Tag Archives: plot

Why You’ll Love the Snowflake, Too

The snowflake I’m blogging about today doesn’t have much to do with winter weather, but instead a writing method developed by author Dr. Randy Ingermanson.  I won’t go through his method here, since he does a much better job describing it on his site than I could, but I’ll just discuss why I like it and why I think you will, too.

First, a snowflake is a good metaphor for a story (no two alike, many quite intricate and beautiful), but that’s not how Dr. Ingermanson means it.  He’s referring to the mathematical fractal construction that starts with a simple shape, adds to the shape according to certain rules, and beautiful complexity emerges, with the final shape looking like a snowflake.

In the same way, he’s suggesting you start with very basic ideas about your story, then add to those ideas in a logical manner, building more detail with each step.  Near the end of his ten-step process, you’ve got a thorough plan for your story.  The tenth step is to write the story, which is much easier when you have your plan in front of you.  You’ll find you don’t get stuck as often, or frustrated at boxing yourself into a plot situation your characters can’t get out of, at least without major changes.

I’ve discussed earlier how plot, characters, and setting have to fit together such that the story couldn’t really take place with any other characters, and the plot actions seem both inevitable and surprising, and the setting is the necessary one for the story.  Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method makes this happen for you, by incrementally developing plot, characters, and setting, starting with sketchy concepts and adding more detail to each in turn until you end up with a comprehensive plan for your story and everything seems to fit.

How do I use the Snowflake Method?  First, I’ve been writing short stories, and the Snowflake is intended for novels, so I abbreviate it a bit, sometimes using mind maps for some of the steps instead of writing them out fully.  Second, I add a step concentrating just on the story’s hook, the opening sentence and paragraph.  Third, I sometimes add a step to construct a motivation chart using a modified Root Cause Analysis chart to make sure my characters take believable actions in accordance with their personalities.

One downside to the Snowflake is the fact that it requires so much time for planning the story, and actually writing it must wait until the last step.  Meantime, your muse may be screaming at you to cease all this planning stuff and get on with things.  A screaming muse is actually good, much better than what comes next.  If your muse starts feeling ignored, she will get bored and go away, or start looking for other story ideas to intrigue her.  So keep thinking of the Snowflake as a method for getting to know your story better and better, not as a dreary planning exercise.  Focus on the emerging details; promise your muse that you’ll be doing actual writing soon.

Dr. Ingermanson has come up with software to make the Snowflake Method easy and fun.  Cheapskate that I am, I have not yet purchased it, but that package might be right for you, especially if you are struggling to accomplish the steps using word processors and spreadsheet programs.

Consider giving the Snowflake Method a try.  Visit Dr. Ingermanson’s site.  Whether it works for you or not, I’m sure he’d like to hear about your experiences with it.  And of course, if you’d click on the “leave a comment” link below, so would—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

October 28, 2012Permalink

Character, Plot, or Setting—Which Comes First?

Today’s question is about whether story-writers think about characters, plot, or setting when they first conceive the idea for a story.  If you’ve written fiction, or thought about doing so, which did you start with?

Of these three story elements, perhaps character is most important to the reader.  For readers, vivid and interesting characters linger in the memory long after plot or setting details fade.  Some writers form a complete mental image of one or more characters, and then wonder what to have them do, and where to have them do it.

For other authors, the first image is of a setting.  The scenery is sharp and distinct in their minds.  Perhaps they have a photograph or painting to inspire them, and they decide to craft a tale around that image.  Some story contests use pictures to prompt stories.

Still others think of the action or story-line or basic situation first.  Only after that do they wonder what sort of people should take those actions and where the events should take place.

The image is my attempt to illustrate some of the possibilities graphically.

I’m talking here only about the initial impetus for the story.  That’s not what the readers reads.  In the end, the story must form a complete, coherent, integral whole.  Characters, plot, and setting should fit together and complement each other.  This is especially true of characters and plot.  In a sense, plot and character determine each other.  In a well-written tale, those are the only characters for which the plot makes sense, and vice versa.  You can’t take any characters at random and fit them in any situation.

I doubt there is any right answer to my question about which element writers should think of first.  I’d be shocked to learn if the greatest writers all started with the same element, but I suspect we’ll never know.

