Ken Hughes's Blog, page 13

Can A Villain Want To Be Evil? Case study: LaCroix

Maybe the first rule we hear about writing villains is "No villain believes he's a villain." That is, in a story or real life, even the people who do the most evil either believe they're doing right or that "good and evil" simply don't matter. I've always agreed with that, but (this being the Unified Theory and all) I can't help trying to test it a bit. Say, with one of the most "deliberately evil" villains I know: Forever Knight's master vampire LeCroix.

Forever Knight was a vampire series that came out a bit (sorry) before the current crazes, and it focused squarely on its reluctant vampire's reluctance and guilts that he faced while working as a police detective. Meanwhile the vampire that created Nick Knight, Lucien LeCroix, was not only a ruthless killer but a creature who reveled in his ruthlessness, always mocking Nick's trying to "repay society for his sins." –Picture all the melodramatic lines that bad villains use to announce that nobody wrote them a motivation, then strip them down so they actually sound like someone who hates human goodness itself, and give them to a completely committed actor. That's Nigel Bennett as LeCroix.

(Or just consider: this is a vampire who named himself "the cross," after all. And yes, Forever Knight vampires do have a problem with crosses, and no, it wasn't his birth name. Nasty.)

So does it mean anything that a villain actually likes evil for its own sake, that he doesn't just "want your __" as the Theory's analysis of villains covers?

One explanation for LeCroix is that he "doth protest too much," until over the centuries that denial became the truth for him. After all, a vampire isn't like a terrorist who believes God needs murders or a serial killer who simply wants to kill. A vampire, unless he makes serious sacrifices, needs to kill humans just to stay alive, not to mention playing cat and mouse with them to keep his secret and then watch any humans he may still connect with age away and die. The core of existing as a vampire is dealing with the killing and isolation… and likely LeCroix is simply very good at dealing with it.

That's a powerful lesson for us writers. We love to justify villains and less extreme kinds of conflict by crafting situations where someone really would start doing the Troublesome Things the plot needs—especially if we can establish his character to show that he still had a choice to refuse the darkness, except he's just not someone who would. But it makes him even seem more determined and more believable (and tragic) if we show that he came to that place through a journey, through facing that temptation and making that choice more than once, and how it's all changed him.

Or of course, to start pushing a hero down that same path…

And there's another point about LeCroix: how exactly he matches the hero's struggle. We all know the villain has to make trouble with something the hero cares about, but how much can we zero in on that flashpoint?

Because LeCroix isn't trying to control a city or running around killing—or rather, the show leaves it as a given that Nick could never stop his feedings if he dared try. And LeCroix's real goal isn't to spit on everything: it's to exist among his fellow vampires with no human weakness ruining their eternity. What he wants is Nick himself, for our hero to give up trying to become human. As a motive, it's not so different from the classic Dracula trying to seduce or carry off a woman into vampirism, or from any tale with a controlling father who refuses to let his son go.

"Every parent wants something in return. Love? loyalty? nothing is free… What did your father promise you? did he promise to take care of you? Did he keep his promise?"

–LeCroix to a crowd (and Nick), "Father's Day"

In fact, most often LeCroix isn't sabotaging the pieces of Nick's human life. Instead he challenges him on that moral level, pointing out all the flaws in human beings and in Nick's struggle to join them; he usually believes our hero needs no more than that to bring him around. And by refining just what the villain strikes at, the show prevents "just fight off the vampire" from distracting us from the focus it really wants, how each human crime gives Nick another challenge to his determination to be mortal.

Yes, you could argue that LeCroix isn't actually used as a villain or other true opposition, more a symbol of the temptations the hero faces. But a story can do great things with a tempter if it can capture that the hero really might be drawn into the dark each time, probably by letting him sometimes give in and having to face the consequences. (And okay, LeCroix does mix in episodes where he acts directly; a little uncertainty adds tension to those staredowns.) The real point is keeping LeCroix as representing the "shadow self," that he's less Whoever's The Big Threat than the picture of how our hero might become the threat himself.

