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[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends] Below are the 18 most recent journal entries recorded in jimbutcher's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, January 7th, 2015 10:14 pm



God knows I have little in common with the folks who died. I doubt we'd have agreed on very much. Looking over some of their work, I find myself rolling my eyes a lot.



But I do agree on at least one matter with them--they should be free to speak their minds without fear.



I saw this tweet attached to one of the cartoons responding to the massacre:



"Still mortified about our fallen cartoonist colleagues, but free speech will always win."



No.



No it won't.



The history of the human race demonstrates /very/ convincingly that free speech is the /exception/ to the human condition, not the rule. For millennia, those who spoke out were imprisoned or killed. Hell, you could say something that wasn't even subversive, just inept and stupid, and be destroyed for committing the crime of lese majeste.



Make no mistake. What we have today is a level of freedom and self-determination on a scale unparalleled in the history of our species. We live in what is, in many ways, a golden age. So much so that we give tremendous credit to the adage, "The pen is mightier than the sword."



But everyone always forgets the first half of that quote:



"Under the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."



I'm not sure I know of anyplace that's ruled by anyone "entirely great." That adage wasn't a statement of philosophy, as it was originally used: it was a statement of irony.



Don't believe me? Look around. Notice that everywhere you go in the world, whoever happens to be ruling seems to have a great many swords.



Still, the idea contained within the quote is a powerful one--that intangible ideas, thoughts, and beliefs can have tremendous power. And that's why we should be paying close attention.



After all, intangible fear can be mightier than the sword, too. Hell, it has been for quite a while now. Don't believe me? Try getting on an airplane without taking your shoes off in the security line. While you're doing that, try cracking a joke about having a knife.



That's the power of fear, guys.



We. Are. In. Danger.



The threat isn't aimed at our government or our borders or our resources. It's targeting something far more precious--our identity. It's changing us, who we are, how we live, and not for the better.



The Western world has got the biggest and sharpest sword the planet has ever known, yes. But the extremists are armed with a weapon just as powerful: Fear. And these nuts are really good at using it.



There is /one/ way that freedom, freedom to speak, to choose, to grow, to believe, to improve, survives in the face of violent attack.



Free men and women defend it, violently if necessary--or it dies.



It's that simple. It really is.



If we forget that, if we forget that there are predators in the world who very much want to destroy those freedoms in the name of their god, their philosophy, their politics, if we forget that our freedoms /can/ and /will/ be taken away if we sit staring and do nothing, they are as good as gone.



Freedom doesn't defend itself.



We have to do it. Freedom v Fear

I don't make statements like this a lot, and I don't really feel like engaging in a huge debate. But there's something I need to say regarding Charlie Hebdo.God knows I have little in common with the folks who died. I doubt we'd have agreed on very much. Looking over some of their work, I find myself rolling my eyes a lot.But I do agree on at least one matter with them--they should be free to speak their minds without fear.I saw this tweet attached to one of the cartoons responding to the massacre:"Still mortified about our fallen cartoonist colleagues, but free speech will always win."No.No it won't.The history of the human race demonstrates /very/ convincingly that free speech is the /exception/ to the human condition, not the rule. For millennia, those who spoke out were imprisoned or killed. Hell, you could say something that wasn't even subversive, just inept and stupid, and be destroyed for committing the crime of lese majeste.Make no mistake. What we have today is a level of freedom and self-determination on a scale unparalleled in the history of our species. We live in what is, in many ways, a golden age. So much so that we give tremendous credit to the adage, "The pen is mightier than the sword."But everyone always forgets the first half of that quote:"Under the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."I'm not sure I know of anyplace that's ruled by anyone "entirely great." That adage wasn't a statement of philosophy, as it was originally used: it was a statement of irony.Don't believe me? Look around. Notice that everywhere you go in the world, whoever happens to be ruling seems to have a great many swords.Still, the idea contained within the quote is a powerful one--that intangible ideas, thoughts, and beliefs can have tremendous power. And that's why we should be paying close attention.After all, intangible fear can be mightier than the sword, too. Hell, it has been for quite a while now. Don't believe me? Try getting on an airplane without taking your shoes off in the security line. While you're doing that, try cracking a joke about having a knife.That's the power of fear, guys.We. Are. In. Danger.The threat isn't aimed at our government or our borders or our resources. It's targeting something far more precious--our identity. It's changing us, who we are, how we live, and not for the better.The Western world has got the biggest and sharpest sword the planet has ever known, yes. But the extremists are armed with a weapon just as powerful: Fear. And these nuts are really good at using it.There is /one/ way that freedom, freedom to speak, to choose, to grow, to believe, to improve, survives in the face of violent attack.Free men and women defend it, violently if necessary--or it dies.It's that simple. It really is.If we forget that, if we forget that there are predators in the world who very much want to destroy those freedoms in the name of their god, their philosophy, their politics, if we forget that our freedoms /can/ and /will/ be taken away if we sit staring and do nothing, they are as good as gone.Freedom doesn't defend itself.We have to do it. (40 Comments |Comment on this) Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 6:55 pm



Over the past four months, I've been busy working several different things. First, I've been getting in some quality LARP time on weekends at least once a month. Hooah! It's really cool to not work weekends!



Oh, and some writing too:



First, our LARP organization is putting together a second rules set, one which hopefully will effectively transcend the stickiest problems of the current system. Chapters will be able to run whichever they like, but our hope is to create a system that is so nifty that you can't NOT want to play it. That's been a HUGE amount of work, and is going to be more, but we're getting to the point now where I'm impatient to have it finished because I wanna go PLAY it! It will be some serious fun.



I've done a trilogy of short stories with linked characters in which Bigfoot is Dresden's client. They take place spread out over the length of the series so far. The Bigfoot stories were about 40 percent of a novel in total page length. Then I sat down and wrote out the foundation for two more series: the first was a Black Company-inspired fantasy series which would be a prelude trilogy to my epic epic fantasy epic. The second is a steampunk fantasy series, with lots of airships, crystals, goggles, manners, and Hornblowerism. The steampunk stuff seems to be ringing the beta readers' bells, so I think that will be the next project I go to town on.



But that will probably have to wait. I have at least one more short story to get in before the year is up. It's for the "Dangerous Women" anthology, and I'm leaning toward writing it from Molly's point of view, in the time between Ghost Story and Cold Days. Come the new year, I'll start Cold Days. With any luck, there will be snow on the ground when it happens, and I can write the first few chapters with the only light in the room being reflected from the snow outside. That would be perfect. :)



Someone have a word with the people who schedule the weather, will you? :D



I'm just about done writing short stories. I've got two more next year and maybe one more novelette for the second short story anthology, and then I'm done with them. I need to focus on writing, you know, novels. :) Stuff I Been Doin'

Okay, for the folks who want to know, here's what I'm up to lately. :)Over the past four months, I've been busy working several different things. First, I've been getting in some quality LARP time on weekends at least once a month. Hooah! It's really cool to not work weekends!Oh, and some writing too:First, our LARP organization is putting together a second rules set, one which hopefully will effectively transcend the stickiest problems of the current system. Chapters will be able to run whichever they like, but our hope is to create a system that is so nifty that you can't NOT want to play it. That's been a HUGE amount of work, and is going to be more, but we're getting to the point now where I'm impatient to have it finished because I wanna go PLAY it! It will be some serious fun.I've done a trilogy of short stories with linked characters in which Bigfoot is Dresden's client. They take place spread out over the length of the series so far. The Bigfoot stories were about 40 percent of a novel in total page length. Then I sat down and wrote out the foundation for two more series: the first was a Black Company-inspired fantasy series which would be a prelude trilogy to my epic epic fantasy epic. The second is a steampunk fantasy series, with lots of airships, crystals, goggles, manners, and Hornblowerism. The steampunk stuff seems to be ringing the beta readers' bells, so I think that will be the next project I go to town on.But that will probably have to wait. I have at least one more short story to get in before the year is up. It's for the "Dangerous Women" anthology, and I'm leaning toward writing it from Molly's point of view, in the time between Ghost Story and Cold Days. Come the new year, I'll start Cold Days. With any luck, there will be snow on the ground when it happens, and I can write the first few chapters with the only light in the room being reflected from the snow outside. That would be perfect. :)Someone have a word with the people who schedule the weather, will you? :DI'm just about done writing short stories. I've got two more next year and maybe one more novelette for the second short story anthology, and then I'm done with them. I need to focus on writing, you know, novels. :) (63 Comments |Comment on this) Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 3:19 am

---------------------------------------- -----------------



I've been giving a lot of advice on technique in this journal, an introduction to the craft and science aspects of writing a solid story. Now I'm going to briefly venture off into new territory. I thought I'd start by telling you the most important thing you need to know if you want to be a professional author: TANFL.



There Ain't No Free Lunch.



Nothing worth doing is easy. Nothing worth having comes free. That's as true in life as it is in your prospective writing career, but I think it's important enough that it needs to be said.



Writing is a LOT of work. Breaking into the industry is a torment worthy of the fifth or sixth circle of Hell. Face that. Expect it. Deal with it. It's going to be difficult.



It's difficult from the get go: you've got to work your tail off and give yourself carpal tunnel just to make it to the front of the rope-line outside Club Author. There's no guarantee that you'll ever get in. There probably aren't going to be very many people who are actively supporting your efforts. You'll probably have more than one person say or do something that crushes your heart like an empty Coke can. You'll probably, at some point, want to quit rather than keep facing that uncertainty



In fact, the vast majority of aspiring authors (somewhere over 99 percent) self-terminate their dream. They quit. Think about this for a minute, because it's important:



THEY KILL THEIR OWN DREAM.



And a lot of you who read this are going to do it too. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. It's just human nature. It takes a lot of motivation to make yourself keep going when it feels like no one wants to read your stuff, no one will ever want to read your stuff, and you've wasted your time creating all this stuff. That feeling of hopelessness is part of the process. Practically everyone gets it at one time or another. Most can't handle it.



But here's the secret:



YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD WHO CAN KILL YOUR DREAM. *NO ONE* can make you quit. *NO ONE* can take your dream away.



