Tag Archives: scene goals

Technique

Varying the tension level to keep your readers’ interest

2 Comments
This entry is part 25 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Or, How writing is like spicy mac

A couple weeks ago, my family went out to lunch. We got a side of macaroni and cheese that was advertised, correctly, as having a little kick to it. The spice was too much for the kids, so my husband and I ended up eating almost all of the macaroni and cheese.

Macaroni and Cheese @ Seersucker RestaurantThe first few bites were really tasty (and I’m really picky about mac’n’cheese). Within a few bites, the spice began to set in. It wasn’t too spicy—no tears, no runny noses—but I could see why my kids needed water.

But once we were halfway through our meal, my husband and I both realized that we weren’t really tasting the mac or the cheese. After a while, all you could taste was the spice.

Early on in our writing, we usually learn early on that we need tension and conflict in our scenes. Tension, suspense and conflict are vital, and few people will read fiction without that “spice.”

However, sometimes it’s easy to go overboard on this vital element. At the climax, we’ll probably have a long passage of high-tension scenes, but if every scene of the book features world! threatening! consequences!, all you can taste is the spice—and the book feels just as one-note as if every scene had no tension at all.

Spice isn’t the spice of life—it’s variety. So change up the tension levels in your scenes.

Ten ways to change up the tension in your scenes

Flatline1. Use humor. A joke can reduce the tension in a scene, or just give the readers a break from unremitting THE WHOLE PLANET WILL DIE!!! drama.

2. Switch storylines. Changing to another group of characters doing something else often helps to vary the tension level. This also works in reverse—if the tension gets too low in one storyline, switch to another, then change back to a point where something more interesting is happening.

3. Bump up your character’s proactivity. Maybe your characters aren’t facing chase scene after chase scene, but they’ve been kidnapped and they’re being dragged around the country, and they’re freaking out the whole time. That level of tension, that helpless response, makes the tension (and the characters!) seem one-note. Don’t let your characters just wring their hands and whine. Do something!

4. Change your character’s goal. If we’ve had five scenes in a row of your characters trying to do the exact same thing, and encountering the same problem, or the same level of problems, something’s got to change. (You know what they say about the definition of insanity?)

5. Change the source of the threat. Maybe your last eight scenes have been at a 7 on the tension scale. You might be able to bump some of them up

6. Use dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something the characters don’t, usually something that will pull the rug from under the characters. If you have scenes from the antagonist’s POV, for example, you can set up dramatic irony (and switch to that storyline to intercut the tension).

7. Have your characters reach a goal. Throughout the book, we mostly try to frustrate our characters’ goals because it increases the suspense and tension. To change things up, have them accomplish something—it could be something small, like retrieving an important artifact, or it could be something major, like defeating the bad guy (who turns out to be only a minor villain).

8. Give us a campfire scene. Let the characters celebrate and relax, if only for a minute. Especially good after a victory that turns out to be false.

9. Use a sequel. You may not have the time or place to have a celebration scene right now, but if your character has a minute, he or she might be able to go through the stages of an emotional reaction to the action, naturally a bit lower in tension.

10. Show the recovery. You’ve got hearts racing, stomachs clenching and palms sweating (dude, gesture clichés). But do your characters ever stop doing those things? Do they strive to (or just naturally) get their visceral responses under control? Take a deep breath, take a look around, take a minute to reorient your goals before you plunge in again.

Again, tension is absolutely vital to a novel—but having all your scenes with equally high tension is just as stultifying as all scenes with low tension. We don’t want every bite of our meal to taste like plain noodle or like plain spice. Vary the tension of your stories to create a truly engaging taste reading experience.

How else can you vary the tension in your scenes?

Photo credits
Macaroni and cheese by David Berkowitz
Flatline by Myles Grant
both via Flickr/CC

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Secret sauce: scene goals

2 Comments
This entry is part 8 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

I learned the concept of scene goals when I read Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. Simply, a scene goal is the character’s immediate goal at the outset of a scene. But it’s amazing how this very simple concept can strengthen your fiction.

Finding scene goals

We mentioned scene goals last week in scene charts. As I forced myself to write out the character’s immediate goal at the outset of the scene, I found that sometimes the character didn’t know what his or her immediate purpose was. The scenes that lacked a goal for the character (or a unique goal, as opposed to one that the character’s had four times now) were often the unfocused scenes I needed the most work on—or to be cut altogether.

