and uneasy you feel if you inadvertently leave your phone behind. Emails and texts can’t reach you–bliss–but you can’t help but wonder, what if I should need to reach someone in an emergency?

Use atmosphere. Let the works of Edgar Allen Poe guide you in how to employ atmosphere, mood, setting, and even weather to increase the creepy factor your book may need. Storms and downpours create an atmosphere of gloom and isolation. They hamper our senses. Be sensitive to the setting details you’re mentioning or describing. Radiant sunshine in a lovely flower-strewn meadow makes us happy. Booming thunder and hammering cold rain make us huddle for shelter and dive into caves or creepy old deserted houses where we shouldn’t normally venture.

Danger should be real. Beware of creating phony danger that turns out to be a false alarm. It’s inadvisable to warn of danger, to build anticipation toward your protagonist having to confront that danger, and then end up rescued in the nick of time or finding nothing in the locked room after all. This kind of plotting is, at best, weak. At its worst it’s known in the writing biz as a “paper tiger.” Fake danger is considered a cheap trick, and it infuriates readers. Earlier this week, I was listening to a half-hour old radio program from the 1950s, a mystery featuring the detective Rick Diamond. Normally Rick is snarky, self-assured, and always investigating his way into trouble that beats him up, shoots at him, or knocks him cold. This particular episode featured a murder victim that had been beaten to death. Details were gruesome, including a broken back and crushed throat. Rick, of course, ended up locked in a cellar with a creepy giant of a man who intended to do the same kind of violence to him. Up till this point, the story had been suspenseful and harrowing. Imagining Rick scrambling in that gloomy cellar, trying to avoid grappling with an immense man with long swinging arms and a habit of muttering to himself about “having to kill another one,” was hair-raising stuff. And then, just as Rick was about to be snapped in half, rescue arrived–very contrived rescue–with an awkward verbal explanation of how the police lieutenant just happened to figure out Rick was there and in trouble. No doubt, the writer ran out of time or minutes or ideas and had to do something to meet the deadline, but his “solution” was a phony and a cheat. It made me angry that I’d wasted time listening to it. That’s the worst Diamond program I’ve ever encountered. Actually, it’s the only bad script I’ve come across in the Diamond episodes, so I won’t give up on the show but I’ll never trust it quite the same way again.

These are a few tactics to add danger, zest, unpredictability, and excitement to the central portion of your book. Thrillers employ these and more from start to finish, but I’ve chosen these because they work very well for second acts. Utilize them all or just a few or simply one, and see if you aren’t happier with the result.

Swamp Survival Strategy 5: Surprise Central

The center of novels written for the commercial genre market generally serves up a shocking plot twist or a large, highly anticipated pivotal event that marks a turning point for the characters and sends them rushing toward the finale.

Either approach is fine. Each has its own merits. Let’s look at them separately.

Wowza Surprise Injection:

We owe this method in part to thrillers and their dominance over the entertainment market. Yet any genre can utilize this technique. After all, what’s better than jolting readers with a logical but unanticipated plot twist? Depending on the type of story, this stinger can be funny, tragic, heartrending, scary, horrific, tragic, dangerous, or intensely romantic.

Two evenings ago, I was reading the latest John Sandford thriller, OCEAN PREY, and the middle of the book served up a doozy I didn’t see coming. I won’t spoil it, but it was a big shock. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t like it. I wish it hadn’t happened. However, it was logical. It made sense. The story events supported it. It raised the stakes. It fit the thriller genre perfectly by providing both thrill and chill. It’s the kind of plotting that put Sandford on the bestseller list to begin with and keeps him there, year after year. It gave me my money’s worth even before I finished reading the book.

Unexpected central events can come into a story as a huge confrontation between oppositional characters. It can be a startling revelation. In whatever form it takes, the surprise should deliver maximum entertainment value (up to that point in the story; remember the climax must top this.) Whatever it does, it should grab reader attention in a big way.

Spoiler Alert: In the mystery novel HOT MONEY by Dick Francis, the protagonist’s father’s home is exploded by a bomb in the book’s middle. In the urban fantasy, FOOL MOON by Jim Butcher, a horrific demonic monster breaks loose in a police station and kills cops, nearly destroys the building, and injures the protagonist who tries to stop it.

