V. Moody's Blog, page 87

Decoy Dialogue

Words don’t always mean what the dictionary says
they mean. It’s one of the pleasures of speech that we can mix up meanings of
words to have completely different intentions, and we can impart that intention
with tone, inflection or delivery.




This is something easy to replicate on stage or in
movies. Even though a script might have to spell things out, once an actor
delivers the line it’s usually obvious.




For novelists this is a little more tricky. Trying
to capture the mercurial nature of dialogue on the page can be a lot of work,
and often it’s easier to write simple, direct dialogue where people say what
they mean in language that has no shades of grey.


Which is fine and suits some stories, but it can
also read as simplistic, juvenile writing.




The kind of thing I mean is like the word ‘please’.
This has a very definite use, conveying civility, deference and good manners.
However, there are a number of other ways to use the word.




An angry guy at work: Will you please shut the fuck
up!




An exasperated mother: Oh God, please no more.




A sarcastic teenager: Can you pass the salt,
pleeeeease.




And so on. Each use of the word has nothing to do
with the original polite intention, but while it’s easy to understand the
person’s meaning when you hear the words come out of their mouth in real life,
on the page it isn’t always so clear.




Capturing tone without having to spell it out (“Can
you pass the salt, pleeeeease,” he said sarcastically) is a skill in itself,
and there are many ways to achieve it. 
Context and set up have a lot to do with it. If you’ve established a
character as a mouthy teen, or the situation as an unhappy one for the
character, then that goes a long way to putting the reader in the right frame
of mind to be able to get what the character means.




But as well as creating language that feels like
how people actually talk, there’s an added benefit to using language in a
non-traditional manner.




When you have a scene where one character has a
specific purpose, let’s say Jack wants to tell his wife he wants a divorce,
going into it head on can feel a bit stale and obvious.




If Jack says, “We need to talk,” you already know
the kind of scene it’s going to be, even though the specifics may vary. No
matter how well you write the scene it’s hard to get away from the feeling
you’ve seen it all before.




But if you approach it with a more open view of
language (“Darling, good news! Let’s talk.”) then you immediately engage a
different part of the reader’s brain.




Because when you don’t use the words the reader is
expecting, you end up pulling them into the narrative at a much deeper level.
They know he was going to ask for a divorce, but how will he get there from
here?




Rather than going all round the houses and adding bits
of chit-chat in an attempt to fill out the scene and make it seem more than the
standard scene the reader’s used to, simply using language in a more flexible
manner can make the old seem new. 



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Better Storytelling Part Four

A good story weaves events together in a way that’s
unexpected yet satisfying. Things that happened early on have repercussions
much later in the story.




Sometimes it’s obvious when an object or a piece of
information is planted by the author for an eventual pay-off, other times it’s
more subtle. Both approaches can be effective, depending on the writer’s intent.
But the important thing is that when the pay-off comes the reader should be
able to put two and two together without having to rack their brains for what
just happened.




This isn’t always an easy thing to achieve. A novel
is a long and time consuming thing to read. Readers aren’t always completely
focused and they may be reading over a few days or a few weeks.




If there’s one
piece of important information in amongst a thousands of words it can easily be
missed or forgotten.


And it isn’t always the long, winding tales this
can happen with. The writer can set something up at the beginning of a chapter
and pay it off by the end of the same chapter, and if it’s convoluted enough
the reader can have forgotten key details.




If a doctor asks his receptionist to send in the next
patient and he starts talking to Mrs Jones, is he talking to the patient or the
receptionist?  If they’re both
middle-aged women and lots of names have been used it can force the reader to
flick back to make sure (very annoying with an e-book).




Sometimes (as with the above case) it takes a
little tweaking to avoid confusion. Making the receptionist younger with
tattoos and the patient posh and older will make it very clear which one is
called Mrs Caton-Jones. But you can’t always clarify things so easily,
especially if the set-up is at the beginning of the book and the pay-off is at
the end.




Trying to imprint a particular piece of info onto
the reader’s mind can feel like sticking a big neon sign over it that says,
“Hey! Remember this, it’ll be important later.” Which is fine if that’s the
intention (Spielberg uses this approach very effectively in Schindler’s List where a little girl’s
bright red coat is the only use of colour in a black and white film – which makes
it hard to miss when the coat is seen in a pile of clothes belonging to murdered Jews). But
usually the intent is to be a little more subtle.