The goal of a scene should be very, very obvious to the writer, the reader and the character. In fact, in Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham says that our POV characters should state their goals for that scene fairly early on.

The prototypical scene begins with the most important character—invariably the viewpoint character—walking into a simulation with a definite, clear-cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable. This goal represents an important step in the character’s game plan—something to be obtained or achieved which will move him one big step closer to the attainment of his major story goal. . . . (24)

The scene begins with a stated, clear-cut goal. (25)

Scene goals are fantastic for structuring fiction at this level because they tell us, the writers, what needs to happen. Our character arrives at the car dealership with the mission to buy a car/talk to his ex-girlfriend/flirt with the new salesguy. (It sets up the “scene question,” if you will: will s/he get this goal?) The character works toward that goal, until the disaster, as Bickham calls it. We answer the scene question with, most likely, a “no” or a “yes, but [complication].” (Just plain yesses should be reserved for false victories, lulling characters into a sense of security, and, of course, the finale.)

Fixing scene goals

Typically, if a scene lacks a scene goal, the scene is not as strong as it could be. (Occasionally, we’ll have something unexpected befall a character in a scene. The POV character may not always have a goal at the beginning of a scene like this—but try to use this technique sparingly, or your characters might seem directionless and as though they’re not taking charge in their life.)

To fix a weak or missing scene goal, ask what the character is trying to accomplish right now? Why did s/he come here, call this person, or take another action. Why does s/he need to do this now?

A weak scene goal can also be shored up by another, stronger goal. Look for connections or other plot lines that you can tie in to this scene. What are the antagonists doing? What can the protagonist do to try to counter them right now?

Once you’ve found the answer, state the goal flat-out close to the beginning of the scene. “I need to get Y.” “He had to make sure everything was going smoothly.” “You must go into the cave to face your inner fears.”

Can scene goals be too obvious? Possibly. From time to time, laying out the character’s entire plan for achieving a goal can actually decrease the tension. Janice Hardy covers this pitfall of overexplaining scene goals well.

Advanced scene goal techniques

Scene goals can be a really powerful tool! Here are a few ways to use them:

Goals and character sympathy

Another role that goals can play in fiction is to help develop character sympathy. How? When readers support a character’s goal, they want the character to succeed. They care.

What does it take to get our readers on board? According to James N. Frey, it takes a noble goal. They can be a really detestable person (Frey’s example is of a convict who wants to break out of prison), but giving them a goal that we can all believe in helps us to believe in the character, too (Frey’s example, IIRC, is that the convict wants to get out of prison to help a family member). And this really works: I felt it happen to me while watching a game show.

What’s noble? Something that’s self-sacrificing, something that benefits another person more than it does the main character, something that helps the general populace (but that can be too vague: helping one concrete person, such as the character’s child, can actually be more effective as a character goal than trying to better the whole world).

Goals and characterization

Our characters sometimes do have life goals other than the plot-level story goals—goals that may or not play into our story, and goals that may or may not be fulfilled in the course of the story. The bed-and-breakfast, a job at the FBI, the private island in the Bahamas.

While these might not really influence the plot, they can still have a great effect on the story: adding layers to your characters. Like real people, our characters can have life goals and dreams. These goals help demonstrate the character’s depth, to round them out.

These goals can manifest in little ways: the FBI job is one of my character’s ultimate goals that doesn’t play into the plot of the story. That goal manifests in her hobbies: spy movies and spy novels. They can also come in handy when they play into the character’s motivations. (I’ll spare you the convoluted explanation of how this happens in my story.)

The biggest caution here: make sure this goal doesn’t upstage the main plot.

Goals and foreshadowing

Foreshadowing or burying clues is all about framing: mentioning the object or information in plain sight, but in light of something more important so that the reader doesn’t think, “Ah, this is out of place/overly conspicuous/waaay too innocent looking—it must mean something.”

This is why it’s sometimes possible to make the wildest excursions inside the conflict appear to have relevance: The viewpoint character will inevitably interpret almost anything as relating back to the goal; you can show his line of thinking in an internalization, and so drag the seeming excursion far afield back into apparent relevance.

When our characters are so focused on this goal, we can use that focus to help the character (and thus the reader) dismiss something that might obviously be a clue. “Oh, he’s just hanging around because he needs to get the assignment, too.”