Even in quieter stories, the surprising plot twist is placed to wake up the saggy middle and give it fresh dramatic punch. In romantic fiction, for example, the center of the book can be where either member of the couple reaches the realization of intense physical attraction for the other. Or it may be the first bedroom scene of the book.

Disadvantages to the shocker plot twist:

It may prove impossible to top this plausibly. Evaluate this plot development carefully to make certain you have a bigger and more compelling finish.You must plant for it, so that when it occurs it seems logical to readers, but take care you don’t give it away.It can be so shocking and destructive that it generates an enormous letdown in the aftermath. This can slow pacing too much, and some writers find it difficult to regain their story’s momentum.Avoid the temptation to kill your protagonist in the middle of the book. Although this may seem clever to you while you’re deep in the throes of swamp floundering, it’s rarely a brilliant idea. It’s extremely difficult to persuade readers to shift over to a new lead character.

Anticipated Pivotal Event:

This confrontation or story event is dangled before readers and characters from the book’s opening. Signals are clear that it’s coming and it won’t be pretty. Anticipation–and its by-product of suspense–builds scene by scene, leading up to whatever is going to take place.

The central pivotal event is a signal–well understood by readers–that the swampy middle is ending, and the author is about to lead everyone into Act III of the story. Up until this point, the protagonist probably had a safety line of some kind that would allow retreat. From the central event, however, there is no turning back. Whatever happens, the story stakes should go up. A gauntlet is thrown.

In some mysteries, a major clue is discovered that may turn the investigation around. In some thrillers, the killer’s identity is exposed. In some women’s fiction, marital infidelity may be revealed, shaking the relationship apart. In romance, the couple may break up. In science fiction, the ship may be severely damaged, putting everyone’s life in danger.

This type of looming central event must fulfill all the anticipatory buildup leading to it. Therefore, it must be large and it must be long in word count. That’s because in reader perception, length equals importance.

In the twentieth century, book chapters tended to be much longer than they are now. For example, Dean Koontz’s breakout thriller, WHISPERS, features a 7,500-word scene of intense, dangerous action between two characters. It’s tightly focused. The goals are directly oppositional–one wants to kill the other–and there’s nothing extraneous, nothing padded. With a single scene exceeding the length of a conventional short story, this is obviously of deep importance to the plot. We call this type of confrontation a Big Scene. It’s long, dynamic, impossible to put down, and very much delivering on reader expectation.

However, thanks to the influence of marketing guru, James Patterson, writing in the twenty-first century has become broken into smaller segments reflective of how people absorb information in quicker bursts, with myriad distractions vying for attention. Chapters today may be only 1,000 words–or less–so does that mean the Big Scene has become extinct?

It does not.

Instead, authors employ what we refer to as a Scene Cluster. This is three or more very short scenes jammed together without aftermath or character reaction. The clustering allows authors to keep the intensity or danger going, and the pacing very fast, but the segmentation allows viewpoint cross-cutting or stopping points for readers who may be interrupted. Once the cluster is over, then a long reaction is supplied to carry across all the scenes that were clustered into a single pivotal event.

While the Big Scene and the Scene Cluster are two very different writing structures, they accomplish the same result of spinning out and fully developing a momentous, terrible, horrific event taking place in your characters’ lives.

Disadvantages to the Central Pivotal Event:

It can be challenging to build anticipation for the coming confrontation while not boring readers. The solution lies in finding fresh ways to keep raising the stakes just a little, just a little more, and more until the suspense seems unbearable. Simply relying on repetition will make readers impatient and jaded.Scene clusters can be difficult to manage without splitting story focus or losing control of what’s happening in a logical, cause-and-effect pattern. If you’re trying to juggle two or three viewpoints, stay aware of your protagonist and don’t let other characters seize too much limelight.Scene Clusters run the risk of losing reader involvement since the story action doesn’t stop to allow viewpoint character reaction to what’s happening. This is dangerous ground. Tread carefully.Either a Big Scene or a Scene Cluster must deliver whatever has been built up for it, and then add a little extra.Remember that the Climax of the book must top whatever happens in the story’s middle.

Swamp Survival Strategies 4: Managing Viewpoint, Part b

Some writers–including the late mystery author Tony Hillerman–consider single viewpoint to be the perfect POV. It is by far the easiest to manage, and keeps your plot focused.

