They say ideas are a dime a dozen, even character ideas. Many experienced authors don’t even think about it anymore; they don’t remember when they were just starting out, facing a blank page, without any idea how to make their characters full and interesting. Because when it comes right down to it, if you want ideas for your fictional characters should be like, you can just look at the people around you. I tend to write down character ideas, as they occur to me, in an idea journal, which I can then go back to for inspiration when I’m when I’m writing a story. All authors at some level base their fictional characters on what they observe of real-life people.

But it takes more than just throwing character ideas at the page, if you want to end up with an actual story. Character ideas may give you zany and quirky, but if you want your characters to have depth, you have to make them feel like real, full-fledged people. In other words, you need characters that have a story to tell.

The image I chose to appear above for this post, that’s a special photo. I searched on Flickr and iStockPhoto, my standard sources, for photos of quirky and eccentric characters. Most of the interesting ones were just crazy-looking dudes with stupid hair or dorky glasses. But this particular photo stuck out at me, because I couldn’t help but ask myself, What is her story? Sitting in an ancient city; wearing a very short, wild, tasseled skirt; knock-out pretty, except for that look on her face; blue hair. What’s her obsession with wild blue? Who’s she sticking her tongue out at? What’s she waiting for, sitting on that wall? This character has a story to tell.

You don’t just want random, quirky characters. (Or if you do, you don’t need to be here. Just throw random character traits at them, and you’ll be fine.) You want characters who have a unique story to tell. And then you want to tell their story.

1. Find the story conflicts: where does the change happen? Without conflict, you don’t have a story; and without change (or at least the promise of change), you don’t have conflict. This is what turns a mere character sketch into a real story.

   Look again at the photo above. Maybe this day, she’s going to meet someone who will change her life forever. Maybe she gets into a fight with a passerby, who unintentionally injures her severely, and she finds herself in a hospital bed in a struggle for her life, and with anger and forgiveness.

2. Ask deep questions about the character. Start with what the character needs and how he’s pursuing these needs, because perceived needs are the root of all character action. Then delve into the character’s past, his future, his social status, his job and hobbies, his religion, his family life, his sense of morality. And don’t just fling characteristics randomly onto the canvas (unless you want something that looks like a Rorschach test). Rather, seek to understand how each of these characteristics defines who he is.

   The blue-haired girl in the photo, maybe she was never allowed any independence while she was growing up. Now, she works just enough to make ends meet, but otherwise, she’s seeking to find herself. She also has always felt looked down upon by society, and so she often acts out, as an alpha male, in an attempt to dominate those around her. Maybe she’s about to lose her job because she doesn’t get along with her coworkers. And so forth and so on.

3. How does character affect the story? Each person is going to respond a little differently to the same situation, based on his personality and his past experiences. In a gripping story, these responses will serve to intensify and resolve the story conflicts. A person’s also interact with each other, sometimes in very complex ways, and sometimes create new problems or generate behaviors that may seem extreme.

   In the photo, maybe she stops at this spot every day at the same time, to mock innocent passersby, because she’s a rebel, independent, suppressed in childhood, now disdaining many social conventions, and this is how she makes herself feel better than everyone else. When one passerby decides to confront her, she refuses to back down, as does he, and confrontation eventually turns into violence.

4. Add quirks if you want, but add them judiciously. Anything that makes your character unique. Just remember that random quirks do not make a character deeper; they make him more shallow, because they displace deeper character traits. The more of your reader’s mental capacity you spend describing nonsensical characteristics, the less you have left to use for the stuff that really matters.

   There are exceptions to the rule, such as the Kirk effect, from Gilmore Girls: it was said that if Amy Sherman-Palladino needed to liven up a scene of Gilmore Girls, all she had to do was add Kirk to the mix. Kirk had more quirks than anyone could remember; he made no sense, and so he was an extremely shallow character and completely useless as a driving character force. But everyone accepted that about him, and so he was always good for a laugh. You didn’t even have to make fun of him; he made fun of himself. All you had to do was to drop him into the scene and then shake your head in amazement.

   In the photo, the blue hair and the dress she’s wearing are quirky. If she’s taunting passersby, those behaviors might also qualify. But of course, these are not just random quirks. They’re important, because…

5. Ask the 5 why’s. People may sometimes seem random, but very rarely is that the reality. They don’t wear certain clothes just because those clothes magically appeared in the closet; they’re trying to make a fashion statement. And they don’t show kindness or lash out at others randomly, either; even if subconsciously, they’re seeking to feel good about themselves. What do your character’s quirks tell you about him?

   I already noted that the blue-haired girl in my story lashes out at those around her in an attempt to feel bigger than them. So what if the guy who injured her turns out to be wealthy, a prime target for a lawsuit. But instead of denying accountability, he pays all her hospital expenses, demands the best care for her, pays living expenses for her while she can’t work, and dotes over her so much that he begins to sicken her, because that makes him a much bigger person than she is?

So, there’s a brief example of how you can begin putting together a character, not as a mere collection of raw character ideas, but as a full-fledged, realistic person. The key is to go deep with the characteristics you uncover. Ask yourself the why’s and wherefore’s. And don’t ever accept that your character is just random or strange, because chances are, she makes perfect sense, if you try hard enough to understand her.

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2009 sylvar CC 2.0 BY

PJ Kaiser suggested—probably because I’ve been doing weekly “#FridayFlash Favorites” posts—that I write about what catches my attention in a flash story, and what turns me off.

I thought that was a pretty kewl idea, and I further decided to link to last week’s #FridayFlash stories (because they’re still fresh in my mind) in order to demonstrate each point. As it turns out, this post has grown long enough to span over two days. So I’ll go through the first 3 turn-ons (and 5 turn-offs) today, and finish up tomorrow.

(Maybe I’ll post another follow up next week, the short version, just a checklist without the explanation. That’ll be far fewer words, but you’ll probably need to read the long version to understand what I’m talking about.)

Having sifted through about 100 stories a week since I started these posts, I’m probably qualified at least to venture an opinion. On top of that, I (usually) know what I like, and (usually) know how to write what I like—which also comes with experience—so I know why I like it.

Even so, my opinions are just that: opinions. The more experience I gain as a writer and author, the more I realize that there’s no right or wrong when it comes to creative expression. (Us indie authors, that’s our rightful motto, you know.) There’s only what you like (or dislike) and what you like (or dislike) about it. So as you go down the following list of positives and negatives—especially if I linked to your story to exemplify one of the negatives—if you think I’m full of BS… well, you’re probably right.

In general, I look for pretty much the same in flash as I look for in any story. The only difference between flash and longer stories is that flash fiction is, uh, shorter. Therefore, the best flash stories respect the length and use it to effect. Other than that, I admire the same qualities in flash that excite me about short stories, novellas, novels, movies, TV episodes, graphic novels, …

1. Compelling Character Need

The most important part of any story is the characters. If you have compelling characters, you can screw up elsewhere and get away with it, because we’re willing to overlook a few inconsistencies for characters that we love.

I’ve taken this to the extreme. I’ve been known to read two-bit, mis-edited indie novels that would get laughed out of the typical snarky-agent’s office, and rate them 4 and 5 stars, simply because they have great characters who dragged me into their lives and held my interest. And isn’t that what a story is supposed to do? I’m just admitting what I like about the stories I read.

So how do you make your characters compelling? It’s not enough to give them quirks, or qualities, or descriptions. You have to give them needs. That’s what turns them into real people, because everyone has needs, and everyone tries to meet his needs. The needs we have and how we try to meet them determine what kind of creature we are. Fish have fish needs. Lizards have lizard needs. Cats have cat needs. Dogs have dog needs. And the way we as humans pursue our human needs, that’s what makes us human.

I can clearly see the needs of not only the main character but also the secondary character in my favorite story this week, Jane Travers’s “The Shades of Chawton.” And that’s the first reason I loved it. (The second through seventh reasons I loved it follow below.) If you haven’t read it, and read it from the perspective of an author, like me, who just wants to write and to make a difference through his writing… Jane’s story is worth reading. Really, it moved me.

Characters that I fail to identify with may be missing a compelling need. (Turn-off #1.) More often, I suspect, they simply fail to reveal it. Maybe they’re not pursuing it. Or more likely, the author simply isn’t focusing on that need. It’s all in how you tell the story.

