Yesterday, I wrote a new story. It had no guns, no light-saber-wielding hobbits, not even a time traveler. It started with a girl in a coffee shop and went on from there. I've never written about an ordinary person in an ordinary world sitting in a coffee shop - I didn't know what to expect. But then, who is ever truly ordinary? Can any human being be considered reliably normal?
The impetus for this story came from my MFA thesis advisor. I met her for the first time yesterday during our department orientation. As we all sat around the table - eight fiction writers, two of them faculty - we talked about what it meant to be in an MFA program. And my thesis advisor recommended that as we work through the next two years, we should each try to generate new work. We should be experimenting with new ideas, developing stories which may not succeed. As she said, a spectacular failure is better than always turning in "perfect" work.
Last night, I started with a girl in a coffee shop. Then her parents appeared. Then friends of hers outside. Someone had a prosthetic arm, others were playing Scrabble. I didn't know where any of it was going, but there were no laser cannons. No solar flares, no end of the world, no entropic heat death of the universe. I left out the standard plot drivers of speculative fiction (which I'm good at) and went with writing about the kind of people you might find on the street (which I'm not so good at).
Honestly, I was surprised. I ended up writing a story about an anorexic who is oppressed by her well-intentioned parents. Did I know I would write about this? Nope. Never would have predicted it. If I had predicted it, the story would have fallen flat. It would have been a diatribe about college and repression and the injustice of living. Maybe it still is. But I didn't know I was writing about those things until they happened. I didn't try fitting the story to any of the molds I'm accustomed to, and yet I ended up touching on themes that I've always wanted to write about. It even has a modicum of racial tension, something I've never had the courage to write about directly.
So is it good? I think so. The story works. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The characted changes, somewhat, over time. We have conflict. It takes on a side of life I understand strangely well, but haven't really written about, this drive to see students perform academically at all costs. More importantly, though, the story is unique. It pushes my writing into uncharted territory. I've proven to myself that I can craft a plot without resorting to the deux ex machina of overwhelming speculation.
This, I think, is critical for good writing. The reason that many stories in speculative genres like fantasy and science fiction fall apart is the lack of character-driven plot. A story is nothing without character - as human beings, we want to read the stories of other human beings. We want to understand our fellow travelers on this blue Earth. But when that Earth is about to be devoured by hungry nanomachines from Andromeda, we all know what the protagonist will (must!) do - save the Earth. And many speculative writers, unfortunately, fail to create characters who are nuanced enough to save the Earth in a "human" manner. We humans never simply solve a problem - we try to make the problem work for us. We try to make our lives fulfilling and secure. But when that asteroid is coming in and the atmosphere is boiling away, it's easy to ignore this. Sure, astronaut dude is saving the planet, but what about his wife and his kids and his parents and that roommate he had in college who still hates him for making the astronaut corps? The Earth's about to be crushed, man. We don't have no time to think about no hateful roommates.
This is why I'm so happy with my story from last night. I want to write science fiction - good science fiction. Character-driven science fiction. But in writing stories with themes from out-there, you have to first learn how to write the people down here. And I don't mean write about them - I mean write them into your stories, write them as people, write their lives as if they could happen. And as we strip away the trappings of speculation, as we get down to the bare bones of what makes these protagonists as real as people, we discover the personal plots that make our lives and our stories truly come alive.
Showing posts with label protagonist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label protagonist. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Cheeky Characters Write Themselves
Yesterday, I had the sad job of watching a story die on the page. It shouldn’t have died, I figured – it was the prologue. It had all the elements of a good prologue – a protagonist scorned, a world of injustice, the start of a very long journey. And yet the story stopped. I made it halfway to the end of prologue and found nothing more to write. This bothered me because the novel’s already half-written. After 42,000 words of novel, what’s a few hundred words of prologue? Why would it be so hard to write a stirring introduction to a story that’s already halfway done?
The problem was expectation. As I noted in “Hit Your Muse With a Rock,” expectation can kill inspiration where it counts most – on paper. As writers, we struggle with two expectations – we expect a certain quality in our words, and we expect a certain ability in ourselves. In good writers, these expectations are not necessarily in agreement, but they are in harmony. The writer expects that he or she can write, and the words produced generally meet the expectation of decent work. But most beginning writers face the problem of low self-esteem coupled with an intense desire to write something good, to write something incredible. The low self-esteem results from lack of practice, and the desire is a natural product of Barnes and Noble. Today, we are surrounded by good books. Even the second-tier authors we rarely hear of are very good writers. As human beings, we feel that we have to match their performance in order to join their ranks.
This expectation of great work kills the creative process. It turns writers into control freaks. We spent hours mulling over the meaning of a single line, lose precious minutes trying to decide between “he said” and “said he.” The momentum of the moment stalls as the process of writing gives way to the process of frustration.