So how do you make enough of an impression to stay
in a reader’s memory, but not so much that it becomes clumsy and obvious?




In order to make it memorable it should have a role
to play in the scene in which it appears. If a character mentions it in passing
or makes a random observation, then it’s less likely to strike the reader as
something worth retaining.




If the gold watch with the message engraved on it
is just one of the things found in a drawer, it won’t necessarily be uppermost
in the reader’s mind when it is referenced in the final chapter. However, if it
is used to hypnotise the main character then it becomes more integrated into
the story.




In addition, if the watch is given a satisfactory
purpose, its second purpose for being in the story will be much easier to keep
hidden from the reader.




That puts it in the story and disguises its true
role, but in order to make it really pop when revealed it also helps to give it
an emotional attachment to the main character.




In the scene where the person or object or
information first appears, what effect does it have on the main character? 




If
the watch is used to hypnotise the character into remembering where he left his car keys, it won't have the same impact as a scene where the hypnosis leads to him remembering who murdered his father.




It doesn't have to be quite so extreme as that, but whenever you have something in the story you want
the reader to remember, consider who the reader is identifying with in the
scene, whose eyes they’re seeing the story through? How that person reacts will
be what the reader remembers. If they react in a neutral manner, then it’s more
likely to skim over the reader’s attention.




So take the thing you want to stay with the reader,
give it a purpose in the current scene, make that scene emotionally effecting for
the MC — now it’s in the reader’s memory. And when its true purpose is revealed
not only will it be immediately clear what you’re referring to, but also the dual
role will make it all the more satisfying.





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Better Storytelling Part Three

So far in this series we’ve looked at what a character wants and who’s getting in the way. Another important element to consider is what’s at stake.

This is something most writers have a fairly good grasp of. If a character has something to lose then they are more likely to get up off the sofa and do something about it. If it’s really important to them they might even take a few risks.

But that isn’t what this post is about.

As well as the big important thing that comes to mind when thinking of the premise (winning the girl, saving the planet, finding the treasure), a story is made up of lots of little consequences and repercussions.

While these smaller threats and risks will be of varying levels (falling off a ledge to being late for a date to eating another doughnut) what very often happens is that although failure carries a penalty the character very much doesn’t want to pay, the character never actually fails.

The writer wants to raise the tension, create some suspense or a sense of urgency, so they raise the stakes. Which is a good idea. If they don’t make it across town at rush hour the puppies will all die or the wedding dress will get sold to someone else or whatever.

The character frets about it, emotes, takes ridiculous risks, and then manages to do what needs to be done and the consequences never materialise.

A skilful writer can hover on the edge of failure so the tension and dread are almost as bad as the thing being dreaded. But if this pattern is repeated too often, the reader will start seeing the character as having something of a charmed life and good luck fatigue can set in.

A character needs stakes in every part of a story. Every action should have consequences, some of which should be quite painful and the character should very much try to avoid them. And you, as the writer, should not allow this.

Because there are a variety of very useful storytelling devices that you gain from allowing your characters to screw up and suffer the consequences. Not nearly suffer. Not a close shave. Actually happen.

I’m not talking about character building and growth through adversity, although those things also result from hardship.

My point is that although you have chosen this character to be the star of your story, the reader has no real reason to root for your choice. A guy wants the girl of his dreams; a girl wants a promotion at work; a scientist want to be first to invent a time machine.

So what? He’ll meet someone else; she’ll get another job; I’m not sure ‘first’ is really a viable concept when it comes to
time machines since you can always go back and change history, but anyway, so another scientist makes the discovery. Life goes on (although not necessarily in the same order as before).

However, once you have a character fail and then get up and try again, they become a much more integrated part of the story. It isn’t just an arbitrary goal, it’s cost them something and in order to redress the balance certain actions need to be taken.By them.

Only this person can be the heart of the story because only this person has suffered to be here.

It doesn’t just have to be straight up failure leading to terrible loss. A character can get what they were aiming for and still suffer as a result, either through unintended consequences or sacrifice. If a guy gets the job he always wanted and discovers he’s being relocated to Antarctica, or in order to save the Earth from an asteroid Australia has to be destroyed, then a win can be a loss.