No one but you.



If you want it, you have to get it. You. An author can't help you. An editor can't help you. An agent can't help you. If you want to climb that hill, the only way to do it is to make yourself do it, one foot in front of another, one word after another. It will probably be the greatest challenge most of you have ever faced.



And here's the kicker: THAT IS A VERY GOOD THING.



If you stay the course and break in, you are going to acquire a ton of absolutely necessary skills. You have to learn to motivate yourself to write even when you don't feel like it: Discipline. You're going to have to learn the ropes of the business, and how to work with an editor: Professionalism. You're going to face what might be years of adversity, facing a monumentally difficult task and you're going to overcome it: Confidence. You're going to do it with very little active support, and when you look back at this time in the future, you're going to know that it was something YOU did all by yourself: Strength.



TANFL, guys.



Breaking into the business is a daunting challenge. But you aren't going to BEAT that challenge. You're going to transcend it. The very nature of the adversity is going to give you the strength and skill you need to overcome and succeed.



You want in? Here's what you do:



1) Make up your mind that you are going to protect your own dream. If you've got its back, your dream is invincible.



2) Cultivate patience. Prepare for the long haul. Building your skills to a professional level can take years. So can building your professional character.



3) Put your Butt In the Chair and start writing. Period. No excuses. There is no substitute for BIC time. It's part of the price you pay.



4) When you get done with a word, write another word.



5) Repeat steps 4 and 5 until your dream comes true.



Secret number 2-- THE PAIN IS WORTH IT. If it had taken me TWENTY years instead of nine, IT STILL WOULD BE WORTH IT.



Cause here's what you get: ding.



When it's all done and you're holding your first novel in your hand, you're going to look back at your breaking-in period and wonder what all the drama was about. All the things that wrenched you inside out during the torment will suddenly seem small and unimportant. Know why? Because much like Scott Pilgrim, you have leveled up. Ding.



You're going to look back at that time with pride, having overcome seemingly impossible odds against succeeding. You're going to look at upcoming challenges as if they were a bottle of champagne to be savored and then gleefully smashed.



The true reward of breaking into the industry against all the odds isn't money. It isn't fame. It it isn't respect.



It's you.



It's confidence. It's satisfaction. It's well-deserved pride. Suddenly, the other challenges in your life are going to dwindle as well, because you know you'll be able to handle them.



TANFL.



Ding, baby. Ding.



Go write. The Most Important Thing an Aspiring Author Needs to Know

The Most Important Thing an Aspiring Author Needs to Know---------------------------------------------------------I've been giving a lot of advice on technique in this journal, an introduction to the craft and science aspects of writing a solid story. Now I'm going to briefly venture off into new territory. I thought I'd start by telling you the most important thing you need to know if you want to be a professional author: TANFL.There Ain't No Free Lunch.Nothing worth doing is easy. Nothing worth having comes free. That's as true in life as it is in your prospective writing career, but I think it's important enough that it needs to be said.Writing is a LOT of work. Breaking into the industry is a torment worthy of the fifth or sixth circle of Hell. Face that. Expect it. Deal with it. It's going to be difficult.It's difficult from the get go: you've got to work your tail off and give yourself carpal tunnel just to make it to the front of the rope-line outside Club Author. There's no guarantee that you'll ever get in. There probably aren't going to be very many people who are actively supporting your efforts. You'll probably have more than one person say or do something that crushes your heart like an empty Coke can. You'll probably, at some point, want to quit rather than keep facing that uncertaintyIn fact, the vast majority of aspiring authors (somewhere over 99 percent) self-terminate their dream. They quit. Think about this for a minute, because it's important:THEY KILL THEIR OWN DREAM.And a lot of you who read this are going to do it too. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. It's just human nature. It takes a lot of motivation to make yourself keep going when it feels like no one wants to read your stuff, no one will ever want to read your stuff, and you've wasted your time creating all this stuff. That feeling of hopelessness is part of the process. Practically everyone gets it at one time or another. Most can't handle it.But here's the secret:YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD WHO CAN KILL YOUR DREAM. *NO ONE* can make you quit. *NO ONE* can take your dream away.No one but you.If you want it, you have to get it. You. An author can't help you. An editor can't help you. An agent can't help you. If you want to climb that hill, the only way to do it is to make yourself do it, one foot in front of another, one word after another. It will probably be the greatest challenge most of you have ever faced.And here's the kicker: THAT IS A VERY GOOD THING.If you stay the course and break in, you are going to acquire a ton of absolutely necessary skills. You have to learn to motivate yourself to write even when you don't feel like it: Discipline. You're going to have to learn the ropes of the business, and how to work with an editor: Professionalism. You're going to face what might be years of adversity, facing a monumentally difficult task and you're going to overcome it: Confidence. You're going to do it with very little active support, and when you look back at this time in the future, you're going to know that it was something YOU did all by yourself: Strength.TANFL, guys.Breaking into the business is a daunting challenge. But you aren't going to BEAT that challenge. You're going to transcend it. The very nature of the adversity is going to give you the strength and skill you need to overcome and succeed.You want in? Here's what you do:1) Make up your mind that you are going to protect your own dream. If you've got its back, your dream is invincible.2) Cultivate patience. Prepare for the long haul. Building your skills to a professional level can take years. So can building your professional character.3) Put your Butt In the Chair and start writing. Period. No excuses. There is no substitute for BIC time. It's part of the price you pay.4) When you get done with a word, write another word.5) Repeat steps 4 and 5 until your dream comes true.Secret number 2-- THE PAIN IS WORTH IT. If it had taken me TWENTY years instead of nine, IT STILL WOULD BE WORTH IT.Cause here's what you get: ding.When it's all done and you're holding your first novel in your hand, you're going to look back at your breaking-in period and wonder what all the drama was about. All the things that wrenched you inside out during the torment will suddenly seem small and unimportant. Know why? Because much like Scott Pilgrim, you have leveled up. Ding.You're going to look back at that time with pride, having overcome seemingly impossible odds against succeeding. You're going to look at upcoming challenges as if they were a bottle of champagne to be savored and then gleefully smashed.The true reward of breaking into the industry against all the odds isn't money. It isn't fame. It it isn't respect.It's you.It's confidence. It's satisfaction. It's well-deserved pride. Suddenly, the other challenges in your life are going to dwindle as well, because you know you'll be able to handle them.TANFL.Ding, baby. Ding.Go write. (71 Comments |Comment on this) Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 12:07 am

or

Organizing This Frickin' Mess



by Jim Butcher

**************************



So you've got a great idea for a story. You've got some good characters, some

good plot, maybe a great scene or two in mind. You're ready to plunge in!



If only you could figure out WHERE to plunge in.



Be wise and listen to me, young padawan writer: get a few things organized

first. It'll save you enormous headaches in the long run. I'm going to share

what I do before I start a novel with you guys. Hopefully, that'll give you

one idea of how to lay your groundwork.



This isn't the only way to do it, God knows. This isn't meant to be a "Thou

Shalt Do This" kind of article. But this is how *I* do it, and it seems to

work out most of the time.



****************



Page One--The Basics



STORY QUESTION

The first thing you need is your STORY QUESTION. See the article earlier in

this journal. Get your story question and write it down.



PROTAGONIST

I haven't done a full article on them yet, but I *have* done an article on

characters. Write down your protagonist, his tags and traits, and how you

intend to introduce him.



ANTAGONIST

Ditto, but for the main opposition. He's a character too, so all the same

rules apply.







Page Two--Story Arc(h) or PLOT



I'm never sure how to spell that.



Get a BIG piece of paper. Draw a big curving arch on it. At the LEFT side of

the arch, write a brief phrase about the opening scene. At the RIGHT side,

write a brief phrase describing the climax of the book. That's your pot of

gold at the end of the rainbow.



At the TOP of the arch, write down your BIG MIDDLE, or whatever event it is

that starts the dominoes to falling.



Then make a bunch of tick marks along the way and fill in any scenes that you

have in mind that you know you want to do. Once you've done that, add in some

more tick marks in between, and add in phrases describing scenes that lead

your character from one established tick mark to the next, in a logical

fashion.





Pages Three to Whatever--SUBPLOTS



Do Story Arches for all of your subplots. Make sure you know where they

begin, end, and what event causes them to be resolved.





MORE PAGES--CHARACTER PROFILES



You need to profile EVERY significant character on his own sheet, just like

you did your Protagonist and Antagonist. I like to go through creating

character profiles as I create the story arches, creating each one as needed

for the story, or attaching established characters to the main arch or to

subplots.



*******************



OUTLINE SCENES AND SEQUELS



RIGHT THEN. Now you've got a good skeleton. In fact, you've already created

a number of Scenes and Sequels without even knowing it.



Each of your tick marks and phrases should describe either a story event (a

SCENE) or a logical point that leads you to the next story event (a SEQUEL).

Starting from the beginning, outline your first SCENE on its own page, as

described in the article on SCENES. Then outline the SEQUEL that follows.



(A lot of writers put these on index cards and lay them out in a line in order

to work out which events go where. That works, but it takes up a LOT of floor

space, and if you have dogs or children, they tend to break your plot.)



Repeat until CLIMAX.



********************



CLIMAX



Sketch out the CLIMAX, as described in the article on CLIMAXES.



********************



Voila.



You now have a packet of pages that gives you a solid foundation to begin

from, as well as handy reference material to check when you forget what color

your character's eyes are in chapter 20. You've created signposts to help

guide you along the way, to boot.



Yeah, it really is that simple. But it damned sure ain't easy. Still, you've

got a good point to begin, and a path laid out for you to guide the way.



As you continue writing books, the process is going to change to suit you--that's what it's supposed to do. You'll eventually come to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and how to plan ahead for problems you've run into before. But for now, that's not a bad way to get going.