Unfortunately, lesser expectation often creates the same problem. Yesterday, my prologue had little chance of greatness. I wasn’t looking for great – I was looking for an introduction, a way to explain the character who stars in my novel. When the story stalled, I shrugged and walked away. I figured inspiration would come to me, but it didn’t. The expectation that killed this work was a desire to mold the character myself, to control the outcome of this prologue to match the novel. I had turned into a control freak of limited scope, but the effect was equally devastating – the story stopped. The words ran dry. The prologue sat unfinished.
My story needs a prologue, so I’ll start it again. But on the second try, I will remember the cardinal rule of fiction – the best protagonists write themselves.
Now, you’re wondering how I can label this the “cardinal rule.” If I had a dollar for every “first rule of writing” I’ve heard, I wouldn’t need to publish to pay the rent. But the fact is, life is about conflict. Great stories are about conflict. Readers sit riveted because they want to know what happens next, because they can’t predict from page one the outcome of page two. But if you want to keep readers in their seats through page four hundred, you must maintain the same unpredictable tension on every page of the book, whether it’s page one, two, or three-seventy-three.
There are two processes you can use to accomplish this. In the first process, you can carefully plan out a riveting story and then write it. I don’t recommend this. Very few writers can pull it off. This method fails because the inner control freak gets free reign. In the outline, every plot twist seems simply stunning. But in the manuscript, as you’re trying to foreshadow and trying to build tension and trying to insert the critical plot twist – everything just like it says on the outline – the story stagnates. It sounds dry. It’s a lot of trying and not a lot of “let’s see what happens next.”
The second process is better. Start with your character, and then write. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going to write a good story – in many ways, it’s better if you don’t. Pick your favorite fictional protagonist – I’m fond of Jane Eyre, myself – and think about what you enjoyed about that character. Was it the way the character reacted to the world? The words the character said? The way they always managed to do the “right” thing, even if it was unexpected or simply outrageous?
Characters don’t achieve this kind of free-spirited winner-take-all success through outlines. They become flesh-and-blood heroines through their own quirks and their own ways of viewing the world. They become realistic because the author allows the character the freedom to pick what comes next. Stories are about conflict, yes, but they are most riveting when they are about personal conflict, the kind of struggle that rocks the protagonist to her bones.
The prologue I couldn’t finish failed in that regard. I inserted my protagonist, but then I withheld the conflict. I made it a secret. She didn’t know that she was walking into a trap, or that she was about to start her long journey. She had nothing to do but stand and wait.
Readers hate waiting. And it’s a dull theme to write. I grew bored, and the writing stopped. When I start again – from the beginning – the protagonist will know the conflict. She’ll know what she’s fighting for – or at least what she’s fighting against. And I’ll have an idea of what the protagonist will do, but I won’t know. That part’s up to her. As a full-grown character, she has to make decisions. She has to be an adult because that’s what readers want to see – an adult making grown-up decisions regarding her own life, regardless of how twisted the world she’s written into.
So as you go forth and write, remember to ease up on your protagonists. Allow them the freedom to make the choices that you yourself would not make. If the protagonist wants to try something outside your plans for the story, go with it. Try it out. Let the characters speak for themselves. You’ll have more fun, as will your readers.
The problem was expectation. As I noted in “Hit Your Muse With a Rock,” expectation can kill inspiration where it counts most – on paper. As writers, we struggle with two expectations – we expect a certain quality in our words, and we expect a certain ability in ourselves. In good writers, these expectations are not necessarily in agreement, but they are in harmony. The writer expects that he or she can write, and the words produced generally meet the expectation of decent work. But most beginning writers face the problem of low self-esteem coupled with an intense desire to write something good, to write something incredible. The low self-esteem results from lack of practice, and the desire is a natural product of Barnes and Noble. Today, we are surrounded by good books. Even the second-tier authors we rarely hear of are very good writers. As human beings, we feel that we have to match their performance in order to join their ranks.
This expectation of great work kills the creative process. It turns writers into control freaks. We spent hours mulling over the meaning of a single line, lose precious minutes trying to decide between “he said” and “said he.” The momentum of the moment stalls as the process of writing gives way to the process of frustration.
Unfortunately, lesser expectation often creates the same problem. Yesterday, my prologue had little chance of greatness. I wasn’t looking for great – I was looking for an introduction, a way to explain the character who stars in my novel. When the story stalled, I shrugged and walked away. I figured inspiration would come to me, but it didn’t. The expectation that killed this work was a desire to mold the character myself, to control the outcome of this prologue to match the novel. I had turned into a control freak of limited scope, but the effect was equally devastating – the story stopped. The words ran dry. The prologue sat unfinished.
My story needs a prologue, so I’ll start it again. But on the second try, I will remember the cardinal rule of fiction – the best protagonists write themselves.
Now, you’re wondering how I can label this the “cardinal rule.” If I had a dollar for every “first rule of writing” I’ve heard, I wouldn’t need to publish to pay the rent. But the fact is, life is about conflict. Great stories are about conflict. Readers sit riveted because they want to know what happens next, because they can’t predict from page one the outcome of page two. But if you want to keep readers in their seats through page four hundred, you must maintain the same unpredictable tension on every page of the book, whether it’s page one, two, or three-seventy-three.