It can be difficult for some writer to allow this kind of punishment on a favourite character, but it should be remembered they can still win in the long run, so it’s not like you’re hanging them out to dry.

If Tony wants to ask Jill out on a date but is afraid of the embarrassment if she says no, then when he finally builds up the courage to ask she should definitely say no. In fact it should be even worse than he feared.

The writer likes Tony. They want him to get what he wants. But you have to remember this is one step on Tony’s journey. At some point he may well get to date Jill. Or maybe someone infinitely better than Jill.

In order to become the person who succeeds, you first have to know what it is to be the person who fails. Not from the sidelines, up close and personal. All those consequences should be faced. What’s at stake should be lost.

Then two things can happen. Either Tony gives up and you don’t have a story, or Tony finds a way to move forward. And it’s in this change that you will have your reason for why it’s this character’s story that’s being told.



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As summer is here (sort of) I'll be reducing my posts to once a week so I can work on my tan. See you next Monday.

Guest Post

No post today but you can find me guest posting tomorrow (Friday 5th July) over at K.M. Weiland's Wordplay blog — a great site for writers and if you aren't following Katie, you definitely should. It's my first ever guest post so please stop by and say hello.




The next part of the Better Storytelling series will be up on Monday. Cheers.

Better Storytelling Part Two

In the first part of this series I discussed the
need for a strong purpose behind a character’s goals. In this post I will be
talking about competition and rivalry.




There are stories where characters are isolated or
are in competition with themselves. These kinds of stories are hard to write
and can easily come across as self-important and self-indulgent. Everything’s
about him, nobody else counts, he has to do it all by himself.




That’s usually not the intention, but it’s hard not to come
over like that if every sentence starts with the same subject.




However, once you bring in a rival to your main
character, things not only become more dynamic, they also help the reader see
the main character more clearly.


This rival can be the main bad guy, but it can also be secondary characters. The detective may be chasing after the killer, but he might also have to contend with the other cops, the ex-wife's new husband, the pushy journalist, the last victims sister.




If you give these supporting characters a reason to want the MC to fail, then they can force the story off the nice, simple, direct route to the solution it naturally wants to take. And at the same time, it will help reveal aspects of the MC's character.




It is a basic truth of human existence that we
compare and contrast ourselves with others. Even though we know it can be
unhealthy and turn people into insecure wrecks, we can’t help it.




Consider when you’re walking along the street and
you trip over an uneven flagstone. How do you feel if there’s no one around to
see you? How do you feel when there is? Hell, as Jean Paul Sartre said, is
other people. It is only in the perceived judgement
of others that we judge ourselves (and usually find ourselves wanting).




The fun really starts when you take into
consideration how the rival feels. He too will react to having someone trying
to reach the same goal or making him look bad (by being successful).




In the last post we left Timmy Timkins on the side
of a mountain, determined to reach the top for some deep seated reason (Daddy
issues, I would guess). What if instead of just man against mountain we
introduced another climber. This one is also determined to reach the top.




Now the struggle against the forces of nature are
intensified with a race against another human being. The story takes on an
added dimension.




But wait. It’s all very interesting having two
rivals playing the game fair and square, but what if the other guy is
determined to win by any means necessary? If Timmy is dodging falling rocks that
appear to be suspiciously well aimed, relying on grit and good
luck isn’t going to be enough. He’s going to have to come up with a different approach.




Make the rival dastardly and you immediately shift
sympathy to the main character. Have the cheating go unpunished, even more
sympathy. And as the fight becomes more and more unfair, the more intriguing it
becomes—how will the hero succeed?




Will the hero stoop to the same level? Complain to the
authorities? Pick up his ball and go home? Whatever the reaction, it will be a reflection
of who your main character is as a person. It will show the reader what they’re
made of.




Antagonists, whether pure evil or just driven by
their own reasons, work best when they are not only reaching for the same goal
as the MC, but when they actively try to throw spanners in his works and banana
peels in his way.




This can be a matter of physical conflict, but it
can also be more sneaky. Spread a little malicious gossip about seeing the MC coming
out of an STD clinic, and maybe the girl will think twice about who to go with
to the prom.