The scene goal tempers how a character sees material clues. They can explain them away easily: “Oh, that paperwork is on her desk—good! She’s been busy. She hasn’t had a chance to look inside the folder.”

Or they can just barely notice them—just enough to warrant a mention, but we have a MISSION here, people, and we are not going to get sidetracked!

Next week, we’ll talk about one more important use of scene goals. Until then, read more on goals in fiction, making scenes matter, and framing scene goals to bury clues.

What do you think? Do you consciously use scene goals? How do they effect your writing?

Photo credits: Goal Setting (brainstorm web)—Angie Torres;
Resolutions and goals (list)—Ed Donahue; Goals (poster)—Robert Degennaro

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Secret sauce: Behold, the scene chart!

3 Comments
This entry is part 7 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

There are probably as many ways to edit a story as there are to write one. One of my favorite tools has been a scene chart, inspired by a post on Edittorrent.

The original post suggested creating index cards for each scene, listing a number of important features—everything from where and when the scene is set, to first and last lines, to “promises” made to the reader, to important details like descriptions. Then you could move the index cards around to resequence events or scenes, or play with the story without hurting your MS.

Like many of the commentators on the post, however, I used a spreadsheet to do this in a very small space. I also combined this with probably the most important thing I learned from Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure—the structure of a scene and the importance of a scene goal—for the character, not just me as a writer. (More on scene goals next week!)

So here’s an example of the kind of scene chart I used, partially filled in for an imaginary story (anybody recognize the plot? Hint: it’s from an old card game). I didn’t use all of these columns myself (and if any of them aren’t clear, feel free to ask what I mean).

I liked this technique so well, I’ve used it on almost everything I’ve written since the first time I used it, more than four years ago. I can use it to make sure the vital elements of every scene are present.

Checking for these elements is a very powerful tool. It makes sure that:

  • Each scene is vital to your story
  • Each scene has direction and purpose
  • Each scene keeps your reader engaged and interested
  • The story is consistent in its details
  • There are no loose threads or forgotten promises

We’ll talk more about how the scene chart helps with some of these elements over the next couple weeks.

What do you think? Do you use a form of scene charts? What’s your favorite high-level editing technique?

Photo credit: Aaron Brown

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Focusing your fiction

1 Comment

I recently read a friend’s manuscript and realized that she had good scenes and themes, but somehow I was still left feeling like the manuscript wasn’t very focused. That might’ve just been me, but it’s something I want to think about as I work on my current manuscript, where the “BIG” theme is something the narrator isn’t aware of consciously until the end, and a smaller theme is something she does notice and talk about.

Here are a couple things you can do to hone a book’s focus (shared with my friend’s permission, but all details changed to protect her):

  • A scene chart, with special focus on scene goals. This makes sure that each scene drives the story forward. I always do this: make a spreadsheet of all the scenes in my book, whose POV they’re in, what information is conveyed, but most importantly what the POV character’s goal is going into the scene. Most of the time, the character will pretty much state the goal outright at the beginning of the scene.
  • Tension check! This is something I have to do with every book, and I usually do it as part of the scene chart. One of the columns is dedicated to writing out the source of the tension in that scene. If I don’t know, I look for an antagonist or a disaster. Typically most scenes end in disaster, at least from the perspective of the POV character who came into the scene with a stated goal. Then, when I go through and edit the scene based on that, I make sure that tension is there in every page.
  • Stakes check! Again, this can be done in the scene chart, or on a higher level, like chapter or section. Ask what is at stake–what happens if the character doesn’t achieve his or her goal? What are the consequences? Do they know that? Can we be reminded of that? (This can also be a subtype of the tension check.)
  • Think long and hard about the theme (Note that this is post-first draft work most of the time!). I feel like there are two competing themes in the book: one of ignorance being bliss, and one of loving someone being a strength rather than a weakness. This makes it feel like we’re telling almost two different stories. Can you make the themes relate to one another? Make one subordinate to the other? Rephrase/rethink/reframe/re-present one so that they are corollaries? Or maybe pick one and focus on it, and make sure the other stays a subplot?
  • Once you’ve pinned down the theme, look at each scene and each character and each character’s journey. How do they support the theme? (If you’re having trouble with the last point, maybe do this first, writing out what each character’s journey and purpose in the story are currently, and looking at trends before you decide which theme to go with or how to correlate them.) How does that character/scene/journey express or support the theme?Does it serve as a counterexample, and if so, is it presented in a negative light or with negative conclusions? (This is sort of inspired by Holly Lisle’s one-pass revision technique.)
  • Look at the language itself. Is the language specific, concrete and vivid? Can we really see a vivid picture of people (visual and characterization) and settings and emotions and experiences?