There are two processes you can use to accomplish this. In the first process, you can carefully plan out a riveting story and then write it. I don’t recommend this. Very few writers can pull it off. This method fails because the inner control freak gets free reign. In the outline, every plot twist seems simply stunning. But in the manuscript, as you’re trying to foreshadow and trying to build tension and trying to insert the critical plot twist – everything just like it says on the outline – the story stagnates. It sounds dry. It’s a lot of trying and not a lot of “let’s see what happens next.”
The second process is better. Start with your character, and then write. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going to write a good story – in many ways, it’s better if you don’t. Pick your favorite fictional protagonist – I’m fond of Jane Eyre, myself – and think about what you enjoyed about that character. Was it the way the character reacted to the world? The words the character said? The way they always managed to do the “right” thing, even if it was unexpected or simply outrageous?
Characters don’t achieve this kind of free-spirited winner-take-all success through outlines. They become flesh-and-blood heroines through their own quirks and their own ways of viewing the world. They become realistic because the author allows the character the freedom to pick what comes next. Stories are about conflict, yes, but they are most riveting when they are about personal conflict, the kind of struggle that rocks the protagonist to her bones.
The prologue I couldn’t finish failed in that regard. I inserted my protagonist, but then I withheld the conflict. I made it a secret. She didn’t know that she was walking into a trap, or that she was about to start her long journey. She had nothing to do but stand and wait.
Readers hate waiting. And it’s a dull theme to write. I grew bored, and the writing stopped. When I start again – from the beginning – the protagonist will know the conflict. She’ll know what she’s fighting for – or at least what she’s fighting against. And I’ll have an idea of what the protagonist will do, but I won’t know. That part’s up to her. As a full-grown character, she has to make decisions. She has to be an adult because that’s what readers want to see – an adult making grown-up decisions regarding her own life, regardless of how twisted the world she’s written into.
So as you go forth and write, remember to ease up on your protagonists. Allow them the freedom to make the choices that you yourself would not make. If the protagonist wants to try something outside your plans for the story, go with it. Try it out. Let the characters speak for themselves. You’ll have more fun, as will your readers.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Hit Your Muse With a Rock
There is a very healthy market of books on how to write and – more importantly – how to find inspiration. Every day, frustrated writers struggle with getting their characters on paper – they battle writer’s block and boredom and the conviction that the story isn’t worth writing. They rack their brains for ideas on how to liven the story, how to make it work, how to “find their muse.” And yes, many of them are sitting in the chair, hand on pencil, eyes on the page as they struggle, so it isn’t even an issue of taking the time to write. It’s an issue of making the writing fit the time.
Seriously, when your muse deserts you like this, hit her with a rock.
Blink. A rock? How can I advocate hitting an imaginary goddess of inspiration with a rock?
It’s simple. When a story stalls, that’s your invitation to write whatever comes to mind. You can begin with the most outlandish words you can think of. For example: “Muse, dear, I’m mad at you. I need a good story. Why aren’t you helping me? I’m throwing a brick your way.”
It sounds like a twisted form of on-the-couch therapy, but the key to this technique is that you write as you do it. Writer’s block is so harmful because it stops your desire to write. It halts the pen with thoughts of inadequacy. Hitting your muse with a rock is not the way to start the Great American Novel. What I’m advocating is a way to break that writer’s block. This probably won’t produce words you can use, and anyone looking over your shoulder might wonder at your sanity when the muse writes back with “Oh yeah? A rock? Is that the best you’ve got, writer-boy?” But this technique will get you writing. It will get thoughts from your mind onto the page, reopening the all-important path between eyes and pen.
This technique is actually a modified version of freewriting. Most writers use freewriting entirely off-the-manuscript. They find a fresh scrap of paper, scribble away for fifteen minutes or so to get in the head of their protagonist, and then they return to their typing. Hitting the muse with a rock requires no such interruption. As you sit before the precious manuscript with nothing to say, you duke it out with your muse right there. You type it onto your manuscript wherever it is you happen to be. Sure, the muse holds no real part in the story, but it relieves a lot of stress to throw rocks on paper. It loosens up the manuscript itself. Remember that writer’s block is the result of high expectation for the manuscript coupled with low expectations of your own abilities. Both of these impulses are wrong. A manuscript is never all-important – when you’re still at the stage for writer’s block, you’re sitting before a first or maybe a second draft. The story isn’t done yet. There’s plenty of room for change. Throw some bricks – you can always delete them later. A press of a key or a swipe of the pen restores the original work.
