I’ve been talking recently—well, I guess recently is a bit confusing as I’ve had so many weeks off—but I’ve been covering questions we writers can ask ourselves about our own book to understand it better, spot weaknesses, and make the book better. These are things we can do before we write a book and during the writing of a book, but mostly, it’s things we can ask ourselves after we finish that first draft and we are getting ready for the first major rewrite.

Wait. You don’t rewrite? Interesting. Most writers, professional and soon to be professional, know our books need to be rewritten before they are ready to be seen by NY. We know that we need to know as much as possible about our book/plot/character/conflict before we start with the actual rewriting. It is simple stuff, but important.

Disclaimer: All of us go through certain procedures and the Q&A I’ve been writing about are just one writer’s methodology. Not all. Some of us do it differently, but it all comes back the one most important question — Does it work?!?

05. Primary motivation: What is the protag’s (MC – main character’s) primary motivation? Okay, I admit it – this is an easy one. But perhaps harder, what is the antag’s (BBU – Big Bad Ugly’s) main motivation?

I am going to assume that you know your main character’s motivation. Kill the BBU that is trying to destroy the planet. Protect the MC’s family/children/wife/husband. Learn to dance so MC can sleep with the sexy dance instructor. Steal the golden egg so the MC can save the family farm. Whatever.

But…

So many fantasy books have a BBU with no clear cut motivation. The Big Bad Ugly is just going to destroy the planet. Ummm. Why? What does he get out of it? A circulating ball of rubble. The end. If he is doing it of out revenge/hatred/something similar, then how much better to enslave and torture the people responsible for whatever happened to tick him off so badly. Why does he want to do the dirty deed that you, the writer, need him to do in order to have a story?

04.  Who or what stands in the way of the MC?

In Faith’s version of Jack and the Beanstalk, (for the sake of argument. Just go with it) Jack is not a hard worker or very wise, yet he has a goal of helping his mom and saving the farm, as long as he doesn’t have to work at it. So when the magical beans grow into a beanstalk a mile high, Jack climbs it. Everything in the overhead palace is a danger, but he steals the golden egg and the goose who laid it, kills the giant, (who was just being a normal giant) and saves the farm. But nothing really stands in the way of Jack. No noose tightens around his neck. Jack doesn’t grow or change at all. Jack is freaking lucky. That is it.

I am currently reading four or five books at once. One is a book where the MC is trying to—I think—find and kill one big BBU who is doing evil stuff. In the course of that attempt, the MC is facing one after another minor evil creatures and each minor one is trying to stop the main character from reaching that one certain BBU and killing him. I think. It isn’t real clear. Like with Jack, things just happen. The writer doesn’t weave an ever tightening noose around the neck of the MC and force the MC to fight and change and grow to achieve the goals. That is what the increasing conflict is supposed to do—make the main character fight and change to achieve the required ends.

Worse, this book goes back to number 05. There is no continuity and no reason for each of the minor evil minions who come after the MC. It isn’t tied together well. It is just one roll of the dice over and over with different minor BBUs. Yes, the character learns something (very minor) about the biggest BBU some of the time, and the MC occasionally gets closer to the BBU when one of the minions is overcome, but…why are the minions doing what they are doing? They aren’t soldiers under orders. At least I don’t think they are. It isn’t clear. It is so random. So, while the biggest BBU may have a reason, a motivation for his actions, and the MC has reasons and motivations, none of the minor BBUs have any reason to be following orders or attacking the MC. I have put the book down 5 or 6 times over the last few weeks.

As I read back over this, it sounds like a rant. It isn’t. It’s surprise. That surprise has sent me back to my own WIP and I have looked at the last Jane Yellowrock book several times to make sure I know the BBU’s motivation. To make sure the things that stand in her way are real problems and not just something I threw on the page to get word count.

What are your main character’s motivations? What the minor BBUs and major BBU’s motivations? When you write them down do they make sense? What stands in the way of the MC achieving his/her goals? Are the MCs having to fight and grow and change to achieve them?