So write already. :) Putting It All Together

How to Get Your Story StartedorOrganizing This Frickin' Messby Jim Butcher**************************So you've got a great idea for a story. You've got some good characters, somegood plot, maybe a great scene or two in mind. You're ready to plunge in!If only you could figure out WHERE to plunge in.Be wise and listen to me, young padawan writer: get a few things organizedfirst. It'll save you enormous headaches in the long run. I'm going to sharewhat I do before I start a novel with you guys. Hopefully, that'll give youone idea of how to lay your groundwork.This isn't the only way to do it, God knows. This isn't meant to be a "ThouShalt Do This" kind of article. But this is how *I* do it, and it seems towork out most of the time.****************Page One--The BasicsSTORY QUESTIONThe first thing you need is your STORY QUESTION. See the article earlier inthis journal. Get your story question and write it down.PROTAGONISTI haven't done a full article on them yet, but I *have* done an article oncharacters. Write down your protagonist, his tags and traits, and how youintend to introduce him.ANTAGONISTDitto, but for the main opposition. He's a character too, so all the samerules apply.Page Two--Story Arc(h) or PLOTI'm never sure how to spell that.Get a BIG piece of paper. Draw a big curving arch on it. At the LEFT side ofthe arch, write a brief phrase about the opening scene. At the RIGHT side,write a brief phrase describing the climax of the book. That's your pot ofgold at the end of the rainbow.At the TOP of the arch, write down your BIG MIDDLE, or whatever event it isthat starts the dominoes to falling.Then make a bunch of tick marks along the way and fill in any scenes that youhave in mind that you know you want to do. Once you've done that, add in somemore tick marks in between, and add in phrases describing scenes that leadyour character from one established tick mark to the next, in a logicalfashion.Pages Three to Whatever--SUBPLOTSDo Story Arches for all of your subplots. Make sure you know where theybegin, end, and what event causes them to be resolved.MORE PAGES--CHARACTER PROFILESYou need to profile EVERY significant character on his own sheet, just likeyou did your Protagonist and Antagonist. I like to go through creatingcharacter profiles as I create the story arches, creating each one as neededfor the story, or attaching established characters to the main arch or tosubplots.*******************OUTLINE SCENES AND SEQUELSRIGHT THEN. Now you've got a good skeleton. In fact, you've already createda number of Scenes and Sequels without even knowing it.Each of your tick marks and phrases should describe either a story event (aSCENE) or a logical point that leads you to the next story event (a SEQUEL).Starting from the beginning, outline your first SCENE on its own page, asdescribed in the article on SCENES. Then outline the SEQUEL that follows.(A lot of writers put these on index cards and lay them out in a line in orderto work out which events go where. That works, but it takes up a LOT of floorspace, and if you have dogs or children, they tend to break your plot.)Repeat until CLIMAX.********************CLIMAXSketch out the CLIMAX, as described in the article on CLIMAXES.********************Voila.You now have a packet of pages that gives you a solid foundation to beginfrom, as well as handy reference material to check when you forget what coloryour character's eyes are in chapter 20. You've created signposts to helpguide you along the way, to boot.Yeah, it really is that simple. But it damned sure ain't easy. Still, you'vegot a good point to begin, and a path laid out for you to guide the way.As you continue writing books, the process is going to change to suit you--that's what it's supposed to do. You'll eventually come to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and how to plan ahead for problems you've run into before. But for now, that's not a bad way to get going.So write already. :) (164 Comments |Comment on this) Sunday, April 6th, 2008 12:06 am Fun Time-Waster!

(50 Comments |Comment on this) Monday, November 19th, 2007 2:01 am

********



Caveat, on this article as on all the others: This is not the whole sum of wisdom on writing craft, forever and ever amen. This is intended to be a place for aspiring writers to /start/, a little bit of foundation with which you can begin to develop your own style. If you work with this stuff here, it can be an immense aid to you in developing your skills to a professional level. I know it's true because this is exactly the stuff that I learned, and it worked out all right for me. It's a pretty good beginning.



Right then!



I've talked a little about beginnings and middles. What's left? Oh, right, right. Here we go.



CLIMAXES!



Stories are like sex: the buildup and the ride can be fantastic, but if there isn't a climax before the end, you might come away from the experience feeling a little frustrated.



So, let's talk about a story climax. What is a climax? Why is is important? How do you build a good one? And will the reader still respect you in the morning?





WHAT IS A CLIMAX?

*****************



A story climax is, in structure terms the ANSWER to the STORY QUESTION that we talked about earlier.



There, see how tidy that is? Simple! Again, not EASY, but simple!



For example, the overall Story Question of Lord of the Rings:



*************

When Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring of Power from his Uncle Bilbo, HE SETS OUT TO DESTROY IT before its evil can wreak havoc upon Middle Earth. BUT WILL HE SUCCEED when the Dark Lord Sauron and every scary evil thing on the planet set forth to take the ring and use it to turn the entire world into the bad parts of New Jersey?

*************



And the story climax of the Lord of the Rings:



******

Yep.

******



See? ANYBODY could have written Lord of the Rings!



Well. Okay. Maybe it's not THAT easy. But it is SIMPLE to write a good story climax when you bear in mind that ultimately, the story climax is, on its most basic level, the answer to a question. Will the Rebels overthrow the Empire? Will the hero win the heart of the girl he loves? THAT is where you begin. It is therefore kind of important that, before you begin writing said story climax, that you know the answer to that question.





WHY IS A STORY CLIMAX IMPORTANT?

********************************



Catharsis.



As I understand it, catharsis is some sort of toxin which humanity has never been able to remove from paperback book ink. It builds up in human fingers as they keep flipping pages, and if they get all the way to the end of the story and DON'T get a sufficiently satisfying climax, the catharsis toxins can drive them into a psychotic state, and bad things happen. The surgeon general has stated that catharsis is--



Oh. Oh, hang on. I just Googled it.



Huh.



Apparently, catharsis is actually only a regional threat. I guess it's only in the ink in Greece and around the Aegean... oh. Oh. It isn't a toxin and . . . I thought my wife was being /serious/ about that. I mean, she never smiled or /anything/.



Gosh, is my face red.



(Thank you folks, I'll be here all week.)



Remember earlier, how we talked about ways to hook your readers and get them emotionally involved in the story? Well, if we've done that right, then when you reach story's end, they are INVESTED in its outcome. They want to SEE what happens, preferably as vividly as they possibly can. By the time you've reached the end of a story, a good writer has got their readers on the edge of their seats, at 3:30 in the morning, and the pages are tearing every time they turn because the reader is so excited.



You've made an implicit promise by getting your reader so bound up in the story. You've /got/ to deliver on it, or that reader is going to freaking /hate/ you for doing that to them. They are gonna go away from that ride all hot and bothered and frustrated as hell. That's what catharsis is: the release of all that tension and sympathetic emotion that the reader has built up because of the writer's skill at weaving the story. Done right, your readers will cheer and cry and laugh out loud and dance around their living room.



EVERYTHING YOU DID IN YOUR BOOK LEADS UP TO THIS. Deliver on the climax or die as a working writer. Simple as that.





HOW DO YOU BUILD A CLIMAX?

**************************



The same way you do everything else. You start at its beginning. A climax officially begins where the Great Swampy Middle ends. To use an overly-simple metaphor, the Beginning of your story dumps the dominoes of your story out of your box onto the table. The Great Swampy Middle sets all the dominoes up into a neat pattern.



And the climax knocks them down.



Guess which is the most fun. :) For the writer, as well as for the reader. There's nothing quite as nice as flicking over that first metaphorical domino after several months worth of setting them up, let me tell you. :)



The Great Swampy Middle ends at the first of the story events that starts the dominos to toppling. In Dead Beat, for example, when Harry and Butters find the little keychain drive inside Bony Tony with the GPS coordinates in it, it sets off a chain of reactions that lead Dresden forward to the final confrontation. That little drive is the last domino to get set up and the first one to topple, and start the cascade.



The actual climax itself, the absolutely peak of it, though, is what I generally refer to as the Showdown or the Throwdown or the Beatdown, depending on my mood and testosterone levels at the moment. The most dramatic point is the actual confrontation between your protagonist and antagonist, where they are directly contending with one another, and where both of them know that the story question is about to be answered.



For THAT confrontation, there several structural components that you can use to organize it that will be really helpful, much like the components used in a Sequel, like we talked about before:



ISOLATION

CONFRONTATION

DARK MOMENT

CHOICE

DRAMATIC REVERSAL

RESOLUTION





ISOLATION: At the end of the day, your protagonist stands alone. That's why that character is the protagonist. Oh sure, there can be other people around, but the one who really COUNTS is your protagonist. The more alone he is, the higher the tension levels are going to be, and the more satisfying the climax is going to be for the reader. Ellen Ripley lands on LV-426 with a whole squad of marines and various others. After the first confrontation with the Aliens, only eight others are left. During the second confrontation, THOSE companions are whittled away, one by one, until Ripley is left to enter the lair of the alien queen--a nuclear reactor about to blow up, no less--ENTIRELY alone. Now THAT is tension and isolation.



CONFRONTATION: Your lone protagonist, determined to follow things through to the end, confronts the antagonist. Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.



DARK MOMENT: The confrontation Does Not Go Well. The odds are stacked against your protagonist, or the situation swings out of his control, or he just plain gets outclassed. Everything looks like it is in genuine jeopardy of going to hell. It looks certain that the answer to the story question is going to be one that the reader is NOT going to like. In the recent Narnia movie, that moment was at the death of Aslan. The Great Lion is gone, the White Witch has made fashion accessories out of his mane, the bad,guys have them outnumbered and outgunned, and there's just no way to win the fight that's coming the next day--but the folk of Narnia need Peter to lead them. Which brings us directly to:



CHOICE: It always comes back to choice. The climax of the story is the acid test, the crucible, where the rubber meets the road and where the schisse hits the fan. Your protagonist has to CHOOSE whether or not to stay true to his purpose or to let himself be swayed by fear, by temptation, by weariness, or by anything else. In that Dark Moment, he has to make the call that ultimately reveals who your protagonist really is, deep down. And the choice has GOT to be

a BAD one. If it's an easy choice, there isn't any drama to it--no tension, no release for the reader.