The secret, of course, is that you don’t need to throw bricks. You don’t need to involve your muse. As you develop this technique, you can focus it to meet the needs of your story. I discovered how much fun this can be during National Novel Writing Month, that wild month of the 50,000 word novel. For NaNoWriMo, the only requirement is word count, but getting that word count is hard. A week of writer’s block can be a deathblow to your work. To produce 1,667 words a day during the month of Thanksgiving and Christmas Shopping, every moment counts. You have to be focused and you have to be excited. The fingers must fly. So I began throwing rocks at my protagonists. Rocks, dragons, tanks, even a computer that was allergic to water. I tossed in absurd challenges, ideas that I would have never written had I taken the time to worry about the final product.
Strangely, the story I wrote worked. The protagonists fought back. Parts of the work seemed silly and ridiculous, I kept writing. The audacity of the story kept me in my seat – I never knew what would happen next, but I always knew I could find another rock.
There’s a reason why this technique works. Deep down, every story is about conflict. It’s about a protagonist facing a challenge and learning to overcome. Challenge on the page takes many forms, but you can imagine it as throwing a rock. Remember that your rock can represent any difficulty. It can be the prom dress that doesn’t fit. It can be the spooky neighbor who invites your protagonist to see the windowless basement after dinner. It can be the cute crush who’s too nice and too funny and to perfect for your protagonist to bear thinking about.
How does your protagonist respond to the rock? Does she duck aside, find her own rock, and throw it back at you? Or does she catch it in the stomach and throw up? Don’t think about it – write it. The key to this technique is to write every step of the way. Keep it fun. Pick an unusual rock, something that does not fit with the rest of your story. Has the heroic knight of the quantum order defeated the horrible space dragon? Give him the queen’s baby nephew to keep quiet for an hour. Has your heroine survived budget cuts and layoffs to become the executive vice president? Maybe her boss the vampire invites her to a round of midnight golf.
Remember, the goal here is not to write the Great American Novel. The goal is to break through writer’s block and to keep writing, to get the ideas free-flowing. Sometimes, you may discover an entertaining twist that you enjoy more than the original story. Other times, you’ll get a good laugh, reconnect with your characters, and then pick up from where you left off. The hardest part is letting go. You have to relax, ignore the expectations of greatness, and focus on your eyes and your fingers.
And, when all else fails, feel free to blame your muse. Just beware of the brick she’ll throw back.
Seriously, when your muse deserts you like this, hit her with a rock.
Blink. A rock? How can I advocate hitting an imaginary goddess of inspiration with a rock?
It’s simple. When a story stalls, that’s your invitation to write whatever comes to mind. You can begin with the most outlandish words you can think of. For example: “Muse, dear, I’m mad at you. I need a good story. Why aren’t you helping me? I’m throwing a brick your way.”
It sounds like a twisted form of on-the-couch therapy, but the key to this technique is that you write as you do it. Writer’s block is so harmful because it stops your desire to write. It halts the pen with thoughts of inadequacy. Hitting your muse with a rock is not the way to start the Great American Novel. What I’m advocating is a way to break that writer’s block. This probably won’t produce words you can use, and anyone looking over your shoulder might wonder at your sanity when the muse writes back with “Oh yeah? A rock? Is that the best you’ve got, writer-boy?” But this technique will get you writing. It will get thoughts from your mind onto the page, reopening the all-important path between eyes and pen.
This technique is actually a modified version of freewriting. Most writers use freewriting entirely off-the-manuscript. They find a fresh scrap of paper, scribble away for fifteen minutes or so to get in the head of their protagonist, and then they return to their typing. Hitting the muse with a rock requires no such interruption. As you sit before the precious manuscript with nothing to say, you duke it out with your muse right there. You type it onto your manuscript wherever it is you happen to be. Sure, the muse holds no real part in the story, but it relieves a lot of stress to throw rocks on paper. It loosens up the manuscript itself. Remember that writer’s block is the result of high expectation for the manuscript coupled with low expectations of your own abilities. Both of these impulses are wrong. A manuscript is never all-important – when you’re still at the stage for writer’s block, you’re sitting before a first or maybe a second draft. The story isn’t done yet. There’s plenty of room for change. Throw some bricks – you can always delete them later. A press of a key or a swipe of the pen restores the original work.
The secret, of course, is that you don’t need to throw bricks. You don’t need to involve your muse. As you develop this technique, you can focus it to meet the needs of your story. I discovered how much fun this can be during National Novel Writing Month, that wild month of the 50,000 word novel. For NaNoWriMo, the only requirement is word count, but getting that word count is hard. A week of writer’s block can be a deathblow to your work. To produce 1,667 words a day during the month of Thanksgiving and Christmas Shopping, every moment counts. You have to be focused and you have to be excited. The fingers must fly. So I began throwing rocks at my protagonists. Rocks, dragons, tanks, even a computer that was allergic to water. I tossed in absurd challenges, ideas that I would have never written had I taken the time to worry about the final product.
Strangely, the story I wrote worked. The protagonists fought back. Parts of the work seemed silly and ridiculous, I kept writing. The audacity of the story kept me in my seat – I never knew what would happen next, but I always knew I could find another rock.
