18. The moral core of your characters

~ Neil MacDonald ~ Leave a comment

Plot, writing, and character – those for me are the three crucial elements of an author’s craft. In posts 3 I talked a little bit about character and plot, and in post 12 I described some of the tools I’ve used for developing and keeping track of plots. I haven’t said much about tools for developing characters. That’s probably because I haven’t yet encountered many tools I find really useful, beyond the checklist in post 3.

  • Name
  • Age
  • Origins (including family and background)
  • Appearance
  • Characteristics (positive and negative) and flaws
  • Distinctive mannerisms
  • Likes and dislikes
  • Goals
  • Key relationships

As I started work on the sequel to A Prize of Sovereigns, I’ve been wondering whether there aren’t other tools I should think about. There are new characters in this sequel, whose working title is The Wheel Turns, but most of them have already appeared in the first book. I know these characters well. They’ve lived with me for the last two years. So why the anxiety about them?

I guess it’s because some of them are going to change in ways they were never challenged to in the first book, most particularly morally. There is morality in A Prize of Sovereigns. It is, among other things, about goodness. I was interested in looking at goodness not so much as measured by individuals’ characters but rather by the consequences for others of their actions. But this is a fairly easy moral universe. Characters either succeed or fail in their stratagems. In The Wheel Turns, different characters’ senses of what is right will come into play, and will be changed. I realised that I didn’t actually know enough about each of them constructed their moral universes, so I began to think and to do read around how other writers had approached this. I tried a couple of the approaches out for my characters.

You can, for example, build your characters by understanding their attributes or traits. There’s quite a lot of this in the Writers Helping Writers website (http://writershelpingwriters.net/). One approach is used by Angela Ackerman, who writes:

‘What really resonates with readers is when a character shows deep convictions–a passion for something meaningful. Why is this? Because buried deep within each of us is our moral center, a belief system that influences our every thought, action and choice. And, for characters to be authentic, they too must display a highly tuned set of beliefs that guide their motivations.’

She advocates building your characters in four onion layers, starting from the moral centre. You work out what particular moral attributes they have, such as kindness, loyalty or responsibility. You then work to the second layer of achievement attributes, aligned with the moral centre and which help the character succeed. Examples of achievement attributes might be resourcefulness or perceptiveness. The third layer, interactive attributes, defines the way your character relates to others, through traits such as honesty or courtesy. The final layer is the identity attributes, which help your character express who she or he is, such as introversion or idealism.

I tried this with my characters. It didn’t really tell me anything about them that I didn’t already know. More importantly, it also didn’t make intuitive sense to me. It’s not how I understand people. It seemed like a sort of character “kit” in which you collect attributes and glue them together to make a person.

Another approach was more intuitive for me. I had quite a lot of fun with this one. It begins with the pyramid of needs, an idea developed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. He argues that people’s behaviour is driven by a set of five needs. At the bottom of the pyramid are basic needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter. Without these, an individual can’t go on to express and try to realise other needs. With basic needs satisfied, people are driven to achieve safety and security. After safety and security come the needs for love and belonging. The fourth level of needs are those esteem and recognition. And finally, at the top of the pyramid, once all the other needs are satisfied, comes the need for self-actualisation – realising one’s potential and achieving personal fulfilment. I mapped some of my characters onto this pyramid.

What was intriguing about this was that I could map my characters’ personal journeys onto this. So Jyoti for example starts with the need to protect her family, somewhere around the border between safety and love/belonging. Her evolution will move her to becoming a fighter for the rights of women, in the self-actualisation tip of the pyramid. In A Prize of Sovereigns she was the only character who underwent no change. She remained strong and cheerful, a helpmeet to her husband Reuven. He is not especially smart or especially brave. He’s a foot-soldier in the King’s war, who returns broken, and suffering post-traumatic stress. In The Wheel Turns, both of them will ascend the pyramid, though Reuven starts from a different place, grappling with esteem issues. Other characters, however, descend the pyramid, most dramatically the King, Byrom, who plummets from the self-actualising tip, to struggling at the bottom of the pyramid to save his life. I’m still not sure I learned anything new about my characters, but I was intrigued by this way of graphically showing the dynamic of their story arcs.

