Pre-Writing: Research

Ah, research. One of my own personal versions of crack. Whether writing historical, fantasy, or contemporary, solid, judicious research can make a book come alive.

It can also be one of the easiest areas in which to become bogged down due to 1) becoming overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of information and a desire to get everything perfect and 2) it’s a lovely way to procrastinate and avoid doing any actual writing.

The way I keep from getting overwhelmed or lost in a never ending maze of historical research is that I break it down into stages. In the prewriting stage, the point of my research is to get a broad overview of the major events, players, and temperament of the historical time period in question. If I’ll be using or referring to real people or events, I make sure I know enough about them so that I can adapt accordingly. In fact, early on, I will often make up a timeline incorporating those historical events that will be happening during the course of the story.

But perhaps more important than the major events and players, is the thing I called temperament. This incorporates not only the mood and tone of the historical period, but also the worldview of the people who lived in those times. I thinking trying to capture the worldview and convey it somewhat accurately is one of the keys to making historical fiction feel like more than a costume drama.

The mindset of those who lived in the Victorian Era was different from those who lived in the Edwardian Era. Medeival men and women had wildly different ways in which they viewed the world when compared to those that lived during the Renaissance. As writers, I think one of the most important research tasks we have is to be able to capture the essence of those views.

However, that worldview must be tweaked in such a way as to make sure the characters are relatable for today’s reader. I think the exception to this is if the main focus of the story is to capture a particular historical milieu and have it be the point of the story, but my own personal feeling is that character and story take precedence over historical accuracy. (Which I will talk about in my next post.)

Another really important point about historical fiction (including fantasy) is this: the story should be so integral to the events and constraints of the time period that it could not take place any other time. It could not be plunked down in another historical time period and work. So if you have a character and plot idea and you’re trying to choose between a Colornial, Renaissance, or Victorian setting, the chances are your plot and character are not fully grounded enough in their time or place. If you’re just at the idea stage and still fleshing out the plot and character, then that’s different.

For example, I get asked a lot about why I set Theodosa in Edwardian times, and the answer is, very simply, that particular story couldn’t have happened at any other time. A hundred years earlier and travel was much slower and women traveled to Egypt much less frequently and a woman archaeologist—while scandalous enough in 1907—would have been nigh impossible in 1807. Plus the Rosetta Stone hadn’t yet been cracked and no one knew how to properly read hieroglyphs, so Theo couldn’t have translated the various texts. Plus, the general view at the time was that it was perfectly fine to acquire artifacts from lands not one’s own and take them to a museum and archaelogical digs were minimally supervised.

If I were to have set it in modern times—well, the story couldn’t have happened in today’s world. Egypt is very much in control of its own excavations and discoveries, travel and access is now nearly instantaneous, and modern politics would have provided a huge barrier. Plus, we know so much more now that we did then and nearly all the really big archaelogical finds have been made.

Thus 1907.

So that’s what I look for in the first round of research, learning enough to anchor both the story and the character’s worldview in the time period. And then it’s a stop and go sort of thing. I’ll begin writing until I run into something I don’t know. If it totally stops the story from going forward, then I’ll stop and research it. If I can keep going without it, I put a note in brackets. [what were some games Edwardian kids played and what toys did they have?] and keep going. That way I avoid the procrastination game.

Oh, one other thing I do in these early, pre-writing stages is that I do the research necessary to assemble the setting of the book. Determine what cities or towns I’ll be using, or make some up based on real towns. I pour over old maps and photos of old towns and castles, trying to get a vivid picture of the setting in my mind and then create enough of a map or blueprint that I’m not constantly having to stop once the writing begins to figure out where in the heck I am.

(And the reason I’m talking about research now is because I do it before I create the template that I referred to in last week’s post. I’m pretty much doing these posts in the exact order that I do them for a book.)

Different Journeys: The Innocent

Okay, it took me longer than I thought, but I’ve been stewing on it, plus the whole Junkyard Brain syndrome kind of interfered for a day or two.

The archetype of The Innocent strikes me as being particularly well suited to kids books, especially picture books, early chapter books, and middle grade stories. The innocent lives in a perfect world where all his needs are taken care of and no horrible things have happened to convince him that the world is other than that perfect place.

When a character is the Innocent, his developmental task is to step into a new awareness—to recognize that the world isn’t paradise and his needs will not always be met and, perhaps most difficult of all, that everyone in the world does not exist in order to please him or make his life easier.

It is a classic stage in emotional and psychological development, and it comes to all of us at different times and in different ways and we bump into it in all areas of our lives.

It seems to me it could involve:

• That moment you realize your parents are not all-powerful or infallible
• The realization that the sun and moon do not rise and set every day just for you
• The first time a best friend lets you down or betrays you
• A treasured, admired older sibling does something horribly wrong or flawed
• That rude awakening when you realize other people are not there to simply make you happy.

In fact, one could make the argument that childhood is a series of falls from that state of innocence.

I am pretty far removed from picture books these days, but one example that springs to mind is Kitten’s First Full Moon, a classic example of this ‘fall’ from innocence. Kitten is certain that the full moon is a bowl of cream, meant just for her. The book is about how she learns that isn’t the case at all. Can any of you think of picture book examples?

In a YA or adult book, it seems as if this type of journey might work for someone who’d led a relatively perfect and charmed life and met their first hardship. Other than that, once Innocents get past about ten, we tend to think of them as narcissistic. ☺ Even so, that journey from self absorption to self awareness is a powerful one. As an adult, however, it also requires a high degree of willful denial and a determination to NOT see in order to maintain that pretense. But lord, we’ve all met adults who were stuck there. I think the big difference, though, in dealing with the Innocent in an older book is that you have to take them farther on the journey moving them into and through other stages (which I’ll talk about in the future.) They can’t end simply with the realization that they are not the center of the universe, whereas a kids’ book could conceivably.

So what then, would the steps be of an innocent’s journey look like?

Act One:
Ordinary World—show the protagonist either using people or being oblivious to their needs.
The Precipice—hint at fall or minor fall, the catalyst provides the initial crack before the entire façade begins to crumble.
The Fall—protagonists eyes are painfully opened to the realities of the world

Act Two:
Coping mechanisms- denial, band aid fixes, attempts and adjusting shallow surface behavior. To learn that we've been fundamentally wrong is painful so there is some denial, as well as guilt, fear, shame, all those horrible feelings. 
Tip of the iceberg—the crack created by the initial fall spreads until the whole world/situation is different. Cannot go back to the way they were at the beginning of the story. (midpoint) 
Regrouping—Now What? Moving through the full chaos of the real world with eyes open.

Act Three:
Evolve or Die (metaphorically, at least) Trying to re-understand the world with this new awareness; attempts to adjust, either through solving the problem or shifting behavior. First couple of attempts fail or, even better, make things worse.
True understanding and acceptance—either of the world the way it is or human frailties
Integration—something that shows he’s truly absorbed all this and moves through the world in a new way.