"Use the Force, Luke," urges ghost-Kenobi's voice. "Let go, Luke!" Luke visibly makes a choice, turning off his targeting computer, putting his faith in the Force to make the shot that the whole galaxy is literally riding on, the way a Jedi should. He's alone, with the baddest guy in the movie hot on his tail, and even his friends are telling him he's nuts. "His computer's off. Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer! What's wrong?" "Nothing!"

says Luke. "I'm all right!" Not ONLY is he about to get blown out of the air by Vader, but he might miss the shot, too. Luke is about to do something INSANE. He's about to sacrifice his life to take a literal shot in the dark.



Which segues right into...



DRAMATIC REVERSAL: The intrinsic nature of the story or of the protagonist's character influences or causes the events of the confrontation to be changed in an unexpected way, causing an outcome that is in harmony with the principles of poetic justice. Luke is an idealistic young kid, brave to a fault, dedicated to a fault, and because of that he has made a choice that is Going To Ruin Everything. But that very idealism and courage have also touched the heart of a jaded smuggler, who, instead of running to protect his own life, has returned to throw in his lot with the rebels, and who has entered the battle at the absolutely critical moment of truth.



(A quick word on Choice and Reversal. Not all heroes MAKE the self-sacrificial choice. Sometimes, the hero falters and makes the awful choice, to save his own skin or indulge his own darker nature. In that situation, the reversal is still there doing exactly the same thing--only this time, the justice that gets handed out is BAD for the protagonist. There's a name for that kind of story: tragedy. See King Lear. See also Hamlet, Othello, etc, etc, etc.



This outline works for both tragic and happy/heroic endings. Those aren't the only ways to end stories, by any means. But they are popular ways to end stories, and they are fairly simple ways to end stories, and this article is aimed at beginners and aspiring writers. Trust me on this one. If you're new, just go for a happy ending or a tragic ending. Work on bittersweet open-ended thought provoking montage endings after you've practiced on some of the simpler ones.



And, to be frank, if you're wanting to write professionally, work your happy ending skills. Real life is full of the other kind. There probably are some, but I can't think of many full-time tragedy writers.)





Finally, we get to...



RESOLUTION: Time to hand out the medals, kiss the girl, go to the wedding, put the star on the Christmas tree, raise the curtain on the rock concert, attend the funeral, or otherwise demonstrate that with the conclusion of the story, some kind of balance has been restored. The catharsis is complete, the tension eased, and the reader can catch their breath now.



My advice to you on resolutions: Keep it short. Once you've gotten through the Showdown, write as sparingly as possible to get to the end, and don't draw anything out any more than you absolutely must. You've already kept your poor reader up until 3:30, your heartless bastard. Let them get some sleep before they have to rush off to their shift in two hours!



Then you get to type the most satisfying words in any book you'll ever write:



T H E



E N D



And there you have it! Story climaxes!



Was it good for you? :) Story Climax

Climaxes********Caveat, on this article as on all the others: This is not the whole sum of wisdom on writing craft, forever and ever amen. This is intended to be a place for aspiring writers to /start/, a little bit of foundation with which you can begin to develop your own style. If you work with this stuff here, it can be an immense aid to you in developing your skills to a professional level. I know it's true because this is exactly the stuff that I learned, and it worked out all right for me. It's a pretty good beginning.Right then!I've talked a little about beginnings and middles. What's left? Oh, right, right. Here we go.CLIMAXES!Stories are like sex: the buildup and the ride can be fantastic, but if there isn't a climax before the end, you might come away from the experience feeling a little frustrated.So, let's talk about a story climax. What is a climax? Why is is important? How do you build a good one? And will the reader still respect you in the morning?WHAT IS A CLIMAX?*****************A story climax is, in structure terms the ANSWER to the STORY QUESTION that we talked about earlier.There, see how tidy that is? Simple! Again, not EASY, but simple!For example, the overall Story Question of Lord of the Rings:*************When Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring of Power from his Uncle Bilbo, HE SETS OUT TO DESTROY IT before its evil can wreak havoc upon Middle Earth. BUT WILL HE SUCCEED when the Dark Lord Sauron and every scary evil thing on the planet set forth to take the ring and use it to turn the entire world into the bad parts of New Jersey?*************And the story climax of the Lord of the Rings:******Yep.******See? ANYBODY could have written Lord of the Rings!Well. Okay. Maybe it's not THAT easy. But it is SIMPLE to write a good story climax when you bear in mind that ultimately, the story climax is, on its most basic level, the answer to a question. Will the Rebels overthrow the Empire? Will the hero win the heart of the girl he loves? THAT is where you begin. It is therefore kind of important that, before you begin writing said story climax, that you know the answer to that question.WHY IS A STORY CLIMAX IMPORTANT?********************************Catharsis.As I understand it, catharsis is some sort of toxin which humanity has never been able to remove from paperback book ink. It builds up in human fingers as they keep flipping pages, and if they get all the way to the end of the story and DON'T get a sufficiently satisfying climax, the catharsis toxins can drive them into a psychotic state, and bad things happen. The surgeon general has stated that catharsis is--Oh. Oh, hang on. I just Googled it.Huh.Apparently, catharsis is actually only a regional threat. I guess it's only in the ink in Greece and around the Aegean... oh. Oh. It isn't a toxin and . . . I thought my wife was being /serious/ about that. I mean, she never smiled or /anything/.Gosh, is my face red.(Thank you folks, I'll be here all week.)Remember earlier, how we talked about ways to hook your readers and get them emotionally involved in the story? Well, if we've done that right, then when you reach story's end, they are INVESTED in its outcome. They want to SEE what happens, preferably as vividly as they possibly can. By the time you've reached the end of a story, a good writer has got their readers on the edge of their seats, at 3:30 in the morning, and the pages are tearing every time they turn because the reader is so excited.You've made an implicit promise by getting your reader so bound up in the story. You've /got/ to deliver on it, or that reader is going to freaking /hate/ you for doing that to them. They are gonna go away from that ride all hot and bothered and frustrated as hell. That's what catharsis is: the release of all that tension and sympathetic emotion that the reader has built up because of the writer's skill at weaving the story. Done right, your readers will cheer and cry and laugh out loud and dance around their living room.EVERYTHING YOU DID IN YOUR BOOK LEADS UP TO THIS. Deliver on the climax or die as a working writer. Simple as that.HOW DO YOU BUILD A CLIMAX?**************************The same way you do everything else. You start at its beginning. A climax officially begins where the Great Swampy Middle ends. To use an overly-simple metaphor, the Beginning of your story dumps the dominoes of your story out of your box onto the table. The Great Swampy Middle sets all the dominoes up into a neat pattern.And the climax knocks them down.Guess which is the most fun. :) For the writer, as well as for the reader. There's nothing quite as nice as flicking over that first metaphorical domino after several months worth of setting them up, let me tell you. :)The Great Swampy Middle ends at the first of the story events that starts the dominos to toppling. In Dead Beat, for example, when Harry and Butters find the little keychain drive inside Bony Tony with the GPS coordinates in it, it sets off a chain of reactions that lead Dresden forward to the final confrontation. That little drive is the last domino to get set up and the first one to topple, and start the cascade.The actual climax itself, the absolutely peak of it, though, is what I generally refer to as the Showdown or the Throwdown or the Beatdown, depending on my mood and testosterone levels at the moment. The most dramatic point is the actual confrontation between your protagonist and antagonist, where they are directly contending with one another, and where both of them know that the story question is about to be answered.For THAT confrontation, there several structural components that you can use to organize it that will be really helpful, much like the components used in a Sequel, like we talked about before:ISOLATIONCONFRONTATIONDARK MOMENTCHOICEDRAMATIC REVERSALRESOLUTIONISOLATION: At the end of the day, your protagonist stands alone. That's why that character is the protagonist. Oh sure, there can be other people around, but the one who really COUNTS is your protagonist. The more alone he is, the higher the tension levels are going to be, and the more satisfying the climax is going to be for the reader. Ellen Ripley lands on LV-426 with a whole squad of marines and various others. After the first confrontation with the Aliens, only eight others are left. During the second confrontation, THOSE companions are whittled away, one by one, until Ripley is left to enter the lair of the alien queen--a nuclear reactor about to blow up, no less--ENTIRELY alone. Now THAT is tension and isolation.CONFRONTATION: Your lone protagonist, determined to follow things through to the end, confronts the antagonist. Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.DARK MOMENT: The confrontation Does Not Go Well. The odds are stacked against your protagonist, or the situation swings out of his control, or he just plain gets outclassed. Everything looks like it is in genuine jeopardy of going to hell. It looks certain that the answer to the story question is going to be one that the reader is NOT going to like. In the recent Narnia movie, that moment was at the death of Aslan. The Great Lion is gone, the White Witch has made fashion accessories out of his mane, the bad,guys have them outnumbered and outgunned, and there's just no way to win the fight that's coming the next day--but the folk of Narnia need Peter to lead them. Which brings us directly to:CHOICE: It always comes back to choice. The climax of the story is the acid test, the crucible, where the rubber meets the road and where the schisse hits the fan. Your protagonist has to CHOOSE whether or not to stay true to his purpose or to let himself be swayed by fear, by temptation, by weariness, or by anything else. In that Dark Moment, he has to make the call that ultimately reveals who your protagonist really is, deep down. And the choice has GOT to bea BAD one. If it's an easy choice, there isn't any drama to it--no tension, no release for the reader."Use the Force, Luke," urges ghost-Kenobi's voice. "Let go, Luke!" Luke visibly makes a choice, turning off his targeting computer, putting his faith in the Force to make the shot that the whole galaxy is literally riding on, the way a Jedi should. He's alone, with the baddest guy in the movie hot on his tail, and even his friends are telling him he's nuts. "His computer's off. Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer! What's wrong?" "Nothing!"says Luke. "I'm all right!" Not ONLY is he about to get blown out of the air by Vader, but he might miss the shot, too. Luke is about to do something INSANE. He's about to sacrifice his life to take a literal shot in the dark.Which segues right into...DRAMATIC REVERSAL: The intrinsic nature of the story or of the protagonist's character influences or causes the events of the confrontation to be changed in an unexpected way, causing an outcome that is in harmony with the principles of poetic justice. Luke is an idealistic young kid, brave to a fault, dedicated to a fault, and because of that he has made a choice that is Going To Ruin Everything. But that very idealism and courage have also touched the heart of a jaded smuggler, who, instead of running to protect his own life, has returned to throw in his lot with the rebels, and who has entered the battle at the absolutely critical moment of truth.(A quick word on Choice and Reversal. Not all heroes MAKE the self-sacrificial choice. Sometimes, the hero falters and makes the awful choice, to save his own skin or indulge his own darker nature. In that situation, the reversal is still there doing exactly the same thing--only this time, the justice that gets handed out is BAD for the protagonist. There's a name for that kind of story: tragedy. See King Lear. See also Hamlet, Othello, etc, etc, etc.This outline works for both tragic and happy/heroic endings. Those aren't the only ways to end stories, by any means. But they are popular ways to end stories, and they are fairly simple ways to end stories, and this article is aimed at beginners and aspiring writers. Trust me on this one. If you're new, just go for a happy ending or a tragic ending. Work on bittersweet open-ended thought provoking montage endings after you've practiced on some of the simpler ones.And, to be frank, if you're wanting to write professionally, work your happy ending skills. Real life is full of the other kind. There probably are some, but I can't think of many full-time tragedy writers.)Finally, we get to...RESOLUTION: Time to hand out the medals, kiss the girl, go to the wedding, put the star on the Christmas tree, raise the curtain on the rock concert, attend the funeral, or otherwise demonstrate that with the conclusion of the story, some kind of balance has been restored. The catharsis is complete, the tension eased, and the reader can catch their breath now.My advice to you on resolutions: Keep it short. Once you've gotten through the Showdown, write as sparingly as possible to get to the end, and don't draw anything out any more than you absolutely must. You've already kept your poor reader up until 3:30, your heartless bastard. Let them get some sleep before they have to rush off to their shift in two hours!Then you get to type the most satisfying words in any book you'll ever write:T H EE N DAnd there you have it! Story climaxes!Was it good for you? :) (93 Comments |Comment on this) Friday, December 29th, 2006 3:28 pm