What do you think? How else can you help to focus an unfocused theme or story?

Photo by Riccardo Bandiera

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Making scenes matter

3 Comments

or, How to Save Your Darlings!

We’ve all heard the phrase “Kill your darlings,” right? While sometimes, it feels like the injunction means that we have to carve out anything we liked in our work—whoa, don’t do that! “Kill your darlings” means more to carve out the pieces of your story that are important only to you—if they don’t matter to your characters, your story and your readers, they shouldn’t be in there, no matter how delightful their dinner discussion might be.

Janice Hardy has a great article on “Poking Dead Scenes With A Stick,” AKA do you really need that scene. She says:

When you have a dead scene, ask yourself: If I cut this scene, would anyone but me care or even notice?

If the answer is no, cut the scene. Go ahead and move it to a new file called "cut scenes" and save in case you need it later if you’d like. Be ruthless, the story will be better for it.

She has some great criteria for determining whether or not your scene is truly necessary. There might be events, statements or actions in the scene that are important, but you might be able to move them to another scene if you really need them.

But sometimes, we really do need these scenes. Perhaps they contain clues/foreshadowing that won’t work any other place. (But here’s a hint: if that clue is the only reason we need the scene, it’s probably going to stand out to the reader—maybe a little too much—unless we can make the rest of the scene work harder.)

So if we really need to keep a scene, what do we do to make that scene matter? To understand that, let’s take a look at the purposes of scenes.

Mission of scenes

On the Writing on the Wall blog, author Annette Lyon lists six of the most basic purposes of a scene:

  1. Advance the plot
  2. Create or show conflict
  3. Set the setting
  4. Reveal character
  5. Show backstory
  6. Lay groundwork for later plot

Numbers 1 and 2 are probably the most important in any sort of commercial or popular fiction. In fact, Annette says that most of your scenes should have #1 or #2 as a purpose—in addition to one of the other six.

To repeat, nearly every scene should advance the plot and/or create/show conflict, in addition to developing another aspect of the story. A scene just for character development isn’t enough of a purpose.

Look carefully at the scene in question and determine if it’s mostly or entirely serving only one of these purposes—and if it’s serving #1 and/or #2 at all.

So, let’s say you’ve gone through the scene line by line and you’ve determined that there is absolutely no other way to convey this information—but the scene still isn’t doing enough. You need to make that scene matter.

Making scenes matter

When you truly cannot cut the scene, what do you do? You make the scene matter.

First of all, look at the list of scene purposes above (and add to it if you really need to). How can you add those purposes to your scene?

When I’m trying to make a scene matter, I ask myself these questions:

  • What is the character’s goal for this scene?
  • How can things get worse?
  • How can I raise the stakes?
  • What is the source of conflict in this scene and how can I make the conflict bigger?
  • How can I weave in the antagonist, the plot, a subplot or a character turning point?
  • Who is the worst person who could walk in right now?
  • What would happen if this scene took place somewhere else?
  • What is the character feeling and have I shown it enough on the page?

In a second post on this topic, Janice Hardy also offers a list of things to look at to help make your scenes matter (and there’s some overlap, but I wrote out my mental list after reading her first post):

  • What is your protag doing?
  • Where does this scene take place (setting)?
  • Who else is in the scene?
  • Where structurally does this scene take place (act one, midpoint, act two, etc)?
  • What happens right before this scene?
  • What happens right after this scene?
  • What’s your theme?
  • What are the stakes?

With all these questions, mine and hers, we want to look for ways to make the scene more integral to the story. Incorporate the themes or the subplots more, heighten the conflict and the suspense, etc.

When I was rewriting the book that will be my first published novel, I knew I needed to amp up the mystery plot (and tone down the romance plot a bit). So I went through each scene, specifically looking for a way I could increase the tension and suspense, raise the stakes and bring in the antagonists more.