Maslow

The only concrete upshot of all this fun, however, has been that I added one more element to my basic character sheet checklist – moral dilemma. In real life, few of us have a moral code as unshakeable as we like to believe, and in extreme circumstances we may do things that conflict with our codes. Most moral choices aren’t between the good and the bad, but between conflicting goods. So, for example, Jyoti’s character sheet now includes this dilemma:

As she becomes a stronger advocate of women’s rights, is forced to confront her ideals of duty to her husband and family. She becomes ruthless in her pursuit of this goal

The other thing that tickled my fancy was a couple of posts on M Talmage Moorehead’s blog (http://storiform.com) who says, writing about the idea of voice, ‘I think the term ‘voice” applies more to the viewpoint character than to the writer … because it keeps the reader feeling as if all the plot twists are happening to a real person..’ He describes an interesting experiment where he has a secret blog, ostensibly written by his viewpoint character. He uses this to detect where her voice disappears and his own intrudes. I thought that was a really fun idea, if a lot of work. I think he probably lavishes more attention on his characters than I do on mine. One clue to this is another post, in which he says that to make a character’s beliefs credible, you have to know the information on which those beliefs rest. So if your character is a conspiracy theorist, he says, you have to go and read all those conspiracy theories, with attendant dangers to your grip on reality.

Now there he has a really interesting point, which I’m still working through. The main knowledge base for the characters in The Wheel Turns is their religion. So I’ve had to build their religion. There’s a bit of religion in A Prize of Sovereigns, most obviously in the religious girl Marta who hears voices commanding her to lead her country’s fight-back in the war. But all of that was easy compared with the new book which is going to be full of religious schisms and revolutionary ferment. I’ve had to add four new Gods to their pantheon and work out in some detail, what the attributes are of each God, which social group they appeal to and why, and the associated theological and ritual elements of their worship. As social ferment accelerates, Jyoti and Reuven are going to transfer their allegiance from the traditional peasants’ God, Kaldin, to Hekla, Goddess of music, love and magic in Jyoti’s case, and to Gobannos, the artisan God in Reuven’s case. Jyoti is drawn to Hekla because her adherents champion the idea of the equality of women and men. Reuven is drawn to Gobannos because his adherents champion fairness. I’m sure the theological and political disputes this couple are going to have are going to challenge my world-building skills.

I shouldn’t complain though. How many people are privileged to build their own worlds? This is the joy of writing.

17. For whom the bell curve tolls

~ Neil MacDonald ~ Leave a comment

I was leafing through the summer issue of The Author, the journal of the Society of Authors. It has some interesting statistics in it.

The UK book market is the fourth largest in the world by turnover. But researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, found that the median annual income among writers in 2013 was £4,000. The bottom half the 2,500 writers they surveyed earned less than £10,500 a year, and took home only 7% of all authors’ earnings. The top 1% of writers made more than £450,000 a year, and took home 22.7% of the pot.

Statistical analysis is based on the idea that a variable (like height for example) is arranged uniformly in what’s called a “normal distribution” – a bell-shaped curve with most people in the middle and small tails at each extreme. Success, however, doesn’t follow a bell-curve. The odds are stacked in favour of a lucky few. Ask any actor, or musician, or any author.

wealth

This graph shows the distribution of wealth in the United States in 2013 – a classic non-normal distribution.

The same issue of The Author also has this instructive statistic from a publisher: Of every 10 books sold in bookshops, five fail, three break even, and two make profit. Little wonder then that publishers like to reduce their risk by publishing works by people who’re already famous. However, the statistic does also mean that publishers are dependent on continually finding new authors in the search for that elusive two. And of course, two out of every three books sold in the UK now, are not bought at the till of a bookshop. The online market coalesces even more around winners than does the bookshop market.

So what can an aspiring author do about these grim facts? Above and beyond being talented, writing the best work you possibly can, and editing it diligently.

1. Be independently wealthy
If you’re not already rich, go to step 2.

2. Don’t give up the day job.
It goes without saying that if you’re unlikely to make a living out of writing, you should have another source of income.

3. Make yourself luckier.
If you know some leprechauns or genies, now is a good time to ask their help. If you’re an ordinary mortal like me, there are still some things you can do.

  • They say, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. If you have a large and loyal fan base, publishers and readers are more likely to pay attention to you. The classic example of this is E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. She started off writing fan fiction, which got her the base from which she became an international publishing sensation. You can publish work on story-sharing sites like Wattpad and Smashwords, and wait for the adulation to roll in. Goodreads is another important site where you can connect with your readers. I talked about these sites in post 10.
  • E L James is also a good example of another way you can boost your luck. She tapped into a trend, particularly among women, for raunchier women’s fiction. If you catch a trend at its peak like she did, you may coast to literary stardom. Keeping your eye on new releases in your bookshop and reading trade magazines like The Bookseller can help you keep your finger on the pulse. Dark thrillers are pretty hot right now, for example. As one of the speakers at the Winchester Writers’ Conference said, a fortnight ago, readers want to be traumatised by their books. The other big trend at the moment, believe it or not, is colouring books for adults.
  • I’m not suggesting that you should write the book the market wants. Of course not. We should all write the books we want to write. But, if it makes sense to give your work a tweak towards what’s trending, it may help.
  • Work hard at getting your friends and readers to review and promote your book (assuming you already have a published book). Most of the 184,000 books published in the UK each year appear without any promotion and vanish without trace. Don’t let yours be one of them.