Check it out! :)



http://butcherblock.libsyn.com



Jim For those who don't know it, I've stumbled into podcasting now. Well, technically, FRED has gotten into podcasting and I sort of stumbled along after him. The Butcher Block (Fred named it, not me) is going to be a quasi-regular podcast about my books and so on. The first one is all about the TV show, and addresses several fan concerns that have been raised as publicity and details for the show have been released to the public.Check it out! :)Jim (53 Comments |Comment on this) 1:30 am



And no, we're not talking about book 2. We're talking about the original meaning of the word sequel--the part that comes after, the next in the sequence. In the scenes of a book, you're getting all your plot-pursuing and action-taking and choice-making done.



Now you get to the hard part.



Getting your reader to give a flying frack about it.



To do that, you've got to win them over to your character's point of view. You've got to establish some kind of basic emotional connection, an empathy for your character. It needn't be deep seated agreement with everything the character says and does--but they DO need to be able to UNDERSTAND what your character is thinking and feeling, and to understand WHY they are doing whatever (probably outrageous) thing you've got them doing.



That gets done in sequels.



Pay attention. This is another one of those simple, difficult things.



Sequels are what happens as an aftermath to a scene. They do several specific things:



1) Allow a character to react emotionally to a scene's outcome.

2) Allow a character to review facts and work through the logical options of his situation.

3) They allow a character to ponder probable outcomes to various choices.

4) They allow a character to make a CHOICE--IE, to set themselves a new GOAL for the next SCENE.



Do you see how neat that is? Do you see how simply that works out?



1) Scene--Denied!

2) Sequel--Damn it! Think about it! That's so crazy it just might work!--New Goal!

3) Next Scene!



Repeat until end of book.



See what I mean? Simple. And you can write a book EXACTLY that way. Scene-sequel-scene-sequel-scene-sequel all the way to your story climax. In fact, if you are a newbie, I RECOMMEND you write your book that way. You can always chop and cut the extra scenes (or sequels) out later, and you will have a solid bedrock structure for getting your book done. We'll talk a little about balancing them in a minute.



First, let's outline exactly what happens in a sequel--and WHY the basic outline I'm gonna show you works.



Here's the basic structure to a sequel. It's another little worksheet you can fill out when you're thinking about it ahead of time:



1) EMOTIONAL REACTION:

2) REVIEW, LOGIC, & REASON:

3) ANTICIPATION:

4) CHOICE:



And it MUST happen in THAT ORDER. Why you ask me? Because we're all human beings, and THAT is the order in which we respond, psychologically, to events that happen around us. Especially to big nasty events that bring out a lot of emotion.



Most of you have probably been in a car accident of some kind, and that's the model I'm gonna use. Even if it was only a little accident and no one got hurt, everybody reacts in pretty much the same way. Imagine it with me, if you will. You're driving and all of a sudden, SQUEEEEEERRRCRUUUNCH! Car accident. What happens next?



You react emotionally, on instinct. Maybe you sit there stunned and startled for a second. Maybe you feel a moment of horror (if it was your fault), or else seething outrage (if it wasn't). Maybe you yell and curse, or throw up on yourself, or break out into hysterical laughter. There are a whole lot of viable human emotional responses to that kind of stimulus--but the first ones on the scene are ALWAYS the most basic, instinctive, emotional reactions.



Next, your brain kicks in. (This takes a variable amount of time, depending on the person.) Your brain tells you things and you pay attention to it. Maybe it says "this accident was your fault, and if they catch you, you'll go to jail. Run!" Maybe it says, "Check to see if anyone is hurt! Call the police! Exchange insurance information!" Maybe it says, "Call so-and-so to help," or "Oh my God, I'm bleeding," or "Please God let me have my proof of insurance in the glove compartment." You think about things like how the accident happened, and what you could have done to avoid it, what's necessary to accomplish immediately--and then you get to think

about where you're suddenly not going to be.



(During your review, logic, and reasoning process, it is very human to realize or rediscover facts that bring on an echo of your emotional response, or which otherwise inspire an entirely new line of emotional response. If you realize that the guy who just slammed into your car ran a stop sign to do it, for example, it might inspire a radically different set of emotions than a moment before, when you thought neither one of you had a clear right of way.)



You can get as upset as you want, for as long as you want, but sooner or later you're going to have gone over all the facts of what happened a minute ago, and you'll start thinking about what happens NEXT. You anticipate the immediate future, based upon what you know and what your current options are. Maybe you've got a buddy who can pick you up and get you to work, and you'll only be a few minutes late. Or maybe you don't, and you've just lost your job. Maybe

you're going to have to find a phone to call an ambulance because someone is hurt. There are a lot of things that could be pretty obviously a part of your immediate future, based on your current circumstances.



And once those things have rolled through your mind, you've got to decide what you're doing next. Maybe you're just trading insurance information and getting back on the road. Maybe you're hiding the body. The point is, you've got a choice to make, and that choice is going to determine your next action.



Voila.



You've just had a sequel, a broad, archetypical human reaction to a sudden situation that goes radically out of your control.



YOUR CHARACTERS DO THE SAME THING.



At the conclusion of a scene, they've just had something go out of THEIR control. You know how I know this? Because you didn't answer YES to your scene question. Something went wrong, because you are a smart writer, and that's how you did the scene. Now your characters go through the same set of reactions:



1) An immediate emotional response.

2) A review of what happened, applying logic and reason to the events and why they turned out that way, and of what options are open to them.

3) Anticipation of what might follow the pursuit of those options. (Highly important, this one. Never underestimate the effects of anticipation on a reader.)

4) Your character makes up his mind and decides what to do next. IE, he makes a CHOICE.



Now, it's possible to SKIP some of these steps, or to abbreviate some of them so severely that you all but skip them. But you CAN'T CHANGE THE ORDER.



Emotion, Reason, Anticipation, Choice. That reaction is typical to people, regardless of their sex, age, or background. It's psychologically hardwired into us--so take advantage of it. By having your character react in this very typically human way, you establish an immediate sense of empathy with the reader. If you do it right, you get the reader nodding along with that character going "Damn right, that's what I'd do." Or better yet, you get them opening their mouth in horror as they read, seeing the character's thought process, hating every step of where it's going while it remains undeniably understandable and genuine to the way people behave.



Sequels, frankly, are what really make or break books. How you choose to show your reader your character's reactions determines everything about the reader's response to the events of the story.



Worse, sequels are very fluid, very flexible things to apply. You can do all kinds of tricks with them. Some sequels are all internal monologue. Some are conversations carried out with a character's best friend (or his all-in-black-id). Sometimes a sequel LOOKS like a scene, in the trappings anyway, but what's actually important is the character's internal reaction.



(Search your feelings, Luke. You know it to be true. *I* am your father. *NOOOOOO*. Yeah, that lightsabre fight looks like a scene, but at that point it isn't. It's a sequel.)



This is where, frankly, I think writers have the greatest fluidity, the most chance to apply their creative talents--which means, of course, we also have the best chance of screwing things up here. You can approach sequels from an almost unlimited number of directions. There are no limits to how you can lay out a sequel, except for your own imagination. Just remember:



1) EMOTION

2) REASON

3) ANTICIPATION

4) CHOICE



Get those in there, in the right order, and you'll be fine.



Let's talk, for a moment, about how you want to weight the various parts of the sequel, based upon your genre, what you want to accomplish, etc. The sequel is where you can put a spin on almost any story to make it more suited to a given genre. Each of the genres has its own bias towards a given part of a sequel.



Romance, for example, is VERY heavy on Emotion and only slightly less on Anticipation. Mystery and SF lean very heavily on the Reason portion of the sequel. Action novels go light on everything but Choice, and give you just enough sequel to get you through to the next scene. Horror loves to linger on Anticipation. Think about it for a while,and you'll start to see what I mean.



So, if you're writing a romance, you'll want to place extra emphasis on your character's Emotional reaction and on his Anticipation of what could come next.