Take, for example, Jen Brubacher’s #FridayFlash, “Somewhere Else.” I mention this story, because I really liked it. But it didn’t make my favorites list, because I couldn’t figure out what the character’s compelling need was, or whether she even had one. She goes on vacation, does all sorts of things that are completely out of character for her, seems lonely. I felt for her, felt like I was beginning to get to know her. But what was she seeking? And did she find it? How did she feel about going back to the daily grind of her ordinary life? It’s not enough to merely feel for her; I want to understand her. I want to identify with her.

2. Character Growth

Coincidentally, I talked about character change and Aha! moments just yesterday. In that post, I posited that characters may sometimes grow—at least in our minds—because our perception of the character changes, even if the character herself does not change.

Even so, the traditional way to evoke character growth is to actually have the character change. For example, Melissa L. Webb’s story, “May I Come In?” A boy who’s too “old” to believe in monsters and the bogeyman, he reconsiders, because his grandfather always knocks on the door to an empty room, so that the monsters can clear out before he enters. The boy adopts the tradition of his grandfather, just to be safe. At the beginning of the story, the boy was too “old” to believe in monsters. At the end, he’s not necessarily too “old” anymore. That’s the Aha! moment. That’s character change.

The opposite of character change is, of course, character stasis. (Turn-off #2.) Consider Danielle La Paglia’s post, “Reflection.” Again, I mention this story, because I really liked it. A man faces himself in a mirror, which means he must face up to what he knows to be true. Yes, the “man meets himself” thing has been done and done and overdone before. So it might be a cliché. (See under #6 below.) But I’m frequently willing to forgive a cliché, as long as there’s something else there for me to hold onto. But this story didn’t make my favorites list, because the character ends up the same as he was at the beginning. My perception of the character doesn’t even grow, so that I might more fully appreciate him or learn something from him. There’s no Aha! moment.

3. Engrossing Narrative

Many readers put this at the top. I rank it up there, but at #3, because I’m willing to forgive a little boringness in exchange for compelling characters that bring me on a journey of self-discovery. Even so, I really do enjoy engrossing narrative. Usually, you spice up your narrative through plot and conflict, and the most reliable way to achieve it line-by-line is to use MRU’s (motivation-reaction units) in a pattern I call “ping-ponging.” That’s another post, but in short, narrate your story as though it were a ping-pong game, always on the edge of your seat as each player takes position and returns the ball to the other (or fails to return the ball).

The most common question I’ve been asked since I began the #FridayFlash Favorites is, how do I read through a hundred stories in a weekend? The answer is that most of them I don’t actually read. I do look at all the stories, all 100 or more of them each week, but most of them fail to engage me with their narrative. Somewhere between the second and fifth paragraph usually, I realize that my eyes have glazed over, and I can’t remember what I read 2 seconds ago, and I finally yell at myself in frustration, “Why do I care?!” And then I skip to the next story.

“Why do I care?!” narrative is the bane of my #FridayFlash existence. (Turn-off #3.) A variation on this is “…and then…” plotting and dialogue. ‘We did FOO and then we did X and Y and Z and then someone said “Ugh. Mee boo pob geee!” and then we threw up all over each other and went home. The End.’ I feel like I’m looking in on random characters performing random acts and talking to each other in disconnected statements. An effective plot is not just activity. That’s why the characters’ motivations and reactions are so important. They imbue activity with meaning. They turn mere ping-pong volleys into a game, with sides I can root for.

An example… There are so many of them. Here’s one: “Island Nights” by Laura Eno. I’m not trying to pick on Laura, and her story may in fact have something in it worth reading, but I simply never finished it. I barely started it. I read through where he woke up from his dream while he was suntanning, but I never discovered whether they decided what to have for dinner. Instead, my brain checked out and went for a walk. Eventually, I followed.

Sometimes a story is boring because it focuses too much on the gimmick. (Turn-off #4.) Most of the “telepathic parrot” stories this past weekend failed on this count. Gimmicks are like character quirks. Quirks can serve an already strong character, but they can’t make a weak character strong. Similarly, a gimmick can serve an already engrossing story, but it won’t turn a boring story into an interesting one. For an example of how to use a gimmick well, see “Bumwattle’s Bird,” Chris Chartrand’s “telepathic parrot” story. Note that the story doesn’t actually need a telepathic parrot. Chris could have written just as strong a story using almost any plot device, such as an exotic virus or a mind-controlling computer. (Or even zombies.) He doesn’t focus on the kewlness on the gimmick; therefore, the gimmick actually works in the context of the story.

Another common barrier to engrossing dialogue is verbiage so thick, I need a machete to make sense of it. (Turn-off #5.) For example, Karen Dash’s “Death Dance,” which is possibly a good story, except that it lost me somewhere between “susurration of his cloak wafting out in his wide berthed wake” and “pert tenacity of tripping the light fantastic in life, now elided into imagining they were auditioning for the great dance-off in the sky.” I realize that Karen was playing with the language here as an art form in itself, and many people love this sort of thing. I unfortunately am not one of them.

On online friend of mine posted last month that he was getting both laughs and blank stares with a phrase that I think should go on a tee-shirt: Extirpate sesquipedalianism!

(Continued: click here for part 2.)

Photo © 2006 Anna Lee CC 2.0 BY NC ND

I love character stories. In fact, I rarely enjoy a story unless it has a character-driven component.

So I was naturally surprised that I so enjoyed Al Bruno’s latest #FridayFlash story. It’s not really a character story, per se. Or is it?

I actually have a different take on that now, different than last week. I think it is a character story, but not in the traditional sense.

Entitled “Breaking the Girl,” here’s the story’s basic outline—

And BTW, SPOILER ALERT! If you want to read the 996-word story as originally written, you should do that now.

1. Lorelei has been drugged and tied to a chair.
2. She attempts to cast an incantation against her captor, but ends up instead with a searing pain in her own head.
3. Her tormentor reveals that he has painted the Sigil of Enfeeblement on her forehead, thereby preventing her from using her magic against him.
4. He begins to torture her for the information he wants, starting with a taser.
5. She goads him on, prompting him to pummel her with his fists, to her body, to her head, to her face.
6. The torturer prepares to pull out her tooth or fingernail.
7. She tries the incantation again. This time it works, throwing him off his feet. Then she casts one to release her from the ropes that bind her.
8. She explains to him that, in hitting her, he had smeared and smudged the Sigil of Enfeeblement with blood, corrupting it and rendering it useless, thereby freeing her to use her magic again.
9. Before she leaves, she prepares to treat her tormentor to the same torture he had prepared for her (presumably as a lesson to him and his ilk).

Aha! Moments

We can arrange conflict into two categories, internal and external, depending on how the conflict resolves. Internal conflict resolves when the character changes his perspective, thereby rendering the problem moot. External conflict resolves when the character changes something in the world around him, solving his problem.

Internal conflict is the stuff of character-driven stories, because it involves character change. External conflict is the stuff of plot-driven stories, because it involves the character manipulating the world around him.

Romance stories frequently rely on internal conflict and are character-driven, because the two lovers change the way they look at each other and their relationship. The characters change their attitudes, equals character change, equals internal conflict. Detective stories frequently rely on external conflict, because the investigator must uncover and interpret clues, leading him to bring the culprit to justice. The character changes how society treats the culprit, equals change in the character’s world, equals external conflict.

So then, “Breaking the Girl” is not a character-driven story, because the character never changes. Rather, from the start, she manipulates the situation, by egging on her tormentor, in order that she might ultimately triumph over him. That makes this a plot-driven story.

Even so, when I read this story, I experience the same feeling as I do reading a character-driven story. It’s not just a matter of sympathizing or identifying with the character, cringing that she is to be tortured by a ruthless villain. My feelings go deeper than that, exulting in the enlightenment of the big reveal, when she triumphs through her creativity. I experience an Aha! moment.

It’s the same feeling I have in a different kind of story, where the hero reaches an impasse, finally looking at the problem sideways and coming up with a totally innovative solution. That Aha! moment, that’s character-driven, because it involves character change. This character change then further drives the plot, allowing the character to manipulate his environment in order to solve the problem. To me, solving the problem is cool. But the Aha! moment is golden.

“Breaking the Girl” has no character change, no moment at which Lorelei figures out she can trick the villain and nullify the Sigil of Enfeeblement. By the time we get to the end of the story, we see that Lorelei always knew exactly what she was doing. So why do I experience an Aha! moment, somewhere around #8 in the summary above?