I think one of the things that makes accepting that fall so difficult is, to accept it, we have to realize our own culpability in what has transpired. Obviously to a much, much smaller degree in kids still developing normally through those stages, but even they have to accept that they were wrong. I think that’s why kids sometimes have such a well developed sense of ‘when I was little” even though the event they’re talking about might have only have happened six months ago. It’s a way to disassociate with the embarrassment one’s younger self brings them.

The kinds of things that motivate the innocent are fear and need. Probably pretty basic needs on Masler’s scale: need for safety, whether emotional or physical, the need for shelter and food and someone to care for them.

What do you guys think? Do you see other steps or ways to move through that journey?
Can you think of any good examples of books or movies in which the hero is an innocent?

Different Journeys

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between male and female journeys, most especially since it was one of the factors that surprised me with my most recent project—the end and resolution stage went on longer than I thought—and not because I couldn’t manage to wrap it up but because the heroine’s journey simply wasn’t finished yet.

It also occurs to me that labeling these different journeys by gender isn’t the most descriptive or accurate distinction, so maybe different labels are in order. Maybe, pulling from The Hero Within, the Warrior journey versus the Wanderer or Martyr’s journey is more apt. Except, of course, martyr is just so laden with negative imagery.

But here’s the big distinction. With the male or warrior journey, the arc ends once the protagonist has faced his internal or external demon and gained the prize, whether it be a hard earned nugget of wisdom or an actual physical thing. He then returns briefly to his ordinary world a changed person; either wiser, gentler, more understanding, whatever. His eyes have been open in some fundamental way and he has achieved a whole new self.

But the feminine journey doesn’t stop there. For women, learning how to wield that newfound wisdom or power once back in their ordinary world is a critical part of their journey. It’s not just about claiming power or wisdom, but facing down others to use it. Because it is hard for women to claim that power, hard for them to speak their truth, discovering those things is only one part of their transformation. Now they must use it and in the process, redefine the relationships in their lives.


The warrior archetype is lacking in wisdom and needs that to temper his warrior tendencies.

Women, on the other hand, need to learn to tap into their warrior tendencies.

I think that’s an interesting distinction. It can also be hugely helpful in trying to determine where the emotional juice of your story is.

I’m also trying to see how that fits in with the increasingly popular woman warrior archetype, such as the kick @ss heroine found so often in paranormal and urban fantasy books. Clearly those entire genres are a means of reclaiming the warrior archetype for women—a much needed balance. I’ll have to go pull some books off my shelf and see, but I’m wondering if part of that journey is forcing others in one’s life to get comfortable with that warrior woman archetype; to show the benefits of that archetype within communities and society since it is something society has not been comfortable with in the past.

I’m also pondering how it works when applied to middle grade fiction rather than YA or adult fiction. It seems to me, that up until middle grade books, the gender based distinctions are much less apparent, which isn’t surprising since adolescence is when those hormones really kick in.

Looking at Theodosia, it seems to me I’ve flipped the archetypes a bit; she is a bit of a warrior, albeit a sneaky, supernatural one. So her journeys tend to be about tempering those tendencies and gaining wisdom.

Nathaniel Fludd, on the other hand, is about as far away from a warrior as you can get. Each book is about him gaining one new step toward becoming a warrior, and then the final books will feature him moving through his world as his new warrior self.

Anyway, I just found it interesting to think about—specifically to be conscious of when plotting or writing the book because whether the wisdom is the end point or learning to use that wisdom is, will greatly alter the shape of the story.

And of course these are gross generalizations; there’s no way to avoid that when talking about archetypal journeys, but I think it’s something worth considering.

Transformative Change (Briefly!) Revisited

Someone asked me to explain the difference between change and transformative. The thing is, we change every day—in surface ways. We move from happy to sad or annoyed to bitter, patient to suffering. Those movements don’t fundamentally change us; rather they are part of our human spectrum of emotions.

The transformative part comes in when we take that grief or bitterness or suffering and let it be the catalyst that impels us to a new state of being; that instead of experiencing our emotions as random stepping stones, we allow ourselves to see the path that is forming at our feet and take it, follow it to a new awareness.

The transformative part means we change who we are, instead of merely how we feel.

And while this might seem a teensy bit philosophical for a blog mostly about writing, it does relate in a big way to our writing.

Transformative Change

I love it when a number of things swirling about in different areas of my life all converge and make me sit up and pay attention.


And as I mentioned last week, I've been reading The Hero Within and in it the author talks about transformative change as we move through the different stages of our journey.

Transformative change. For some reason that phrase has really stuck with me, always in the back of my mind this week. Probably in no small part because I've reached the point in the manuscript when everything is building to that big moment when my character sheds her old skin and steps into her new self. When she is truly and completely transformed by the events of the novel.


Then a couple of days ago on twitter, @Quotebelly posted this quote:  

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails." - William Arthur Ward

And it hit me; the act of adjusting the sails is not just about being realistic; it is also about being open to transformative change. A mere realist would batten down the hatches and hold on. But the act of adjusting the sails, of preparing yourself to accommodate what life is about to send your way, is a much more profound act of acceptance.

For some people, those bumps on life's road completely derail them or make them bitter or cause them to feel victimized. And while I hate tragedy and mishap as much as the next person, one of the only ways I can put my head down and get through it, is to try and see the situation as an opportunity for that sort of deep rooted change. To extract the life lesson that the universe is sending me. In doing that, in finding some nugget of wisdom to take from the incident, I feel that no matter what I have lost, I have also won.

The thing is, no one taught me that; not my parents or a church or a therapist. I'm pretty sure I have managed to learn that concept though stories.

Which is why in fiction, as writers, it is so vital that things in our story make sense, that the events in our stories are pushing our characters toward this transformative change. That is one of Story's most important roles in our lives, showing us what that sort of deep change looks like, feels like, how to recognize and respond to the opportunities when they arise.

Character Growth and Personal Journeys

For me, one of the most satisfying parts of a book is often the character’s transformative growth. All of my favorite writers strike me as exceptional students of the human condition, and it shows in their writing. However, sometimes stuff that we know intuitively, escapes us when it comes to wrestling with the nitty gritty logistics of arcing out a character’s internal journey. We know a character must change or grow, attain some new level of awareness. But unless we have a child development or psychology degree, the nuts and bolts of that process might be unfamiliar to us or cloaked in mystery. It is probably not surprising then, that half my favorite internal growth references for characterization are actually psychology books.

I am very fond of The Hero’s Journey and think it is particularly well suited to middle grade and YA stories because it so mirrors the coming of age process. Many of you have probably read The Writer’s Journey by Chris Vogler, but if it’s been a while, take the book off your shelf and look at it again. If you have a firm grip on the basics of the journey, try re-reading his section on archetypes and how they can serve as different facets of the hero.