There’s a reason why this technique works. Deep down, every story is about conflict. It’s about a protagonist facing a challenge and learning to overcome. Challenge on the page takes many forms, but you can imagine it as throwing a rock. Remember that your rock can represent any difficulty. It can be the prom dress that doesn’t fit. It can be the spooky neighbor who invites your protagonist to see the windowless basement after dinner. It can be the cute crush who’s too nice and too funny and to perfect for your protagonist to bear thinking about.
How does your protagonist respond to the rock? Does she duck aside, find her own rock, and throw it back at you? Or does she catch it in the stomach and throw up? Don’t think about it – write it. The key to this technique is to write every step of the way. Keep it fun. Pick an unusual rock, something that does not fit with the rest of your story. Has the heroic knight of the quantum order defeated the horrible space dragon? Give him the queen’s baby nephew to keep quiet for an hour. Has your heroine survived budget cuts and layoffs to become the executive vice president? Maybe her boss the vampire invites her to a round of midnight golf.
Remember, the goal here is not to write the Great American Novel. The goal is to break through writer’s block and to keep writing, to get the ideas free-flowing. Sometimes, you may discover an entertaining twist that you enjoy more than the original story. Other times, you’ll get a good laugh, reconnect with your characters, and then pick up from where you left off. The hardest part is letting go. You have to relax, ignore the expectations of greatness, and focus on your eyes and your fingers.
And, when all else fails, feel free to blame your muse. Just beware of the brick she’ll throw back.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Fiction 101 Workshop Curriculum
Fiction 101 - Introduction
Learning to write fiction provides a unique challenge to any writer. Unlike nonfiction, which is based on established facts, or poetry, which can be entirely imagined, fiction depends upon rooting an imagined story in reality. Good fiction allows readers to suspend their disbelief - for the duration of the story, readers believe in the story, they believe in the characters. It might be a story about vampires or it could be aliens fighting for control of Mars, but if it's well written the readers will set aside their doubts and allow the question that drives all imagination: "what if?"
In Fiction 101, we examine the fundamentals that allow suspension of disbelief. For this class, each student will write a prompt-directed story. First, we root the story with setting, providing a stage for all that occurs. Then we establish our characters: the protagonist, the antagonist, their conflict. We use dialogue to flesh-out the story further, to develop the conflict and reveal the sides of our characters that are not seen directly. Finally, we bring the conflict to a head and resolve the story.
Throughout this workshop, students will receive feedback from the instructor after each assignment. Through ongoing discussion forums, the instructor will provide topics for consideration and fellow students will discuss their progress. There will opportunities for questions and feedback throughout. At the end of the course, students will share their stories with classmates for critique.
Fiction 101 - Activities:
Setting - Set Location
Pick a Room that has strong memories for you. It could be your own room now, you're parent's bedroom, the principal's office, your grandfather's attic. It should be a room that holds personal meaning to you, a room from which you can draw personal connections. Describe this room. What's in this room? What's missing that should be there? How do the contents of this room represent it's inhabitants? How do the habits of the people affect this room, the way it's been laid out? The aim is 250-750 words.
Character - Pick a Protagonist
Imagine your protagonist in the room you've described. This protagonist can be someone you know, or a stranger who fascinates you, or simply someone you made up. Think about what your protagonist looks like. What does he or she wear? How do we see the life of this person in his face, in her hands? What does this person want or need most right now?
Now write your protagonist into the room. You may use first or third person narrative, but limit your point-of-view to information that your protagonist would personally know and care about. Your reader will see the story through this character's eyes. The goal is 250-750 words.
Conflict - Insert Antagonist
Insert character two. Consider how this character prevents your protagonist from fulfilling his or her needs. Why do your protagonist and antagonist hate one another? What topics will they never discuss? Write about this from your protagonists perspective. Write about how these to people avoid one another while inhabiting the same room. Remember that in developing conflict, you must continue to uphold setting along with descriptions of both characters. What are these two characters doing in the room? How do their actions display the turmoil? What do they say - or not say - to one another?
As you write this, you are revealing an important aspect of your protagonist. Make sure that you write about the key change that your protagonist must make in his or her life. Think about the lesson you want your protagonist to learn from this story. What plans does the protagonist make while sparring with the antagonist? Are these plans good or bad?
The goal is 500 words, but you can go longer.
Dialogue/Description - Introduce Outside Party
Dialogue is one of the most potent literary tools at your disposal. It is dialogue that drives scene by defining the relationships between characters. Description may indicate feelings and setting can influence tone, but the words that your characters exchange will leave the most lasting impression on the reader. Your characters must sound believable, and they must exchange information which drives the plot forward. For this exercise, your protagonist is still in the room, but the antagonist has left. Briefly describe why the antagonist has left - is it something the protagonist said? Or is it part of your antagonists plot to rule this world?
Insert a third character, a neutral party, someone who is not part of the conflict but should be aware of it. The first part of this exercise is the way your protagonist views the third party. What brief detail defines this third person? How does the protagonist think of this person?