It's worth trying. Know just what your hero is struggling with, and define some villain or foil to challenge specifically that. And/ or, find the path that brings the villain (or the hero, or both) right to that place… even if it's by way of how many escapes he walked right past until he doesn't dare to look at them any more.

Click on pen to

Options for Suspense – Hitchcock’s bomb

How many ways are there to write suspense into a scene? It’s a major question—especially since really tightening the tension can be some of the heaviest lifting in a story we thought we’d already planned out. And don’t we want every scene to do more to pull the reader in, not just with danger but that any kind of scene builds that “what’s next??” eagerness about whatever’s going on? Still, let’s explore this through Alfred Hitchcock’s famous example of the bomb ticking under the table.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

(No, this is not another discussion about Surprise versus Suspense. It’s less about how to use a given plot thread than about how many things you can twist, so you can apply the Master’s method or his challengers’ to whichever you want.)

So, about that bomb…

What I always ask myself is to take the whole chain of events that are needed for a thing, and ask “What could go wrong?” In this case, that means about keeping the bomb and the people together, and what else could affect them. And for each idea I get, I then ask “What am I assuming?” to look for more variations on where to twist.

Hitchcock talks mostly about the bomb’s targets not knowing what the audience does, and making the audience mentally scream at them to get up from that table and run for their lives. Of course that’s because the obvious thing about a bomb is that it’s not obvious until it blows, that the victims have no idea what’s about to happen. And so their survival probably comes down, not to outfighting or outwitting the problem, but to blind luck about whether they’re in the blast or not. –Which is about as scary as it gets, of course.

So the purest way to write that bomb scene would be to use nothing but the petty details of the moment. How many small, everyday things just might make someone get up and walk away to safety? It might be as simple as them starting a meal and either hating the food or deciding to linger over seconds. Or does someone have to take a phone call—although to really apply Hitchcock’s logic, even the call shouldn’t come out of the blue, it should come from factors we can watch changing before our eyes. (Now if the table discussion is actually whether one guy’s girl is going to call to forgive him for a fight, or if someone says he might get a call but then gets so into the conversation he stops to switch off his cell phone…)

Of course the real roller-coaster of stay/go factors is probably the people’s conversation. So we can work out the excruciating twists and turns of how they’re deciding the fate of the world or planning their futures, or just who walks the dog tomorrow, so the reader follows all this knowing that whether they have a future may depend on how they drag things out or maybe spiral into a fight and storm off to safety. This grounds the thrills because we’re probably all more interested in things depending on people than in if the roast is burned, and a detailed conversation is easier to write twists in anyway. (Then again, really blind luck has its own chills.)

But here’s one assumption within that: thinking of people moved around by conversations or other issues, does it have to be only the people already at the table? You can change the whole scene by calling someone else over into the bomb’s reach—maybe some Much Less Expendable character, or the bomber himself so he’s struggling to find an excuse to get away again.

And there we’re moving into another dimension: characters not just affected by chance but the consequences of those who do know about the bomb. It might still start with the same people and/or luck, maybe the old “drop the fork, what’s that under the table” if you can explore ways to either prolong the scene or have other excitement despite it. (Say, what if the woman who spots the bomb actually wants to STAY near it a bit longer, to test if the man she’s sitting with knew about it…) Or is someone else figuring out the bomb plot meanwhile, or racing across town to warn them? (Okay, racing to escape the villain and grab anyone with a cell phone.) Is the bomber having second thoughts, maybe because the wrong person is too close to the bomb?