I considered the question with respect to my own short stories, and thought at first I had some stories in each category.  Then I reflected on each tale one by one and discovered I had thought of plot first in almost every case.  There were three stories in which the plot immediately determined the characters.  In “Alexander’s Odyssey” and “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” the characters were historical or mythological figures.  In the case of “The Steam Elephant,” my sequel to a pair of Jules Verne novels, the characters had been established by Verne.

The single exception to my usual practice of dreaming up a plot first is my story, “Against All Gods,” and I must admit I thought of the setting first there.  I’d wanted to set a story aboard a trireme for some time, and also the Wonders of the Ancient World, so I started with those and conjured up a plot and characters to fit those settings.

Not that it matters to readers, who only see your finished product, but which do you think of first—characters, plot, or setting?  Let me know by leaving a comment.  It’s a question of interest to—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

October 14, 2012Permalink

Is Fiction Dialogue Different from Plain Old Yakking?

Dialogue through verbal speech is as important to your fictional characters as it is to us flesh-and-blood folks, though for somewhat different reasons.  For both fictional and real people, speaking is the most common form of communication, and communication is, of course, not only vital but is something we humans do a lot.

However, real people engage in spoken dialogue for only a few reasons, and among them are:

  • to inform
  • to persuade
  • to establish a relationship
  • to argue
  • to direct or command

When our fictional characters talk, it is for these reasons, too, but also several more.  This is due to the difference in their situation.  For example, we often speak ‘off the cuff’ without much preparation or forethought; characters never do that, though they seem to.  Characters only exist due to the efforts of an entity called a ‘writer,’ of whom they are unaware.  They exist solely for the benefit and enjoyment of another entity called a ‘reader,’ of whom they are also unaware.  So dialogue between characters also serves these purposes:

  • to set the scene; that is, help the reader ‘see’ the scene
  • to establish a character’s personality
  • to advance the plot by introducing or heightening the conflict
  • to create suspense or add tension
  • to remind the reader of previous events or characters
  • to foreshadow future events
  • to provide easy-to-read ‘white space’ in between narration paragraphs

Most of the time, fictional dialogue is accomplishing many of these functions at once.  That might seem a daunting task for the beginning writer, and you may be wondering how you’ll ever write dialogue that does so much.  As an author not too far removed from beginner status, all I can say is, I’m told the task gets easier with practice, like any good habit.

Now that we’ve covered the differences in purpose, let’s cover the differences in form between real and fictional dialogue.

  • In the first place, fictional dialogue is less dull.  As much as we try not to be dull in real life, much of our conversation is, frankly, boring.  Fiction can’t afford to be dull, so leave out all the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ of real speech.  Cast out all the little pleasantries like ‘how are you doing?’ ‘fine,’ etc.  Ever notice fictional characters rarely say ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye?’ Now you know why.
  • Fictional characters shouldn’t have as strong an accent as real people, at least as it’s depicted in written dialogue.  Whether your character is from the deep South, New England, or speaks English with a strong foreign accent, don’t attempt to replicate every word by spelling it as your character would pronounce it.  Just do that with a couple of words per sentence at most.  Your readers’ imaginations will do the rest, and you don’t want to make it difficult for them to decipher your prose.

And that’s it.  In other words, fictional dialogue isn’t too different from everyday speaking, at least on the surface.  If it were significantly different, readers wouldn’t find it believable.  It’s only beneath the surface where fictional dialogue serves purposes beyond what’s going on in real conversation.   Here are three links to great articles giving helpful guidance about fictional dialogue:  here, here, and here.

“Hope you enjoyed my blog entry on how dialogue is different from plain old yakking.  Feel free to leave a comment whether you agree or disagree,” said—

                                                  Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

October 8, 2012Permalink

Writing “Against All Gods”

In a previous blog post I’ve explored how writers take a basic idea and build it into a story.  Here I thought I’d show you that process at work in the development of one of my tales.

Recently, Gypsy Shadow Publishing launched my story “Against All Gods.”  It’s the latest tale in a series called What Man Hath Wrought.