However, if your story is one that requires multiple perspectives, then you need to know

when to switch,

where to switch,

to whom to switch

for your story–especially in its middle section–to achieve its full potential as reader-enthralling entertainment. In genre fiction, multiple viewpoints means you’re shifting from one limited viewpoint to another at strategic points for specific reasons. Viewpoint is not shifted at random or just because you can’t think of anything better to do with your story.

By limited, I mean you stay in one viewpoint at a time, for the duration of a scene, or a chapter, or a section of the story, and then you change to another.

Viewpoint shouldn’t jump at author whim.

Viewpoint shouldn’t float, uncontrolled, meandering from the perspective of several characters within a scene or conversation.

Limited viewpoint means that you maintain the illusion and integrity of any given viewpoint as long as you are inside that character’s skin.

Now, for any character in your cast to be given a POV, that character should meet the following criteria–even if only temporarily:

*Will this character be at the center of the story action?

*Will this character have everything at risk?

*Will this character’s struggle toward a goal be the fuel driving this portion of the plot?

*Will this character be altered or changed by the scene’s outcome?

If a character in your story lacks leadership qualities, is not a doer, is not someone who gets involved, is passive and stands aside from what happens to others, is dispassionate, and is content to watch the world go by, this individual should NOT be a POV.

Therefore, only proactive characters should carry viewpoints.

Viewpoint Rules

#1–Never switch POV just to show what another character is thinking.

As you write a book, you develop an idea of how well a the protagonist’s viewpoint is working and whether you need more perspectives.

A careful selection of POVs will help focus the story and keep you on track.

One or two viewpoints is sufficient for short books.

Up to four viewpoints are enough for longer, complex books.

Remember that each viewpoint you add to your story serves to expand the plot and render it more dimensional. That, in turn, makes your job in writing it more challenging.

Consequently, with multiple viewpoints you should plot and graph where and at which key, dramatic points these different plots will intersect because each viewpoint constitutes a subplot. That’s why you should limit your POV selections to characters with whom you can empathize, understand, or care about. Even more importantly, limit your POV selections to a number you can comfortably handle.

If you can’t find some emotional link between you and a character, don’t include that perspective just for the sake of variety.

#2–Change POV to follow the story.

If you story bogs down–possibly during the dismal middle–then perhaps you need a viewpoint shift. It will perk up a story that’s losing momentum. It will give you fresh material, and it will intrigue readers.

Anytime your protagonist must be sidelined for a short time in the story world, if exciting events are taking place, shift to whatever character is at the center of those events.

It can be fun also to put your protagonist in a tough spot, then shift away to a different character. You follow this second perspective through a setback and leave Character 2 teetering on a metaphorical (or actual) cliff edge, then shift back to your protagonist’s POV.

#3–Change POV to heighten danger or suspense in your story.

For example, when you shift to the villain’s perspective, and this individual is busy planning some way to foil, defeat, or harm the protagonist, then threat is immediately heightened because readers are now aware of impending danger while the hero is not.

This tactic carries with it advantages and disadvantages, which should be weighed.

Advantage:

Shifting viewpoint to show impending danger will cause readers to turn pages more quickly. They’ll read faster with heightened involvement. They want to warn the protagonist, but, because they can’t, anticipation rises within them. They read anxiously, not wanting to miss a word of the approaching danger.

Disadvantage:

Shifting viewpoint to the villain destroys the element of surprise. When danger strikes the protagonist, there’s no plot twist.

Also, if readers know too much more than the protagonist for too long, they tend to grow impatient. They unfairly expect the protagonist to solve problems more quickly.

#4–Change POV to show character motivation.

This isn’t the same thing as jumping between characters from paragraph to paragraph to share what they’re thinking. Instead, you limit yourself to a single perspective from start to finish within a scene. Then shift POV after the scene ends to show Character 2’s reaction in viewpoint.

For example, in a romance story, doing this serves to keep the hero sympathetic early in the plot when he might be acting rude, arrogant, or unhelpful. Shifting into his viewpoint shows readers why he’s behaving the way he is, and also that he’s really a decent guy.

#5–The most effective POV shifts occur at the end of chapters.