Then there are assumptions about the bomb itself. It goes off, but when? Hitchcock’s example tells the audience when and puts a clock in the background so we can take in everything in terms of that image. (Though of course, this is easiest as a visual method; in print we may have to look for reasons for characters, unlike camera angles, to keep noticing the time. Or just write 5:49. John said…) But writers have done more convoluted tricks like “oh, that clock’s five minutes slow—boom!” or made the scheme something like “it blows when the birds fly” so our hearts stop when a flock of pigeons is startled up but then realize that next door the Midtown High Hawks are about to get out of practice. Maybe the subtlest way of all is to never show the time, if you can really manipulate the feeling in a vacuum that it must be about to run out…

Or does the bomb even go off right? One recent story (no, no spoilers which) actually had the much-built-up bomb misfire… of course, the bomber had time to re-rig it so it was just a stall, but this is the kind of thing you can get away with if you think your story’s good enough that readers forgive the obvious manipulation and then love you for showing anything is possible. (One reviewer called it “a magnificent cheat”, which about sums it up.) –Of course, it always helps if it’s being plotted in terms of the bomber using shoddy materials or rushing his work.

Another assumption: must the blast kill everyone, if you can make it convincing that a victim’s standing just at the edge, maybe behind a big shielding truck? Or if your story actually has a character that’s invulnerable, you can do whole different things with the bomb plot, probably about him revealing his power or mourning the people who do die.

There’s one more assumption to vary here: besides what makes someone live or die, we can also plot around how the reader cares about that death. A conversation could build toward a couple baring their souls and getting engaged, or a petty scumball looks like he’s about to reveal who the killer us. –After all, if the readers see us raising or changing the stakes, the very fact that we bother to do it also looks like a sign that we’re about to push the button. Similarly, what if one of the prospective victims is revealed to be a killer himself, and about to go do something villanous, and the reader hopes he stays for the explosion after all? We could even walk the line of making him only unsympathetic but layered, so the reader starts wanting him to die but is aware he’s wishing death on someone just for one fallible sin…

I do love a subtle explosion.

Click on pen to

Options for Suspense – Hitchcock's bomb

How many ways are there to write suspense into a scene? It's a major question—especially since really tightening the tension can be some of the heaviest lifting in a story we thought we'd already planned out. And don't we want every scene to do more to pull the reader in, not just with danger but that any kind of scene builds that "what's next??" eagerness about whatever's going on? Still, let's explore this through Alfred Hitchcock's famous example of the bomb ticking under the table.

(No, this is not another discussion about Surprise versus Suspense. It's less about how to use a given plot thread than about how many things you can twist, so you can apply the Master's method or his challengers' to whichever you want.)

So, about that bomb…

What I always ask myself is to take the whole chain of events that are needed for a thing, and ask "What could go wrong?" In this case, that means about keeping the bomb and the people together, and what else could affect them. And for each idea I get, I then ask "What am I assuming?" to look for more variations on where to twist.

Hitchcock talks mostly about the bomb's targets not knowing what the audience does, and making the audience mentally scream at them to get up from that table and run for their lives. Of course that's because the obvious thing about a bomb is that it's not obvious until it blows, that the victims have no idea what's about to happen. And so their survival probably comes down, not to outfighting or outwitting the problem, but to blind luck about whether they're in the blast or not. –Which is about as scary as it gets, of course.

So the purest way to write that bomb scene would be to use nothing but the petty details of the moment. How many small, everyday things just might make someone get up and walk away to safety? It might be as simple as them starting a meal and either hating the food or deciding to linger over seconds. Or does someone have to take a phone call—although to really apply Hitchcock's logic, even the call shouldn't come out of the blue, it should come from factors we can watch changing before our eyes. (Now if the table discussion is actually whether one guy's girl is going to call to forgive him for a fight, or if someone says he might get a call but then gets so into the conversation he stops to switch off his cell phone…)

Of course the real roller-coaster of stay/go factors is probably the people's conversation. So we can work out the excruciating twists and turns of how they're deciding the fate of the world or planning their futures, or just who walks the dog tomorrow, so the reader follows all this knowing that whether they have a future may depend on how they drag things out or maybe spiral into a fight and storm off to safety. This grounds the thrills because we're probably all more interested in things depending on people than in if the roast is burned, and a detailed conversation is easier to write twists in anyway. (Then again, really blind luck has its own chills.)

