Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Monday, February 3, 2014
Three Goals for Every Character
You can break down each character�s goals into three types: professional, private and personal.
�Professional� refers to the job that needs to be done. A monster has to be killed, a treasure has to be found, a wedding has to take place etc. This physical goal drives the main story and gives the hero something to do.
�Private� is something that characters want for themselves. It may not be the main focus of the story as it doesn�t necessarily affect other characters, but a character that only acts out of pure altruism and self-sacrifice is both unrealistic and a little annoying.
�Personal� is more about the psychological needs of the character. Whatever flaws or hang-ups the character might have (and he should definitely have some), there will have to be a resolution or understanding reached at some point in the story. This aspect is often the most rewarding and satisfying in a novel, but also risks being the most clich�d and obvious.
These three elements are often very closely linked and intertwined, but they can also be very separate. Both approaches have their advantages and their disadvantages.
A typical example of a story with closely bound goals would be something like this: a knight has to kill a rampaging dragon (professional); he�s in love with the princess the dragon has captured (private); he fears he is not good enough to be allowed to marry into the royal family (personal).
An example of a story with more divergent goals might be something like this: a government spy has to stop the villain detonating a nuclear bomb; he has to tell his girlfriend he�s not an accountant before they get married; he�s a recovering alcoholic and constantly struggling against relapse.
In the dragon example you can see that each goal is directly affected by the others and it is pretty straightforward to keep all three in the mix as the story progresses. The problem is likely to arise at the end of the story as everything suddenly gets resolved at the same time. All that build up and suddenly the dragon�s dead, the girl�s in his arms and the future looks bright. And all in one paragraph. It can make for a rushed and unsatisfying ending.
In cases like this an uninteresting solution is usually due to an uninteresting problem. Adding a few wrinkles (the princess has fallen for the dragon, the king has sent assassins after the knight, the knight converts to Buddhism...) can help give the ending less of a one-shot and done feel to it.
With the spy example, while showing different aspects of the hero�s life can add depth and complexity, it can also create a mishmash of ideas that don�t appear to have anything to do with one another. Trying to push these elements together can feel forced and contrived. Out of nowhere it�s revealed the villain is the long lost brother of the girl our hero is set to marry. Or he happens to attend the same AA meeting as the bad guy�s main henchman. How convenient...
To some degree there is an expectation and acceptance of these sorts of contrivances from readers. We all know if a cop is terrified of heights that at some point they are going to find themselves up on a roof chasing the killer. In those situations it�s not so much about avoiding expectation as it is about how you handle it. With enough tension and momentum it�s possible to pull off the most outrageous occurrences, but it�s also possible to fall flat on your face.
In both kinds of setups (intertwined or divergent) the main factor is going to be the character. They are always the one constant shared by all goals, so making that character as engaging and three-dimensional as possible makes it a lot easier for reader�s to transition between the three types of goals without feeling things are either too rushed or too random.
Easier said than done, but it is the third element, the �personal�, that usually gets overlooked. Often this inner-conflict is just the obvious thing you see all the time in a particular type of story. A love story where the girl is afraid to love after a bad experience, a thriller where the hero has to keep his rage in check, a fantasy where the chosen one isn�t sure he�s up to the job.
There�s nothing wrong with fulfilling an expectation even if it�s one that�s been done before, many stories are built on archetypes people like to read about. But when you settle for a generic attitude or posture without thinking about the reasons behind it, it comes across as superficial and unconvincing.
Not that you need to have a degree in psychology before you start writing, but spending a little time thinking about the specifics of what troubles your characters when they�re lying alone in the dark (even though that scene might never make it into the story) can make all the difference.
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Monday, January 27, 2014
Where Is Your Story Headed?
When asked if he knew the ending when he started a story, E. L. Doctorow said of his process:
It�s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
Taken in isolation that quote can seem very freewheeling and unfettered. The romantic idea of novel writing often has this sort of outlook: just set off and every time you come to a fork in the road just choose whichever path seems most appealing.