You gain the advantage of a natural break point with a structural separation that helps readers transition smoothly into the perspective of the new POV character.

Most chapters end at the setback of a strong, conflictful scene. That setback provides a powerful hook where things look bleak for the protagonist. Then, when you switch chapters, shift to a different POV character. Doing this entices readers to keep going instead of putting the story down for a while.

#6–Viewpoint can also be shifted between scenes within a chapter.

I don’t see this technique used much these days. Chapters have become very short, thanks to the influence of writers such as James Patterson. But in older fiction, you’ll see a long chapter separated by a space break and possibly a POV shift.

#7–NEVER shift viewpoint within a scene.

Doing this disrupts reader suspension of disbelief. It splits the scene’s focus. It also muddles the identity of the scene’s protagonist. Finally, this muddles the scene setback because who wins and who loses? Shifting perspective within a scene creates a diffused goal intention, split focus, confusing stimulus/response, and a weak or missing setback that fails to firmly resolve the scene or set a hook for what’s to come next.

Swamp Survival Strategies 4: Multiple Viewpoints, Part a

Viewpoint in fiction is a vital component to a rich, entertaining immersion of the reader into your story world and the heart and soul of your protagonist. Viewpoint is what prose writers bring to the party that the razzle-dazzle color, moving images, and special effects of movies and television just can’t deliver. Movies can’t put audiences into the mind of a character. Therefore, watching movies–while helpful for plot, pacing, setting, and character design–won’t teach you how to handle viewpoint.

Movies show their audience what’s happening from the outside.

Novels let readers experience what’s happening from the inside out.

Viewpoint, remember, is about placing readers in the thoughts and emotions of a person at the center of the story’s action.

Simple plots fare better with a single viewpoint–that of the protagonist–from start to finish. However, some stories are long, complex, intricate, and need multiple character viewpoints to bring an author’s vision to the page. Novels with several subplots may require a viewpoint shift to follow the story action.

Very often, the middle of a novel brings a decided change of pace after a frenetic first act. The midsection is where writers seek to fill in background explanation that’s been deferred or they want to open up subplots or they want to twist the plot by revealing the villain’s identity. Therefore, it’s common to utilize a shift of viewpoint to the villain’s perspective. Other viewpoints may be utilized as well to follow the story, especially if the protagonist is going to be sidelined for a few pages.

Keep in mind that if you decide to shift to the villain’s perspective, you are in effect creating a subplot with the villain as its protagonist. The subplot will have its conflict progression and conclude with its own miniature climax. Each viewpoint you utilize in a novel manuscript should, in fact, launch and carry a subplot.

By approaching multiple viewpoint this way, you avoid the bad habit of jumping at random into the thoughts or emotions of various characters just for the sake of variety or just because you can’t think of what should happen next.

The very basics of viewpoint management are as follows:

In genre fiction, you choose whether you intend to write your story in first-person viewpoint (me, myself, and I) or third-person viewpoint (he, she, or it).

Single limited viewpoint means the story is restricted to the protagonist’s perspective only (either in first-person or in third-person) for the duration of the book.

Multiple limited viewpoint means that at any given point, the story is restricted to one viewpoint at a time. Most often, multiple-viewpoint plots are written in third-person. Occasionally they do appear in first-person, although you’re asking readers to make a larger mental leap from one character to the next.

To decide whether you want to focus your plot on a single viewpoint or expand to two or more, ask yourself the following questions:

Will changing viewpoint make my story better?Will changing viewpoint make my story more dramatic?Will changing viewpoint make my story less predictable, or will it rob my plot of twists?Do I need to change viewpoint to improve my story?Do I want to change viewpoint to share with readers what all my characters are thinking?

Forget what you want. Write what you need.

To be continued …

Swamp Survival Strategies–Part 3: Managing Subplots

A subplot is any plot thread that’s secondary or subsidiary to the central plot line. Consequently, a subplot receives less emphasis and fewer pages than the central plot. Subplots can revolve around the protagonist by bringing out internal conflict or a relationship conflict aside from the external conflict of the main story.

You don’t have to wait until the middle of a book manuscript to bring in a subplot. These secondary story lines can begin almost anywhere in a novel except the climax. Most of them, however, enter the book near the end of the first act or in the book’s middle section.