The True Nature of Conflict

We usually define conflict as “the problem the character faces.” This is a standard definition. It’s not the definition I use, however, because it’s too vague. Character problems cause conflict, but they are not conflict per se.

Conflict is a perception by the reader that compelling change has occurred and will occur. (I explained this definition in more depth recently when I talked about alternative conflict.)

We say character stories involve character change. But is there also a place for a character story that involves a change in our perception of the character? An Aha! moment in which her character is revealed?

I believe that’s what’s happening in “Breaking the Girl.” The Aha! moment doesn’t go along with the character’s change (because there is no character change), but it does go along with my changing perception of the character.

Even when I know what’s coming, I still experience the moment. Even when I know at #5 that Lorelei is gritting her teeth and sacrificing herself for her ultimate victory, even when I know that the villain is digging his own grave, even when I know exactly what she means when she calls him an amateur, even when #7 is no mystery to me (because I know why her incantations worked)… When she then explains to him that he had smudged the Sigil, I blurt out, “Aha! I told you so! You rank amateur!”

I now notice this same effect occurring in numerous stories.

Sometimes, the character doesn’t tell us (the audience) what he’s thinking, because doing so would compromise his position or it’s not in his nature to do so. We have to figure it out on our own, and in that figuring, that’s where our perception of the character changes, and that’s where the Aha! moment occurs. Columbo did this wonderfully, because you never knew exactly when he had figured out who the murderer was, when he shifted from investigation to pursuit of the criminal.

Other times, the character himself doesn’t know what he’s thinking, or why he does what he does. Maybe he’s acting on instinct. And if he figures it out, we can revel in the same Aha! moment he does. Such as in the final episode of M*A*S*H, where Hawkeye gradually comes to terms with a traumatic experience. (That would be character change.) But even if he doesn’t figure it out, we might, and we can have the Aha! moment without him.

Keep writing!
-TimK

I called it “alternative conflict” in Monday’s post, but a better monicker might be “problem-free conflict,” because it pops up over and over again in literature, TV, and film. Usually, it’s used alongside the more traditional character problems.

“But character problems cause conflict,” I hear you objecting. “How can you have conflict without character problems?”

Well, actually, this introduction itself is an example of problem-free conflict. But first, let’s look at a more obvious example.

Mischievous Miscreant

Our story begins as the rising sun beams in on sleeping Dag. He rolls over just long enough to get in one more snore, before his alarm jolts him awake.

“Time to annoy my brother,” Dag says, an evil gleam in his eye.

He reaches for his “365 Ways and Days to Completely, Totally, and Fully Annoy Your Brother” calendar and flips to January 7, today: “Bop your brother till he bleeds.”

“Kooky!” Dag says to himself. “It’s a good thing I got this ’365 Ways and Days to Completely, Totally, and Fully Annoy Your Brother’ calendar. I could never think of this many ways to completely, totally, and fully annoy my brother on my own.” And he sets off to find his brother, and a boxing glove.

You have to get the humor of the Angry Beavers in order to fully appreciate that scene from the episode “Same Time Last Week.” (Yes, Dag and his brother Norb are animated beavers.) My brother and I used to watch them all the time before stupid Spongebob pushed them off the air. But now most of those episodes are available on NetFlix Watch Instantly, and I’ve been having loads of fun getting reacquainted with them.

What struck me most about that scene was that there’s no character problem. Not-a one. This is supposedly one of the no-no’s of storytelling. But the scene works, because Dag’s mischievous plan produces conflict. At least, it does by the definition of conflict I used in Monday’s post:

Conflict is a perception by the reader that compelling change has occurred and will occur.

In this case, Dag has begun going through his “annoy your brother” calendar, something new for this episode, something beyond his normal Daggaliciousness. And we expect both fallout and humor from this mischief. Indeed, we get both. He eventually ends up with a real character problem, but only after the plot has thickened a couple of times.

What’d'ya Mean, You’re Dead?

“Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.”

That’s the first line of Laura Whicomb’s debut novel A Certain Slant of Light. This is what we call “a hook.” But whence comes its power?

We have several things happening, all at once, in this tiny sentence:

1. Someone is staring at the main character.
2. It puts her ill at ease.
3. She’s dead.

The second of these is clearly a traditional conflict. The character has a problem: she is comfortable with the way things are (a need), and this someone is interfering with her status quo (an obstacle). That’s a problem. We expect her to address that conflict, and indeed she does. But first, we have to deal with the other two conflicts posed by this introductory sentence.

I think of them as “What the hell is happening here?!” conflicts. You get one of these for free whenever someone first begins reading your story, because he doesn’t know anything about your story or its world or characters. But this freebie only lasts for a paragraph or two. In that space, you have to give him something more. And one path is to explore related “What the hell is happening here?!” conflicts.

In A Certain Slant of Light, the story has implicitly promised us that we’ll find out who the someone is who is staring at the main character (and why he’s staring).

We also want to know how she can be aware that someone’s staring at her if she’s dead. She’s obviously a ghost. But so what? Why shouldn’t someone see her? (That is, if she’s standing right in front of him?) Don’t people see ghosts?

Note that this sort of conflict drives non-fiction essays— like this very piece you’re reading right now. We usually don’t think of non-fiction as a story, with conflict, thickening, and resolution. But that’s because we usually think in terms of character-problem conflict, and non-fiction usually doesn’t focus on character-problem conflict. Well-written non-fiction, however, does follow the general structure of a story, including using conflict to push the story along.

It Don’t Matter Much to Me

One last quick example. Remember Forrest Gump? Winner of six Academy Awards, including Best Picture— Yeah, that Forrest Gump.

(BTW, at the time of this writing, you can also stream the film via NetFlix Watch Instantly.)

A profound story, but the main character, Forrest, nothing bothers him. Well, almost nothing. He certainly doesn’t get uptight about most of the life-pressures that constantly stress us out. That was, in fact, how the film was marketed back in 1994. Yes, I saw it when it first came out— and some of you may not be old enough to remember the movie trailers: “The world will never seem the same, once you’ve seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump.”

I don’t want to make it sound like this character doesn’t have needs, because he does, and sometimes he has to strive to meet those needs. But a great number of the problems he faces are not his own.

For example, Forrest runs into his old platoon leader, Lieutenant Dan Taylor, who had lost his legs in Vietnam. Dan immediately tears into Forrest, because stupid Forrest got a medal of honor, while Dan lost both his legs and is now poor and destitute. Forrest—much more of a man than I would be—doesn’t even seem to notice the slight. Instead, he opens up his life to his old friend, and they eventually become partners in a lucrative business.

A number of forces drive this scene. One of them is the promise that the situation will change, either for the worse (if Dan’s raging anger eventually sinks through Forrest’s skull) or for the better (if Forrest’s unconditional affection eventually sinks through Dan’s skull). Neither one of these addresses any problem, but either would have been significant.

As I recall, Forrest Gump is full of story threads like this, where a non-problem drives the story via the promise of a change-to-come.

When this movie first came out, I wanted to write a long, detailed essay exploring its many layers and the many angles from which one could interpret the story. I never did. But if you haven’t seen this classic film, it’s definitely worth renting on DVD. In the meantime…

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2007 Chantal Lyons CC 2.0 BY NC ND

My #FridayFlash short-short story, “Too Much Information,” this past week experimented with a different kind of conflict, something I’m calling “alternative conflict.” In reality, there are published stories out there, in prose and in TV and film, that already use conflict like this, so it really isn’t alternative. (It’s mainstream.) But the advice that you get as a novice writer frequently forbids you from exploring any but one form of conflict.

Traditional form dictates that you start with a character who has a problem, and that’s where the conflict in the story comes from. But in “Too Much Information,” the character has no problem. He (or she) explains that he has been dreaming the future, and he’s going to see if he can change the future by manipulating his dreams. Yes, he has a compelling need, to explore this dream phenomenon. But there’s no obstacle preventing him from meeting his need. Therefore, he has no problem. In fact, the entire story is about how he is meeting his need.

So then, if my character has no problem, how do I maintain the reader’s interest?