Sounds great but this is a somewhat disingenuous view of storytelling that can lead to dead-ends and pointless detours. Even the most improvisational of writers usually know the ending they�re aiming for (even if they�re not always consciously aware of it).
It�s not often you get in your car without having a destination in mind.
But at the same time, just because you know where you want to go doesn�t mean you know what you�re going to find when you get there. What it give you, though, is a framework to help create a cohesive narrative rather than a random sequence of events that might come together through happenstance and good luck.
When I talk about knowing what you�re aiming for I don�t mean a specific event. If you�re the kind of writer who has an image in mind of how your story will end (say, two men fighting with bamboo sticks on a cliff-edge in a fog) that�s okay, but having that kind of moment in time fixed in your head it isn�t an essential part of knowing where you�re going.
Equally, if you don�t have any idea of how the plot will be resolved, no idea where the final scene takes place or who will be in that scene, that�s okay too; none of that is important here either.
So, what do I mean? Let�s take as an example a story about a man who invents a hat that when you wear it you become super-intelligent. Where is this story going to end up?
Well, let�s say I�m into action-adventure, thriller type stories and I see this as evil government agency trying to get hold of the hat for their own nefarious purposes and eventually there will be a confrontation between our hero and the men in black suits.
Once I decide that a showdown is what I�m aiming for (and bear in mind I don�t know where or how it will take place) then I can write the story (planned in detail or totally freestyle) with a clear idea of whether I�m getting closer to the goal or not, and adjust accordingly.
This doesn�t mean a particular type of story has to have a particular type of ending (e.g. a thriller must have a showdown), you can choose any type of climax to your story. The important part is to choose an end point that you consider worth pursuing since you�re the one who will be pursuing it for the next 100, 000 words or so.
If, for example, I was interested in a more cerebral thriller and �The Man with the Hat� was about ethical dilemmas�our hero is offered a lot of money for his invention by some shady company and he takes the deal�then perhaps the end point for this story would be a realisation of the cost of his abdication of responsibility.
So scenes of him enjoying the fruits of his labour and having a great time would eventually lead him to facing the harm done by those same labours.
On the other hand, maybe I want to write a story about him meeting the girl of his dreams while wearing the hat and her falling for him as the smart guy. He has to find excuses to wear the hat whenever they�re together so she won�t fall out of love with the normal, average him. Where is this story going? Perhaps the discovery of his subterfuge and the resulting fallout of who (or what) she�s really in love with.
I want to make it clear though that my examples are just one of an infinite range of possibilities. I know it can seem like the set-ups I�m proposing can only have the one outcome, but that�s just the nature of hearing other people�s ideas.
I could have the romantic version of the story end with him learning that there�s more to life than knowing everything. So the ending might involve her falling for someone else who is much stupider but much nicer/richer/taller than him. A different type of story completely.
Or maybe it�s about him becoming so smart that he realises she would be happier with some other guy and using all of his augmented brainpower to convince her of that. Eventually he will have to choose between his brain and his heart.
None of these ideas are particularly brilliant, but my point is there are a lot of them (and plenty more where they came from). As you can see I�m not providing specifics or settings or known outcomes. I�m not saying you can�t have those things in mind�some writers make a point of working out all of those�but it isn�t necessary.
The important thing is to have an idea of where you�re headed that you find interesting enough to want to figure out, and once you have that, it will shape and influence the scenes leading up to it, even those that are seeming unrelated.
In addition, it will also make it a lot easier to gauge whether scenes are driving the narrative in the right direction, or if you veer off into a sub-plot how to steer things back on course.
Although it can feel tempting to go in with no idea of how things will turn out it�s a hazardous way of working. If you�re willing to risk find yourself down a dead-end and start over then there�s no reason why you can�t produce a good story... eventually.
But if you have a destination in mind then every time you come to a split in the road you will have a much stronger inclination about which path to take.
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