How did I come to write that story?  I’ve long been fascinated with ships, ship design, and the beautiful vessels of the past.  Among these is the trireme of Ancient Greece and Rome.  Well suited for naval warfare in the Mediterranean, triremes sailed and fought for hundreds of years using a basic design that changed little during that time.  If Hollywood made a movie featuring the adventures of a trireme crew, I’d stand in line when it opened.  Can’t you just see the deadly ram; the painted eyes; the jutting prow; the churning rows of oars; that single rectangular sail; and the graceful, upward curve of the stern?

As an engineer, I’ve also been enthralled by the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  Using only the simple materials available to them, Bronze Age people of the Mediterranean constructed architectural marvels whose memory lingers across the millennia.  Six of the seven are gone, but that only heightens their grandeur, for our imaginations build them anew to a magnificence the originals probably lacked.

How, I thought, could I write a story featuring a trireme and the Seven Wonders?  Clearly a sea voyage to each of the Wonders seemed in order.  Moreover, it must have some appeal, some relevance, to modern readers who might not share my interests.  As to that, it had not escaped my notice that my only previous romance story, “Within Victorian Mists,” had been selling rather well.

Could I manage, then, a tale involving a trireme, the Wonders, and a romance?  Time for a mind map to brainstorm various plot ideas.  First, all seven Wonders had to be in existence, and since that was only true between 280 B.C. (when the Alexandria Lighthouse was built) and 226 B.C. (when the Colossus of Rhodes collapsed), those dates roughly fixed the story’s timeframe.  Early on I abandoned the notion of bringing the woman character along on the voyage as being too far-fetched.  That meant my two lovers would be separated for most of the story.  And what should the woman do at home while the man voyages on his sea adventure—strum her lyre and pine for him?  No.  Today’s readers seek strong and independent female characters.

Think, for a moment, about the story you might have written given those constraints.  As for me, I explored a few options in my mind map, considering pros and cons of each, rejecting ideas with unsolvable flaws, weighing the remaining notions, and finally selecting the one I believed held the most promise.

As it says in the book blurb, “In ancient Athens, trireme commander Theron and the woman he loves, Galene, have each earned the wrath of jealous gods.  To marry Galene, Theron must voyage to all seven Wonders of the World.  At every stage the immortal gods test their love with all the power and magic at their command.  While Galene suffers anguishing torment in Athens, Theron faces overwhelming challenges at every Wonder from Ephesus to Rhodes to Babylon.  Theron and Galene may be devoted to each other, but how can mere mortal love survive…against all gods?”

There it is…a glimpse into the mind of a creative writer at work.  Comment if you found it helpful.  Or unhelpful.  It’s all part of the service provided by—

                                                     Poseidon’s Scribe

 

August 20, 2012Permalink

A Mystery to Me

Do you love reading mysteries?  Ever think of writing one?

The genre was invented by Edgar Allan Poe and popularized by Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories.  It remains a popular genre with a devoted readership.

The mystery genre is hard to define.  All fiction involves an element of mystery, since there’s always a conflict and the reader doesn’t know how the protagonist will resolve that conflict.  Here we’ll speak of stories where the focus is on the puzzling aspects of the conflict, which is often a crime or some unexplained phenomena.  In addition, the sleuth in the story uses attention to detail and deductive logic to solve the mystery.

In your mystery story, make sure the mystery itself is something important, something the reader will care about.  That’s why there are so many murder mysteries, and so few involving a missing 99¢ comb.

Before writing your story, develop various timelines or storylines:

1.  First is the actual timeline of events in which the real perpetrator commits the act.  This must be logical and in accordance with various character’s motivations.  As author, you’ll be the only one who knows this one.

2.a., 2.b, 2.c, etc.  You may need a series of fake timelines, in each of which one of the other suspects could commit the act.  These need not be completely logical or reflect character motivations exactly, but at first your sleuth won’t know that.

3.  A timeline pieced together by your sleuth, formed through evidence and logical deduction.

4.  You might even have a separate timeline that is revealed to the reader.  However, Timeline 4 usually matches Timeline 3.

Most mysteries involve the commission of a crime.  To do so, a criminal must have means, motive, and opportunity (MMO).  The challenge for the sleuth is that either (1) several people seem to have all three, or (2) nobody seems to have all three.  Of the three necessary parts of MMO, motive is often the first part presented to the reader.