If you’re somewhere in the dark, dank, miserable, swampy middle of your story … if you feel your main, central story line sagging and losing impetus … if you feel bogged down and unable to keep your story going … then you should try the strategies I’ve mentioned in previous posts (toss in some new plates and increase conflict) or introduce a subplot.

Writers frequently start a subplot at the end of the first act as a transition into the second. This gives readers a jolt of renewed interest from the story taking a fresh direction or a different perspective. The pacing usually changes here as well, and the middle of a story is an adroit place to insert some background explanation or to deepen characterization. Sometimes, the protagonist will become involved romantically here, or an old flame can be rekindled. New characters and their problems may be brought into the story, giving the protagonist additional challenges to solve.

However, as exciting as it is to launch a new subplot in the story’s middle, readers tend to expect that. It can be less predictable and potentially far more exciting to conclude a subplot in the middle of the book.

While not all plots lend themselves to opening with a subplot, and most books don’t, doing so can be effective whenever there’s a plausible reason for delaying the start of the central conflict.

Some stories require a longer setup than others. For example, the current trend in modern mysteries is to delay the murder almost to the middle of a novel. This allows readers to get acquainted with the victim-to-be and to see how this individual’s behavior contributes to motivating the other characters into potential violence. By striking the victim down in the book’s center, an exciting and pivotal plot event occurs that keeps the middle section from sagging.

The Dick Francis novel, ODDS AGAINST, has remained in print since its first publication in the 1960s. This is due to the complex arc of change within the protagonist. The book opens with the subplot of the protagonist being shot and undergoing a slow recovery. As soon as he’s on his feet, the mystery investigation of sabotage against a seedy racetrack begins and carries the story forward.

In the classic film, CASABLANCA, the central story line is delayed until after Rick the protagonist is introduced, the political situation is dramatized, and Ilsa and her husband Viktor arrive at Rick’s cafe in search of safe passage from north Africa.

While delay involves advanced writing technique and it’s seldom advisable to delay the central plot for long, a small subplot can engage reader interest while you acquaint readers with your protagonist and story world. Tying off that subplot then–as mentioned above–becomes an exciting little spike within the book’s second act.

You can use subplots to generate additional forces of antagonism against the protagonist. These serve to make life more difficult for the main character, but they can focus on a romance or create comic relief from the central plot’s violence or tensions.

To return to the CASABLANCA film as an example, the central plot involves the love story between Rick and Ilsa. There is also a political subplot revolving around Ilsa’s husband, an anti-Nazi agitator desperate to escape arrest by the Germans. Additionally, the movie contains a thriller subplot that deals with a petty crook’s attempt to steal possession of vital passports. There’s a tiny subplot about the corrupt police chief’s attempt to seduce a young bride, also a political subplot with the arrival of German forces in Casablanca, and an endearing little cameo of an elderly couple trying to practice their English in preparation for immigrating to America. That’s a lot to pack into a two-hour movie.

Many threads can add dimension to a story, but beware the temptation to overload your book with more subplots than are good for it. Subplots that don’t focus on the protagonist will tend to split attention away from the central story line. This is how some writers–despite good intentions–lose their way in the dismal swamp.

If a subplot is threatening to overtake the rest of your story, or it’s splitting the focus away from your central plot, then it needs to be de-emphasized. You can do this by not dramatically presenting certain key elements in scenes and reducing the number of pages you devote to it.

On the other hand, if such a vibrant, compelling subplot takes over by consuming your imagination, then ask yourself if this subplot should be your central plot instead. That could involve enormous revision work and a complete rewriting, but if it will make a better book, by all means consider it.

If you’re planning a multiple-viewpoint story, keep in mind that each POV is in fact running a subplot, with that POV character serving as the mini-protagonist of this smaller story line. There will be a small central goal and story question to be answered in the subplot’s mini-climax with a YES or NO.

This is why indulging in an over-abundance of viewpoints can make juggling subplots complicated. Until you feel ready to tackle something so ambitious, you might prefer instead to confine yourself to the protagonist’s viewpoint, with maybe an internal arc of change subplot.

Beware, also, the so-called “inspired idea” of dividing a book between two characters. Such a construction focuses equally on two parallel plot lines or two equally important viewpoint characters. I’m mentioning it only because it’s become trendy in teen fiction in recent years, yet it is a misuse of classic story design principles and leads to a split focus that in turn botches climax construction.