Next, use dialogue to reveal who this character is. What does this person care about? Does the protagonist need to win this character as an ally? Does this person have valuable information for your protagonist? Or has the antagonist bought him off? Your protagonist is trying to justify his own point of view in the conflict with the antagonist - this dialogue is his chance to justify himself through words. The goal for this exercise is 500 words, but you can go longer.
Dialogue: The Three-Way
Uh-oh, the antagonist returns…and now we have a three-way dialogue. Remember that conversations consist of short sentences - everyone wants to be heard, even those afraid to speak. While your protagonist and antagonist are duking it out for supremacy, your third character will have his or her own agenda. What is this agenda? We don't know because we see the world through the eyes of the one protagonist only. Using dialogue, description, and your protagonist's intuition, reveal as much as you can about your antagonist and his relation to the third character. As in other exercises, the setting of the room continues to evolve - has anything changed in the room since assignment one? How does the change affect the arena of conflict? (e.g. if the AC goes out and everyone's sweating, will tempers be lost?) Remember that you do not need to resolve your story just yet - that's the next assignment. The goal for this one is 500 words or more.
Resolution: The Clean-Up
The key to ending a story is resolving the conflict. Somehow, the energy driving the protagonist's desires must dissipate. Does the guy get what he wants? Does the girl realize she needed something else entirely? Does our hero oust the antagonist from an ill-gotten throne, or has compromise postponed our battle? The goal is 250-750 words.
Looking Back: Revision and Critique
Now that you've completed your story, the final portion of the workshop is dedicated to examing what you've accomplished. Each student will complete revisions and submit a second draft of their story for student critique. The writing assignment for this portion is to provide feedback for fellow students. The instructor will lead the story critique with leading questions for each story and highlights. Ground rules will be maintained to establish an open and welcoming environment for critique.
Click here to Register for Fiction 101.
Learning to write fiction provides a unique challenge to any writer. Unlike nonfiction, which is based on established facts, or poetry, which can be entirely imagined, fiction depends upon rooting an imagined story in reality. Good fiction allows readers to suspend their disbelief - for the duration of the story, readers believe in the story, they believe in the characters. It might be a story about vampires or it could be aliens fighting for control of Mars, but if it's well written the readers will set aside their doubts and allow the question that drives all imagination: "what if?"
In Fiction 101, we examine the fundamentals that allow suspension of disbelief. For this class, each student will write a prompt-directed story. First, we root the story with setting, providing a stage for all that occurs. Then we establish our characters: the protagonist, the antagonist, their conflict. We use dialogue to flesh-out the story further, to develop the conflict and reveal the sides of our characters that are not seen directly. Finally, we bring the conflict to a head and resolve the story.
Throughout this workshop, students will receive feedback from the instructor after each assignment. Through ongoing discussion forums, the instructor will provide topics for consideration and fellow students will discuss their progress. There will opportunities for questions and feedback throughout. At the end of the course, students will share their stories with classmates for critique.
Fiction 101 - Activities:
Setting - Set Location
Pick a Room that has strong memories for you. It could be your own room now, you're parent's bedroom, the principal's office, your grandfather's attic. It should be a room that holds personal meaning to you, a room from which you can draw personal connections. Describe this room. What's in this room? What's missing that should be there? How do the contents of this room represent it's inhabitants? How do the habits of the people affect this room, the way it's been laid out? The aim is 250-750 words.
Character - Pick a Protagonist
Imagine your protagonist in the room you've described. This protagonist can be someone you know, or a stranger who fascinates you, or simply someone you made up. Think about what your protagonist looks like. What does he or she wear? How do we see the life of this person in his face, in her hands? What does this person want or need most right now?
Now write your protagonist into the room. You may use first or third person narrative, but limit your point-of-view to information that your protagonist would personally know and care about. Your reader will see the story through this character's eyes. The goal is 250-750 words.
Conflict - Insert Antagonist
Insert character two. Consider how this character prevents your protagonist from fulfilling his or her needs. Why do your protagonist and antagonist hate one another? What topics will they never discuss? Write about this from your protagonists perspective. Write about how these to people avoid one another while inhabiting the same room. Remember that in developing conflict, you must continue to uphold setting along with descriptions of both characters. What are these two characters doing in the room? How do their actions display the turmoil? What do they say - or not say - to one another?
As you write this, you are revealing an important aspect of your protagonist. Make sure that you write about the key change that your protagonist must make in his or her life. Think about the lesson you want your protagonist to learn from this story. What plans does the protagonist make while sparring with the antagonist? Are these plans good or bad?
The goal is 500 words, but you can go longer.
Dialogue/Description - Introduce Outside Party
Dialogue is one of the most potent literary tools at your disposal. It is dialogue that drives scene by defining the relationships between characters. Description may indicate feelings and setting can influence tone, but the words that your characters exchange will leave the most lasting impression on the reader. Your characters must sound believable, and they must exchange information which drives the plot forward. For this exercise, your protagonist is still in the room, but the antagonist has left. Briefly describe why the antagonist has left - is it something the protagonist said? Or is it part of your antagonists plot to rule this world?