Indeed, many of the more literary short stories that I read, they focus on the beauty of the language, or they merely describe a character or a scene. They have no character problem, and they sometimes suffer from the travelogue syndrome. They don’t resemble anything that I would call a story (though there are other readers who do enjoy these pieces). And they fail to draw me in, because there’s no conflict.

When I wrote “Too Much Information,” however, I focused on the conflict, even though the character has no problem. I tried to draw readers in, firstly, with the idea that the character has his head in the clouds or is imagining some phenomenon that doesn’t exist. Then with the idea that he actually might be dreaming the future. As the story progresses, the reader should realize that the character is ascribing special meaning to mere coincidence, even though the character himself doesn’t see things that way. At that point, the conflict is resolved (because the “dreaming the future” has been explained away), and the story is over. So there is a story arc, but happens in the reader’s mind, rather than in the character’s experience. The character doesn’t change, but the reader’s perception does.

What Is Conflict?

One standard definition is that conflict occurs when a character has a problem. And this is true: if you create a character and give him a compelling problem, you will have a compelling story conflict.

But are there other ways to generate conflict? I believe so. And we can discover what they are with a better definition, a definition that tells us what conflict is beyond a character’s problems.

Holly Lisle, I think, comes very close in her excellent How to Write Page-Turning Scenes, with a profound insight: “Conflict is, simply put, change. Anytime something changes, it creates ripples that will be good for some people, bad for others.” She then goes on to detail five categories of conflict that she has identified in her experience as a fiction author.

I think Holly’s definition comes darn close. And as a metaphor, it’s perfect. But I would refine it one more step further. Conflict is not change, but conflict always goes along with change. The only way to produce conflict is to divert from the status quo, that is, to change something. And the only way to resolve conflict is through change, to move to a new status quo. So change precedes conflict, and change follows conflict. And thickening the plot also is a form of change, a transmutation of conflict, from a lesser conflict to a greater conflict.

So I would define conflict as follows:

Conflict is a perception by the reader that compelling change has occurred and will occur.

That’s what I tried to do in my story, to indicate to the reader that something was off from the status quo (that the laws of the universe had changed from what he understood), with the implicit promise that I was going to explain this discrepancy (thus producing a new status quo).

Thursday’s post will explore some more stories that use alternative conflict. (UPDATE: Click here to read it.)

In the meantime…

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2008 .craig CC 2.0 BY NC ND

They say that effective story characters have problems, because problems mean conflict, and conflict makes for an interesting story. True enough. (See Wednesday’s post for a better explanation.) But what they don’t usually tell you is that all problems come from character needs. Or more precisely, from characters not getting their needs met.

Like us, when a character’s needs are not met, she seeks to meet them. But there might be something preventing her from getting her needs met. For example, if a captor has sold her into slavery, that’s bound to ruin her day, because it interferes with her need for autonomy. Or maybe she simply doesn’t have the resources to meet her needs, as if a famine is making it difficult for everyone to find food. She may not possess skills she needs to meet her needs, for example, if she is lonely because she doesn’t know how to relate to others. And sometimes, as any real human would, she is bound to do things that she feels will meet her needs, but which really just create complications, such as when she turns to alcohol in a search for fulfillment.

You’ll also find that her needs are interrelated—as ours all are—and that she may seek to take action to fulfill two needs at once, or to satisfy one need at the expense of another. Or sometimes one need rebounds on another, such that if the one is not met, it will cause the character to perceive another also not being met. This interrelatedness can also thicken and complicate the plot. She drinks because she feels her life has no meaning (need #10 below), and as a result, she begins to lose intimacy with her husband (#5), which may affect her sense of accomplishment (#8), her sense of status (#9), and further decrease her sense of purpose (#10). Now she has four problems to deal with instead of just one.

If you’re having trouble finding a compelling conflict, start by choosing from one of the following 10 basic character needs.

(These needs I took from the Human Givens essential needs, most of which are expanded on in the book Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking. Whether or not you agree with the Human Givens approach for psychological counseling, I find it a useful set of tools for understanding my fictional characters.)

1. Physical needs — Air, water, food, and sleep. (The rest of the needs on this list are emotional needs.) Some people may put sex in the “physical” category as well, although sex is not merely a physical act; it has an emotional component. (See “emotional intimacy” below.)

2. Security — Including our need for shelter, cleanliness, protection, and safety, and the like. From the time we were newborns, we knew how to establish rapport with our mothers, whom nature had already primed to fulfill our need for security. As we grow, we learn to find security in the rapport we’ve built in other relationships, in our ability to control our environment, in our jobs, even in our governments.

3. Attention — We all need both to give and to receive it. We all want to feel special at least some of the time, want to be the center of attention, even those of us who are quiet and introverted. We draw attention to ourselves by the way we look or act, or even by engaging in activities that provide us opportunities for attention, such as the security officer who takes that particular job just so that he can wear the uniform. People even tend to perform better when they believe they will get noticed, a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne Effect.

4. Autonomy — Control over one’s own life and one’s own choices. Independence. The need for autonomy is why office workers desire to have their own desk where they can set their own coffee cup and a picture of their own family, their own office that they can decorate however they choose, including by posting sardonic cartoons that make fun of the corporation who employs them, their own little island of autonomy in a sea of tyranny. Rapid change or volatile circumstances can also be perceived as loss of autonomy. (“Better is the devil that you know,” as the saying goes.) Loss of autonomy can make a person feel helpless, despondent, may cause him to give up trying to improve his situation, and may generate depression, which can further deepen the feeling of helplessness.

5. Emotional intimacy — One of the oldest and most powerful story conflicts, and the subject of most romance novels, we all need emotional and physical closeness to at least one other person. This is the person who sees us as we really are, naked and undignified, and we see the same way, and love anyway. Sexual closeness is part of emotional intimacy, which is why it also is frequently the focus of romance novels. In a more general sense, strong, supportive relationships can mean the difference between success and failure. They can help someone through hardship, or even help make her more resistent to disease. Even the simple physical contact that comes, for example, by petting a beloved cat, even that can reduce stress and make someone feel more able to meet the world.

6. Feeling part of a wider community — Shared perceptions and identity with others, and connections to them. We are not just a collection of individuals all competing to win; we are also all parts of larger communities. Isolation from community can cut off our psychological resources for dealing with stress, anxiety, and grief, resulting in depression and other mental illnesses.

7. Alone time — An opportunity to reflect on our experiences and process our thoughts. A total lack of alone time can be as stressful as having no one to talk to.

8. Achievement — Competence. We need to feel there’s something in the world that we’re good at. It can be any skill, either in work or hobby or social situations or whatever.

9. Status — Validation. The sense that we are valuable in a social grouping. This is why we desire that others think well of us. We often collect symbols of our status: jewelry, an expensive car or suit, or even a simple momento. Need for status may also cause a person to take on a provider role, where others are the recipients, because this makes him more important than those others.

10. Purpose — Spiritual need, the search for meaning, the quest to understand, fulfilled through personal growth, from being stretched in what we do and think. Something inside seeks to fill this inner need by completing it in the environment. This is the reason the monk meditates, seeking enlightenment. It is why the mountaineer scales ever taller heights, and why the adrenaline junkie executes ever more dangerous stunts. It is why a musician learns new songs and masters new techniques.

And the need for purpose is also why writers write, and why we seek to write better than we did before. We put out other reasons, like “I want to get published” or “I want to make a difference.” And these may be true, but at the end of the day, I think these are just surface reasons. The real reason we write is so that we can find inner fulfillment, by creating a substance that reflects our inner selves.

Keep writing!
-TimK

Photo © 2006 mudkat CC BY-NC 2.0

Conflict is the engine that drives a story forward. And not just any conflict, but relevant, meaningful conflict that matters to the protagonist and to the reader.

Moreover, every scene needs conflict. I’ve included this as an item on my novel-revision checklist, to make sure that each scene is a story in miniature, with characters, plot, and–most importantly–conflict.

Some scenes focus on suspense, the edge-of-your-seat desperation of the character’s situation. Other scenes are full of action, as our hero matches wits in combat against his foe. Some scenes portray deep wants, unrequited love, unfulfilled longing. Others betray passions that threaten doom.

None of that should surprise you. What might surprise you, however, is that even slow scenes need conflict.

In between the fast, fierce mountains of any story, there lie the leisurely, contemplative lowlands, where we readers get to catch our breaths. But even through the grassy valleys, you the author must keep the story moving. And if conflict is the engine that drives a story forward, that means you need conflict. Not a intense, driving conflict, but a more gentle, maintaining conflict.