Faith
www.faithhunter.net

When I was a kid, I loved to pretend I was someone special.  Yes, I know, we’re all special, but that’s not quite what I’m going for here.  One summer we visited the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Back then there were a number of shipwreck ruins on the sand.  I climbed onto them and played pirates, the wind whipping through my hair as I waved a stick for a sword.  Another summer we traveled north from Virginia all the way to Canada, staying in a bunch of lushly wooded campgrounds along the way.  My cousin and I wandered among the trees, pretending to be Robin Hood’s men and hunting for magical geodes, armed with my daddy’s hammer and two bows we’d constructed from sticks and string.  (My cousin had a sliver of granite in her thumb until the day she died, from our continual rock-bashing.)   When I moved to South Carolina, the house we lived in was a few yards from a marsh.  There’s something eerie and lovely about marshes, and I spent hours climbing on the branches of live oaks and sitting quietly, waiting for the fae to appear and take me to their land under the hills. 

All those things I did because I read books.  I read about magical creatures and mythical adventures, places that I could never see with my ordinary eyes, but only with the sight of my imagination. And as I read, I discovered that I wanted to be more than just a school kid.  I wanted to fly, to cast spells, to fight evil and emerge triumphant.  I wanted to be those heroes I read about.

According to a study published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a reader who becomes utterly engrossed in a work of fiction can find his behavior mimicking that of his favorite character.  In other words, you are what you read.  It depends on how deeply the reader is drawn, of course, and even on what kind of reader you might be.  Not everyone becomes immersed, and I doubt that sort of reader would have the same experience, but generally, I think the study might have a point.  I know that I was affected by what I read.  I learned ways of dealing with my fellow human beings by reading what fictional characters did.  I used to be shy in middle and high school, until the year I read Dune.  Paul Atreides was taken from his home, dropped into a world he couldn’t possibly have been prepared for, and then discovered that he was different in ways he’d never suspected.  I was different, too (not the level of a Muad’Dib, of course – we can’t all be messiahs!) and now I saw that different was okay.  Even cool.  If Paul could overcome the tragedies he suffered, then I could overcome high school.  And I did.  It wasn’t all thanks to Paul, of course, but he helped. 

I want to hear today about characters whose behavior spoke to you, made such an impression on you that you found yourself changed.  Huge ways or small, it doesn’t matter – it’s the change that’s important.   Tell me your tale.

That’s right, I’m talking about cheerleaders.  Not the ones who wear short skirts and build human pyramids, but the ones who sometimes keep us going. 

Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”  I’ve always understood this on a level, but it wasn’t until I began my current project that I truly internalized it.  Humor has always been a defense mechanism for me.  Snark and sarcasm come naturally.  Holding it back is hard.  Emotion is harder.  But the novel I’m working on right now is deep and dark, psychological and suspenseful, and it deals with some extremely difficult issues.  Devastating, even.  This means several things:

1)      I have to GO THERE.  You can not write a dark novel without getting into the mindset.  Just as profilers need to get into the heads of the killers they’re tracking, you have to be the person or people you’re writing.  You can’t just walk a mile in their shoes, you have to live the narrative in their heads and hearts.

2)      There’s no safety suit.  You can’t shield yourself and still tap the well of emotion that you need to plumb.

3)      You need cheerleaders.

To be honest, #3 is true for whatever kind of artistic endeavor you undertake.  Art is often speculative in the sense of being done “on spec”—live without a net…or contract.  No one can tell you its worth before they actually see the finished product, or at least a really significant portion thereof.  In other words, when you’re starting out a new novel or proposal, you have to pour blood, sweat and tears into it, then polish it to a high gloss before anyone ever sees it and says to you, “Yes!”  Right?  Wrong.  Oh, you do want to get it into the best shape of its life before the publishing pro sees it, but sometimes you need some perspective.  You need someone to assure you that all the time spent away from your family and endlessly revising that opening scene to the point where you feel you’re making no progress at all will be worth it in the end.  You need your cheerleaders.  At least I do, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. 

Now, I’m not talking about yes men and women, who will tell you that something is wonderful even if it isn’t.  I’m talking about people you trust to tell it like it is, because those will be the people whose opinions mean the most.  They might be critique partners or a group, if they can be as enthusiastic as they are brutal.  They might be readers (as opposed to critiquers, though they’re, of course, readers too), or even family members, though I’d be careful about that.  The important thing is that art, whether visual, textual or experiential, is not just about the artist, but the interaction of the audience with the piece.  Sometimes, you just need to know if you’re striking the right chord.  That, to me, is priceless.