Another book I enjoy browsing through but don’t seem to have used yet is 45 MASTER CHARACTERS. What I like about this book is that it breaks down personality characteristics into mythical archetypes, which can be helpful when you’re trying to navigate your protagonist’s internal landscape. For example, there is Artemis (The Amazon) and Athena (The Father’s Daughter) and Isis (Female Messiah), as well as the Dionysus, the Lady’s Man and the Ares The Protector and Apollo the Businessman. (Okay, now I see why I haven’t used this part yet—a lot of those archetypes only minimally apply to kid protagonists!)

She also discusses the difference between a masculine and feminine archetypal journey. I tend to think of them as either character-centric stories or more externally driven stories, and both work for either male or female characters. The main difference is the focus of the journeys.

The masculine is the one we are familiar with:
Challenge (Ordinary World, Call to Adventure, Mentor)
Obstacles (Tests, Allies, Enemies, Ordeal, Reward)
Transformation (Resurrection, Return with the Elixir.)

The Feminine Journey is:
Containment (Illusion of a Perfect World, Betrayal of Realization, The Awakening) Transformation (The Descent, Eye of the Storm, Death—all is lost)
Emergence (Support, Rebirth/Moment of Truth, Full Circle)

Interesting that the transformation in one comes in the middle and the act of true victory is maintaining that transformation when one returns, rather than having the transformation be the end of the story.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s WOMEN WHO RUN WITH WOLVES provides an absolute wealth of internal journey scenarios. Most of her chapters, in fact, are the equivalent of an internal growth arc. For example, the one I’ve been using as I shape the Theodosia series is The Retrieval of Intuition. I think it works really well for character’s who are discovering their inner powers. It breaks down something like this:

Allowing the Too Good Mother to Die
Exposing the Crude Shadow
Navigating in the Dark
Facing the Wild Hag
Serving the Non Rational
Separating This From That
Asking the Mysteries
Standing on all Fours
Recasting the Shadow

She also has a great arc for love relationships (Facing the Life/Death/Life Nature of Love) and Finding One’s Pack, which works really well for stories where someone is trying to find their tribe.

My newest discovery isn’t new at all, but an old classic, it’s only new to me. The Hero Within is being very insightful in helping me see nuance in how different characters need to grow. She has six major archetypes she discusses, Innocent, Orphan, Martyr, Wanderer, Warrior, and Magician. But of course, they’re really stages we all go through on our life’s journeys. What’s particularly helpful with this book is that she breaks down different tasks and points of views that accompany each archetype. For example, what each archetypes greatest fear is, or what they are looking for in relationships, or how they move through the material world. There’s tons of rich material in there for character development.

Do any of you have any books you’ve used for character development? I know some people use the Meyers Briggs typing and other swear by the Enneagram. I’ve never used either of those for characters, although I have had fun taking the tests myself. ☺

Drilling Down

Okay, maybe not the best title choice considering the current, ongoing BP fiasco...

I've been working on the manuscript and one of the things I'm trying to get a grip around is the all different levels this story is taking place on. The layers of the story, if you will. I know instinctively that they're there, but until I can clearly identify them in my mind, I can't be absolutely certain that I'm building those layers and getting them on the page.

After doing some noodling this morning, this is what I came up with, and it struck me as a good solid template for looking at your characters and their level of motivation.

The inciting incident for the story is that my heroine agrees to pose as someone else.* At first glance, my this premise could seem glib or shallow or facile. Or even a bit tacky. But it's what's underneath that intial action that gives it the necessary juice: my heroine agrees because of her perception of what she owes someone.

Underlying that is her need to prove herself to these people, the very ones that raised her up from the ashes of her former life. She wants to earn their respect. Actually, she wants to earn their love, but she isn't able to admit that, so she calls it respect. She is sure that by doing this thing for them, and doing it beyond reproach, she will earn their respect and they know they did the right thing by giving her this chance.

And underlying that is her scar tissue--her absolute starvation for love or affection of any kind and her very human need for those things.

And lastly, under all of those things is her gaping wound--her belief that she is every bit as flawed and worthless as she has been told since birth. Not worthy of love, in any of its forms.

So that's about four layers going on, which feels about right. Any more and I risk losing my mind...


*I apologize for the coy verbiage, but I am trying to avoid any spoilers.

Oh Me Aching Head!

Okay, so I know I have to prevent historical events and personages from swamping my main characters, but the knowing is the easy part. It’s the HOW that gets tricky.

Once again, I find I am cutting characters right and left and combining them wherever possible. (Keep in mind I’ve done this twice already.) I’ve eliminated two major secondary characters and about eight extras with speaking parts. And combined two antagonists into one, and taken a role filled by a secondary character and given it to my hero. My new goal is to have all the actions that were being done by those extras performed by existing, more important characters. For the first time in the four years (off and on) that I’ve been working on this book, I finally feel like I have a manageable cast that won’t woefully confuse the reader. Phew.

But now the harder part: the historical events themselves. How to weave them in without letting them take over the story and make it feel as if the characters are being bowled over by history, or worse, leave my characters feeling like human flotsam carried along by history.

One of the first things we learn as writers starting out is that *it really happened* is absolutely meaningless. You have to let go of what really happened and create a cohesive story out of the useable parts of history (or reality, for that matter.) The truth is, history ISN'T satisfying in terms of climax and resolution and catharsis, all the things we look for in a story. History isn’t coherent and doesn’t make sense, or provide closure or any of the things we expect a STORY to do. However, historical events DO rule our lives (just ask anyone who lost their jobs in the last recession!) So the challenge is to pick a portion or thread of history that has the potential to be presented in a way that satisfies the needs of the story, or be willing to alter it a bit.

So what I'm going to do is block out the major historical events in the story, then use them mostly as a backdrop. This will allow me to zero in more closely on how my main characters are reacting to those events and, more importantly, what actions those events cause them to take. Because character is action.

And really, that’s the story. Not the historical events themselves, but how ordinary people react under those extraordinary circumstances. How the crucible that is history, molds them into new, stronger versions of themselves.

But even knowing that, it can still risk feeling like a string of pearls or episodic. How to make it hang together?

And with a resounding duh, I remember, It’s the character, stupid.

It’s the characters goals or motivations that will provide the dramatic throughline for the story, tying the events of history together so that, for this one person whose story it is, they create a cohesive, integral story. They do that through the choices they make, the actions they take, and the way they come to terms with the historical events, either emotionally or intellectually.

So maybe it’s a story about a romance in a war torn country and the historical events are pretty much just one hit after another, the chaos of war, not just the attacks launched by enemy, but the random cruelty that causes among people on the same side trying to survive.

In order to keep it from feeling episodic or string-of-pearls-ish, the character has to provide that cohesion and use the chronology of unfolding events to feed her own motivation, goals, and growth. Each of those unfolding events has to increase the stakes for her in some way, or cause her to try to find a new way to reach her goal, which is the one thing that *does* stay constant throughout the plot. Maybe in each of the disasters that befall her she is able to find some small reason to believe in love rather than give in to despair, or each historical event carries her farther from her love interest, but regardless, she gets up and tries to make her way to him again. Or the unfolding events strip one loved one after another away from her, making the reader all that more invested in seeing the lovers united in the end.