Occasionally, I’ll read a novel that seems to forget the second of these two. During the more leisurely, in-between scenes, the story will degenerate into a sequence of meaningless activities.

“And then we went to the store, and we bought bread and flowers. And I thought the flowers were so beautiful. But I was hungry, so I ate the bread. And then…”

Who the hell cares? Give me a reason to care. Give me something that matters deeply to the character, because it addresses one of her compelling needs. It doesn’t have to be a life-and-death struggle with the enemy. But maybe she’s wrestling with a decision she needs to make, or a decision she just made. Maybe she’s stewing, because she feels wronged. Or maybe her ever-abiding fear that her beloved will leave her, it haunts her, building up into a dysfunction that will eventually threaten her relationship. Maybe she’s mustering the courage to stick in there for the long haul. Or maybe she’s going through the long haul, dealing with whole classes of issues in the abstract.

Here are some ideas for understanding gentle conflict:

I’m sure you can think of some more possible differences, if you compare the conflicts of your favorite novel. Note that the slow passages are not absent of conflict, but they focus on different character needs and may look at them differently.

Pace your story. Start with intense conflict, to get the story rolling. But then take a breath, and switch to a gentle conflict, which only needs to overcome the friction of a story that’s already moving. After a period, increase the intensity again, and then let it subside. And if you really want to end with a bang, let the intensity drop off to almost nothing, just before you ratchet it up to its highest point ever, just before the denouement. (I see this a lot in suspense novels.)

All conflict addresses a compelling need of the character. But not all conflict needs to be life-and-death, push-the-story-up-Mount-Everest serious.

1. Holly Lisle’s How To Write Page-Turning Scenes AUDIO (MP3) PLUS PDF VERSION – I actually have the How To Write Page-Turning Scenes PDF-only version, and I recommend it, as I do all of Holly’s writer’s tools. Page-Turning Scenes is about conflict: how to find it, how to create it, how to write it, how to get your characters into it—and out of it—with plenty of step-by-step. Conflict is the engine that drives your story forward, and so this is one of the fundamentals that you must have down in order for your writing to work. Therefore, Holly Lisle’s How To Write Page-Turning Scenes is a key resource for any aspiring fiction writer, and a useful checklist for every experienced one.

2. The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Russia by Irene Galaktionova and Neil Woodhead – This is part of the “33 Worst Mistakes” series, of which I have 3. I bought them to complete my research while writing my last novel. They mostly reassured me that I had gotten all my facts straight, but the “Firearms” volume helped me avoid an embarrassing faux pas that I should’ve known about before, and the one on “Disappearing” helped me rewrite a whole future story-line I was planning. So if you’re planning a story set in Russia or that involves someone from Russia, I highly recommend this ebook—sight unseen—as a cost-effective way to avoid stupid mistakes in your story.

   (Also check out the rest of the “33 Mistakes Writers Make” ebooks.

And as usual, I’ve used affiliate links on this page, which you can click on to show your support for this site.

-TimK

In a story, starting a fight is an easy way to make the mood tense. But conflict can do more than just make a story feel tense, suspenseful. Conflict engages the audience. It makes us sympathize with the characters and root for them. And it heightens other emotions in the story.

Conflict draws us in

Frequently, when the conflict makes the story tense, it’s actually heightening some other tension in the story. For example, C.J. West’s Sin and Vengeance is a true, page-turning suspense novel. The suspense comes not just from the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist, but also what we expect the antagonist to be capable of. He terrifies us.

This happens because conflict draws us in: Conflict enables us to feel sympathy for the underdog. In a Romance, the romantic parts are about love unrequited or passion unfulfilled.

Conflict enables sympathy

Tom Sawyer is a sympathetic character. Even though he’s always doing naughty things, getting into trouble, we don’t like to see him punished. And then when he develops a crush on Becky Thatcher, our sympathy increases. And when he witnesses a murder and Injun Joe is out to get him, our sympathy increases again. Our sympathy lets us feel for him, even feel the same way he does.

I also talked about conflict in the season-six finale of Gilmore Girls in another post. The reason for the strong reaction fans have to the finale is the sympathy they have for the characters. And this sympathy would not happen were it not for the conflict. The sympathy is so strong, in fact, that fans get upset because the conflict. (Is it possible to make a story too immersive?)

Romance unfulfilled

This Gilmore Girls episode also includes romantic elements that make us want to cry. This happens when romance is unfulfilled.

Casablanca is another example of a movie that makes some people cry. It’s because Rick is in love with Ilsa, but their love can’t be, then will be, then will never be.

Casablanca actually didn’t make me cry, though The Notebook did, as I mentioned in the last spotlight. Movie critics have described The Notebook as being a sappy romance story. But such a story works, for a simple reason, romantic tension. We have conflict; it draws us in, makes us feel what the characters are feeling.

How to do it

If you want to use conflict to create or enhance the feeling a story brings:

1. Decide which feeling the story should portray.
2. Choose a conflict that would make the protagonist feel that way.
3. Make the protagonist face that conflict.

An example

Last September, I wrote a short story called “Pine.” It was actually a project I did for a writing prompt. I had to write something inspired by a certain photo of a house. But I knew I didn’t want to write about just a house. Because no matter how much I dressed it up, that would be boring. I knew I needed a conflict. So I chose a romance story revolving around a first love.

Here’s the beginning of the story:

Each morning Jace walked by her house on his way to school. Each afternoon he passed it on his way home. Sometimes, he would also pass at other times. Occasionally he would catch a glimpse of the bright-faced girl with wavy blonde locks. She sat under the two conifers that towered overhead. But as far as he knew, she never noticed him.

The house itself, a grey Stick Victorian with brown trim, spoke of a happy family. Its expansive porch took a jaunt through the sweet-scented yellows and reds of the flower garden. Little gabled alcoves jutted into the world, embraced by the overall form of the structure, as if its gables were parents looking after their offspring. A squat wall of white stone stood before this all, making up in intensity what it lacked in stature, a formidable protector to all within.

But the trees were even more special, for under these Jennifer would read. Or sometimes she would just be sitting quietly or humming softly a tune Jace didn’t recognize. Jace paid her no heed, or else she might see his admiration. But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her shapely form, and he fought to keep breathing. And in his imagination, he felt the softness of her pink cashmere sweater in his delicate hands. He felt her fingers running through his thick, dark hair. Her chocolate eyes and his ordinary brown ones got lost in each other. Perhaps his finger stroked the line of her eyebrow, following her face around softly-curved cheek and jaw, finally resting under her chin.

But Jace said nothing, made no motion out of the ordinary. He merely continued walking, as nonchalantly as possible for a big-footed, lanky teen in a grey tee and worn khakis.

You can read the whole story at my “stories” blog.

-TimK

Well, first of all, if something is unrelated to the story, it probably shouldn’t go in there in the first place. I’m constantly reading passages in blogs and published novels that make me ask, “Why the heck to I care about this?!” and then skip to the next one. Really, you need to give the reader some reason to care about what you want to tell them. You have to make them care before you actually tell them.

This is all part of immersion and of suspension of disbelief. Fortunately, you’re already half-way there. When I read a story, I’ll give you several paragraphs for free. You have that long to make me want to read on. Actually, they’re not free, but I will give them to you on spec. You have me for the first few paragraphs of your story or the first few minutes of your film. Use that time to make an impression. If you make even a little effort, you’ll probably have me, because I’m such a sucker for a good story.

Most of us are probably like that. Audiences want to like your story. We have a “willing suspension of disbelief”, a term coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And we will maintain it, as long as you don’t break the suspension of disbelief. It’s kind of like photo-realistic art: Photo-realism is the absence of any clues that it’s not real. But most of us will overlook even blatant gaffs if it keeps the story going.

A story is like a giant boulder. You have to give it a push to get it going. But once it’s moving, you only have to give it a nudge at the right moments in order to keep it going. But first you do have to get the story going. For that, use conflict, the great story engine. Think of the time in your life when you were most embarrassed. Or a time when you made a huge mistake. Think of a time when you faced imminent danger. Or a time when you were afraid. When did you want something you could not have, wanted it so bad you could taste it? When did you love so passionately you felt like crying? These are the inspiration for great stories, because they are the essence of intense conflict.

