Situation is somewhat self explanatory: it is the external situation or state of affairs that your character must deal with. Ideally, you want to set up the big situation from the start of the book. Sally Protagonist visits home after pursuing her journalism career for a decade only to find that her mother is going to lose the family flower shop. She must find a way to save the shop and keep her editor back in the big city happy.  Or perhaps: Marshall Main, a jaded cop, is pulled into the seamy underside of the city in trying to help a young runaway who’s now disappeared. The brass don’t want him searching for this kid, for reasons unknown, yet he’s compelled by the last conversation he had with the girl before her disappearance.

Creating situations can sometimes be difficult in much the same way creating characters can be difficult. Your situation must be believable, but it must also be universal in some way, so that the reader can relate to what your character is about to go through or is trying to accomplish. And even as it’s relate-able, it must also be unique in some way. You must bring something to it that no one else has. Yet, the uniqueness can be something as simple as an unexpected setting. Or a slight twist of the norm–a young boy runs away from the circus, instead of running to join it. In this case, the universal aspect is the idea of escape from an unpleasant life or situation.

Of course, you will have your main situation, but also, over the course of the story, different situations string together to form your plot. Your character, by his actions, will be put in difficult circumstances and will have to find a way out. Each situation leads to another situation and by this method, your story is told!

Stay tuned for the third installment: Objective!

I got to ride my new motorcycle this afternoon and that was awesome! We found out that the front tire was low, which was why it was so difficult to control. Once we put air in it, riding the bike was a dream! I still got a little freaked out turning corners and probably will for awhile, but for now, I’m happy!

So recently I found out that Neil Gaiman is going to be at the Clarion Workshop this year! I’m a wee bit of a fangirl, so I am really excited to hear about this! (Oh and if you’ve never read Neil’s journal, for shame on you! For shame!) I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to go to the workshop, though. The application deadline is March 1. That poses a bit of a chronology issue for me.

Part of the application requirements are two short stories. I have several shorts laying around, but all are still in their first draft form. It’s going to require me to revise. And we all know how well I revise! :p Anyway, what it really comes down to is whether or not I’ll be able to get two shorts revised in time for the deadline or not, since I have to have my novel completely revised by April 10. How much money do I have to pay to get about 5 more useable hours out of each day?

Moreover, I think I’m a little bit intimidated. My understanding is that there’s a lot of spontaneous writing expected. I can’t recall if it’s Clarion  or Odyssey which requires a new story every day (I think it’s Odyssey). But either way, I don’t do that sort of writing very well. Given ten minutes in a writing class to write a few paragraphs about whatever–my brain freezes up and I just look at the page. I’ve never been good at that sort of writing.

I’m still going to see if I can get a couple stories polished, even though that aspect does scare the writerly doodoo out of me. I’m already in debt up to my eyeballs from grad school. What’s another $4k, right?

I’m a little snarky about the cost, I know, but Clarion is one of the best short story workshops out there for genre writers. A few of my fellow students at SHU are former Clarion students and they can’t say enough about it. So I’m intrigued about going. I really do believe in the usefulness of programs like these. I know the writers in my master’s program who’ve gone through Clarion are already phenomenal writers, even before SHU gets to them!

Any other graduates of Clarion or Odyssey out there? What was your experience?

Low Impact Woodland Home

My mentor, Mike Arnzen, tells me that I should take this time and really make my story shine. To show the world all the neat creativity I have. To surprise them, maybe scare them, impress them.

Revisions are difficult for me because I’ve never really done any. So I’m flying by the seat of my pants, fiddling with things in a marginal way, tweaking some wordage. Am I really revising? I have no idea.

Some of my classmates at SHU can take their manuscripts and completely rearrange the chapters, taking chapters from the middle, putting them at the front, etc. How do they do that? Maybe I’m just a linear thinker (so should I even be writing?), but my ms needs to be mostly in the order I’ve written it in. As it is, I’ve got a chapter that I have to find a way to fit in, so I’m going to need to hack two different chapters in half in order to get the chronology right. And that’s freaking me out, in itself.

Something I discovered about myself while writing this book: once it’s on paper, I think it’s holy. Okay, not really holy, but I’ve found that if I put something down on paper, it’s very, very difficult to make major changes to it. Psychologically speaking.

I made this realization about a year ago, when I was coming into the mid-point of my novel. I’d had to write a synopsis several months prior, before I really knew where the story was going. I just made something up for the second half, figuring I could change the synopsis once I figured out where the story was really going.

My muse, however, wasn’t privy to that plan.

When I came to the point in the story where I was supposed to write about my main character and her father hopping a plane to Europe to save her best friend from fiendish kidnappers, my muse decided to vacation for awhile. Maybe in Tahiti, maybe Barbados, maybe skiing in the Alps.