It’s about how those historical events shape their emotional growth.

That's the story. Duh.

This is the painful part about picking up an old project, trying to recollect all the good stuff  you need to know, but not carry forward any of the unnecessary clutter that was mucking up the story.

It's Alive!!

So, last week I ended up having to put aside the Theo Four manuscript and instead pick up my Theodosia Four journal. For the week prior to that, I had been pushing the characters around on the page and it felt just like a four year old pushing peas around the mound of mashed potatoes on his plate. Nothing pretty was happening.

I have to say, I so admire people who can fly into the mist and just write. Not knowing much about their characters or their stories, they simply begin, knowing they will discover these things on the page.

I don’t seem to be able to do that. Instead, I had to regroup and spend the last week journaling all my characters’ histories. I need to know who they are and what life events have shaped them before they will come alive for me on the page. And since so much of that is backstory, it doesn’t seem to emerge in the actual writing of the book. Nor do I seem to be able to make them do anything on the page except walk woodenly across the stage until I know them better.

But all that journaling? I inevitably get frustrated along the way and feel like I’m spinning my wheels or procrastinating or being overindulgent of my process.

Except, as I journal these people, they begin to come alive for me. At first inception, they are mere stick drawings, a few bare lines in black and white, little more than placeholders. Sometimes I know so little about them that I can’t even define what they want within the story, or what their goals might be.

That’s when I begin to root around in their past, digging through their history in an attempt to understand them. For example, I have an elderly gentleman in this book, and I ended up printing out a timeline of British history from 1830 to 1900 so I could see what skirmishes and battles and experiences would have shaped him. After all, the events going on around us shape who we are as people, whether we live through a Great Depression, survive 70’s disco music, or enter the job market at one of the worst times in history—all these things shape our outlook on life. If I’m writing a novel that takes place in a different time, then it makes sense that I need to understand which historical events shaped my characters.

This is where I actually ‘draw’ my characters, only using words instead of lines. The form and shape and texture begins to show up. Once I have all this stuff, the character’s context and worldview, I can then go in and do the detail work, the stuff that will show up on the page. What are this character’s emotional wounds? His motivations? His goals? Why does he want that? What personal events and circumstances have combined with the broad strokes of history to shape him?

When I know that, I know how he will react to the people and events around him. How he will respond to Theodosia, the magic swirling around them, how he holds his head or looks down his nose, or whether he responds with disdain or respect.

And then a really cool thing happens, a bit of magic akin to when the wooden Pinocchio became a real boy. The character begins to take on attributes that I haven’t designed for him. He begins to become a real person in his own right until finally, he becomes so real and fully dimensional that he gets up off the page and walks into the book, finally a real person.

Which is a long way of sheepishly confessing that I guess all that journaling time isn’t wasted after all.

How do your characters become real to you? What tricks do you use to b ring them to life, both for yourself and your readers?

Quirks and Foibles

It seems to me that the best writers, the ones whose books really stay with me, are connoisseurs of human nature. Being proficient at craft, or excelling at it, is good, but not enough, nor is a crackerjack plot. I relish learning things about the human condition and people.

I also think this is part and parcel of what propels some people to become writers—this desire to wrestle with and better understand the human condition. Do writers become observers of people so they have material? Or, do acute observers of people become writers so they have something to do with all that knowledge they’ve accumulated? Chicken? Egg? For most writers I know, this people watching begins at the earliest of ages.

I’ve also decided that people fall into two groups; those who like and are attracted to perfection, and those who are charmed by and attracted to quirks and foibles. I am willing to bet that a majority of writers fall into that latter category.

The thing about perfection is that it is often boring in its beauty, there is nothing innately interesting or human about it, no place for me in its vista. And I say this as a rank perfectionist—if I am not perfect, I have failed, so as a goal, perfection holds huge appeal for me. And yet, what I love most about people is their quirks and foibles. Their personal behavioral tics and oddities.

~The thirty five year old muscle bound guy who still has a baby animal calendar.
~The precision machinist who can’t get the sugar in the sugar bowl or the coffee grounds in the filter, but can execute the most precise of measurements on a metal lathe.
~The sleek, sexy brand spanking new black dodge charger being driven by an eighty year old lady.
~The woman who feels called to the priesthood, but also has an unholy obsession with Jimmy Choos.
~The guy who drives a gorgeous Porsche, but can’t stand driving in traffic so he rarely gets it out.
~The laid back surfer girl who cannot be in the same room with a change jar without sorting the coins into neat little stacks.

Quirks can also be physical—the kid whose ears turn bright red when he gets embarrassed, the stunning woman who bites her lip or nails, the kid whose twirled his hair so often he has a bald spot…

Quirks and foibles are often a chink in our armor, an indicator at how hard won our mastery of some skill or behavior really is. They are a physical manifestation of our deepest level conflicts.

Take a look at the people around you. What is it that most endears them to you? I’m betting it’s not their straight A report card or excellent punctuality record. No, I’m betting it’s that little something that only they do, it might even be a tad odd or strange…The thing is, a lot of this behavior can cross over into the highly annoying, it’s a matter of degree really.

But I wonder if we use that enough in our writing?

What quirks and foibles do your characters have? Not just pasted on to simply be funny or clever, but one’s you can trace back to their development as a person?

Juggling a Cast of Characters

So I think I’ve mentioned that I’m juggling a cast of thousands in the Medieval France YA. I need a sense of a full royal court worth of nobles, but I also need for the reader not to get overwhelmed by all the players. I want them to feel real enough that they add texture and richness to the story, but at the same time, I can't allow them to swamp it, either sheer numbers or from being too vivid. And any vividness needs to serve the story overall, not threaten to run away with it.

*I* also need to not get overwhelmed by all the players.

These are more than simply walk ons, but not true secondary characters. And there are a couple of traitors hidden in there, so they need to be on-screen enough that the readers don’t feel cheated when their identities are revealed.

So as I was staring bemusedly at the mss page, trying to decide how to make all these people stand out—for both myself and my readers—I came up with this little system that I thought I’d share.

I took a 3 x 5 index card for each character and put their name on the top: Baron Geffoy
Then I picked three characteristics for that person: jovial, opportunistic, nurses grudges.
Then I added a hidden core to that person, that was the core motivation for both his personality traits and actions: impotent

Next I listed a handful of dominant physical features that would help me key into that character, but that would also act as tags to help anchor the reader in that character: pale read beard hides a weak chin, blue eyes watery from too many evenings spent drinking wine, barrel chested.