Among frequent readers of the genre it’s considered unfair to (1) withhold evidence from the reader that the sleuth knows, including specialized skills or knowledge, or (2) have the sleuth confront the guilty suspect with insufficient evidence (that wouldn’t gain a conviction in court) but still the criminal breaks down and confesses.

Your writing challenge is to present the reader with all the evidence needed to solve the mystery, but to make the puzzle difficult enough that the reader would rather just read to the end to see how the sleuth cracks the case.  Bear in mind the necessary evidence need not be emphasized in your story, just present.  It could be buried in the middle of a paragraph.  Or you could distract the reader’s attention with some dramatic action that happens to include a piece of evidence easy to gloss over.

The genre has been so well explored, it’s difficult to think of mysteries that haven’t been done.  For example, I wish you luck in thinking up a new version of the locked-room mystery, where a crime is committed in a sealed enclosure where the only entries are locked from the inside.

For that reason, writers of mysteries these days seem to be focusing on the character of the sleuth, or the setting.  In today’s market, the way to set your mystery apart is to have a very compelling sleuth.  The minimum attributes for this character are: (1) attention to detail, and (2) an ability to deduce a chain of events from disparate facts.  Or you could have two sleuths working together, each of which has one of these traits.

Another way to distinguish your mysteries from others is to use a historical or unusual setting.  Depending on how far back a time you choose, it could present a real challenge for your sleuth due to the lack of modern crime investigation technologies.

Did this blog entry inspire you to write a mystery story?  Leave me a comment and let me know about it.  Just make sure the answer to whodunit isn’t–

                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

 

July 8, 2012Permalink

Fleshing Out Your Story

Perhaps you’re a beginning writer with a great idea for a story.  Or maybe you’re an experienced author and someone has come to you with a  story idea and suggested you just whip up the story inspired by that idea.  Either way, there’s something writers know that non-writers don’t — the idea is the easy part.

Would you approach a sculptor with a sketch, then gesture to a nearby block of marble and suggest the sculptor merely chip away at the block until it looks like your sketch?  Would you hum a tune to a composer, and suggest she spend a few minutes penning some lyrics and orchestrating all the instruments to play the harmonic parts to fit with your hummed tune?

It’s not clear to me why people think writing is so different.  Somehow the belief got started that writers search and search for something to write about, that we spend 90% of our time enduring the agony of waiting for the idea to hit.  Once it does, we simply dash off the story and hit send, apparently.  A particularly long novel might, they think, take the better part of an afternoon to jot down.

I hate to be the one to burst the bubble on that myth, but it just ain’t so.  On occasion, it’s true, some writers struggle to figure out what to write about.  For a time, they seek some prompt.  There are books and websites to supply these, but there’s also real life–it’s all around, filled with plenty of things that could form the basis of a story.  Even that’s not enough.  Next the writer must turn this ‘prompt’ into an idea.  This idea forms the skeleton of the story.  An idea includes main characters, a rough primary plot, and some notion of settings.

I don’t mean to downplay the difficulty of getting that far.  But a writer reaching that point is a long way from finished.  Moreover, we have no sense yet of whether the resulting story will be good.  Promising ideas still can suffer from poor execution when converted to finished form.  Alternately, a truly wonderful tale can be spun from a trivial, humdrum idea.

A writer with an idea now faces the task of fleshing out that skeleton.  He must breathe life into the characters, making them identifiable and engaging.  She must select such descriptive words for her settings so as to transport the reader there.  He embellishes the plot with understandable motives for actions, and adds subplots.  She imbues the story with her own style and flair, ensuring she touches on universal human themes.  When his first draft is crap, as it always is, he edits and rewrites, often several times. During these subsequent drafts, she might spice the manuscript with symbolism, alliteration, foreshadowing, character quirks, tension-building techniques, allusion, metaphor, and the other little things separating good from average fiction.  Then, because the story is now too long, he goes through it again, compressing, trimming, cutting, and making each word defend itself.