Mystery writers had better be able to produce clear lines of logic in the Reasoning portion of their character's reaction. If you need the reader to be cozy with a character, put extra emphasis on that character's sequels. If it isn't necessary for another character, go light on the sequels, or skip them entirely.



If that wasn't enough, Sequel-to-Scene ratio is the single largest factor for controlling pace. Sequels have a unanimous tendancy to slow the pace of your story, while scenes have the opposite effect. If you've ever read a book and felt like it blurred by too fast and never seemed to touch on anything long enough, go back and look at it. You WILL find that the book's scenes took up a great deal more space than its sequels. If you've read a book that you thought was too slow, too cerebral, or that wandered back and forth while droning on and on, go back and look at it. You WILL find that sequels took up a hell of a lot more page space than scenes.



It's a balancing act, and how you stack up scene-to-sequel is going to depend on several factors, including your genre and your audience. Romance, for example, is really nothing BUT sequels with occasional scenes to make them stick together. Romance wallows in sequels, because that's what it's ABOUT--emotions, feelings.



If you write an action book, those emotional passages--not so much. You'll want to spend more time and effort on the scenes, and make sure that the sequels don't start to outweigh them. If you're writing for a more cerebral, mature audience, they have a much higher desire/tolerance for sequels than if you write for, for example, young adults. The older audience might well be more interested in the thought and emotion behind the plot, while the younger audience might want you to stop moaning and dithering and get straight to the point. You control that pace by balancing sequels with scenes.



Sequels also determine what I've always called the "warmth" of your novel. When people talk about a "warm viewpoint" what they really mean is that you're throwing in a lot of emotional reaction. Oftentimes, warm viewpoint novels (like the Dresden Files) toss in micro-sequels as a part of scenes. Any time you see Harry talking to someone, wanting to tear his hair out, forcing himself to control his temper and get back to the task at hand, you've just ridden through a micro-sequel with him.



"Cool" viewpoint novels, like the more classic hardboiled PI novel, downplay their protagonist's Emotional reactions--often skipping them entirely during a scene, and showing them only indirectly during sequels. They tend to emphasize the Reason side of things.



My God, there are so many things you can do with this stuff. Brainy, intelligent characters go heavy on reason--and then you cheat by going light on Anticipation, and keeping his Choice half-veiled from the reader, so that when he actually acts in the next scene he looks a lot smarter and more resourceful than he might have if you went step by step through the whole thing. ("Of course! He animated the T-Rex! Brilliant!") Characters who are balancing their loyalties up to some critical moment can get the whole sequel laid out, extra heavy on Anticipation, and then you deny the reader any info on the Choice until they're actually in action.



Get it? SEQUELS ARE WHERE YOU APPLY THE COLOR TO YOUR STORY. It's the best point at which to manipulate your readers' emotions. I've been working within this craft structure for ten years, and I feel like I'm only barely beginning to get a handle on it. Seriously. You've got to give this some thought.



Knowledge of how sequels effect your book's impact on the reader is damned handy in rewrites, too. If a character is coming off too flighty, all you have to do is add in a bit more Reason to their sequels. Character too dry and boring? Add in more Emotion to /his/ sequels. Someone comments that your character's motivations aren't clear? Go give their sequels a tune-up, and make sure his Emotion-Reason-Anticipation-Choice is in the correct order and consistant.



When you do it right, the reader knows exactly what is going through your character's head, and why. The /reader/ starts being the one anticipating along with your character, and when that happens, you pwn them. It creates forward momentum for the next scene, and it helps the reader /want/ to read it.



This basic structure for sequels is pretty much the ENTIRE secret of my success. I do it like this in every freaking book I write. I know it works because check it out. People like my books. They like them for some of the special effects, sure, and for some of the story ideas sometimes--but mostly it's because they find themselves caring about what happens to the characters, and that happens in sequels.



People don't love Harry for kicking down the monster's front door. They love him because he's terrified out of his mind, he knows he's putting himself in danger by doing it, he's probably letting himself in for a world of hurt even if he is successful, but he chooses to do it anyway.



Emotion. Reason. Anticipation. Choice.



Special effects and swashbuckling are just the light show.



The heart of your character--and your reader--is in the sequel. SEQUELS

SEQUELSAnd no, we're not talking about book 2. We're talking about the original meaning of the word sequel--the part that comes after, the next in the sequence. In the scenes of a book, you're getting all your plot-pursuing and action-taking and choice-making done.Now you get to the hard part.Getting your reader to give a flying frack about it.To do that, you've got to win them over to your character's point of view. You've got to establish some kind of basic emotional connection, an empathy for your character. It needn't be deep seated agreement with everything the character says and does--but they DO need to be able to UNDERSTAND what your character is thinking and feeling, and to understand WHY they are doing whatever (probably outrageous) thing you've got them doing.That gets done in sequels.Pay attention. This is another one of those simple, difficult things.Sequels are what happens as an aftermath to a scene. They do several specific things:1) Allow a character to react emotionally to a scene's outcome.2) Allow a character to review facts and work through the logical options of his situation.3) They allow a character to ponder probable outcomes to various choices.4) They allow a character to make a CHOICE--IE, to set themselves a new GOAL for the next SCENE.Do you see how neat that is? Do you see how simply that works out?1) Scene--Denied!2) Sequel--Damn it! Think about it! That's so crazy it just might work!--New Goal!3) Next Scene!Repeat until end of book.See what I mean? Simple. And you can write a book EXACTLY that way. Scene-sequel-scene-sequel-scene-sequel all the way to your story climax. In fact, if you are a newbie, I RECOMMEND you write your book that way. You can always chop and cut the extra scenes (or sequels) out later, and you will have a solid bedrock structure for getting your book done. We'll talk a little about balancing them in a minute.First, let's outline exactly what happens in a sequel--and WHY the basic outline I'm gonna show you works.Here's the basic structure to a sequel. It's another little worksheet you can fill out when you're thinking about it ahead of time:1) EMOTIONAL REACTION:2) REVIEW, LOGIC, & REASON:3) ANTICIPATION:4) CHOICE:And it MUST happen in THAT ORDER. Why you ask me? Because we're all human beings, and THAT is the order in which we respond, psychologically, to events that happen around us. Especially to big nasty events that bring out a lot of emotion.Most of you have probably been in a car accident of some kind, and that's the model I'm gonna use. Even if it was only a little accident and no one got hurt, everybody reacts in pretty much the same way. Imagine it with me, if you will. You're driving and all of a sudden, SQUEEEEEERRRCRUUUNCH! Car accident. What happens next?You react emotionally, on instinct. Maybe you sit there stunned and startled for a second. Maybe you feel a moment of horror (if it was your fault), or else seething outrage (if it wasn't). Maybe you yell and curse, or throw up on yourself, or break out into hysterical laughter. There are a whole lot of viable human emotional responses to that kind of stimulus--but the first ones on the scene are ALWAYS the most basic, instinctive, emotional reactions.Next, your brain kicks in. (This takes a variable amount of time, depending on the person.) Your brain tells you things and you pay attention to it. Maybe it says "this accident was your fault, and if they catch you, you'll go to jail. Run!" Maybe it says, "Check to see if anyone is hurt! Call the police! Exchange insurance information!" Maybe it says, "Call so-and-so to help," or "Oh my God, I'm bleeding," or "Please God let me have my proof of insurance in the glove compartment." You think about things like how the accident happened, and what you could have done to avoid it, what's necessary to accomplish immediately--and then you get to thinkabout where you're suddenly not going to be.(During your review, logic, and reasoning process, it is very human to realize or rediscover facts that bring on an echo of your emotional response, or which otherwise inspire an entirely new line of emotional response. If you realize that the guy who just slammed into your car ran a stop sign to do it, for example, it might inspire a radically different set of emotions than a moment before, when you thought neither one of you had a clear right of way.)You can get as upset as you want, for as long as you want, but sooner or later you're going to have gone over all the facts of what happened a minute ago, and you'll start thinking about what happens NEXT. You anticipate the immediate future, based upon what you know and what your current options are. Maybe you've got a buddy who can pick you up and get you to work, and you'll only be a few minutes late. Or maybe you don't, and you've just lost your job. Maybeyou're going to have to find a phone to call an ambulance because someone is hurt. There are a lot of things that could be pretty obviously a part of your immediate future, based on your current circumstances.And once those things have rolled through your mind, you've got to decide what you're doing next. Maybe you're just trading insurance information and getting back on the road. Maybe you're hiding the body. The point is, you've got a choice to make, and that choice is going to determine your next action.Voila.You've just had a sequel, a broad, archetypical human reaction to a sudden situation that goes radically out of your control.YOUR CHARACTERS DO THE SAME THING.At the conclusion of a scene, they've just had something go out of THEIR control. You know how I know this? Because you didn't answer YES to your scene question. Something went wrong, because you are a smart writer, and that's how you did the scene. Now your characters go through the same set of reactions:1) An immediate emotional response.2) A review of what happened, applying logic and reason to the events and why they turned out that way, and of what options are open to them.3) Anticipation of what might follow the pursuit of those options. (Highly important, this one. Never underestimate the effects of anticipation on a reader.)4) Your character makes up his mind and decides what to do next. IE, he makes a CHOICE.Now, it's possible to SKIP some of these steps, or to abbreviate some of them so severely that you all but skip them. But you CAN'T CHANGE THE ORDER.Emotion, Reason, Anticipation, Choice. That reaction is typical to people, regardless of their sex, age, or background. It's psychologically hardwired into us--so take advantage of it. By having your character react in this very typically human way, you establish an immediate sense of empathy with the reader. If you do it right, you get the reader nodding along with that character going "Damn right, that's what I'd do." Or better yet, you get them opening their mouth in horror as they read, seeing the character's thought process, hating every step of where it's going while it remains undeniably understandable and genuine to the way people behave.Sequels, frankly, are what really make or break books. How you choose to show your reader your character's reactions determines everything about the reader's response to the events of the story.Worse, sequels are very fluid, very flexible things to apply. You can do all kinds of tricks with them. Some sequels are all internal monologue. Some are conversations carried out with a character's best friend (or his all-in-black-id). Sometimes a sequel LOOKS like a scene, in the trappings anyway, but what's actually important is the character's internal reaction.(Search your feelings, Luke. You know it to be true. *I* am your father. *NOOOOOO*. Yeah, that lightsabre fight looks like a scene, but at that point it isn't. It's a sequel.)This is where, frankly, I think writers have the greatest fluidity, the most chance to apply their creative talents--which means, of course, we also have the best chance of screwing things up here. You can approach sequels from an almost unlimited number of directions. There are no limits to how you can lay out a sequel, except for your own imagination. Just remember:1) EMOTION2) REASON3) ANTICIPATION4) CHOICEGet those in there, in the right order, and you'll be fine.Let's talk, for a moment, about how you want to weight the various parts of the sequel, based upon your genre, what you want to accomplish, etc. The sequel is where you can put a spin on almost any story to make it more suited to a given genre. Each of the genres has its own bias towards a given part of a sequel.Romance, for example, is VERY heavy on Emotion and only slightly less on Anticipation. Mystery and SF lean very heavily on the Reason portion of the sequel. Action novels go light on everything but Choice, and give you just enough sequel to get you through to the next scene. Horror loves to linger on Anticipation. Think about it for a while,and you'll start to see what I mean.So, if you're writing a romance, you'll want to place extra emphasis on your character's Emotional reaction and on his Anticipation of what could come next.Mystery writers had better be able to produce clear lines of logic in the Reasoning portion of their character's reaction. If you need the reader to be cozy with a character, put extra emphasis on that character's sequels. If it isn't necessary for another character, go light on the sequels, or skip them entirely.If that wasn't enough, Sequel-to-Scene ratio is the single largest factor for controlling pace. Sequels have a unanimous tendancy to slow the pace of your story, while scenes have the opposite effect. If you've ever read a book and felt like it blurred by too fast and never seemed to touch on anything long enough, go back and look at it. You WILL find that the book's scenes took up a great deal more space than its sequels. If you've read a book that you thought was too slow, too cerebral, or that wandered back and forth while droning on and on, go back and look at it. You WILL find that sequels took up a hell of a lot more page space than scenes.It's a balancing act, and how you stack up scene-to-sequel is going to depend on several factors, including your genre and your audience. Romance, for example, is really nothing BUT sequels with occasional scenes to make them stick together. Romance wallows in sequels, because that's what it's ABOUT--emotions, feelings.If you write an action book, those emotional passages--not so much. You'll want to spend more time and effort on the scenes, and make sure that the sequels don't start to outweigh them. If you're writing for a more cerebral, mature audience, they have a much higher desire/tolerance for sequels than if you write for, for example, young adults. The older audience might well be more interested in the thought and emotion behind the plot, while the younger audience might want you to stop moaning and dithering and get straight to the point. You control that pace by balancing sequels with scenes.Sequels also determine what I've always called the "warmth" of your novel. When people talk about a "warm viewpoint" what they really mean is that you're throwing in a lot of emotional reaction. Oftentimes, warm viewpoint novels (like the Dresden Files) toss in micro-sequels as a part of scenes. Any time you see Harry talking to someone, wanting to tear his hair out, forcing himself to control his temper and get back to the task at hand, you've just ridden through a micro-sequel with him."Cool" viewpoint novels, like the more classic hardboiled PI novel, downplay their protagonist's Emotional reactions--often skipping them entirely during a scene, and showing them only indirectly during sequels. They tend to emphasize the Reason side of things.My God, there are so many things you can do with this stuff. Brainy, intelligent characters go heavy on reason--and then you cheat by going light on Anticipation, and keeping his Choice half-veiled from the reader, so that when he actually acts in the next scene he looks a lot smarter and more resourceful than he might have if you went step by step through the whole thing. ("Of course! He animated the T-Rex! Brilliant!") Characters who are balancing their loyalties up to some critical moment can get the whole sequel laid out, extra heavy on Anticipation, and then you deny the reader any info on the Choice until they're actually in action.Get it? SEQUELS ARE WHERE YOU APPLY THE COLOR TO YOUR STORY. It's the best point at which to manipulate your readers' emotions. I've been working within this craft structure for ten years, and I feel like I'm only barely beginning to get a handle on it. Seriously. You've got to give this some thought.Knowledge of how sequels effect your book's impact on the reader is damned handy in rewrites, too. If a character is coming off too flighty, all you have to do is add in a bit more Reason to their sequels. Character too dry and boring? Add in more Emotion to /his/ sequels. Someone comments that your character's motivations aren't clear? Go give their sequels a tune-up, and make sure his Emotion-Reason-Anticipation-Choice is in the correct order and consistant.When you do it right, the reader knows exactly what is going through your character's head, and why. The /reader/ starts being the one anticipating along with your character, and when that happens, you pwn them. It creates forward momentum for the next scene, and it helps the reader /want/ to read it.This basic structure for sequels is pretty much the ENTIRE secret of my success. I do it like this in every freaking book I write. I know it works because check it out. People like my books. They like them for some of the special effects, sure, and for some of the story ideas sometimes--but mostly it's because they find themselves caring about what happens to the characters, and that happens in sequels.People don't love Harry for kicking down the monster's front door. They love him because he's terrified out of his mind, he knows he's putting himself in danger by doing it, he's probably letting himself in for a world of hurt even if he is successful, but he chooses to do it anyway.Emotion. Reason. Anticipation. Choice.Special effects and swashbuckling are just the light show.The heart of your character--and your reader--is in the sequel. (51 Comments |Comment on this) Thursday, December 28th, 2006 2:53 pm