Last, I listed two or three mannerisms that this person used: stroking his beard, shifting eyes, rocking back on his heels

I was surprised by how much this helped me get everyone straight in my mind, and helped delineate them on the page. Especially since, at face value, many of them had similar characteristics. For example, many of them were arrogant, as nobles often are. But I learned that one of them was arrogant and dismissive, while another was arrogant and calculating, which totally informed how they interacted with others and helped me nail their speech patterns.
It also helped be sure that all the information I divulged about these characters went to building a cohesive impression.

So anyway, I thought I’d pass that trick along in case anyone else was struggling with a similar problem.

To recap…

Name:

Three Characteristics:

Hidden Core:

Dominant features:

Mannerisms:

Plotting - Baby Steps

Okay, so let’s say you’ve figured out—kind of—what your characters motivations and desires. You even have a pretty good idea as to what is standing in their way—a bad guy, a raging storm, a stalking fae, a lovesick werewolf, whatever. Now how do you take what you know and shape it into a plot?

What I do at this point is I sit down and look at both the internal and external GMCs. Then I try to brainstorm four to six baby steps the character will need to take to achieve both the internal goal and the external goal. In real life, change may happen over night, but in fiction, we readers want to see the process of change, make that journey to a new, improved self along with the character, so it helps to be sure and break down the change into manageable bites.

Now is probably a good time for me to explain that I don’t do all of this at the very beginning. I usually spend some time writing what I do know, either snippets of scenes or dialogue, details about the world, setting, or characters. Sometimes, I’m pleasantly surprised by how very much I instinctively know about the story. Then I use these exercises to fill in the blanks.

Other times I’ll have a pretty clear idea of the external plot, but then need to be sure the action precipitates growth in the character. In that instance, I’ll look at the baby steps for my internal GMC, and make sure that the scenes I have for the external plot change the character’s internal landscape, using those baby steps as my guidelines.

Other times, I’ll have a solid idea of an internal journey, but no clue as to what has to happen physically in the story. In that case I’m pretty wide open for brainstorming the most effective (and dramatic) external events that will bring about those changes.

It’s also not a bad idea to write an entire discovery draft, learning about your characters and their internal landscape, friends and relationships, before applying any plotting or structure to the manuscript.

The point I’m trying to make here is that whatever you way you approach the story is the right way. It’s just a matter of finding a process that allows you to plug up the holes you don’t know yet.

How To Grow Plot From Character

In order to understand what actions will effect a transformation in your character, there are a few things one needs to know. Debra Dixon addresses this brilliantly with her concept of Goal, Motivation, and Conflict, and if you haven’t read the book, I highly, highly recommend it. She talks at length about needing to have both an external GMC (plot) and internal GMC (internal growth arc).

Goal – What your character wants.
Motivation – Why do they want it? Why are they pursuing this goal?
Conflict – What is standing in their way.

Ideally you should be able to answer those questions on an external and internal level for your character.

One of the things I constantly stumble over is giving my protagonists an actual, bona fide goal. It takes me a while to figure out what they want, and sometimes I realize they don’t actually want anything. Or at least anything that they could articulate to themselves or anyone else.

However, it finally occurred to me that sometimes simply allowing oneself to want something can be a dramatic act all its own. In fact, I wonder if that’s one of the reasons I write kids books, because they are immersed in learning they have the right and the power and eventually the responsibility to act, not just observe or get carried along. Maybe that thematic issue kind of clusters around kids books. Or maybe that’s just one of my personal themes. Not quite sure about that…

Anywho, sometimes I have more luck by asking myself what my characters needs or longs for. Those words seem less self aware than goal, and especially with young protagonist, having an unarticulated need seems a more realistic way to drive their actions. At least initially.

Often I will start with just the germ of an idea; What if a girl could see curses and black magic on artifacts in a museum that no one else could see? Then I have to step back and decide what kind of girl would have this skill, and how it would affect her. Then I massage and poke and scratch my head until I have at least some semblance of GMC. For Theo, it was pretty easy.

Goal: To neutralize black magic and curses before it harmed anyone
Motivation: Because it was nasty, vile stuff that could cause great harm to those she loved; plus she was the only one who could see it, so the responsibility landed in her lap.
Conflict: She was only a child, with few resources; no one would believe her if she tried to explain; and certain bad guys wanted to let use that magic for their own gains.

Knowing that allowed me to begin to design the framework of the structure of the novel; what the inciting incident would be, what the turning points might look like, how the conflict and tension would rise.

But that was only the externals. To give the novel depth, I had to find a way to put what I knew about Theodosia emotionally onto the page. These physical events had to force her to some new understanding or awareness on her journey to becoming an adult.

I knew that one of the things that Theodosia hungered for was her parent’s attention as she was often overlooked. (Luckily, there was a fairly hands-off child rearing philosophy in 1907, so her parents didn’t appear to be horrid people.) She also wanted their professional respect, perhaps simply an extension of the above, since her parents were consumed by their professions, she felt that would be the best way to gain their attention, with her professional expertise.

For me to be able to develop the internal GMC, I often have to look to my character’s wounds or scars; what is lacking in their life, what hole are they trying to plug up, for those are often what drive our actions. So the internal GMC might look something like this (and notice how I word them differently so they make sense to me):

Goal (Emotional need/longing/desire): To be reassured that her parents really do care about her.
Motivation (Why she has that longing/Emotional Wound): Emotionally abandoned by her parents
Conflict (What prevents her forward growth): Parent's preoccupation with selves, child-centric perspective

Dixon has designed a nifty little GMC table that looks a lot like a tic-tac-toe square and goes something like this:




Can you fill in those blanks for your character?

A couple of additional things: Goals can be to NOT want something, to NOT move, or NOT go to a new school. They can also change over the course of a book as they character grows or acquires new knowledge.

Revealing Character

So as a follow up to my post about reading Orson Scott Card's book, I thought I'd talk a little bit about revealing character versus having a character growth arc.

I think, especially for childrens books, characters aren’t going to always have a huge growth arc because in childhood we’re always growing to new awareness, new life lessons, mastering new skills. In general, kids are more malleable, their growth more ongoing and continuous until they reach their adulthood. Then, dramatic or profound occurrences or situations are usually required to propel us adults toward change and growth.

In fact, I've heard it said that a book should be about a person's most profound and dramatic life experience. And I would argue that kids have so many, each coming rapidly on top of the other, that that doesn't necessarily apply to kid's fiction.

Which is why I was so struck by Card’s reminder that some characters are revealed rather than grow. But how do we resolve that with today’s reader (and agents and editors!) who tend to look for a growth arc of some sort? How can one satisfy that readers longing for an internal journey and yet remain true to our character's core if they don’t change significantly over the course of the book?

I think having the character come to terms with who they are, which is a form of personal growth, can also make for a satisfying growth arc. In order for a character to do that, they have to recognize who they are, they have to strip away all the pretenses—the persona they cloak themselves in—and meet themselves face to face. They sort of have to see themselves, warts (emotional scars) and all, and come to terms with that. So if they aren’t going to change, consider having them learn to accept who they are or their role in their family or school or whatever.