It’s not that conflict can’t rise out of a  character’s battle with himself and his
personal demons, it’s just that other people are so much better at making life
difficult.




A rival should be there
to provide a challenge, and the more proactive you make them, the more the hero
will be forced to think on their feet and use their ingenuity to get the job done.







The next part of this series will be how to make a more entertaining story using Consequences
and Repercussions. 

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Better Storytelling Part One

We all have an innate sense of what makes a good
story. Even as children we can discern between what’s interesting, what’s
interesting to just us, and what isn’t interesting at all. If a kid comes home
and you ask him what happened at school today, nine times out of ten the answer
will be, “Nothing.”




But sometimes the answer will be, “Charlie brought
his pet tarantula to class and it got out of its cage and Mr Sellers screamed
and jumped on the table and then he lost his balance and fell out of the window
and broke his arm so now we have to have Miss Reedy for the rest of term.”




My point being not only that kids don’t seem to
speak with any punctuation, but also that a kid knows when he’s got something
to tell you.  We all do. We all have the
urge to find someone with whom to share a story when something remarkable
happens.


That internal barometer, however, can get buried
under a lot of doubts and insecurities when the story you’re telling isn’t
something you’ve observed for real but instead is something you’ve made up.




When you experience a story for yourself and make a
judgement that it’s interesting to you, then it becomes a lot easier to
confidently pass the story on to others in the belief that they too will find
it of interest.




A story that comes out of your imagination doesn’t
have quite the same seal of approval (even though that seal of approval comes
from you).








So we try to find other ways to makes sure it has
the qualities of a good story. And usually the first place we start is the
quality of the writing.




But at its heart a story has to have something more
than good writing. Learning good grammar and narrative techniques to improve
the flow and pace will obviously be beneficial, but that in itself will not
make what’s happening on the page more interesting.




In order to make the adventures of Timmy Timkins
appeal to the reader, his hopes and dreams need to be worth reaching for.




If a character’s goals come down to basic human
desires (love, success, happiness etc.) then you can be fairly sure people won’t
question the motivation behind all the shenanigans. Some motivations are easier
to accept than others. The clearer and stronger the need of the character, the
easier it will be to get the reader on board.




If Timmy wants to be the first to the top of a
mountain, then we all know people do this sort of thing and are celebrated for
it. But if you’re going to write a whole novel about it, leaving it just as a
personal desire to climb tall things isn’t going to be very captivating.




Readers will accept it, but will they care?




The further you get from the basic human desires
(sex, money, status etc.), the fewer people will automatically just click with
your character’s goals. If he wants the person he loves to love him back, then
most people will be able to connect with that feeling. If he wants to
hang-glide non-stop around the equator, a lot of people are going to be like, “Okay,
well good luck with that.”




That doesn’t mean you should only write about the basic
human desires (having babies, collecting shiny objects, tweeting incessantly
etc.), it means you should evaluate what it is your character wants to do and
work out why they want to do it. If it isn’t the sort of thing that would
feature in most people’s top ten basic human desires (eating chocolate, eating cake,
eating chocolate cake etc.) then it’s the writer’s job to convince readers
otherwise.




And in most case you will find the underlying
reasons are indeed things we can all relate to.




Timmy wants to climb the mountain. Why? Just to say
he did it? That might be what he claims, but do you believe that’s all there is
to it? It’s certainly an impressive achievement, but who is he trying to
impress? Will he get to the top, climb back down and then quietly get on with
his life? What’s driving him to want to be the centre of attention?




Sure, we all want to be admired and thought of as
cool, but few of us run up a mountain and shout, “Look at me!”




Why does he want to do it? Who is he trying to
impress? What is his relationship with doing dangerous things? Once you dig a
bit deeper hopefully you’ll find more universal reasons for his behaviour that
readers will relate to.




These things don’t need to be spelled out immediately.
In fact it can often be more rewarding to start with a character seeming to be
driven by basic human desires (sniffing marker pens, popping bubble wrap,
obsessing about One Direction etc.) and to gradually discover a deeper, more
personal reason.




Knowing what drives a character and how important
it is to them is the sign of a story that has potential to be important to lots
of other people too.