As readers, we want our characters to face great challenges, and overcome them. We want to root for them. We want to tremble when they are afraid. We want to cry when they weep. We want to enter the inner cave with them, slay the fire-breathing dragon, and bring the elixir back with us into our real-world lives.

That’s why the single biggest thing you can do to keep the flow in your story is to make something go wrong. Pose an unanswerable question that demands to be answered. Give a character a noble goal, and then deny him its fulfillment. Take your favorite character’s passion, his heart, and stomp it into the dirt. Why your favorite character? Because he’s our favorite, too. And we will want to see everything made right. We are now part of the story. And you have achieved immersion; you have achieved suspension of disbelief.

This past week, the season-six finale of Gilmore Girls aired. The last couple of episodes rapidly thickened the plot, culminating in a season cliffhanger that left fans very upset. I myself recorded a short comment for the Stars Hollow Podcast (which hopefully will be in podcast episode #37). The podcast’s hosts, Jon and Cara, described the Gilmore Girls episode with words like “boring” and “don’t care.” This, after they went on about how terrible things are turning out for their favorite characters. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. And this ain’t indifference. This is passion. Fans have forgotten that the story’s characters are not real people. And they complain now, but do you think they’re coming back for season 7? Do you think that they’re going to be buying the DVD sets a year or two down the road? Yup.

This is what we want in out stories.

-TimK

When one first starts reading a story, the foremost question is “What’s this about?” That’s enough to keep me reading for a paragraph or two, or maybe for a page of a novel. But you really have to give me something more to go on, some reason to care, something more than just “What’s going on here?”

Yet so many writers drag out the uncertainty, as though that should keep me reading. In fact, they purposely withhold information to try to heighten the tension artificially. But it doesn’t work. When I first start reading, I’m already asking “What’s going on here?” Making me ask “What’s going on here?” isn’t going to keep me reading. You get a paragraph or two for free, but after that you have to pay for my attention. You have to give me some reason to care.

Now, sometimes, it’s natural to withhold information or explanation: The detective story in which we don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle until just before the end. That’s natural because the detective doesn’t have all the pieces until just before the end. But what about a detective story in which the detective discovers some core information or develops a core theory and shares this information with all of the other characters, but the author withholds this information from us. That’s just frustrating.

Monk fans may recognize the feeling from the recent episode “Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show” in which Adrian Monk and Captain Stottlemeyer put into action a plan to trap the murderer and his accomplice, but no one tells us what they’re up to. Of course, this episode broke the rules of a detective story in other ways, too. The end result was that I didn’t know what was going on, and I felt cheated.

How much uncertainty is too much? It’s not a matter of amount, but of setting. If the narrator should reasonably know the answer to the imminent question occupying the audience’s mind, he should reveal it. If the characters know the answer, they should reveal it.

The best tension comes from answers that are more confusing than the questions themselves. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did this well in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Tell me what’s going on, which gets me involved in the story. But once I understand the surface-level explanation as to what’s going on, that just brings up other underlying issues. And now I’m not only involved in the story, I’m also engaged. That’s how to keep me on the edge of my seat.

-TimK

Conflict is what drives the story arc. It’s what keeps the audience on the edge of its seat. And it’s a fundamental aspect of story structure. If you want to see how a story arc works, just look at just about any novel or movie or story game. Let’s look at Disney’s Snow White.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Snow White’s evil stepmother the Queen is envious of Snow White’s beauty, so she makes Snow White a maid. Snow White meanwhile meets a prince who would carry her away, which makes the evil stepmother even more envious. She orders a huntsman to cut out Snow White’s heart and bring it to her in a gold box. But the huntsman instead warns Snow White to escape into the forest and tries to fool the evil queen by bringing to her in the box the heart of a pig.

Snow White, meanwhile, finds the cottage of the seven dwarves. She cooks and cleans for them in return for lodging. But the evil queen finds out through her magic mirror that Snow White is still alive and still the most beautiful in the land. So she disguises herself as an old crone and creates a magic apple that will put Snow White to sleep forever. Only love’s first kiss will be able to wake up Snow White. She tricks Snow White into eating the apple. The dwarves discover this going on and chase the evil queen off a high precipice, from which she falls to her death.

But it’s too late. Snow White has already taken a bite of the apple and is dead. So the dwarves put her in a gold coffin with a glass cover. The prince happens along, discovers Snow White, kisses her, and she wakes up. Then he puts her on his horse and they ride off and live happily ever after.

The arc

A charming fairy tale, yes, but it follows a classic story arc. Here’s how the story arc works. Start with a conflict. In trying to resolve the conflict, things get worse for the protagonist. He tries once, twice, and then finally on the third try the conflict is resolved. And then there’s an epilogue that shows the new status quo after the conflict is resolved.

• The conflict is that Snow White is in danger and wants to find her prince.
• First attempt to solve the conflict: She meets her prince. This just makes the queen more angry. As a result, the queen tries to have her killed.
• Second attempt: Snow White runs away to the dwarves and the huntsman tries to fool the queen into thinking Snow White is dead. As a result, the queen sets out on a plan to kill Snow White personally. And she succeeds, at the cost of her death, yes, but that’s of no help to Snow White.
• Third attempt: The prince kisses Snow White, which wakes her up and resolves the conflict.
• Epilogue: They lived happily ever after.

Doing it ourselves

Our character gets laid off from his job, and now he’s out of work and needs to support his family. (That’s the conflict.) He has some unemployment pay and some severance. He tries for several months to get a job. (The first attempt.) But that doesn’t work, as he can’t find a job, and now they need to cut back, to economize. His friends at his church find out about his economic situation and invoke the church’s benevolence fund. (The second attempt.) This keeps them in food and shelter, but he still doesn’t have a job, and now he feels guilty for taking charity and inadequate as a provider. One of his friends has been urging him to try a career change, which he has been resisting. But now he does try it. (The third attempt.) It works, and he ends up making enough money to pay back the money he borrowed and contribute money to the church benevolence fund and the other communities that helped him through. And maybe he’s also has gained a new perspective on charity. (The epilogue.)

Variations

I like an abbreviated epilogue, rather than an epilogue full of inane banter. Just tell me what things are like after the conflict is resolved, and end the story.

The plot points are areas of great intensity in the story. Inbetween, there can be periods of relative rest. A story is like a huge boulder. Initially at rest, you have to give it a push to get it going, but then you can coast along, spend a little time looking at the scenery, before the next big push. The times of rest are not excuses to dump expository lumps onto the reader, but they are opportunities to look at relevant asides that would be uninteresting on their own.

In a complex story, there will be layers of story arcs. Consider a serial drama, like Gilmore Girls. The first 3 seasons of Gilmore Girls represent a unified epic story arc. On top of that are stories that stretch across multiple episodes. Then on top of that are individual episodes, each of which is a story of its own. The episode-length stories provide the surface for the multi-episode stories, which are built on the multi-season stories.

To resolve the conflict, the protagonist can conquer it, or the conflict can conquer the protagonist. Be careful with having the conflict win. I personally need the protagonist to win something, even if he also loses something. Maybe he wins a new perspective on life, as he yields to the inevitable. That may be bitter-sweet, but at least it’s not frustrating, as I found, for instance, A Streetcar Named Desire.

There’s a standard formula for romantic stories. Boy meets girl. They fall in love but pretend they don’t even notice each other. Finally, they declare their love and live happily ever after. This may sound a little corny, but most romantic stories are much deeper. Still they rely on the standard formula. There’s a reason why the standard formula is used so much. Because it works.

The Baxter

The Baxter is one of the romantic movies I watched recently. It follows the standard formula.

Elliot Wendall Sherman (Michael Showalter) is a “baxter,” a man who will never get married, because women always leave him for their one true love. This pattern repeats itself with one Caroline Swann (Elizabeth Banks), who leaves him at the altar. This is no spoiler, since we find out how the relationship ends at the very beginning of the movie. But this story is not about that romance. It’s about the romance between Elliot and another woman Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams).

Note that we have a lack of sympathy for Caroline, because we know that she’s going to leave Elliot and break his heart. Also, while they develop their relationship, we the audience get the rough treatment, the overview. So we feel no loved lost for their relationship.