But that needs to be developed over the course of the entire book. We have to feel we know more about the character at the end of the book than we did at the beginning. Which makes sense since it is the crucible of hard choices that the character goes through that enables him to finally reach a higher level of understanding.

One really effective tool can be to peel back the layers of a character, like an onion, to reveal his innermost nature to the reader. By doing that in stages, it gives a sense of internal movement and forward momentum as the reader comes to learn more and more of the character.

If you think about it, there are things about all of us that we wish the world didn’t see, but is often plain to most people who know us well.

Then there are the things that only our best friend or close family members know or understand about us.

And finally, there are those parts of us that are so painful, we can hardly stand to admit them to ourselves. For some, facing these painful truths will cause the entire world to shift. For others, it will shift only a little bit, but in a vital way that helps us continue on.

So for Theo, in Book I, she was lonely, anyone could see that. (First Layer) And on some level she worried it was because she was doing something wrong, that she was lacking in some fundamental skill needed in order to form friendships. (Second Layer) But the thing she was terrified of acknowledging, was that she was so flawed, that something was so wrong with her that even her parents couldn’t muster up the emotional connection necessary to love their child. In fact, that’s part of what propels her to such huge risks, trying to earn their love. (Third Layer)

Of course, in the end, this is proved wrong and Theo learns her parents do value her more than she realized.

So while Theo didn’t change, her understanding of the world and her place in it and her value to others did.

And I think, to address another point that was brought up in the comments, it can be smart to mention in a synopsis or summary that the character is wrestling with trying to come to terms with a particular emotional issue so that it will be clear that there are two layers to the story.

And thus endeth today’s lesson….

Managing A Cast of Thousands

So here I sit, struggling with my overwhelming cast of thousands. When I drew perilously close to tearing out my hair, I pulled a writing book by Orson Scott Card off my shelf today, CHARACTERS & VIEWPOINT. I only have it because someone gave it to me instead of the used book store and I’m a pack rat where books are concerned. However, in true gotta-love-it fashion, I found exactly the information I needed to help me through this.

The thing Card said that was exceptionally powerful for me was that characterization is a tool, not a virtue.

Wow, did I need to hear that. When one’s novel is populated by hundreds of people, not every one of them can stand out, nor should they. It would be exhausting to have them all be memorable. It is perfectly acceptable to have some characters in one’s novel simply be part of the backdrop, the bodies that populate the room for realism’s sake while the true drama unfolds among a select handful of your characters. For those walk-ons and stand-ins, its okay, necessary even, to use quick broad strokes, perhaps even, dare I say it—stereotypes—since their actions have no bearing on the plot.

Because their actions have no bearing on the plot. Gah! Of course!

This is a prime example of me not being able to see the forest for the trees. It’s a matter of selecting the right tool for the right job, and complex characterization isn’t always the right tool. In pursuing some abstract concept of "good writing," I got so wrapped up in wanting every character to be meaningful, that I lost sight of the simple fact that it isn’t necessary. Or even desirable. Brilliant characterization for every single human being in a novel would be exhausting and would not even serve the story.

I love it when I get permission to do exactly what I needed to do . . .

Questions to Reveal Character

One of the things I need to know kind of early in the process of writing a book is my turning points. I write to the turning points and acts, rather than to the end. The benefits of this are that I am writing three or four smaller stories within one larger narrative, and not having one long endless slog through a never-ending middle.

It is also the way to check and be sure that the events of the story are forcing the necessary character changes so that they will have undergone a true transformation by the end of the book. Which is why I am so married to the idea that plot is character—the external plot is often the construct an author uses to effect the internal change in their characters, which is where I think the true juice of the story is.

And I know all my turning points for this medieval French book—except the first one, which comes at about the 1/4 mark in the mss. That first TP is so important! It launches the character on their external journey, or if the character is already moving along that path, it ramps up the action, increases the urgency, or throws a major kink in the works.

Or it should, anyway. Mine? Not so much.

I have a really soft turning point, which is bugging me because it should be, at the very least, the moment the two forces in the novel, the protagonist and antagonist (or antagonistic force) cross swords and agree to duel

And I got nothin’. Well, there’s something there, I’m sure of it, I just have to find it.

Which is where these questions I mentioned the other day came in so handy. They are from a workshop Michael Hague gave at the RWA National Conference a couple of years ago. He suggests that the internal journey of a character is a transformation from persona (the construct that they show the world) to their essence (their true nature). Now, I’ve looked at these questions before, and they never really clicked for the Theodosia books or the Beastologist books. Maybe because those are series and the process happens throughout the course of bookS rather than A book. But boy, the questions clicked for me with this manuscript. Which is one of the reasons I like having a collection of writing processes and approaches up my sleeve, you just never know which one will coax which story into being.

So, onto the questions. The first two are ones I already ask myself, but the way he worded them triggered something this time. I think one of the reason these questions worked for me is because they echo something I do instinctively, but give it a bit more form and cohesion.

What is my character's longing? What is their deeply held desire they’re only paying lip service to, that they’re not pursing. Now some characters are so shut down or disconnected from their selves that they don’t even have a longing. Instead they have a need, a hole inside that must be filled.

And that hole is usually caused by the answer to the next question…

What is my character’s wound? What past traumas have shaped them and profoundly altered the way they see the world?

Third question, What is my characters belief? How has my character’s wound shaped his way of seeing the world? Of seeing other people? This is the one that really helped me this time because it gave me a sense of what the scenes needed to reveal about my character.

My character’s belief is that her only value or worth is in her usefulness as a tool to her organization. In fact, she clings to the fact that she’s a tool and uses it to disconnect from her emotions, her self. If she clings to the fact that she’s a tool—separate from the needs and desires other people are subject to, then she doesn’t have to admit they are lacking in her life, that she isn’t worthy of them.

This belief is used to keep fear and terror at bay.

The fourth questions is What is your characters’ identity? Which for me was answered in the belief question. She is naught but a finely honed, fully committed tool.

And the fifth question, What is your hero’s essence? When you strip away all the roles they play and the beliefs they protect themselves with, what are they at their core?

Now I have to admit to not being certain what essence was, so I rephrased it like this:
Who would my character be if she had the courage? If she wasn’t afraid of anything? It turns out my heroine’s essence is that she is a merciful, compassionate person who is being used for the purpose of judgment and punishment.

And then of course the story is about her movement from her persona to her essence, learning to step away from being a tool for a punishment she finds she doesn’t actually believe in.

Again, this doesn’t work for all stories, this is the first one of mine that it really generated an aha! moment for. Maybe it will be helpful to you at some point.

Finding Your Character's Voice

This is probably the most conscious aspect of voice, adjusting your voice to convey a specific, fictional character. It’s the part where you climb into the character’s skin.

One thing that I’ve learned I need to understand in order to make my characters breathe on the page is what piece of me is in that character. What of my own core emotional truths does this character have? This is usually the key for me to an authentic character voice.

