Fight The Biggest Monster – Coming Up With Useable Ideas, pt. 3
Godzilla by Ian Myles, flickr.com, CC Attribution license
How can we create a story that readers will remember? What makes readers want to keep reading, and eventually come back for more of your stories?
The key is fighting the biggest monster in the story — finding the scariest or most challenging thing for the main character to face.
In part 1 of Coming Up with Useable Ideas, we developed a story file in which to keep our ideas. In part 2, we discussed writing what we like as a starting point for storylines. Now we turn our attention to the emotional journey of the story, and how to make it exciting.
Monsters All Around Us
Real world challenges can help us find our monsters in every day life. We face obstacles every day, and many of them are pretty scary. Just in my own life I’ve faced down cancer, life-threatening illness, deaths of people closest to me, heartbreak, financial devastation, and more. Inwardly, I fear loss, anger, loneliness, and hurt, among a host of other emotions. I watch those around me suffer similar hardships and some have even changed dramatically for better or worse because of the difficulties in their lives.
We all face very frightening circumstances in our lives, and writers turn these challenges into obstacles for our characters. By dealing with our own fears through our writing, readers can connect with the characters and are absorbed into the story.
Face your fears
What do you fear most?
Think about more than just bugs or heights, but if someone were to hurt you, what would be your weakness? Being forced to live a life you didn’t choose? The closest person to you walking away and leaving you alone? Someone exposing a long-hidden secret? Someone coming after your family?
What about the fears of those closest to you? Have you watched someone you love deal with a heartbreaking struggle? How did that affect them? How did it affect you?
Try instilling the reals fears around you into your characters. Make your deepest fear your main character’s inner struggle. Take that inner dialogue that you hear whenever anxiety attacks and turn it into your characters’ inner dialogue.
You can confront your fears through writing, not only for yourself, but for others who struggle with the same fear. Many fears are more universal than we realize, but even readers who don’t share that fear feel more immersed in a character written with a very real personal struggle.
Start with a character
Begin with your greatest fear. The first step is to take that fear and go two directions:
1. Make a character that can grow to overcome that fear – the protagonist
You don’t want to start your main character at a point of being able to overcome the fear, but you do want to create someone that can learn, grow, and eventually can overcome it.
This character shouldn’t be exactly like you, but you can use your own weaknesses in that character. What weakness hinders you from overcoming your fears? Even if you can’t answer now, think about how a character might overcome these fears with the same weaknesses.
What emotional tools did you have or want when you were going through the problems in your life? Is there a person or support system that you could have used? Is there one you can imagine now, looking back on the situation?
If envisioning your character is difficult at first, find a celebrity or model that can physically represent them. Give them a funny quirk or vice that would hinder them even more from achieving their goals. Start to imagine how they would bumble about with that quirk holding them back.
2. Make a character that personifies that fear – the villain
You can also start with your villain. An effective villain could be someone who personifies your own fears. It could be a corporation or country that symbolizes your fears, but make sure you put a face on that entity with a character that leads or represents that entity. The Dark Side in Star Wars would not have been quite so easy to imagine without the shadowed mask of Darth Vader or the Emperor’s lightning.
Like Darth Vader, giving your villain some sort of visual cue will help readers identify their entrances into the story. It doesn’t have to be something quite so dramatic as a full mask, but as simple as the company logo on their lapel, black gloves, or a red scarf.
3. Give your secondary characters contrasting fears from your protagonist
Your secondary characters can be another challenge for your characters. They should have their own set of goals, fears, and challenges. Dramatic tension can greatly increase when you give opposing fears to your secondary characters, ones that cause disagreement and conflict between your characters.
For a simple example, say your main character wants a beautiful woman. The woman can want another man, or the main character’s friend can also want her. We see tropes like this in stories all the time. They are familiar to the readers, and generate a lot of tension between characters.
However, even if your storyline is familiar, use your characters’ unique voices to approach those traditional problems. What could your characters do that would be totally different from what other characters might do? If you need to insert quirks, also make them contrasting. The more contrast you put between your characters, the more conflict and tension you can produce.
Set up giant obstacles
Obstacles create conflict and force your character to decide to keep fighting. Obstacles need to make your character feel as though their whole life was at stake, either literally or figuratively.
Obstacles need to happen regularly in your story. I would say every three chapters at least, but some writers use them in every chapter with great effect. The key is that they don’t always have to be huge. They do have to present a big enough challenge that your character wonders if they can win. Even a simple time delay with the obnoxious neighbor, or a car not starting can hinder your character and make it seem like they can’t complete their goal. If you’re a seat of the pants writer like me, thinking “What terrible thing can I do to my character today?” is a fun way to start a writing session.
Don’t be afraid to make the obstacles big. Include some huge, sticky, and very dangerous obstacles. From thrillers to romantic comedies, you can incorporate potentially disastrous problems:
The troublemaker out to get your character fired, which will cause them to lose their home.
The backstabbing friend who is going after the guy/girl
A witness to a crime who saw your main character at the scene
A boss who messed up and plans to place blame on your main character
Use your fears to propel the characters’ emotional journeys against those obstacles. Whenever you feel stuck, start writing down fears and how a character might approach those fears.
Coming Soon
Next week we’ll finally get to brainstorming and how to take your base ideas and rachet them up to create more twists and plots. After that, we’ll discuss some ways to add more depth to your story. In the last installment, I’ll use these methods to develop a brand new story idea, and go through the process so you can see how I use it.
Related Posts:
Write What You Like – Coming Up With Useable Ideas, pt. 2
The Idea Game – Coming Up With Useable Ideas, pt. 1
Writing the End: How it should have ended
Original article: Fight The Biggest Monster – Coming Up With Useable Ideas, pt. 3.
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