I’ve made this fleshing-out process sound like drudgery, and sometimes it is.  True writers find enjoyment in it, or at least tolerate it.  But it is not the easy part.  For me, writing consists of the same proportions as Thomas Edison’s formula for genius–1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.  Perhaps someday when I’ve written many hundreds of stories it will get more difficult to come up with new ideas, but I’m a long way from that.  Even then the percentages will likely be 2% and 98%.

Were you laboring under a misconception about the difficulty of ideas and the ease of writing?  Have I changed your mind?  Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.  While I wait for you to do that, it’s back to the hard work of fleshing out another skeleton for–

                                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

July 1, 2012Permalink

Writing for Young Adults

Want to write stories for Young Adults?  Hard to blame you.  It’s a large market, and some authors have become successful in aiming for it.  If you, like J. K. Rowling, happen to write a YA story that also appeals to adults, then your story’s market is that much bigger.

Perhaps your purpose in writing YA stories is more complex than a direct desire for money or fame.  One web commenter has suggested writer Robert Heinlein wrote YA (then called ‘juvenile’) novels to shape a young audience, to prepare readers for later buying his brand of adult novels.  If true…wow!  That’s thinking ahead!

Whatever your reason for wanting to write for it, the YA market is an interesting one.  It took until about 1900, several hundred years after the first printed books, for the following confluence of events to make a YA market possible:  (1) the price of books dropped to be within a teen’s budget, (2) teen buying power rose so they could afford books, and (3) teens weren’t working so long and had available time to read.  Once the market emerged, authors began aiming for it.

What are YA stories like, and how do they differ from other genres?  Young adults, as an audience, are leaving the comfortable world of childhood and ready to experience adulthood.  They’re curious about it, anxious to try things.  Fiction gives them a safe opportunity to “try” things in a vicarious way.  They’ve grown beyond simple, moralistic tales.  They crave stories with identifiable, strong but vulnerable characters–complex characters who aren’t all good or all bad.  A good, solid plot-line is more important to them now than it was in the children’s books they no longer read.

In short, YA stories are very similar to those written for adults.  I thought I’d read once where Robert Heinlein had said writing for juveniles (the old term for YA) was just like writing for adults except you take out all the sex and swearing.  I can’t find that quote now, but it would need amending anyway.  Notice Heinlein had no problem with violence in YA stories, and that remains true.  As for sex, it’s probably best to leave out graphic descriptions, but don’t pretend the act doesn’t exist.  As for swearing, it’s my guess that mild swearing is acceptable in YA literature these days.

How do you write for the YA market?  I think it’s important to think back to your own teen years and pull what you recall from those experiences.  Remember when the world was new to you, when all your emotions were intense ones, when you longed to be accepted and wondered if there were others like you, wondered if you’d find even one special person for you?  Pick a protagonist who is aged a few years older than your target audience, either in the late teens or early twenties.  Don’t talk down to your readers; they’re old enough to look up words they don’t understand.  Don’t set out to write a moralistic story of instruction; teens are quick to spot a lecture and, frankly, they get enough of those from their parents.  They’re not about to shell out good money and spend their time reading a sermon from you.

My own reading as an early teenager focused on the Tom Swift, Jr. series published between 1954 and 1971.  After that I primarily read Jules Verne and other science fiction authors, mostly those writing hard science fiction.  Now as a writer, I think all my stories should be acceptable for the YA audience, though I haven’t consciously aimed for it.  My tales have very little swearing.  There is a sex scene (of sorts) in my horror story, “Blood in the River,” but nothing too graphic.  However, none of my published stories feature a teen protagonist.

Good luck with the YA story you’re writing.  If this blog post has helped in any way, or if you take issue with what I’ve stated, please leave a comment for–

                                                    Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

June 24, 2012Permalink

Speaking of Dialogue…

Yes, I know I’ve written about aspects of dialogue before, but it’s time I tackled the subject in general.

First, why do fictional works include dialogue at all?

  • The most important reason is because people talk.  A lot.  If you’re writing a story about more than one person, chances are they’ll have something to say to each other.
  • Also, dialogue is a great way to show the reader things about your characters.  More on that below.
  • Without any dialogue, your story would be uninterrupted narration.  Dialogue helps to break that up.