The truth is, pieces of ourselves show up in all our work. I have been surprised many times by unplanned pieces of me that show up on the page, usually spotted long after the book went to print and I acquired some distance from the story. Since this happens even when we don’t intend it to, we might as well consciously choose which parts we include and let them do some of the heavy lifting for us.

It is entirely possible, easy even, to write a complete story using only your author or story voice. In fact, this often happens. That’s what happened to me with the first draft of Beastologist II, I wrote it from my head and heart, not my characters’.

But how do you develop that characters’ voice?

Well, if we agree that Voice is an author’s core emotional truths and personal wisdom, combined with their use of language, then to evoke a real-seeming, authentic character we need to understand their emotional truths, personal wisdom, and use of language. And while some of ourselves will be in them, they will in large part be wildly different from us, not unlike how kids have some of their parents in them, but are also their own unique selves.

This is where backstory comes in. Not because it belongs in the story—it doesn’t! Or only the very littlest bit you can get away with. No, we need all that backstory because authors need to understand what emotional truths and personal wisdom our character has acquired throughout their lives. We need to know his formative experiences, emotional scars and wounds, hopes and fears, what sort of environment he’s grown up in, all those things go into creating our character. In order to get him to live on the page, he has to have a fully developed life of his own in order for us to be able to nail his worldview and, therefore, his voice.

I’m not suggesting we have to account for every moment of his life before he shows up on page one, but definitely the big emotional events that have shaped him.

Personally, I don’t find those character worksheets that ask what color his hair and eyes are, and what pets and hobbies and quirks he has, all that helpful.

What I need to understand is WHY my character has a ferret for a pet and WHY he has a constant tic under his left eye and WHY collecting boogers is his favorite—only?—hobby.

I often joke about not knowing what color my character’s eyes are because I’m too busy looking through them, not at them.

I think one of the secrets to getting this strong character voice is using deep point of view, going deep into the character’s head so that it is HIS perspective that colors the story. Again, Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out Of A Tree is a great example of this.

But how do we get deep inside our character’s head?

For me it’s usually character journaling—creating a “journal” written by my character in which he confesses and contemplates his deepest thoughts. Almost like a therapy session. I'll often do a "therapy session" with the character on how he feels about the plot point that just occurred in the story--that's where I find his emotional juice.

Whenever a story feels flat to me or has flat spots, I go deep. I ask what is the core emotion the hero is experiencing in this scene? And why? Then, more importantly, have I managed to get it on the page?

Either later on today or sometime this weekend, I'll post the characterization worksheet that I use to help me to fully understand my character.

Scratching My Head

Every once and a while, it feels like I’ve completely forgotten how to write a novel. I can’t figure out where to start, or how to plow forward. So what do these people do, I whine to myself. What gets the plot moving, or worse, what is the frickin’ plot? That’s when the digging begins.

And for digging, I find the most useful tool is a large, 11x 17 or 17 x 21 sheet of graph paper. I take that big piece of paper and write the protagonist’s name and any other major players, along with any plot goals I may know of, for example, a quest for the emerald tablet. Then I just do that whole brainstorming thing where I try to fill in the following sentences:

Theodosia wants
Wigmere wants
Sticky Will wants
Stilton wants
Fagenbush wants
Awi Bubu wants

Somehow, seeing it visually helps my brain forge the connections and possibilities that merely listing them or thinking about them doesn’t.

Then once I have some vague goals for people, I begin fleshing out why they want it. Because I’ll have to show that in order for their goals to makes sense, so that gives me some great scene material.

Next, I find out what is in the way of their goals. If my muse is on top of her game, I find that many of the characters are standing in each others way, which means I have a nice big connected tangle of goals and conflict that all tie in to the major plot. Usually there are one or two dangling, like Will’s. Will wants to provide for his brothers and keep and earn Wigmere’s respect. However, in my current plot, that’s not really threatened or in any kind of danger. So now I have to brainstorm some action, plot thread, or layer that pulls that goal into the main story.

Plotting. Not for the faint-hearted.

Of Bridge Conflicts and Withdrawn Protagonists

Well, I lied about the tomorrow part. Sorry about that. It’s been a busy week. And hot! Yowa. 92 degrees in the shade. And anything over 78 melts my brain.

Anywho….

Sometimes it can seem impossible to build a strong enough emotional connection between the character and the reader AND start the book when the trouble starts. Of course, in an ideal world, you could do both, but since many of us are not perfect writers, we have to find other ways to accomplish this end. For me, my own personal philosophy is, when in doubt to err on the side of connecting with the reader emotionally. What I sometimes use to do this is called a bridge conflict. Which simply means that in the beginning of the story, the protagonist is in conflict with something, but that something happens not to be the main plot element.

For example, in Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos*, the inciting incident for the main plot is when Mum brings the majorly cursed Heart of Egypt home with her. The problem I ran in to was, if I started the book there, I’d have to shoehorn in too much backstory in order to make the reader understand about what Theo’s “normal” life looked like, because it was very, very different than the average normal life, either then or now. Plus if the reader had a chance to understand how on her own Theo was, her emotional isolation as she dealt with this major problem would be more vividly understood. Or that was my thinking at the time. (I do find that writing theories evolve over time, so who knows what I’ll think in five years!)

So the book opens with Theo in conflict with a cursed artifact that her mother has sent home ahead of the rest. This does a couple of things. Shows Theo’s Ordinary World. Gives clear parameters of what the magical rules are in the story world. Establishes Theo’s emotional isolation, as well as her plucky resourcefulness at dealing with it all. And shows how she ends up taking care of the adults around her. All in all, a nice micro encapsulation of the themes Theo will be struggling with on a grander scale throughout the course of the book. I was also able to get one of the bad guys in there in that first scene, although deeply hidden.

So Theo’s conflict with the Bastet statue was a bridge to the main conflict, giving the reader enough time to settle into the complex world of the story AND bond with Theo, so when this big bad nightmare of a problem fell in her lap, they would see how it was testing her beyond her normal coping strategies.

I think one of the things that determines whether or not bridge conflicts works is whether or not the story has enough plot layers. Which is really the subject of another post, but essentially plot layers are all the different areas of the protagonist’s life that the main plot impacts. The bridge conflict can’t be about something that never comes up again in the book. It needs to tie into the overall cohesive elements that form the various plot elements or lays the foundation.

Creating an emotional connection with a withdrawn or reserved protagonist.

Well, this was the problem I was whining about that started this whole series of posts. In my most recent book NATHANIEL FLUDD, BEASTOLOGIST, The book opens with Nate sitting in a lawyers office, receiving the bad news that his parents have been lost at sea. The scene ends with the lawyer hustling him off to the train station, where poor Nate departs for parts unknown, specifically his last remaining relative.

The good news was, I had indeed started the story when the trouble starts: finding out your parents are dead and being shipped off to the unknown is Trouble.