Part two of this series will look at Competition. A
good story has more than one character because it’s only when we compare
ourselves to others that we see the best and worst in ourselves.

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The Complexity Of Complex Characters

 





A glass slips out of Mr A’s hand and smashes on the
floor. He sighs and sweeps up the pieces and then gets another glass out of the
cabinet.




A glass slips out of Mr B’s hand and smashes on the
floor. He lets out a howl of rage and stamps the pieces into dust under his
feet.




The different reactions of these two men are both
perfectly plausible. But in this case both men are the same person. The only
difference is that these two events occur on different days when Mr A-B is in
dealing with life in different ways.




Again, perfectly plausible. We all have our moods.
We all have good and bad days.




However, in fiction, having characters react in a
variety of ways to more or less the same stimulus will make them appear to be
acting out of character. But when is it distracting and unnecessarily
convoluted, and when is it a reasonable depiction of the richness of human interactions?





Readers like to feel they know who a character is
and often the way this is achieved is by limiting the way they behave.




The best friend is reliable and supportive; the bad
cop is always up to no good; grandpa is always complaining. If you reduce a
character to one or two characteristics it’s much easier to get a handle on who
they are and what their role is.




The problem with this approach is that it’s
simplistic and unrealistic. While you can get away with it in stories aimed at
a younger audience or designed to deal with a very specific (and narrow) view
of life, as soon as you expand the story into something resembling real life those
characters are going to feel like cardboard cutouts.




Filling out a character with a range of possible
reactions can end up being confusing and messy. When the character in question
is a major one this problem is usually avoided by dint of spending so much time
with them. Chances are we will see what has caused them to shift from one mode
of behaviour to another.




Not only does this avoid confusion, it also helps
reinforce the narrative. If something terrible happens in the previous scene
and then in this scene the character is not her usual self, then it shows that
events have had an impact.




What is trickier to pull off is when it’s a minor
character we don’t see that often. If we don’t see the transition from one
state to another, it can seem the character is some kind of schizophrenic. A
good writer can smooth over these transitions using foreshadowing and hints to
the cause of the change, but in some cases it’s important to the plot that the
reasons for the change in behaviour not be revealed yet.




If Quiet Mary is always softly spoken and shy, and
then in one scene she becomes very sarcastic and confrontational, there may
well be a very good reason for this change, but if the reader doesn’t know what
it is, it can come off as bad writing and poorly realised characterisation. And
in many cases that turns out to be exactly what it is.




If the writer needs a bit of drama in one scene,
why not just have a random character stir things up?




That’s why readers are often not keen to just keep
reading and see how things turn out. They’ve been burnt before.




To the writer it may seem obvious that it’s all
part of the story and things will become clear shortly, but the reader doesn’t
know that. And it can continue to be distracting even as the story continues.
The next scene may be set somewhere completely different with other characters,
but the question of whether something happened to Mary or if she was just
written in a loose manner can keep the reader from remaining fully engaged with
the story.




An easy way to put the reader’s mind at rest is to
have a character within the story comment on this uncharacteristic behaviour.




Two characters can mention it to each other. A
character can point it out to the character in question. Or the character can
make the observation about themselves.




The observation can include an explanation of the
behaviour, but it can also be just noting the change and wondering about it. Or
an explanation can be offered that turns out to be wrong.




It depends on the circumstances and the writer’s
preference. No one way is necessarily better than another. The important thing
is to show the odd behaviour has been noticed. This allows the reader to move
on with the story knowing the change is part of the story and if it isn’t
explained now it will be dealt with later.




This works for any sort of deviation from the
traits you’ve established for a character. Readers don’t expect characters to
be one dimensional, in fact I think most would prefer them not to be, but
sudden shifts (at least from the reader’s perspective) can be jarring. A simple
acknowledgement that it happened is often enough to keep the narrative flowing.





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Important In Story: What Happens Or Who It Happens To?

For most readers, once they finish a book that they
have enjoyed, it is the characters that make the strongest impression on them.
They may well read more stories about these characters based on their affection
for them.




But this is how they feel at the end of the book.




When you’re reading a book for the first time, you
don’t know whether you will feel that way.


As a writer you may approach writing a story with a
character in mind, creating a three dimensional person in your head and only
then finding something for them to do.