And you know what? Even though I’ve written four books since that one, I still have to do this. Last month I did the first revision on my most recent manuscript, and I had to look for ways to make the scenes more interesting, state the characters’ goals and tie in the suspense more.

For a more specific example, in the last week, I reread a book I wrote almost 3 years ago as the first step in revisions. I’ve already edited it a bit, so just about all of the scenes are in there for a good reason (though I can see I hadn’t really grasped scene goals at the time). However, some sections of the book really drag, so I’m still brainstorming how I can draw in the antagonist more, how I can keep the threat present and how I can raise the stakes.

One really good example I’d like to share, though, is at a major turning point of the book. It’s the midpoint. Things are looking pretty bad for the future of the romance, and the hero goes home and basically mopes. (It’s my own writing; I can be harsh if I want to.)

This is the midpoint of the book, a major turning point. After the midpoint, says Larry Brooks, the character is ready to go on the offensive. The third quarter is all about the attack. But my character basically rolled over and played dead after the midpoint.

When I reread my midpoint scene, I thought, “NO! He does not MOPE! HE WILL FIGHT!” (If you feel like either quoting The Incredibles or singing some Peter Cetera, feel free.) And suddenly the entire third quarter made sense. I still have a lot of work to do to implement these changes, but suddenly this scene matters so much more.

In my example, yet another scene of the hero mourning his losses didn’t add anything to the story, except that we found out he’d gone so far as to buy an engagement ring before they broke up. (This does not help to make him less mopey, LOL.) In my new vision for the scene, we’ll still get that information—which wasn’t vital to the story in the original version. But now, that ring (which will actually be offstage), plus the events of the day, will help my character to a turning point.

And I can’t wait to see him fight.

What do you think? How do you help to make scenes that aren’t doing a lot for your story really integral?

Photo credits: delete—Mixy Lorenzo;
question mark—Alexander Drachmann; sad sack baby—J

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Goals in fiction, on every level

2 Comments

And I don’t mean getting published

This time of year is ideal for thinking of our resolutions. But we’re not the only ones who should be working (or autopiloting) toward a goal: in fiction, characters should have a goal, too. Characters’ goals affect their stories from beginning to end, on multiple levels.

Sometimes, we hear “goals” harped on so much that it gives us a complex. I had one: I used to think my characters didn’t have good enough goals. Beyond the scope of the plot, I couldn’t think of what their goals might be.

Plot-level goals
I used to think that characters had to have goals in their lives aside from the ones that get thrust upon them at the beginning of the story. While that’s true, I doubt the hero’s goal of retiring in Hawaii or the heroine’s dream of owning a bed and breakfast in twenty years plays heavily into their story. (It can help to make the characters richer, of course, but that’s just not what Goal-Motivation-Character is all about.)

Finally, I realized because of the types of stories I write, the plot did contain the characters’ goals, and that was okay. In romance, the characters’ goals often are to find someone. In mysteries, the characters’ goals are to find the killer/perpetrator and bring him/her to justice. There’s something wrong in the world (the character is alone; someone has been killed, etc.), and it’s their job to right it. And that’s OKAY.

The character’s plot-level goal is controlled by the story question. In a romance, it’s “Will they get together?” In a mystery, it’s “Will they catch the bad guy?” In other genres of fiction, of course, the variety of questions might be wider, but it might be “Will Jenny find healing?” or “Will Harry triumph over his awful, lonely roots?”

The answer to all of those story questions is yes. (You could phrase them other ways to get a no, like “Will the murderer get away with it?” or “Will Jenny’s past ultimately defeat her?”) The characters’ external, plot level goals relate directly to these questions. In a romance, with “Will they get together?”, the characters’ goals are to not be alone, to be with someone who understands them, to find someone who will love them in spite or even because of their peculiarities. (These might double as internal goals, too.) In a mystery, the characters’ goals are to serve justice.

Plot level goals are SIMPLE. I worked myself up overthinking this level of goals, worrying that my characters had to have a grand life plan in place and they were on step 27-B section ii-c when suddenly STORY CRISIS comes along. Not necessarily. What does your character get in the end? Is the story about the character’s journey to get that? There’s your goal. (And if your story isn’t about your character’s goal, take another look at your story.)