On the other hand, every moment between Cecil and Elliot, we see into their souls, and we sympathize with them and root for them. But the situation is that Elliot is engaged to Caroline, and Cecil has a boyfriend. Standard stuff, but that means they can’t pursue a romance, prime fodder for an effective romantic conflict.

And it is an effective romantic conflict. The Baxter made a number of debatable story choices, and you can read about them at Amazon.com or IMDb. These choices mean you may or may not find it mediocre. But for all these choices, it is an effective romance. I definitely found it fun to watch, and I would watch it again.

Note, I’m talking about “romantic stories,” not just stories in the Romance genre. This includes even romantic story threads.

The Romantic Story Arc

What makes a good a romantic story? Firstly, it builds up sympathy for the characters. Though plot twists can contribute to a romantic story, romance itself is about people, and so romantic story threads are character-based. Often, one of the characters must overcome some personal obstacle in order to resolve the romantic conflict. The story builds up sympathy for the characters, and make them feel for each other. And it makes us feel deep inside the same longing that the characters have for each other.

The characters rarely tell us how they feel, but their feelings are evident for all to see. Generally, they should not say, “I love you.” In fact it’s better if they can’t say, “I love you.” Because that can be the source of the romantic conflict. Once we feel the longing, the story draws out the seperation between the charcters, making it less and less likely they’ll see their longings fulfilled. When they finally do come together, we can turn on the water-works.

This is the same story-arc pattern seen in every genre. For example, in an action story, the villian does something that makes the audience cry for blood, but the hero is powerless to satisfy. You have to keep the villian alive, because he’s the source of the conflict that drives the story forward. And he must grow in his evil power, or else the story will stagnate, or end. Only after the conflict reaches the crisis stage is the hero able finally to prevail. Likewise in a romantic story, pose a romantic conflict, then build it, build it, then: Bang! Our hearts turn to Jello.

Romance as a Human Need

Abraham Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs, published in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. His theory is that humans have more basic and higher needs. After the more basic ones are met, they can seek to meet the higher needs.

These are usually represented as a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are physiological needs: the need to breathe, to eat, to sleep. After our physiological needs are met, we turn to our need for safety. This includes the need to be safe from violence, to be provided for and in good health.

Now, Maslow put sex in the first category, physiological needs, as the need to procreate. But some of the best romantic stories have no sex whatsoever. In fact, over the past week, I’ve watch three good romantic movies, none of which had any sex between the two main romantic characters. Romance is not sex. It is intimacy.

Intimacy is part of the Maslow’s third layer of needs: the need to be loved and to love others. This includes the need to have friends and family, to be accepted and to accept others, the need to be needed. Deny a character one of these needs, and you have a great romantic conflict in the making.

A Simple Romantic Storyline

Here’s a simple romantic storyline, incorporating the above ideas. I used parts of Holly Lisle’s Create a Character Clinic to stimulate some of these ideas.

CHARACTER has a need to love a woman and to be loved. And he feels this with a particular woman. But he’s not available emotionally. He wants to keep the relationship platonic, because he wants to avoid the pain of rejection. But he must suffer rejection before he gets to acceptance.

His pattern of platonic relationships instead of romantic goes back to his adolescence. On the one hand, he spent time with his sister and her friends. On the other hand, his first love broke his heart by rejecting him. So he established a pattern in his thinking: platonic good, romantic bad.

CHARACTER meets a woman with whom he develops intimacy. To her, this is romantic, and she tries to start a romance with him. But he rebuffs her, and she decides she just can’t do this anymore.

Meanwhile, his sister, whom he also dearly loves, experiences some tragic event involving a hospital. He realizes he needs the woman in his life and takes the first steps at repairing the relationship.

This would have to be fleshed out much more to become an actual story. But you can see how it’s starting to come together.

This episode I’d like to call “The Crunchy Shell and the Creamy Middle,” but I don’t think anyone would be able to figure out what I was talking about. Stories use two types of conflict: internal and external. Internal conflicts are resolved by something changing inside the character, whereas external conflicts are resolved in the world around outside the character. When these two work together, the result can be dazzling. And when they don’t, the result can be devastating.

Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! This episode contains spoilers for Gilmore Girls season 4 episode 8, “Die, Jerk…” and for Philip Pullman’s novel The Golden Compass, as well as for the Roswell episode “Ch Ch Changes.”

Die, Jerk…

Gilmore Girls season 4 episode 8 is entitled “Die, Jerk…” (We’ll see why in a moment.) GilmoreGirls.org has a complete episode summary. For now, let’s look just at the “Die Jerk” story thread.

In the first scene, we learn that Rory wants to be on staff at the Yale Daily News, but first she must get a piece published in each department of the newspaper. She doesn’t think this is a big deal, even after she finds out that her review of a chamber-music recital never made the paper. Doyle, the editor, explains that it was “a bit of a yawn.” This thickens the plot, building on the first, external conflict, that Rory needs to get a review published.

She tries again, still with no luck. Doyle doesn’t just want facts. He wants opinions. She has one more chance. Her lifelong dream is to be a journalist. But by this time, she’s doubting her ability to make it as a journalist. This is an internal conflict. Her assignment now is to review a ballet. As she watches, we see the audience wince, and we hear the derogatory comments exchanged between Rory and her mom. But Rory does what Doyle asked. She writes what she saw and what she thought about what she saw.

The review gets raves. The ballet gets cancelled. The external conflict, that Rory needs to publish a review, is resolved. Her internal conflict is also resolved, as she’s proven her mettle as a journalist… Or is it?

We immediately discover that someone has painted the words “Die Jerk” on Rory’s dorm room door. We the viewers of course know at whom the sentiment is directed, but Rory and her roommates don’t. This is another external conflict, solving this mystery. They also don’t know whether this is an actual threat or whether someone is just acting out.

Fortunately, it turns out to be the latter, as Rory has a run-in with the devastated ballerina who had starred in the short-lived ballet. This leaves Rory internally conflicted, not only because she doesn’t like hurting other people, but also because she still doesn’t think she’s doing this journalism thing right.

Her mother is shocked at how harsh the review turned out in print. Her grandparents revel in the harshness of it; they’re very proud of their granddaughter. This serves only to conflict her further.

She decides to try to get a follow-up published, something that will help the ballerina, to try to balance out the damage she did in her review. This is another external conflict, as she’s trying to effect this change in the newspaper. She begs Doyle to let her review the ballet again, or to write a piece on the ballerina. We naturally can see right through her, as can Doyle:

DOYLE: I know what’s going on here.

RORY: What?

DOYLE: You’re feeling bad about the effect your article had on the people in the ballet.

RORY: No, that’s not it.

DOYLE: We heard about the dining-hall confrontation.

RORY: That was not really a confrontation. We were just chatting.

DOYLE: It goes with the territory. When I was your age, I reviewed a clog-dancing team that was really bad. I mean, even compared to other clog dancers. I was merciless.

RORY: But – but if I can’t re-review it, then can I just print the things that I meant to put in and didn’t have time to?

DOYLE: Hurting people’s feelings is what we do.

RORY: But when I become a real journalist, the people in my reviews aren’t gonna live in my building.

DOYLE: Doesn’t matter. When you write for the Yale Daily News, you are a real journalist.

RORY: I didn’t mean -

DOYLE: And if you can’t handle it, you should leave the paper.

RORY: I don’t want to leave the paper.

DOYLE: Good. Here. Your next assignment.

RORY: Thanks.

DOYLE: Knock ‘em dead.

And Rory smiles at the thought that she already has what it takes to be a real journalist. This resolves or negates all the conflicts. She now feels confident in her ability as a journalist. She also has come to terms with the damage she did to the ballerina, and she sees no need to publish a follow-up piece.

In the last scene of the episode, she listens for her next assignment to an especially bad musical performance. We see in her face the words that will eventually describe the ear-piercing cacophony. And we see that she’s okay with that.

Together And Separate

The story threads build off of each other, causing attendant conflicts and resolving them. External conflicts can generate or resolve attendant internal conflicts and vice-versa. However, they are still separate conflicts, and this affects how we perceive the story as its told.

We never find out, for example, how Rory feels about the “Die Jerk” graffiti on her door, because that’s an external conflict. It’s enough that Rory learns who put it there and why. We don’t have to understand how Rory feels about the mystery of it.

Similarly, two separate conflicts spawn from this resolution. Firstly, Rory is upset that she hurt the ballerina, an internal conflict. Secondly, Rory wants to publish a follow-up piece to offset the damage she’d done, an external one.