Or, you may come up with an engrossing premise that
touches on various themes and ideas that interest you, and only then do you
populate the story with characters who will bring those events to life.




It doesn’t really matter how you go about it; each
writer will have their own approach that works for them. However, the reader’s
experience of story is not quite so open.




When someone wants to know about a book (maybe the
one you’ve written) they don’t ask, Oh, who
is it about? They ask, What is
it about? 




So the first instinct is to inquire about subject
matter, premise, setting and things of that nature. In effect, what happens in
this story that will be of interest to me?




But is it possible to have an interesting story
when you know little or nothing about the character? Undoubtedly it is, if the
events are interesting enough.




For example, if I tell you that there’s a guy at
work who got into a fight with a Michael Jackson impersonator, that in itself
is weird enough to hold a person’s attention. This almost perfect lookey-likey
of MJ (silver glove, fedora, epaulets) comes into the office and we think it
must be someone’s birthday and this is one of those singing telegrams, but it
turns out Fred in acquisitions has been having an affair with MJ’s girlfriend
(a Beyonce-style strippagram) and MJ wasn’t happy about it, so he smacked Fred
around while singing ‘Beat It’ and then moonwalked out of the office.




Now, I’ve made the story as absurd as possible so
that Fred has the least interesting role to play. You don’t know anything about
Fred, but even if you did, it probably wouldn’t add anything.




However, this approach only works if you keep
things extraordinary (although not necessarily as extraordinary as my story),
and even then only for a limited time. Eventually the reader will want to know
who this Fred guy is.




But that’s okay. As the further adventures of Fred
are revealed, you will at the same time start learning who he is. It can’t
really be avoided.  What he does and how
he reacts will allow the reader to start judging him, as we judge people in
real life.




So as you can see at the start of the story the
reader is only interested in what the story is about, right?




Well, not exactly.




Let’s say my story is about Godzilla rampaging
through London during the 2012 Olympics. That gives you a pretty good idea what
the story is about and either you’re into that kind of tale or you’re not.




But here are two versions of that same story:




1. It’s about a teenage girl who has to save the
city of London from an attack by Godzilla.




2. It’s about a super soldier who has to save the
city of London from an attack by Godzilla.




As I change the person at the centre of the story,
even though the premise remains the same, it has a big effect on how you view
it. And it also gives you a much better idea of the kind of story it’s going to
be.




Without knowing the detailed backgrounds of these
characters you are instantly aware of the difference in approach. Because in
effect you view the premise through the eyes of the main character. The battle
a young girl faces will be very different to the one faced by a seasoned
soldier.




So what if I add more details? If I were to tell you
the girl was very pretty with long red hair, or that the soldier was angry
about his wife leaving him, would that change your view of the story?




Those details certainly give you a better picture
of the character, but they don’t affect how they’ll be approaching the story,
at least not in an obvious way. They may in fact have some impact we’re not yet
aware of (maybe Godzilla has a thing for redheads, or from a certain angle
Godzilla reminds the soldier of his wife and fires him up), but if the reader
can’t see the connection then it makes no difference.




On the other hand, if I told you the girl is in a
wheelchair or that the soldier has a phobia of lizards, how about now?




Information directly related to the objective will
give you a stronger sense of the kind of story this will be. Unrelated
information about the character, won’t. Bear in mind I haven’t given you any
idea of the personalities or characteristics of either MC. Learning to love a
character comes from seeing them act in context, you can’t win over readers by
telling them how great and interesting a character is going to be, they have to
see it for themselves.




What a story is about is closely connected to who
it’s about and very much dependent on whose eyes we see it through. While there
are going to be a multitude of traits your characters possesses that will
appeal (or not) to the reader over the course of a book, it’s the ones that
directly relate to the mission they will be faced with that need to be
addressed first.


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The Power Of Yes To Ruin A Story

A character in a story will want something. In
order to get it they will at some time or other need the assistance of other
characters. Information, permission, objects or help of some kind will be
required and the character will have to ask for it.




If the person holding the power just says yes to the
character, giving them what they need, it won’t make for a very interesting
story. Getting what you want quickly and easily, while certainly preferable in
real life, leads to a simplistic and dull tale in fiction.