Classic story design involves a hierarchy of importance with the protagonist being the star character. The protagonist receives the most viewpoint pages–if not all of them. The protagonist’s goal drives the central plot and forms the main story question. Anything else is split focus.

Therefore, the most important plot thread in a book should be the one driven by the protagonist’s objective–and not resolved until the very end of the story.

The next important plot thread is a subplot involving the protagonist’s inner story and/or arc of change.

After that, the next plot thread should belong to the second-most important viewpoint (probably the antagonist).

And so on, moving down in descending order of importance.

Also note that all subplots do not run as long as the main plot because you don’t want everything ending in your book at the same time.

Swamp Survival Strategies #2 cont. (Plot Progression–Part 2)

In my previous post, I was explaining how to escalate conflict, especially in the middle of a story where it tends to naturally lose its momentum.

As we writers strive to keep stories accelerating to counteract story sag, conflict and more conflict is an excellent tool at our disposal. But there’s more to it than two oppositional characters standing toe to toe and shouting at each other.

There are, in fact, three levels of conflict:

Inner conflict

Emotional/relationship conflict

External conflict

Now, it’s perfectly viable to write a story–long or short–dealing with conflict on a single level. Stories plotted through external conflict alone sweep readers along. As long as plenty of events are transpiring and the pacing is kept quick, readers are going to enjoy the adventure.

For example, action hero and super spy James Bond faces conflict solely on the external level. He has no inner conflicts. He has no true relationships, preferring instead recreational, fleeting encounters with women. Miss Moneypenny, who would adore establishing a real relationship with Bond, is adeptly dodged.

Since Bond lacks internal conflict to support an arc-of-change subplot, stories about him must “fill the gap” through a large cast of characters. Bond faces arch-villains as well as minor villains, along with their minions, assassins, femmes fatales, and even armies. He busies himself rescuing civilians in need of help and from time to time he has helpers or semi-sidekick characters for assistance.

Although typically a Bond adventure features numerous characters, most of them are minor roles. They serve up a progressive succession of obstacles, danger, and conflict for Bond to face and overcome as he strives to complete his mission.

Stories that deal with conflict only on the level of relationships focus on the personal and emotional interaction between the protagonist and every other character in the plot. The protagonists suffer when they meet disappointment or fail to get what they want, but they aren’t deeply torn inside or facing soul-shattering internal dilemmas.

Women’s fiction and romance are two genres that favor relationship conflict. In these plots, the external conflict operates softly and exists primarily to bring additional characters into the protagonist’s life so more relationships can be explored. For example, the protagonist’s external conflict might stem from a divorce situation or sisters in disagreement over how to deal with their mother who’s developing dementia, but the primary conflict can stem from how well or poorly these characters get along and what they feel about the events happening. In more mainstream women’s fiction, external conflict can be negligible, the merest nudge of change to put the protagonist where emotions can be explored or new people met.

In romance stories, focus remains on the courtship of the couple through a depiction of how they meet, what they feel about that first meeting … and the next … and the next … and so on. It revolves around the gamut of emotions they experience as they move from initial dislike or attraction to deeper emotional connections.

Complex novels, however, don’t limit themselves to one type of conflict alone. Instead, they put their protagonists through a combination of two or three. Very often, the central act of a novel is where one of the three conflict types will move into prominence over the others.

For example, if the story has been primarily operating on external conflict in the first act with only hints of inner conflict and relationship conflict, then act two will bring the relationship conflict forward as the protagonist clashes with a loved one or copes with another character strongly attracted to (or repulsed by). Act three might bring the inner conflict up as whatever is happening in the climax starts to pressure the protagonist’s ethics. Dick Francis mysteries serve up a lot of complexity and offer far more than a simple whodunnit plot. For example, in Reflex, the protagonist is trying to investigate blackmail and murder (external conflict) but must also cope with his difficult grandmother, who wants him to dig up old family issues (relationship conflict), plus he struggles to decide whether to give up his career for another one (internal conflict).

Whichever approach you use–single level of conflict or multiple levels of conflict–your story can work fine. Just keep the conflict strong in the midsection of your plot.