Internal goals
It was much harder for me to identify characters’ internal goals: until I looked closer at their internal conflicts. Just like the external plot conflict, I found the characters had goals inherent in their conflicts already. I just hadn’t fully expressed those goals to myself. And when I did, I was able to tweak their character arcs ever so slightly to make the characters even stronger.

For example, let’s say your character struggles with being disrespected. (Kind of external, but we’ll go with it.) The story follows their internal journey, from disrespected to respected, or maybe from disrespected/low self-esteem to high self-esteem. Their internal goal is right there, inherent in that starting point: gain respect.

To find internal goals, look at the character’s arc. Where does she start from, emotionally? What does she gain or how does he change in the course of the story? Voila.

Internal conflict adds a necessary dimension to characters. Making sure that internal conflict is clear and expressed in a character arc adds a necessary dimension to good fiction.

Scene-level goals
Characters have even smaller goals, of course, than living happily ever after or ridding the world of the threat. Characters should have goals in (almost) every scene. In fact, in Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham says that our POV characters should state their goals for that scene fairly early on.

The prototypical scene begins with the most important character—invariably the viewpoint character—walking into a simulation with a definite, clear-cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable. This goal represents an important step in the character’s game plan—something to be obtained or achieved which will move him one big step closer to the attainment of his major story goal. . . . (24)

The scene begins with a stated, clear-cut goal. (25)

Scene goals are fantastic for structuring fiction at this level because they tell us, the writers, what needs to happen. Our character arrives at the car dealership with the mission to buy a car/talk to his ex-girlfriend/flirt with the new salesguy. (It sets up the “scene question,” if you will: will s/he get this goal?) The character works toward that goal, until the disaster, as Bickham calls it. We answer the scene question with, most likely, a “no” or a “yes, but [complication].” (Just plain yesses should be reserved for false victories, lulling characters into a sense of security, and, of course, the finale.)

But scene goals aren’t just for the beginning and end of scenes. You can use them to keep the tension high in a scene. By reminding the readers what the character is after—and showing the growing disparity between her goal and reality—we can draw the reader along through the scene. As always, we don’t want to harp on anything too much or be repetitive.

Scene-level goals drive the story forward through each scene. Keeping those goals clear helps to keep our characters—and our readers—oriented in the story.

Occasionally, we’ll have something unexpected befall a character in a scene. The POV character may not always have a goal at the beginning of a scene like this—but try to use this technique sparingly, or your characters might seem directionless and as though they’re not taking charge in their life.

Goals and character sympathy
Another role that goals can play in fiction is to help develop character sympathy. How? When readers support a character’s goal, they want the character to succeed. They care.

What does it take to get our readers on board? According to James N. Frey, it takes a noble goal. They can be a really detestable person (Frey’s example is of a convict who wants to break out of prison), but giving them a goal that we can all believe in helps us to believe in the character, too (Frey’s example, IIRC, is that the convict wants to get out of prison to help a family member). And this really works: I felt it happen to me while watching a game show.

What’s noble? Something that’s self-sacrificing, something that benefits another person more than it does the main character, something that helps the general populace (but that can be too vague: helping one concrete person, such as the character’s child, can actually be more effective as a character goal than trying to better the whole world).

Goals and characterization
Our characters sometimes do have life goals other than the plot-level story goals—goals that may or not play into our story, and goals that may or may not be fulfilled in the course of the story. The bed-and-breakfast, a job at the FBI, the private island in the Bahamas.

While these might not really influence the plot, they can still have a great effect on the story: adding layers to your characters. Like real people, our characters can have life goals and dreams. These goals help demonstrate the character’s depth, to round them out.

These goals can manifest in little ways: the FBI job is one of my character’s ultimate goals that doesn’t play into the plot of the story. That goal manifests in her hobbies: spy movies and spy novels. They can also come in handy when they play into the character’s motivations. (I’ll spare you the convoluted explanation of how this happens in my story.)

The biggest caution here: make sure this goal doesn’t upstage the main plot. We’ll see how this works out in edits, but I’ve had a little mixed feedback about my character’s dream. Some readers think it’s so important it needs to be mentioned in the very first chapter. And even though that chapter won the contest, at least one judge complained that the very same character didn’t have any dreams or aspirations. (Why, exactly, they thought she needed to think about those dreams and aspirations when dealing with the murder of her priest, I’m not sure.)