But here's one assumption within that: thinking of people moved around by conversations or other issues, does it have to be only the people already at the table? You can change the whole scene by calling someone else over into the bomb's reach—maybe some Much Less Expendable character, or the bomber himself so he's struggling to find an excuse to get away again.

And there we're moving into another dimension: characters not just affected by chance but the consequences of those who do know about the bomb. It might still start with the same people and/or luck, maybe the old "drop the fork, what's that under the table" if you can explore ways to either prolong the scene or have other excitement despite it. (Say, what if the woman who spots the bomb actually wants to STAY near it a bit longer, to test if the man she's sitting with knew about it…) Or is someone else figuring out the bomb plot meanwhile, or racing across town to warn them? (Okay, racing to escape the villain and grab anyone with a cell phone.) Is the bomber having second thoughts, maybe because the wrong person is too close to the bomb?

Then there are assumptions about the bomb itself. It goes off, but when? Hitchcock's example tells the audience when and puts a clock in the background so we can take in everything in terms of that image. (Though of course, this is easiest as a visual method; in print we may have to look for reasons for characters, unlike camera angles, to keep noticing the time. Or just write 5:49. John said…) But writers have done more convoluted tricks like "oh, that clock's five minutes slow—boom!" or made the scheme something like "it blows when the birds fly" so our hearts stop when a flock of pigeons is startled up but then realize that next door the Midtown High Hawks are about to get out of practice. Maybe the subtlest way of all is to never show the time, if you can really manipulate the feeling in a vacuum that it must be about to run out…

Or does the bomb even go off right? One recent story (no, no spoilers which) actually had the much-built-up bomb misfire… of course, the bomber had time to re-rig it so it was just a stall, but this is the kind of thing you can get away with if you think your story's good enough that readers forgive the obvious manipulation and then love you for showing anything is possible. (One reviewer called it "a magnificent cheat", which about sums it up.) –Of course, it always helps if it's being plotted in terms of the bomber using shoddy materials or rushing his work.

Another assumption: must the blast kill everyone, if you can make it convincing that a victim's standing just at the edge, maybe behind a big shielding truck? Or if your story actually has a character that's invulnerable, you can do whole different things with the bomb plot, probably about him revealing his power or mourning the people who do die.

There's one more assumption to vary here: besides what makes someone live or die, we can also plot around how the reader cares about that death. A conversation could build toward a couple baring their souls and getting engaged, or a petty scumball looks like he's about to reveal who the killer us. –After all, if the readers see us raising or changing the stakes, the very fact that we bother to do it also looks like a sign that we're about to push the button. Similarly, what if one of the prospective victims is revealed to be a killer himself, and about to go do something villanous, and the reader hopes he stays for the explosion after all? We could even walk the line of making him only unsympathetic but layered, so the reader starts wanting him to die but is aware he's wishing death on someone just for one fallible sin…

I do love a subtle explosion.

Click on pen to

Conflict – or How Many Sides to the Dark Side?

Did The Phantom Menace have it right?

—Yeah, a cheap shot, nodding to a movie most of us found… uninspired. But if the question is what makes a character evil—or rather, what makes him move against other characters, whether it's "villainy" or driving someone to turn on his friends or even pressure the hero—I always thought the movie's (one) famous line had a lot to say.

Still, this is the Unified Writing Field Theory, where we try to sort out a lot of different ideas to see what our story options are, and where we can take them. So let's start with the basic definition of conflict:

someone hurts someone.

Call it his hand swinging into our hero's face, or into his pocket, or him speaking out against the hero's plans, or anything that interferes with the hero or other sympathetic folk. And the obvious motive is just

he wants his __

but that's only one type, and worse, "he really really wants it" doesn't give us a lot of options to build on it in a story. So let's mix in some other dimensions of evil: the Seven Deadly Sins, the famous Jedi warning, and the Unified Theory's recent breakdown of plot elements.