External conflicts, true, happen when the conflict resolves outside the character, even if the attendant circumstances are inside the character. Conversely, internal conflicts resolve inside, even if the situations causing them are outside. Even so, we need to understand what’s happening inside if it’s an internal conflict. Therefore, what’s happening inside will be brought into focus by a well-told story, in order to set up the internal conflict to be resolved internally. And we need to understand what’s outside, if it’s an external one, and so what’s happening outside will be brought into focus in this case.

The Golden Compass

Don’t you love it when an author grabs you by the nose, pulls you into his story, strings you along on the edge of your seat, and then lets you down with a lame ending? Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass is such a story. This is the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman expertly weaves a fantasy tale, draws you in, only to let you down at the end by resolving an external conflict with an internal solution.

In this fantasy story, a young girl named Lyra, a very special girl indeed, she finds herself on an adventure to the great white North. Throughout this adventure, she is always able, with the help of her allies, to accomplish what she needs to.

At the very end, the antagonist is about to open a gateway to another world– The way Philip Pullman tells the story, this does not come off as wierd or cheesy at all. By the time you get that far in the story, this all seems completely natural and believable. Pullman introduces his innovative creation, his world, to you so expertly that you never feel there’s anything strange about it.

The antagonist is about to open a gateway to another world, but this will kill Lyra’s best friend Roger. This is the ultimate climax. Lyra in this last great quest must stop the experiment and save Roger, and she has to do it on her own. And I fully expected her to, somehow, because that’s how the story was set up.

But she fails. The gateway opens. Roger dies. And Lyra, an eleven-year-old girl, devastated, with her dead friend in her arms, has a sudden change of heart and decides to follow the antagonist to the other world in order to… I’m not exactly sure. After 349 pages, the entire focus of the story turns around in the space of one more page, and I don’t know what’s going on. I guess I’m supposed to read the next book in the series in order to find out, but I don’t think I’m going to. I don’t like to be let down.

We all know about Deus ex Machina, God from the Machine. We all recognize that when the gods come down and magically make the hero’s problems disappear, that’s lame. This is similar. Maybe we can call it Deus ex Persona, God from the Character. Actors used to wear masks on stage to indicate which character they were portraying. This is as if the actor suddenly changes masks, and as a result all of the conflicts that mattered no longer matter. Deus ex Persona. How lame is that?

Ch Ch Changes

The third-season episode of the sci-fi series Roswell, “Ch Ch Changes”—and I swear that’s actually what it’s called—does the same thing. Liz is experiencing strange changes, and everyone’s looking for a way to stave them off. Suddenly, Liz accepts these changes.

Fortunately, Gilmore Girls never lets me down like this.

Shallower story arcs introduce or build up elements in deeper story arcs.

Mini-stories

There are two types of conflicts: plot-based (external) and character-based (internal). External conflicts are outside of the character, whereas internal conflicts are inside him. The classic external conflict is the murder mystery, where the detective must put together clues and reveal whodunnit, something that happens outside of his own psyche. Internal conflicts are frequently seen in romance stories, where interpersonal relationships cause the characters to rethink the way they feel or conquer internal obstacles that have kept them from being fulfilled.

Plot-based (external) conflicts are generally shallower and serve well in smaller arcs. Character-based (internal) conflicts are generally deeper and need to be placed in broader arcs in order to be effective.

Also, plot-based and character-based story threads, though intertwined, are separate, or else the story is confusing. The story will highlight certain things for a plot-based story but others for a character-based one. And intuitively we pick up on these signals as the story is told.

Opening scenes are a great place to see layering, because in the beginning of a story, the writer must establish the characters, setting, and conflicts. In very deep stories, the conflicts are going to be elaborate and possibly based on the characters, established as we learn about and identify with the characters. In the meantime, we want to be entertained and driven as we learn about the characters. Small conflicts can teach us about the characters and provide momentum that carries us into the deeper parts of the story.

These small, shallow conflicts might be close to trivial, because they don’t have to hold our attention for very long. They are there to introduce or build up elements of the deeper story arcs.

Gilmore Girls

In the initial scene of the first episode of Gilmore Girls, Lorelai wants a cup of coffee, and Luke won’t give it to her. That’s the first conflict that faces us. After a few seconds, Luke gives her some coffee, which resolves the conflict, but through it, we begin to learn about the character. Already, we begin to see her as a real human being with real human desires, and she’s already facing obstacles that are keeping her from fulfilling those desires. We also see some of the dynamics between the characters, as Luke shows he cares enough about Lorelai to question whether she should really be feeding her insane coffee addiction.

Ultimately, in this episode, we understand that Lorelai has gone through great pains and personal humiliation in order to make it possible for her daughter Rory to attend the Chilton school, but Rory decides she doesn’t want to, and the reason why is that she’s met a boy.

By the end of the episode, they resolve this conflict, but the characters and situations the episode has set up are a springboard for a series of even deeper story arcs, which last the first three seasons of Gilmore Girls. By the end of the third season, Rory has graduated from Chilton; she has experienced both romance and heartbreak; Lorelai and her friend Sookie are on their way to seeing their big dream come true, to own their own inn. There are other story arcs as well that progress through these three years of Rory’s and Lorelai’s lives. Though the pilot stands as a complete story, it also is a component in an epic story arc.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Robert A. Heinlein’s award-winning, classic science-fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an example of a primarily plot-based story in which we can see layering. As the story begins, the main character, Manny, is called to the Lunar Authority complex to debug a computer problem. This computer printed for one of the janitors a paycheck of AS$10,000,000,000,000,185.15, the last five digits being the correct amount. Through this, we learn that the computer, whom Manny calls Mike, after Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’s brother– Mike is self-aware, and he issued this check, not as the result of a software bug, but because he was playing a practical joke.

The novel itself is about a revolutionary war in which Luna breaks away from Earth, lest its inhabitants suffer starvation and death. The story progresses in three phases, each of which provides numerous small conflicts that drive the story forward. Heinlein so quickly and thoroughly pulls you into the story, you don’t even care that Heinlein wrote the novel years before anyone had set foot on the moon, that as a result his lunar science is way off. Instead, you identify with the characters and find yourself believing in them and their culture, and rooting for them in their plight.

Grim Fandango

With bony hands I hold my partner;
On soulless feet we cross the floor.
The music stops as if to answer
An empty knocking at the door.

It seems his skin was sweet as mango
When last I held him to my breast,
But now we dance this grim fandango,
And will four years before we rest.

Grim Fandango was the last of Tim Schafer’s great story-based adventures during his days at LucasArts. Now he’s started his own studio, Double Fine Productions, who produced Psychonauts (available for PC, PS2, and X-Box), which is also a great story-based game, a platform game.

(A note on playing Grim Fandango: Be sure to install the version 1.01 Update patch, which you can download from the LucasArts web site Support section.)

Like most story-based games, Grim Fandango is strongly plotted. (I’m still looking for a good, character-based story game, and perhaps I will someday find one in the interactive-fiction community.) Since they’re plot-driven, most story games are mysteries or science-fiction.

Grim Fandango is based on Mexican folklore, told in a film-noir style. Set in the Land of the Dead, Manny Calavera must earn his way out of the Eighth Underworld so that he can reach the Land of Eternal Rest. He works as a grim reaper, a form of community service, because he lived a less than stellar life. But we later find out that, like many of his clients, Manny actually lived a virtuous life and was robbed of his proper passage.

Some arcs from Grim Fandango:

• Manny needs a premium sale in order to earn his way out of the eighth underworld.
• Manny must overcome Dominoe, his arch nemesis.
• He must find Meche, the woman he loves, so he can get them both out of there.
• He must uncover and conquer the conspiracy that’s robbing so many souls of their eternal rest.

You the player must discover what actions progress the plot and cause Manny to take these actions, which together form story threads, of which 3 or 4 may be active simultaneously. The story threads are arranged in chapters, each of which brings Manny closer to reaching the Ninth Underworld, the Land of Eternal Rest.

It’s unfortunate that so few deep story games are developed anymore. Psychonauts is one of the only ones currently being published. Most game players, being young, value gameplay; thus the gaming industry concentrates on gameplay as the core of computer and video games. But a gamer captivated by the story aspects of the game will consider the story to be core, and the gameplay to be there to support the story.