However, adding that to the first chapter might make readers think it’s an important part of the plot. It’s not part of the story question for this book. Our first chapter offers a promise of things to come, not a synopsis of the characters’ lives. If we make a promise of this character’s dream, and especially if it’s not fulfilled in this book, we’re setting our readers up for disappointment.

Instead, use goals and dreams to add depth to the characters and the story—from the hobby on up.

How can you better use goals in your writing?

Photo credits: climbing the mountain—Ben Rohrs;
my life in 10 years—lululemon athletica; grab the brass ring—Foxytocin

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Bury clues using framing with scene goals

2 Comments
This entry is part 3 of 11 in the series Clues in non mysteries

Finally, the fun stuff: techniques for making sure your clues and foreshadowing are in there, but don’t attract too much attention from your reader that you’re telegraphing the pass.

Burying clues is all about framing: mentioning the object or information in plain sight, but in light of something more important so that the reader doesn’t think, “Ah, this is out of place/overly conspicuous/waaay too innocent looking—it must mean something.”

The first way we’ll discuss burying clues I’m calling “using framing with scene goals.” Scene goals are the POV character’s “mission” going into the scene. These goals should be fairly obvious, and may even be stated: “He had to get that folder from her before she looked inside,” “If I didn’t find out what the assignment was, I was toast,” etc.

So the POV character comes into the scene focused on this goal—maybe a little too focused, in fact. Maybe so focused that we use this to our advantage. As Jack Bickham explains (emphasis mine):

We know that the viewpoint character is strongly motivated toward a specific, short-term goal essential to his long-term quest when he enters the scene. Therefore, he will tend to be preoccupied with this goal throughout the scene. In fiction, as in real life, people tend to interpret everything in the frame of reference of their preoccupation of the moment. This is why it’s sometimes possible to make the wildest excursions inside the conflict appear to have relevance: The viewpoint character will inevitably interpret almost anything as relating back to the goal; you can show his line of thinking in an internalization, and so drag the seeming excursion far afield back into apparent relevance.

When our characters are so focused on this goal, we can use that focus to help the character (and thus the reader) dismiss something that might obviously be a clue. “Oh, he’s just hanging around because he needs to get the assignment, too.”

The scene goal tempers how a character sees material clues. They can explain them away easily: “Oh, that paperwork is on her desk—good! She’s been busy. She hasn’t had a chance to look inside the folder.”

Or they can just barely notice them—just enough to warrant a mention, but we have a MISSION here, people, and we are not going to get sidetracked!

What do you think? Have you ever had a character so focused on a scene goal that they led a reader away from a clue?

Photo by Candie_N

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Tension fix: Bring out internal conflicts

3 Comments
This entry is part 17 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with the scene set up: we’ve put Mitch into a situation where he would be uncomfortable, unsure of himself, or required to perform a monumental feat. And yet somehow, the scene still doesn’t get the reception we want. Critique partners note that the scene—a turning point for the character—drags.

We need this scene—so now what? Can’t they see how this situation would be stressful and tense for Mitch? Doesn’t that automatically imbue the scene with tension?

Uh, no. Not if we didn’t put that there. Yeah, even though we’d all spent 300 pages together, if the feelings we know Mitch would have weren’t on the page, readers won’t see it.

Simply introducing more more tension—more conflict—through the narration can increase the tension in a scene. If Mitch just sits there and takes this pivotal situation, the readers won’t be engaged in his change—and it won’t be as believable.

Camy Tang wrote an article about this, taken Donald Maass’s “tension on every page” axiom to the next level—tension in every line. She used a great before and after comparison of a cut scene from one of her novels—one without the “tension commentary” and one with (going for tension with a humorous tone).

Weaving in your character’s emotions and observations—whether they’re a “why me” comedic effect, a “not me!” suspense effect or a “can I do this” character effect—can help to increase the tension in a turning point scene.

But don’t beat your readers over the head with it. If this is the fourth scene in a row where your protagonist is battling his Inner Demon, we readers are probably familiar enough that the conflict doesn’t have to be mentioned in every paragraph. In fact, if this is the fourth scene in a row with the same inner conflict, it might be a good time to see if all of those scenes are really necessary. Also, too much internal monologue can slow down the action of a scene, so try for a balance.

What do you think? How can you bring out your characters’ internal conflicts more?

Photo by Penguincakes

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!