The Deadlies include Greed, Lust and Gluttony, all more examples of simply Wanting things. But they also add Sloth (not much of a plot event, but slacker or stressed characters could be goofing off about something important), and Pride and Envy. (I'll get to the seventh in a moment.) Could we see these as amplifying how much a character wants things?

Envy twists any sense of what he doesn't have by fixating on what someone else does have, so he tries to drag his "rival" down more than trying to take things for himself. Envy's nasty stuff if it goes deep, maybe the hardest evil of all to spot because it's less direct. Think Iago scheming behind Othello's back.
Pride, though, is about what he does have or thinks he does. And it can create two conflicts: refusing to consider other people's needs and warnings (like that hero saying he needs to guard the gates), and being protective of things he hates to lose—like anyone from a first son to the angel Lucifer might resent someone new getting attention. They're protective… as in afraid.

And here we get to Fear (which isn't in the Deadly Sins) but also to the last of those Seven, Wrath, because of Yoda's line:

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

I think the coolest thing about this line is that it lists its evils *in sequence*, showing that we need some thing to be worried for before we can get fighting mad to keep it. (Like Mom used to say, if you get angry at an insult, it also shows you think it's a little bit true. Come to think of it, even the future Darth Vader had to start by losing his mother…) Then on the less specific end, hate is simply anger moving to a long-term burn, maybe hating the people who "wronged" him but maybe also being more ready to resent the whole world more the more he loses.

So, a budding antagonist could have desires on one hand, and on the other have things he fears and rages to hang on to, maybe stiffened by past losses' grudges, or pride, or envies… You could have a whole spiral of how the hero's noble goal is threatening what he values, and his response makes the hero push harder, until…

–Not a bad plotline, especially once we add how someone could be protecting an intangible thing like "a world where no peasant belongs in college," or how "fear" might mean he attacks an innocent hero because of what the hero might do. (How many wars start because the nation next door seems too strong and angry not to hit first? Or consider the jealous boyfriend—real "jealousy" is very different from envy, less sneaky but more immediate.)

Or his "fear" could be of doing what he himself used to do. Guilt is a marvelous way to define a character as coming from a whole different viewpoint from what he has now; it really lets a story point out two sides of a tangled problem.

Yes, what he wants and what he won't lose or do, good. Now let's check that against this blog's recent breakdown of plot elements: changing alternative choices that have Reward, Cost, and Difficulty.

Of course Reward and avoiding Cost are what we've been talking about, but there's another side to this: what if what makes the difference is the cost to his victims, that instead of something driving him past restraints he just doesn't realize he's hurting people, or doesn't care? Here we have everyone from sociopaths, to mad scientists who think their creations will help people, to the daily tragedy of seducers that don't notice whose hearts they break.

And then there's Difficulty. Plenty of storylines have hinged on people who have all the same goals and fears as the hero, and that becomes the whole problem: they still block him because they doubt he's got the right plan or just the skills to pull it off.

So… desire (or envy), and fear (even paranoia, or maybe guilt) or anger multiplied by pride or old hate, and maybe ignorance or apathy or just a doubt about strategy.

That's a lot of problems. And the more a tale explores these conflicts, the clearer it is how much they challenge our heroes—both with how many committed enemies can come out of the woodwork, and how hard it is for a struggling hero to keep his own soul clean.

Sounds like a story to me…

Click on pen to

Conflict — or, How Many Sides to the Dark Side?

Did The Phantom Menace have it right?

—Yeah, a cheap shot, nodding to a movie most of us found… uninspired. But if the question is what makes a character evil—or rather, what makes him move against other characters, whether it's "villainy" or driving someone to turn on his friends or even pressure the hero—I always thought the movie's (one) famous line had a lot to say.

Still, this is the Unified Writing Field Theory, where we try to sort out a lot of different ideas to see what our story options are, and where we can take them. So let's start with the basic definition of conflict:

someone hurts someone.