But that doesn’t mean a flat ‘no’ and slamming the
door in the character’s face will make things any more interesting.


Creating drama in a minor situation that’s meant to
be short and functional can sometimes seem unnecessary, especially if doing so
is going to turn into a long involved scene. But getting what you want is
behind pretty much every story narrative and not using that dynamic to its full
potential is wasting a golden opportunity to draw the reader in deeper.




If our guy is a detective on a murder case and he
goes to a bar and asks the barman if he recognises the lady in the photo, and the barman goes, “Sure, she was in here last Tuesday. Left about
midnight with a guy wearing a monocle and a top hat,” it’s all going to feel a
bit convenient (unless you’re watching Law & Order, where the barman with
the perfect memory is a New York staple, apparently).




Similarly, answering in the affirmative to ‘Mom,
can I go to the party Friday night?’, ‘Are you going to tell me where the bomb
is?’ or ‘Did you kill the victim?’ will pretty much bring your story to a swift
conclusion.




But being contrary just for the sake of it is not
particularly interesting. Refusal to cooperate because sometimes people aren’t
in the mood to help is more a delaying tactic than a well thought narrative
approach.




It all comes down to this: the person who has the
thing your character needs should not want to give it to them. And for a
specific reason.




Working out what that reason is will lead to
getting what they need, and that can happen in a single line of conversation or
take the whole book, but it provides a dynamic between characters that a simple
yes or no doesn’t.




So, if Milly asks her mother if she can go to the
party and Mom says no, that that will make sense and we all know
parents are wary of letting their children go out late at night, but that’s an
unremarkable scenario. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it. Many stories have
clichéd and obvious scenes, in fact a lot of genres more or less require them.
Readers may expect parents to be unfair and unreasonable. But it’s still a cliché.




On the other hand, if Milly’s mother doesn’t like
the stuck up parents of the boy who’s having the party and Milly wins her over
by promising to block their toilet and flood the bathroom, then not only do you
get a quick moment of conflict, but you also get an idea of the kind of people
these characters are.




Ultimately that’s the real reason for any conflict
in a story, to allow your characters to reveal who they are.







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Characters Are Developing All The Time

A reader follows a plot by the changes that occur
in a character’s life. If their aim is to find the lost treasure of the Incas,
then how the situation develops—if they seem to be getting closer or further
from the goal—will be the primary way to tell how things are progressing.




Changes in the physical world indicate that people
are acting in order to realise their goals. If the scenario remains static,
then you have no plot.




But as things change in the physical world, they
have an effect on the character instigating them. If things are going well, if
things are going badly, if outside forces are getting involved—all these
variables not only change the external situation, they also change the
character internally.




If Billy Joe ask Tammy Jane to the prom and she
says no, that isn’t just a setback requiring a new approach, it will also
change Billy Joe’s emotional frame of mind.




Plot isn’t just about trying various paths until
the character finds the right one, it is also about how a character handles the
journey. In fact, while the external stuff keeps the intellect engaged, it’s
the internal stuff that keeps a grip on readers’ emotions.




Even though most stories show a change in a
character as they make realisations and have moments of insight, these often
get shoved into the end section of a book. But change is rarely only a single
moment of epiphany. Smaller shifts are happening all the time.




When Billy Joe gets a big fat ‘No’ from Tammy Jane,
how it affects him will depend on how she said it and what kind of person he
is. Both characters will be affected by the encounter. Billy Joe might be
horribly embarrassed or angry or depressed. What it won’t do is have no effect
other than him having to find another date.




This change in the character will also affect how
they deal with other things and other people in their life.




Rather than the bad guy always being hated, the
best friend always being asked for advice and the girl across the hall being
flirted with, whatever happens to a character in pursuit of their main goal
will have a knock on effect that allow for a broader range of interactions.




As long as the reader can see the link between
cause and effect it won’t seem out of character, it will make the characters
seem more three dimensional. Their behaviour is a result of what just happened,
repercussions of what they tried to do, what they now have to deal with—in
other words the plot. And what they do next will be informed by their current
state of mind.




Along with the physical changes that mark where we
are in the plot, these character changes also show the reader how things are
progressing. In fact it’s these changes that reveal the kind of person we’re
reading about and allow the reader to connect with the character on a much
deeper level.


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