I couldn’t write it. Not one word. I was so frustrated with the writing process that, after weeks of wrestling, I decided to scrap my novel and start on a different project. I’d already written over 50,000 words. And I was going to dump it.

What I eventually realized was that because I’d put that BS on the paper, for the second half of the novel, my muse thought that it had to be that way. And I froze. Somehow, once something’s put on paper, that is The Way It Must Be. Isn’t that crazy?

So revisions are a challenge for me both in polishing the prose, but in also forcing myself to tear off the chunks of the story that have been written but need to be cut. Or moved. Or merged with something else. I guess for me, the paper is sacrosanct.

Oh, by the way, I ended up not even using any part of the second half of that synopsis. My poor main character ended up in a hedge maze being hunted by baddies. And it’s a much more interesting novel for that!

Character

In today’s modern novel, it’s not farfetched to say that character is king. Readers want to connect with characters, sympathize with them, especially your protagonist. To catch your reader and, more importantly, keep her, you must make her care about your characters. If we don’t care, we won’t read on.

Characters provide a moral compass for your story. Your protagonist (the character whom your story is about) is the anchor which keeps your tale on track, the lens through which you’re showing the reader your story. Your reader wants to see all sorts of terrible things happen to him but, in most cases (but not all), wants him to prevail in the end.

So how do you make your readers care?

Make your characters believable and sympathetic.

Making characters believable

Know thy character. The more you know about your character, the easier it is to make him believable. Of course, you need to know the basics about him: body type, hair color, eye color, occupation, family, etc. But don’t stop there! What hobbies does he have? What does he do when he gets angry? Does he stop for directions when he’s lost? What charities does he donate money to? What’s his dream car/job/vacation? What’s his biggest regret in life? His biggest joy?  What were the circumstances of his first kiss? Does he wish he had a brother/sister/none at all?

Know your character’s strengths and weaknesses, know what he wants and know what’s preventing him from getting it (this goes a wee bit more to plot, but it’s applicable here as well). Know what motivates him and know which character traits he has which will keep him from his goal. Give him a secret.

As you’re fleshing out your character, you should understand that most of what you figure out about him, your reader will never know. But your reader will know that you know, because you will understand your character enough to know how he will react in each situation he enters. And it will be believable.

Making characters sympathetic

First, I should say, characters don’t always have to be sympathetic. There are certainly genres which have unsympathetic characters as main characters. However, in order for your reader to connect with your character, to want to root for him, to care about what happens to him, she has to be able to relate to him in some way.

There are universal situations in life that most of us go through at some point: the awkwardness of adolescence, dating, loss of a loved one, learning how to drive,  good relationships, bad relationships, our first traffic ticket or car accident, moving out on our own, college life, work promotions, getting fired/laid off, renting an apartment or buying a house. While you don’t have to include these situations in your story (unless they are important to the plot), they flesh out your character and they can be alluded to in your manuscript. They make your character more real, more human. And that, in turn, makes readers more sympathetic.

Before closing, I also want to point out that your protagonist–the character your reader is rooting for–does not have to be your point of view character. Probably one of the more famous examples is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Tales of Sherlock Holmes. The point of view character is Dr. Watson, while the protagonist is, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Don’t be afraid to play with point of view this way. Sometimes an outside voice can make the reader appreciate and care for the protagonist more.

Please let me know if you found this post useful. There will be four more in the Story Elements series, with the next installment being Situation.

Best of luck with the writing!

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There, I admitted it. In my little circle of friends, I’m know as the deal-finder. I like travelling cheap (though I don’t stay at cheap motels — my back’s too old for bad mattresses!). I like finding computer stuff cheap. I love finding great deals on gadgets. Better than cheap, though, is free. Loooove free!

So in checking out the blogosphere recently, I ran across an offer for a free blogging course. The catch? I have to link to it in my blog. So, here it is:

An angel crashes into the paved asphalt of an LA street. He hates coming to Earth, he hates being near humans, and it hurts to be away from the presence of God, but he’s come down for a reason, to kill a demon.

Have a look at his entry, Angel’s Reflection and see what you think! I should mention that this is not your goody-goody angel story. This is dark urban fantasy/horror, so please keep that in mind when reading.

So, I had a pretty fun weekend. I bought a new motorcycle! My old one got flooded out, so I bought a 2002 Honda Shadow ACE 750, fully dressed with the exception of floorboards. It’s beautiful! Mine is a metallic blue with a patterned design on the sides of the gas tank and the fenders. It’s just gorgeous.

I haven’t been riding very long and my previous bike was a 500cc, so this is significantly bigger. It’s still too cold out to really ride, so I’ll have to wait to practice. But I’m really excited!

Okay, there’s today’s randomness!

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