Call it his hand swinging into our hero's face, or into his pocket, or him speaking out against the hero's plans, or anything that interferes with the hero or other sympathetic folk. And the obvious motive is just

he wants his __

but that's only one type, and worse, "he really really wants it" doesn't give us a lot of options to build on it in a story. So let's mix in some other dimensions of evil: the Seven Deadly Sins, the famous Jedi warning, and the Unified Theory's recent breakdown of plot elements.

The Deadlies include Greed, Lust and Gluttony, all more examples of simply Wanting things. But they also add Sloth (not much of a plot event, but slacker or stressed characters could be goofing off about something important), and Pride and Envy. (I'll get to the seventh in a moment.) Could we see these as amplifying how much a character wants things?

Envy twists any sense of what he doesn't have by fixating on what someone else does have, so he tries to drag his "rival" down more than trying to take things for himself. Envy's nasty stuff if it goes deep, maybe the hardest evil of all to spot because it's less direct. Think Iago scheming behind Othello's back.
Pride, though, is about what he does have or thinks he does. And it can create two conflicts: refusing to consider other people's needs and warnings (like that hero saying he needs to guard the gates), and being protective of things he hates to lose—like anyone from a first son to the angel Lucifer might resent someone new getting attention. They're protective… as in afraid.

And here we get to Fear (which isn't in the Deadly Sins) but also to the last of those Seven, Wrath, because of Yoda's line:

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

I think the coolest thing about this line is that it lists its evils *in sequence*, showing that we need some thing to be worried for before we can get fighting mad to keep it. (Like Mom used to say, if you get angry at an insult, it also shows you think it's a little bit true. Come to think of it, even the future Darth Vader had to start by losing his mother…) Then on the less specific end, hate is simply anger moving to a long-term burn, maybe hating the people who "wronged" him but maybe also being more ready to resent the whole world more the more he loses.

So, a budding antagonist could have desires on one hand, and on the other have things he fears and rages to hang on to, maybe stiffened by past losses' grudges, or pride, or envies… You could have a whole spiral of how the hero's noble goal is threatening what he values, and his response makes the hero push harder, until…

–Not a bad plotline, especially once we add how someone could be protecting an intangible thing like "a world where no peasant belongs in college," or how "fear" might mean he attacks an innocent hero because of what the hero might do. (How many wars start because the nation next door seems too strong and angry not to hit first? Or consider the jealous boyfriend—real "jealousy" is very different from envy, less sneaky but more immediate.)

Or his "fear" could be of doing what he himself used to do. Guilt is a marvelous way to define a character as coming from a whole different viewpoint from what he has now; it really lets a story point out two sides of a tangled problem.

Yes, what he wants and what he won't lose or do, good. Now let's check that against this blog's recent breakdown of plot elements: changing alternative choices that have Reward, Cost, and Difficulty.

Of course Reward and avoiding Cost are what we've been talking about, but there's another side to this: what if what makes the difference is the cost to his victims, that instead of something driving him past restraints he just doesn't realize he's hurting people, or doesn't care? Here we have everyone from sociopaths, to mad scientists who think their creations will help people, to the daily tragedy of seducers that don't notice whose hearts they break.

And then there's Difficulty. Plenty of storylines have hinged on people who have all the same goals and fears as the hero, and that becomes the whole problem: they still block him because they doubt he's got the right plan or just the skills to pull it off.

So… desire (or envy), and fear (even paranoia, or maybe guilt) or anger multiplied by pride or old hate, and maybe ignorance or apathy or just a doubt about strategy.

That's a lot of problems. And the more a tale explores these conflicts, the clearer it is how much they challenge our heroes—both with how many committed enemies can come out of the woodwork, and how hard it is for a struggling hero to keep his own soul clean.

Sounds like a story to me…

Click on pen to

Plot – Just Three Tools?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Greetings and welcome to the first post of my evolving Theory. I could take a moment to introduce myself and plug my novel… or I could dive right in to what's been the most useful principle for me to look at a story.