Insert a third character, a neutral party, someone who is not part of the conflict but should be aware of it. The first part of this exercise is the way your protagonist views the third party. What brief detail defines this third person? How does the protagonist think of this person?
Next, use dialogue to reveal who this character is. What does this person care about? Does the protagonist need to win this character as an ally? Does this person have valuable information for your protagonist? Or has the antagonist bought him off? Your protagonist is trying to justify his own point of view in the conflict with the antagonist - this dialogue is his chance to justify himself through words. The goal for this exercise is 500 words, but you can go longer.
Dialogue: The Three-Way
Uh-oh, the antagonist returns…and now we have a three-way dialogue. Remember that conversations consist of short sentences - everyone wants to be heard, even those afraid to speak. While your protagonist and antagonist are duking it out for supremacy, your third character will have his or her own agenda. What is this agenda? We don't know because we see the world through the eyes of the one protagonist only. Using dialogue, description, and your protagonist's intuition, reveal as much as you can about your antagonist and his relation to the third character. As in other exercises, the setting of the room continues to evolve - has anything changed in the room since assignment one? How does the change affect the arena of conflict? (e.g. if the AC goes out and everyone's sweating, will tempers be lost?) Remember that you do not need to resolve your story just yet - that's the next assignment. The goal for this one is 500 words or more.
Resolution: The Clean-Up
The key to ending a story is resolving the conflict. Somehow, the energy driving the protagonist's desires must dissipate. Does the guy get what he wants? Does the girl realize she needed something else entirely? Does our hero oust the antagonist from an ill-gotten throne, or has compromise postponed our battle? The goal is 250-750 words.
Looking Back: Revision and Critique
Now that you've completed your story, the final portion of the workshop is dedicated to examing what you've accomplished. Each student will complete revisions and submit a second draft of their story for student critique. The writing assignment for this portion is to provide feedback for fellow students. The instructor will lead the story critique with leading questions for each story and highlights. Ground rules will be maintained to establish an open and welcoming environment for critique.
Click here to Register for Fiction 101.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Light-Hearted Look at the Hazards of Being a Writer
Light-hearted? There is nothing light-hearted about the hazards of being a writer. Every day, I hear voices in my head and feel compelled to talk back.
“No you don’t.”
What? Dag-nabbit, there goes another one. She’s a protagonist, I think…I’ve been trying to delete her.
“Don’t even try, bucko.”
So yes, it’s a serious condition, this mental deterioration which results from writing. The longer you work with the words, the more they begin to seep through you subconscious mind and take over the rest of your life. You begin to think of freedom of speech as a right and you try to enforce it, but then you have characters who begin to say terrible, horrible, unpublishable things.
“What, you think I’ll be like Jane Fonda? She only said the c-word. And it was only national television.”
Dagny, stop it – I don’t need to get banned from Helium because of you.
“What, you’re afraid of a fictional character?”
I’m not afraid of you, just afraid of what you’ll make me write.
“Well fudge,” Dagny mutters, planting hands on hips, glancing down at the polished handle of her plasma disintegrator, “how in the gosh-darned heck am I going to express myself? What, you call yourself a writer? More like a two-bit cyber-punk wannabe trying to drive traffic to some cheap-skate website.”
Like I said, it’s dangerous being a writer. Just when you think you’re safe, your fingers start typing out the n-word and the f-word and then all kinds of social norms get shattered in the name of literature. Before you know it, the Catholic Church is pounding at your front door while Homeland Security goons drag you out the back.
“Oh, you wish,” Dagny adds. “That only happens when you’re popular. I don’t think you have enough friends for that.”
Great. There it is, the greatest hazard of all, true death to the writer – self esteem so low that his own imagination fails to believe in him.
Dagny rolls her eyes. She would tap her foot on the ground, but I’ve been taught to never write in clichés.
“Oh, it’s not that I don’t believe in you,” Dagny says. “It’s just that we’re tired of your whining.”
We? Who’s we?
“We, us, the rest of the voices. What, you thought it was just me down here?”
Ah crud. I suppose I could just go ahead and ignore the physical hazards, then – carpal tunnel, eyestrain, mental disfigurement.
Dagny crosses her arms. “Mental disfigurement? Are you making up words again?”
No, I’m trying to describe the act of jabbing a pair of scissors through my skull. Man, can’t I get even a few moments without you crazy inner monologues? I’m trying to express a serious point here about the hazards of being a writer.
Another voice pipes in – Jonathan. He sounds tired again, as usual. “Hazards?” Jonathan asks. “I think you have it pretty good.”
Right. Listen, Jonathan, I know you don’t understand that you’re fictional, but you should at least know that you’re only some dude in a novel. It’s your job to face down fire-belching dragons and homicidal robots. It’s called poetic license.