There are several points to bear in mind as you write dialogue:

  • Each conversation should be significant.  It should support and advance the plot.
  • Use dialogue to illustrate aspects of your characters.  Show your readers your character’s wants, backgrounds, attitudes, values, emotions, and thought processes.  Since dialogue requires two or more people, you’ll also show their relationships with each other.
  • Gender can factor into dialogue.  There is a tendency for women to speak horizontally – to use conversation to establish the degree of emotional closeness and, once established, go from there.  The tendency for men is to speak vertically – to discover through conversation where each stands in a hierarchy, and, once established, go from there.  These are just common tendencies, not firm rules.
  • If you write a character’s dialect (the way they deviate from Standard English), be careful not to overdo it.  A word or two in each sentence is sufficient.  Avoid dialect that readers could construe as an insulting stereotype.  If you’re inventing a new dialect for a non-existent culture or world, do it with care so as not to confuse your readers.
  • Speaking of not confusing readers, that’s essential for dialogue.  At a minimum, readers need to know who’s speaking.  Ensure you use separate paragraphs for each character.  Give each character her own “voice” or “tone” identifiable through her word choice to help the reader distinguish one from another.  Use “tags” like ‘Charles said,’ or, better, ‘Charles said as he holstered his blaster.’
  • Dialogue should convey emotion.  People are emotional and fictional people even more so.  Avoid using dialogue just to convey information.  Changes in emotion from mild to strong during a conversation can be quite effective.
  • For more authentic dialogue, listen to real people talking.  In your writing you shouldn’t write exactly the way you hear it, though.  Do include the cadences and the shortcuts based on assumptions about what the other person already knows.  Don’t include the “um’s” or the tangential trivia.
  • Don’t overdo it by making your story mostly dialogue.  That’s just talking heads.  Readers want thought, and especially action, too.

Please leave a comment and let me know if this helps you write better dialogue.  Also comment if you think I left out an important aspect of dialogue; I’m certain I did.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this example of dialogue:

“Who’s that handsome and ingenious guy with the excellent blog advice?”

“He calls himself–

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe.”

May 27, 2012Permalink

Use Mind Maps to Solve Your Writing Problems

The concept of mind mapping has come up in my blog entries before, as a suggested tool to help writers.  I’ve said you can use mind maps for outlining, to improve your creativity, and to solve pesky plotting problems.  But what exactly is a mind map, and how does it work?

A mind map is a way of organizing and illustrating thoughts about a topic.  I learned about the technique from reading Use Both Sides of Your Brain, by Tony Buzan.  It contrasts quite a bit from other note-taking methods like the I.A.1.(a)(1)(i) outlining method you learned in school.  I’ve found it to be more intuitive, less messy, and easier to remember than other methods.  I use my own variant of mind mapping any time I need to organize thoughts:  note-taking during meetings at work, planning my day, planning a vacation.  And, oh yeah, I use mind-mapping to aid in my writing.

How do you construct a mind map?  I’ll give only a quick description here; I recommend you read Buzan’s book, or at a minimum read descriptions of the technique elsewhere online.

  • Start in the center with an image of the topic.
  • Write key words around the central image using upper case letters.
  • Underline each key word.
  • Use lines to link the underlined key words to your central image and to each other to illustrate connections.
  • Use images and symbols throughout, in addition to key words.  (Don’t worry if you think you can’t draw decent pictures; no one but you will see your mind map.)
  • Use multiple colors to separate thoughts, and to link similar thoughts.
  • Continue branching out from the center, expanding the thoughts and linking related ideas.

The best way to explain what that all means is to show you a mind map.  I’ve said you can use mind maps to solve writing problems, so let’s see a hypothetical example.  Let’s say you’re Jules Verne and you’re working on a book with a working title of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  You’re outlining the major events of the book and you want to finish with an appropriate, memorable ending, one with a big impact and one that fits the novel’s major themes.  You could make a list of possible endings, then go back and list pros and cons for each option, then choose the best one.  Or you could construct a mind map.

(Set aside for the moment, that [1] mind-mapping hadn’t been invented at the time, and [2] Verne did not write in English.)

In a more complete mind-map, Verne would have continued branching from each option, with pros and cons.  I’ve violated a few mind map rules in this example, but my overall point is for you to see how you could use the technique to aid your writing.

