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

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.

—Scene & Structure p 86-87

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

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

Yesterday, I said “if the character’s goal or purpose isn’t early in the scene, we can risk losing our readers.” I believe that’s true—but at the same time, I recognize that sometimes, it would make no sense for us to jump from the previous scene to the scene goal or start of the action without motivating the POV character properly.

This is one of those times where it’s vital to have a sequel—a “scene” where we focus on the character’s emotional reaction to the action of a scene. Most of the time, we tack these onto the end of the appropriate scene—but that’s not always going to work. Say, for example, we were in Jimmy’s head for the confession scene and his sequel—he tells Gina that they really can be together. Then we move on to Gina tearing up all his letters. Huh?

We need a sequel in Gina’s perspective to clarify her motivation. But starting her scene with half a page (or more) of her emotions and thoughts in reaction to the last action is . . . well, slow. (Especially if we just saw Jimmy’s emotions and thoughts on the same subject.)

So how do we make the reader understand? One great way to create tension is not to explain these actions—at first. The reader is taken aback by this interesting or inexplicable action—and they’re eager to not only find out what happens next, but to learn why this is happening now.

As James Scott Bell says in Revision And Self-Editing, you can “marble in” this sequel information through the beginning of the scene. As she rips up the letters, we have a natural reason for her to think about the last scene and to give us her response—and now we’re really compelled to find out.

This can be effective within scenes, too. I found a scene in my WIP where, halfway through, a minor character gave a two paragraph monologue to the hero to catch him (and us) up on her subplot. I’d interrupted the speech with the hero’s thought about the minor character’s habit to ramble, but still, the blocks of text were more than even I really wanted to read.

After she finished the speech, she went and retrieved a piece of evidence in a crime—a threat against her. I realized if I had the minor character hand him that evidence first, the readers would be pretty surprised—and now they want to know how she crossed the bad guys. Then her speech could keep the readers’ attention.

It can also be useful to pick up the pace (and increase suspense)—if a lot of our scenes are actually sequels, the story can slow down. If that’s not the appropriate pace for the story, ending scenes with disasters and combining sequels with the beginning of the next scene can also help speed up the action of the story.

Of course, this technique shouldn’t be used too often—we don’t want our readers to get whiplash from all those head-fakes. But it can be used to ramp up the tension at the beginning of a scene, and make the reader want to know about the emotional reaction that led the characters there.

What do you think? How do you handle necessary sequels? Do you use the “head-fake” explosion opening?

Photo by Rob

One of the ways that I’ve found to increase tension as I’ve read a bunch of craft books and reread my WIP is to pull readers into scenes and create tension quickly.

Our scene openings are really key in establishing tension early on. Many times, however, we spend the beginning of the scene “warming up”—rehashing the last scene or sequel, running through mundane events, working up to a conflict (or even to a scene goal). Even after I’d edited specifically focused on making scene goals clear, I still found many scenes meandering near the beginning, wandering around until we found a conflict.

The first step is to make our POV character’s scene goal clear. Often, that will be stated explicitly: she’s waiting for her mystery date or he headed into the office to check on the Q4 numbers. (Thrilling—though I actually do know someone shopping an MG financial thriller, so maybe it could work.) Sometimes it’ll be pretty darn clear from the way we ended the previous scene: the couple just had a fight, and now he’s at a florist.

If the character’s goal or purpose isn’t early in the scene, we can risk losing our readers. And if we don’t get those characters to work on those scene goals, we can risk losing our readers. And if those characters don’t do something interesting—find a source of tension—pretty quick, we can risk losing our readers. (They’re just fickle like that.)

I’ve said before that conflict is at the heart of tension—just as conflict is at the heart of any fully-imagined scene.

Once we’ve established the character’s goal, explicitly or implicitly, we should bring on the conflict. Maybe he’s headed to the florist but—the elevator’s broken—the stairs are being painted. He twists his ankle getting down from the fire escape—the nearest florist is closed—he can’t get a cab—he gets hit by the bus he’s trying to catch. Notice that the conflict doesn’t have to start huge—he doesn’t have to jump straight to the disaster.

It doesn’t even have to be big—maybe the florist doesn’t carry her favorite kind of flowers, or after he pays, he remembers she’s allergic. But don’t just leave him in there, pondering over whether to get daffodils or dianthus.

Along with this, we can look at the whole scene to see what we can tighten. Eliminate unnecessary or redundant words and use powerful, fast-paced language instead. Check out this tightening checklist at the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood for help.

What do you think? Is there a time when we need long sections of thought between the goal and the conflict?

Photo by Matthias Rhomberg