Jonathan and Dagny exchange looks. Dagny mimes the act of jabbing a pair of scissors through somebody’s skull – probably mine.
Listen, I tell them, sitting at a keyboard all day isn’t as easy as it looks. I get migraines from neck pain, and my wrist still hurts, so if you buggers could just go back to whichever part of my brain spawned you, then I’ll go on back to work.
“Um, correct me if I’m wrong,” Dagny replies, “but, ah, aren’t we your work? Aren’t you, well, kinda unemployed when we’re quiet?”
I said can it!
“He’s bitter,” Jonathan tells her. “He thinks he’d rather be fighting the dragons himself.”
“Oh really? Why don’t we let him, the ingrate.”
“Trust me,” Jonathan tells her, “if real live dragons were a hazard of writing, our wonderful author would have a lot more than scissors sticking through his head right now.”
Right, right…moving on, let’s see if there’s something else to write about…something safe…a nonhazardous channel. Maybe politics. At least there I can express an opinion without overruling by myself.
“You wish.”
“Shh! Come on, Dagny, we gotta let him pretend. He’ll stop writing if he gets depressed.”
“So?”
“If he jabs those scissors through his forehead we’re dead.”
Dagny again rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”
“No you don’t.”
What? Dag-nabbit, there goes another one. She’s a protagonist, I think…I’ve been trying to delete her.
“Don’t even try, bucko.”
So yes, it’s a serious condition, this mental deterioration which results from writing. The longer you work with the words, the more they begin to seep through you subconscious mind and take over the rest of your life. You begin to think of freedom of speech as a right and you try to enforce it, but then you have characters who begin to say terrible, horrible, unpublishable things.
“What, you think I’ll be like Jane Fonda? She only said the c-word. And it was only national television.”
Dagny, stop it – I don’t need to get banned from Helium because of you.
“What, you’re afraid of a fictional character?”
I’m not afraid of you, just afraid of what you’ll make me write.
“Well fudge,” Dagny mutters, planting hands on hips, glancing down at the polished handle of her plasma disintegrator, “how in the gosh-darned heck am I going to express myself? What, you call yourself a writer? More like a two-bit cyber-punk wannabe trying to drive traffic to some cheap-skate website.”
Like I said, it’s dangerous being a writer. Just when you think you’re safe, your fingers start typing out the n-word and the f-word and then all kinds of social norms get shattered in the name of literature. Before you know it, the Catholic Church is pounding at your front door while Homeland Security goons drag you out the back.
“Oh, you wish,” Dagny adds. “That only happens when you’re popular. I don’t think you have enough friends for that.”
Great. There it is, the greatest hazard of all, true death to the writer – self esteem so low that his own imagination fails to believe in him.
Dagny rolls her eyes. She would tap her foot on the ground, but I’ve been taught to never write in clichés.
“Oh, it’s not that I don’t believe in you,” Dagny says. “It’s just that we’re tired of your whining.”
We? Who’s we?
“We, us, the rest of the voices. What, you thought it was just me down here?”
Ah crud. I suppose I could just go ahead and ignore the physical hazards, then – carpal tunnel, eyestrain, mental disfigurement.
Dagny crosses her arms. “Mental disfigurement? Are you making up words again?”
No, I’m trying to describe the act of jabbing a pair of scissors through my skull. Man, can’t I get even a few moments without you crazy inner monologues? I’m trying to express a serious point here about the hazards of being a writer.
Another voice pipes in – Jonathan. He sounds tired again, as usual. “Hazards?” Jonathan asks. “I think you have it pretty good.”
Right. Listen, Jonathan, I know you don’t understand that you’re fictional, but you should at least know that you’re only some dude in a novel. It’s your job to face down fire-belching dragons and homicidal robots. It’s called poetic license.
Jonathan and Dagny exchange looks. Dagny mimes the act of jabbing a pair of scissors through somebody’s skull – probably mine.
Listen, I tell them, sitting at a keyboard all day isn’t as easy as it looks. I get migraines from neck pain, and my wrist still hurts, so if you buggers could just go back to whichever part of my brain spawned you, then I’ll go on back to work.
“Um, correct me if I’m wrong,” Dagny replies, “but, ah, aren’t we your work? Aren’t you, well, kinda unemployed when we’re quiet?”
I said can it!
“He’s bitter,” Jonathan tells her. “He thinks he’d rather be fighting the dragons himself.”
“Oh really? Why don’t we let him, the ingrate.”
“Trust me,” Jonathan tells her, “if real live dragons were a hazard of writing, our wonderful author would have a lot more than scissors sticking through his head right now.”
Right, right…moving on, let’s see if there’s something else to write about…something safe…a nonhazardous channel. Maybe politics. At least there I can express an opinion without overruling by myself.
“You wish.”
“Shh! Come on, Dagny, we gotta let him pretend. He’ll stop writing if he gets depressed.”
“So?”
“If he jabs those scissors through his forehead we’re dead.”
Dagny again rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”
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