I mean the broad process of fitting everything together, building a forest so you know where each of those trees belong, and if that makes you ready to line up their branches too.

The plot.

Plot's the kind of thing where we find either simple advice ("rising and falling action") or so many people's different toolboxes I used to make myself crazy wishing I could compare more than a few tricks at a time. People even give us different ideas for what's most important about plot:

it's conflict…
it's keeping events logical…
it's the character following a goal…
it's him making choices…

Or people say plot matters but never as much as presenting a vividly-detailed world, or a memorable character, or revealing a theme or inspiring an emotion in the reader.

–Never mind forests and trees, describing writing can turn us all into blind people examining the proverbial elephant! Most of it must be the good times we've all had digging trenches with the tusks or clearing roads with the trunk, but still, is there a whole picture of the animal that we can see or not?

I think there is.

To take that wish list –conflict, logical, goal, choices, world, character, theme, reader emotion– I'd say you could line them all up to say:

plot is "how a Character and his Goals come in Conflict with the World, especially creating Themes and Reader Emotions through how Logical his Choices are."

In other words:

someone's Choices.

Doesn't everything else fit around that? Choice is how the character (and her most active part, her goals) deals with the world; conflict and its lack are how the two mesh. And most ways to bring the reader to the right emotion that are just following what the character learns will and won't blow up in her face, and why.

I think choice is the root of it all. We hate villains for their bad choices, struggle alongside a detective to choose which tool to crack the case, and savor a book that puts us so deep in the world we start to intuit what's behind how someone handles his day.

So, if it comes down to choice, how do we writers use that?

Well, so many stories focus on problem-solving: how do you get the girl, or track the terrorist, and so all the classic forms of "what helps/hurts it next"? In other words, the chance that a goal will simply fail, its Difficulty.

But if you think of that a moment, you'll probably add "or the times he finds the goal's price is too high." True enough, especially since Cost is an easy other way to complicate a goal in progress. (If I can't see what a character's giving up for his goal or how it hurts someone else, I know I'm just not trying.)

And then there's the third side, the Reward of the goal itself, that he hopes makes the Cost and Difficulty worth it. In many ways this might be the deepest level of internal conflict–or at least the hardest one to mess with without reconsidering everything else. It's also the easiest to cover in adventures (the reward is you don't get killed), and all too easy to leave it fuzzy in lower-stakes tales.

Again: Difficulty, Cost, and Reward. If a plot just establishes those three, then everything else relates to the balance of those, in two ways:

Alternatives, and
Changes

A choice isn't much of a choice without an Alternative, some different way to change the Difficulty or adjust the Cost or try a different goal with a different Reward and its other factors–known as "taking a longshot" or "taking the bullet for your friend" or "settling" or whatever it may be. And of course, a story is always "what comes next" so you're presenting these by having them Change, the whole process of building suspense or maybe revealing a new option to tempt the hero or slowly raising the cost he'll have to pay.

Really, is there anything that doesn't come from some combination of these?

Tales of courage? just show how high the Cost is and that there is no alternative to its Difficulty.
A mystery? work through all the Alternatives about what might solve its Difficulty.
Learning one lesson? it might be the same plan as a mystery: only one option works.
Theme? isn't that showing how one factor or one pattern within them keeps coming back? (Betrayal, betrayal by one guy, coping with betrayal with forgiveness…)
Making one shocking point? keep the reader busy with one set of choices and then spring the real one, so they'll never forget how you're saying that in this situation, This Just Happens.
Or you can lay out a progression through all of these sides of choosing, to really capture how wide this slice of the world is and how your hero grows in dealing with it all.

Try it. Look a story's plot: how much of it is pushing the Difficulty up and down with changes and alternatives there? When does it tear at the hero by bringing in a Cost, or make the heroine grow by seeking a more mature Reward?

See how much of your story it pulls together.

Next time:

Conflict — or, How many sides to the Dark Side?

Click on pen to