Stuck for an idea what to write about?  Write down key words that resonate with you, even if apparently unrelated.  Go fast and fill up a page with words and pictures.  Now pause and look for natural associations.  Re-do the mind map if necessary to keep it clean and neat.  Now, in a different color, try connecting some unrelated ideas.  Do any of these clashing notions suggest a possible story?

Not sure how to plot your story?  Mind-map the story’s scenes, with branches describing why they occur and how the characters change or learn things from each event.  That should make it apparent if you have unnecessary scenes, scenes in the wrong order, or if you’re missing some scenes you need.

Possible uses for mind-mapping are limited only by your imagination.  In other words, there are no limits.  Can you see yourself using this technique?  Have you ever done so?  Share your ideas about mind-mapping by leaving a comment.  This blog post has been brought to you by both the left and right sides of the brain of–

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

April 15, 2012Permalink

Give Your Characters Vivid Personalities

Figured out the plot for a story you’re going to write, have you?  Got some rough character ideas in mind?  You say the only problem is, you’re not great at fleshing out the personalities of your characters?  Well, you may have surfed to the right blog post.

I think the first rule of character personalities is–they must fit the story.  Sometimes the plot itself necessitates certain personality types for your major characters.  Of course, from the reader’s point of view, this fitting is the other way around.  Readers learn about the character’s personalities early as they are introduced and relate to each other, and then read about the plot events.  So from your reader’s perspective, it seems fortunate that your characters had just the right personalities, given what eventually happened.

You may have read plot-driven stories in which there’s a lot of action but the characters seem shallow or stereotypical.  These stories get published because the plot action is so riveting, and despite the character portrayals.  There are also character-driven stories where the characters are fully fleshed out, but very little action occurs other than people talking to each other.  These stand a better chance of publication because readers like compelling characters.  However, it’s best to have both a gripping plot and captivating characters.

Let me explain more clearly what I mean about character personalities fitting the plot.  The protagonist in your story will face a conflict consisting of increasing levels of challenges.  That’s what stories are about.  The conflict can be external or internal or both.  In the end, the conflict will be resolved somehow, and the protagonist may undergo an internal change.

So you could pick a personality type for the protagonist that suits her well for the conflict.  In that case the story line is about her dealing with the challenges as they arise, and the actions she takes in accordance with her personality help to resolve the conflict.  Or you could pick a personality type that’s at odds with the conflict.  (For example, the conflict requires bold action, and you’ve got a shy protagonist.)  Now the internal struggle within the protagonist is one more challenge she faces as she deals with the external conflicts.  The actions she takes may actually worsen the conflict initially and trigger the increasing challenges.

In addition to fitting the plot, a character’s personality should fit, and emerge from, his background.  As you figure out where the character was born, his birth order in relation to siblings, what his upbringing was like, and what occupation he chose, those background details might well suggest certain personality traits.  (Alternately, you can determine personality traits first and come up with a suitable background later.)  Keep in mind that people sometimes form personality types in reaction against their upbringing rather than being in harmony with it.

In addition to having a protagonist’s personality fitting both the conflict and the character’s background, you should ensure your major characters have different personality types.  That makes their interactions much more interesting.  As a beginning writer I have found this difficult.  It’s easy to have characters act as I, the writer, would act in their place.  That results in characters with personalities much like mine.  A good writer populates her stories with characters of several personality types that are both revealed by their actions, and determine their actions in a believable way.  Ideally your readers should be unable to determine your personality type from your writing.

There are many sources of information about personality types that can aid you in developing your characters.  Internet searches on any of the following terms will provide plenty of information:

  • One (my favorite) is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which lays out sixteen different personality types.
  • There are four-color personality representation schemes which seem a little less useful to me.
  • Enneagrams provide nine personality types.  I have not used or studied this much, but it looks intriguing.
  • Astrology, either Western or Chinese, provides twelve unique personality types.

I listed these aids last because they are only useful to you in fleshing out a character’s personality type after you’ve already ensured the personality (1) fits the plot, (2) fits the background, and (3) differs from other characters and from the writer’s.

As always, feel free to leave a comment whether your personality clashes or matches with–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

December 11, 2011Permalink