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Scenes are important. Scenes are where all the plot in your book happens. Any time your character is actively pursuing his goal (as opposed to a character who is pausing to reflect or react emotionally to the events of the story) he is engaged in a SCENE.



The basic structure of a scene is simple. Your POINT OF VIEW character sets out in pursuit of a SPECIFIC GOAL. Someone else (usually, but not always, the antagonist) actively, knowingly tries to stop him. There is a CONFLICT. The reader is left to wonder whether or not the POV character will succeed (which can also be thought of as the SCENE QUESTION). The result of the conflict is *always* a SETBACK of one kind or another (also thought of as the SCENE ANSWER)--at least, until you get to the end of the book.



Let me break that into a simple format. This is the one I use every time I write a scene. I fill it out, like a freaking class worksheet (which at one time it was):



POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER:

GOAL:

CONFLICT (SCENE QUESTION):

SETBACK (SCENE ANSWER):



We'll look at each of them, one at a time.



POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER

------------------------------------

Sometimes, this is easy--for instance, when you're writing a first-person viewpoint novel, like the Dresden Files. The point of view character is always the same person.



Other times, though, you've got more lattitude (IE, a better chance to screw up). You've got multiple point of view characters in your book, and often more than one of them is participating in the scene. (Romance writers, especially, run into this issue a lot.) If you pick the wrong viewpoint character, you'll cheat yourself out of making your scene as interesting and appealing as it could be. Picking the optimal viewpoint character is VITAL.



Fortunately, there's a simple rule of thumb for people getting started. ALWAYS pick the person with the MOST AT STAKE, emotionally, in the scene. If you do that, you help build in additional tension, you get to show more emotion (aka, create greater empathy in the reader), and you help ensure that the conflict is real, that it matters.



You can break this rule--just like you can break all of these rules--once you know what you're doing. But until you are CERTAIN that you understand why this works, how it works, and what you can accomplish by NOT following the rule . . . don't. Please, until you've worked enough to get it yourself, just take my word for it that this rule of thumb is frickin' critical, and you will do well by yourself to stick with it.



GOAL

-------



Once you've got your point of view character, the next thing you need is a GOAL for them to pursue. This needs to be an ACTIVE, SPECIFIC goal, not just something vague. Instead of your character setting out to "do something to save the day" he needs to have a goal more like, "go pound Joe Blow for information that might let me save the day." Instead of "make the girl like me" his goal needs to be something more like "take the girl out for a wonderful night on the town with lots of attention to detail and customized surprises for her."



(That's the great part about writing action scenes. You get really clear, simple goals like "Get out of the room alive.")



Your goal doesn't always have to be life-shatteringly important. It can be as simple as "I want breakfast." The most important thing about it is that it must be clear, apparently attainable, specific, and important to your viewpoint character.





CONFLICT

-------------



Ah, conflict. The heart of every story. If you screw up absolutely everything else about a scene but GET THE CONFLICT RIGHT, you're gonna be way closer to getting published than most people ever manage.



Conflict is what happens when someone, for some reason, up and decides that your character needs to fail in his goal, or else is pursuing a goal which, if met, will prevent your viewpoint character from reaching his goal.



CONFLICT IS ALL ABOUT CHARACTERS. IT HAPPENS BETWEEN CHARACTERS. Conflict is NOT "there's a forest fire!" or "it's really cold outside!" Those things can be used as dramatic elements, don't get me wrong--but they aren't CONFLICT. They are referred to as "adversity" and they are inherently second-class citizens when it comes to establishing interesting scenes.



(Most often, they serve best as a supporting role. It's one thing to be in a knife fight with your most hated enemy. It's quite another to be in a knife fight with your most hated enemy in the middle of a forest fire.)



CONFLICT, ideally, is two characters going head-to-head (on whatever level is appropriate--social knife-fighting can make reading every bit as interesting as literal knife-fighting), while both of them try to achieve conflicting goals.



All this really means is that you need an antagonist with the same specific, attainable goal, the same kinds of emotional stakes, as your protagonist. Once you've got the right kind of set up, the scene almost writes itself.



(Notice that I say "antagonist" and not "villain." It doesn't have to be a villain. It can be a concerned friend, trying to talk your character out of doing something. It can be a misguided heroic-type, who just happens to be acting against your protagonist, like Murphy was in the first couple of Dresden books. It can be an admirable and even likeable foe, like Marshal Sam Gerard in The Fugitive. The choices are vast. The important thing, though, is that he's working against your viewpoint character.)