The bad news, Nate was unbelievably passive. As a child in an adult situation, all he could do was sit and take in information. Kiss of death, interest wise. Clearly he would be easy to sympathize with, him. But my challenge was to show HIS emotional scars and wounds so that the reader would care about him specifically and not just, oh, ho hum another orphan in children’s literature…

The emotional set up for his character was that Nate had been emotionally and physically abandoned by his parents into the care of his governess/nanny. And while she appeared very loving and to have his best interests at heart, she also managed to quash him in many ways; curiosity, any desire for adventure, etc. But how to show that or allude to that in the first scene without just telling a lot of backstory?

What I finally ended up doing was having him sit there, instructed by Miss Lumpton to draw while she talked with the lawyer, essentially to be seen and not heard. Then he hears the lawyer mention his parents and he stops drawing to listen, and Miss Lumpton exhorts him to keep drawing. But suddenly he has a goal, even if a very tiny goal. To understand what’s happened to his parents and by extension what will happen to him. This is also a nice way to get some dramatic action in what was a very physically static scene. The action of Nate’s drawing or stopping or fiddling with his pencil gave me some nice vehicles for showing his emotional state rather than telling.

Plus it is just the sort of thing that stupid adults say to kids, as if they can sit there and turn off their ears!! And by that one command, I (hopefully) was able to convey how much Miss Lumpton squelched his curiosity, his intelligence, and his place in the world, until he became merely an extension of her desires. Okay, maybe it doesn’t convey all that, but that’s what I wanted to convey and if it touches on some of that, I’ll be happy.

Which is a long way of trying to illustrate that even the most withdrawn protagonists who are afraid to react in their world, if you dig deep enough and long enough you can usually find some way to establish unique, empathetic characteristics as well as tiny little goals.

And now I simply must go finish up my lesson plans for the SBWC then get ready for work. If you have questions or need further clarification or examples, say so in the comments and I’ll address them next week!

* I’m not trying to be all about me by using examples from my own books, they are just the ones I understand the best.

Pulling the Reader In – Part Deux

One caveat before I continue talking about story beginnings. We all have different reading tastes and will have different opinions on what makes a good story. Therefore, take my ramblings with a grain of salt. If you are someone who reads for plot, you may (quite validly) disagree with me. If you are all about the subtle character studies, my suggestions may seem too heavy-handed for you. And that’s fine. For me, as a reader and writer, I find myself drawn to stories where the plot and character are intertwined, with the plot being the physical vehicle through which the character effects meaningful personal growth or change. Your mileage may vary.

In fact, a really good exercise is to pull 10 of your favorite books off the shelf and read the first scene. What about that scene grabs you? At what point did you feel you were in the hands of a skilled, competent storyteller and decide you wanted to go along for the ride? That can be a good guide as you try to construct your own first scenes. Now, onward...

In order to show the emotional scar or wound in the first scenes of a book, that means you, the writer have to know quite a few things in order to pull that off.

You have to have a fairly firm grasp of both the internal and external character/plot arcs in your novel. If you don’t understand what is emotionally driving your characters’ actions, then you can’t show it to the reader. See, the thing is, people don’t set off to join the cheerleading squad, be the star of the soccer team, find out what’s inside that spooky house at the end of the street, or become queen bee of 4th grade just because. While those are excellent external plots—lots of pro-active actions a protagonist can take towards those goals—there are usually internal reasons that propel a person to pursue those goals, and that’s what I think can be missing in so many books, and more specifically, in so many openings.

We need to know why THIS scenario is so meaningful for THIS kid, above and beyond other kids who have found themselves in similar situations. Without seeing a glimpse of the emotional impetus that drives them—or at least seeing evidence that something is driving them emotionally, then even the most physically suspenseful, action-packed opening can feel flat and lifeless.

Think of all those women out there who aren’t big sports fans, would never spend a minute watching any sporting event on TV, yet if you put THEIR kid on the field, their emotional involvement is suddenly way up and they are rabidly involved in the game. You want your readers to have that same emotional connection with the characters in your story so that they care deeply about what happens to them

So one of the most helpful tools in getting all these elements on the page is the ol’ goal, motivation, and conflict trio. You should know both the internal and external GMC for your main character, and find ways to make sure you get it on the pate. You don’t need to have all those elements in the first scene—in fact that would be TMI. You want to seduce the reader along, raising questions, creating empathy, and making them curious enough that they keep turning the page.

Then try to couple that with compelling situations, such as…
Have the character be in undeserved trouble
Have the character do something nice
Have them be funny
Put the character in physical or emotional jeopardy
Show them as skilled or intelligent or plucky
Show them in conflict with someone or their surroundings


Some examples:

Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
Her goal in that first scene is to keep her father safe from whatever curses might be on the Bastet statue. This is a solid encapsulation of her larger goal of keeping her family safe in general. Her external motivation is also made clear, that she is the only one who can see these curses, therefore she is the only one who can deal with them. It also, hopefully, hints at her emotional scar or wound—she is left having to take care of the adults around her in very dangerous circumstances because no one would be inclined to believe her should she dare to explain about the curses. The scene (hopefully) also hints at her emotional abandonment by illustrating just how much she’s left on her own both physically and in a coping sense. Also, she’s in conflict with both her surroundings (curses) the adults around her, she’s in undeserved trouble for trying to protect her father from the curses, and she’s plucky and intelligent.

In Harry Potter, his initial goal is just to endure the Dursleys. Instead of seeing the emotional scars, we actually witness the actions that cause these scars, which is equally, if not more effective, but it can be very hard to do in a way that doesn’t load the opening of the book with backstory. So Harry’s grim circumstance is the motivation for his first goal, to find out what is in that mysterious letter that shows up and opens a whole new world to Harry, one the Dursleys don’t want him to explore. This is also where conflict is introduced. Harry defies the Dursleys and tries to get at the letter to discover this mystery about himself. Harry is shown in lots of undeserved trouble, he’s plucky, he’s in conflict with everyone in his family, he tries to do something nice for the snake at the zoo (commiserate) and clearly he’s in emotional jeopardy by living with these horrible people.

In My Big Sister is so Bossy She Says You Can’t Read This Book, Effie is shown in a wildly unfair power balance with her sister. Like Rowling, Herhsey does a good job of showing us the actions that cause Effie’s scar tissue, right in that first scene with her sister (motivation for the subsequent events). Even if Effie can’t articulate her goal, the reader can sense she needs to get out from under her sister’s thumb and get some justice. In fact, that whole first scene nicely sets up her internal goal: Get out from under Maxey’s overbearing ways, Motivation: because she’s steamrolling over Effie all the time, Conflict: Maxey’s got such a strong personality, and Effie doesn’t have the personal strength or fortitude—yet—to get her to back off. But Effie is funny, she’s in undeserved trouble with both her mother and her big sister, she’s waaaay plucky, plus there’s that big secret/lie thing she mentions, right up front.

Tomorrow – what to do if you can’t get the main external plot elements to start in that first scene, and how to make a quiet, mousy, withdrawn protagonist likeable, or at least empathetic.