And, done right, the conflict poses an implied SCENE QUESTION. Will your character succeed? Or even better, WHICH character is going to succeed?





SETBACK

------------



The SETBACK is the result of the CONFLICT. Your character set out to accomplish a certain goal--AND HE DOESN'T GET IT.



Eh, you say? What what?



He doesn't get it. Come on, if it was that simple--Goal, attained! Goal, attained!--it really wouldn't be a terribly interesting story. Think . . . oh, the early Superman cartoons. A dozen problems would start happening--bad guys, natural disasters, what have you. Then Supes would show up and, one by one, smash/burn/freeze/throw/beat up the problems, mostly with very little apparent effort.



THAT GETS BORING FAST.



(In fact, I often don't even like to use the word "setback" to describe the results of the scene. I like referring to it as the DISASTER. But I'm melodramatic, that way.)



In any case, the character doesn't attain his full goal, his total completion, until the END OF THE STORY. If he gets it early on, hey, why keep reading? The best stories keep the reader on edge (IE, not entirely satisfied) until the story's climax, at which point all questions are resolved, all goals met, and we can all go have a cigarette or something.



There are a number of ways you can end a scene--or phrased another way, there are a number of ANSWERS to the SCENE QUESTION. Let's go over them, beginning with the least desirable, from the standpoint of a writer trying to keep a reader glued to the story:



ANSWER 1: YES. Already told you, this one is a no-no. It's the simplest, leaves you with the least drama and the fewest options. It's predictable, almost inherently comes with less conflict, and gives you the worst odds of keeping a reader's attention.



("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps to safety unscathed, and continues his journey!" See what I mean? Bor-ing.)



ANSWER 2: YES . . . BUT. This one is a lot better. In this scenario, your hero accomplishes his scene goal all right--but there's a complication of some kind, and one that might have consequences down the line. Generally, the more dire and/or disastrous the potential consequence, the better.



("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps up to climb to safety, the wolverines raging and foaming beneath him--but just as he reaches the edge of the pit, and freedom, he is savagely bitten on the leg! He is free! But it is only a matter of time before Mad Wolverine Syndrome reduces him to a snarling, foaming monster!" See there? Way more interesting than getting away without a mark to show for it.)



ANSWER 3: NO! Another solid scene resolution, from the writing standpoint. The hero sets out to attain his goal, but is flatly denied. Maybe he gets shut down by the antagonist. Maybe he makes a mistake and blows it completely. Either way, he gives it his best shot and is slapped down. Now he'll have to back off, re-evaluate the situation, and try something else. Use this scene answer with some caution, because it can have the effect of bringing your story to a halt. Too many of them can become frustrating for the reader, and can make your character look foolish and/or impotent, thus reducing reader empathy and the tension of your overall story.



("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps up to climb to safety, but the crumbling edge of the pit gives way, dropping him back down among the foaming monsters! He reaches for his communicator and shouts, "Red! I may have a problem here!" See? This can be a good way of getting other characters involved, dropping in some more character interaction, what have you--but you're still stuck in the pit of wolverines. Unless you are writing "Wolverine Pits of Madison County" or something, you don't want to stay stuck in the wolverine pit forever, so use your NO answers carefully.)



ANSWER 4: NO! AND FURTHERMORE! My personal favorite scene answer. Not only does your hero NOT attain his goal, but he manages to make matters even WORSE along the way. It's best if the worsening of the situation is your protagonist's fault, because that's just FUN, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.



THIS answer is really the one that gives you the most interesting scenes, provides the meat for the most interesting and endearing sequels, and is generally the Big Gun you pull out when your plot is slowing down. Warning: it does force you, as the writer, to get a little creative, because it multiplies the problems your hero has to solve. But hey. If you weren't at least a little creative, you wouldn't be here.



("Trapped in the pit of starving, diseased wolverines, our hero struggles to get free! He leaps up to climb to safety, seizing onto the trailing end of a vine! But the vine gives way, sending our hero sprawling back down among the slavering beasts! He stares at them in horror, and only THEN realizes that the "vine" he seized was no such thing! He is now holding the tail of a thirty-foot long Peruvian Acid Cobra--and the incredibly deadly serpent is NOT happy to have been suddenly seized in the middle of its siesta. It opens its deadly jaws and lunges for our hero's throat!" Mmmmm. Now that's good fallout.)



Granted, these examples are pulp fictiony, but they're meant to serve as broad illustrations. In one way or another, every scene in every story where a character is pursuing a goal will fall into one of those four outcomes.



And you've done it! You've written a good scene!



Simple, right? It is. But it isn't EASY. Try it out, and PRACTICE it. Shockingly, you get better with practice. These days, I don't even really consciously think in terms of goal/conflict/setback. Those things are a part of my thinking process, and they've become transparent to me, now. I just think about the scene, forming it with a solid skeleton from the get-go, and it allows me to focus more active effort on other aspects of the writing--pace, character, mood, setting, description. Occasionally, I'll even have time to spare for making the language pretty. But if I didn't have that solid skeleton there, that other stuff wouldn't much matter. You've GOT to have the craft elements solid before you can start adding in artistry.





To recap:



POINT OF VIEW

GOAL

CONFLICT

SETBACK



And that's all there is to writing a really good scene.



Of course, books aren't 100 percent full of scenes. Characters have to stop to bind up their diseased wounds, be diagnosed with Mad Wolverine Syndrome, to worry about their impending doom and steal kisses from sympathetic nurse-heroines. Where's the conflict in that? How does that fit into your scene paradigm, Jim?



It doesn't, of course.



That's a sequel. We'll talk about those next. SCENES

SCENES----------Scenes are important. Scenes are where all the plot in your book happens. Any time your character is actively pursuing his goal (as opposed to a character who is pausing to reflect or react emotionally to the events of the story) he is engaged in a SCENE.The basic structure of a scene is simple. Your POINT OF VIEW character sets out in pursuit of a SPECIFIC GOAL. Someone else (usually, but not always, the antagonist) actively, knowingly tries to stop him. There is a CONFLICT. The reader is left to wonder whether or not the POV character will succeed (which can also be thought of as the SCENE QUESTION). The result of the conflict is *always* a SETBACK of one kind or another (also thought of as the SCENE ANSWER)--at least, until you get to the end of the book.Let me break that into a simple format. This is the one I use every time I write a scene. I fill it out, like a freaking class worksheet (which at one time it was):POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER:GOAL:CONFLICT (SCENE QUESTION):SETBACK (SCENE ANSWER):We'll look at each of them, one at a time.POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER------------------------------------Sometimes, this is easy--for instance, when you're writing a first-person viewpoint novel, like the Dresden Files. The point of view character is always the same person.Other times, though, you've got more lattitude (IE, a better chance to screw up). You've got multiple point of view characters in your book, and often more than one of them is participating in the scene. (Romance writers, especially, run into this issue a lot.) If you pick the wrong viewpoint character, you'll cheat yourself out of making your scene as interesting and appealing as it could be. Picking the optimal viewpoint character is VITAL.Fortunately, there's a simple rule of thumb for people getting started. ALWAYS pick the person with the MOST AT STAKE, emotionally, in the scene. If you do that, you help build in additional tension, you get to show more emotion (aka, create greater empathy in the reader), and you help ensure that the conflict is real, that it matters.You can break this rule--just like you can break all of these rules--once you know what you're doing. But until you are CERTAIN that you understand why this works, how it works, and what you can accomplish by NOT following the rule . . . don't. Please, until you've worked enough to get it yourself, just take my word for it that this rule of thumb is frickin' critical, and you will do well by yourself to stick with it.GOAL-------Once you've got your point of view character, the next thing you need is a GOAL for them to pursue. This needs to be an ACTIVE, SPECIFIC goal, not just something vague. Instead of your character setting out to "do something to save the day" he needs to have a goal more like, "go pound Joe Blow for information that might let me save the day." Instead of "make the girl like me" his goal needs to be something more like "take the girl out for a wonderful night on the town with lots of attention to detail and customized surprises for her."(That's the great part about writing action scenes. You get really clear, simple goals like "Get out of the room alive.")Your goal doesn't always have to be life-shatteringly important. It can be as simple as "I want breakfast." The most important thing about it is that it must be clear, apparently attainable, specific, and important to your viewpoint character.CONFLICT-------------Ah, conflict. The heart of every story. If you screw up absolutely everything else about a scene but GET THE CONFLICT RIGHT, you're gonna be way closer to getting published than most people ever manage.Conflict is what happens when someone, for some reason, up and decides that your character needs to fail in his goal, or else is pursuing a goal which, if met, will prevent your viewpoint character from reaching his goal.CONFLICT IS ALL ABOUT CHARACTERS. IT HAPPENS BETWEEN CHARACTERS. Conflict is NOT "there's a forest fire!" or "it's really cold outside!" Those things can be used as dramatic elements, don't get me wrong--but they aren't CONFLICT. They are referred to as "adversity" and they are inherently second-class citizens when it comes to establishing interesting scenes.(Most often, they serve best as a supporting role. It's one thing to be in a knife fight with your most hated enemy. It's quite another to be in a knife fight with your most hated enemy in the middle of a forest fire.)CONFLICT, ideally, is two characters going head-to-head (on whatever level is appropriate--social knife-fighting can make reading every bit as interesting as literal knife-fighting), while both of them try to achieve conflicting goals.All this really means is that you need an antagonist with the same specific, attainable goal, the same kinds of emotional stakes, as your protagonist. Once you've got the right kind of set up, the scene almost writes itself.(Notice that I say "antagonist" and not "villain." It doesn't have to be a villain. It can be a concerned friend, trying to talk your character out of doing something. It can be a misguided heroic-type, who just happens to be acting against your protagonist, like Murphy was in the first couple of Dresden books. It can be an admirable and even likeable foe, like Marshal Sam Gerard in The Fugitive. The choices are vast. The important thing, though, is that he's working against your viewpoint character.)And, done right, the conflict poses an implied SCENE QUESTION. Will your character succeed? Or even better, WHICH charact