A word of caution. I’m just passing on advice I’ve received and that I’m following. In post 10, I told you how slowly this is going for me. Since that post, my number of Goodreads friends has increased to 7, and on Wattpad, I’ve had 76 reads and have attracted one new follower to add to the four I already had. To be fair, I haven’t posted anything new on Wattpad for months, so this isn’t too surprising. I just posted a new story there, so I’ll let you know how that works out.

The moral is, remember the odds are stacked against you, work at it, and don’t expect instant miracles.
actor, or musician, or any author.

16. Playing fast and loose with the facts – more on historical “mash-up”

~ Neil MacDonald ~ Leave a comment

Since the feedback I got at Winchester last week, I’ve been thinking about the historical fantasy genre. It’s prompted me to consider what you can and can’t do with historical facts. I contributed to a discussion thread on Goodreads about this. Does a writer of historical fiction have artistic licence to change the facts? The writer’s answer is, yes, of course. Historical fiction is fiction, not academic research. The writer can do anything that he or she wishes. But, the reader’s answer is different. Readers have conventions, just as writers do. The reader of historical fiction expects that the story should stick closely to the known facts, just as in science fiction the expectation is that the story should be consistent with known science.

The reader also has a right to expect something else – namely that the story will be a cracking good tale, observing the rules of story-writing, which lead the main characters in an arc, through jeopardy, to a resolution. That poses a dilemma in, at the same time, being faithful to the truth. The question is, what does truth mean?

Stories have a lot to tell us about what we really mean by truth. They are probably the oldest form in which humans have preserved and transmitted wisdom. Stories are devices that tell us what facts go with each other, what is important and what is less relevant, who deserves praise and who blame. It is quite possible to connect the same facts in different ways, by means of different stories. In this anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, different stories are emerging. Was Napoleon a megalomaniac dictator and warmonger? Or was he, instead, the saviour of France against aggression from the old monarchies of Europe? This debate is both about professional history, and also about stories.

Napoleon

Truth and facts are not necessarily the same thing. That argument would, of course, allow a writer of historical fiction to argue that, by manipulating the facts, they were uncovering a deeper truth, an artistic truth. I feel a little uncomfortable with that argument. I suppose that’s why I’ve opted for an approach in which the readers are left in no doubt that they are reading fiction. Indeed, they never need to know that a lot of research went into the writing of the book, and simply enjoy it (I hope) as a story. Though by the time they get to my Joan of Arc character, Marta, most will probably think “hmmm, I know this story”. They may then wonder whether there is any “truth” in the way in which the Dauphin character, Aurthur, decides to manipulate and then betray her. Some readers may also recognize the strong parallels between the fictional battle of Aldkhor and the real battle of Agincourt, but it doesn’t matter to me if they don’t.

I have now started work on the sequel to A Prize of Sovereigns. It starts about a year in fictional time after the end of the first book. In historical time, it has jumped around 100 years. Clearly, I couldn’t do that, and maintain the same cast of characters, if I was writing historical fiction according to the canons of the genre. But the forces that drive both books responds to a view of history that wouldn’t be necessary if I was writing fantasy. In fantasy you can do anything you like, and of course dragons and enchanted blades are de rigueur. There are no dragons, or elves, or enchanted blades in my books. So, I don’t really believe I’m writing fantasy. Historical fantasy is a convenient genre label. But perhaps, one day, there will be a recognized genre called “historical mash-up”, and then I will with, a sigh of relief, re-shelve my work there.

I guess what, in my own mind, distinguishes what I’m trying to do from fantasy is that I’m interested in exploring the question about history “why did that happen?” and that is the unbending logic that my story has to be true to. I do think that there are forces which drive history, but they’re often hard to see through the accidents of who happened to gain power at a particular time, and the vagaries of their personalities. By creating my own little world, I can strip away those accidents and vagaries, and pursue the underlying story. It’s my own little model historical system in a narrative Petri dish. Are the “facts” correct? Many are, though they may be out of sequence and attached to different characters than those of real history. So, it isn’t a factually correct history. But is it “true”? I’d like to think it has a kind of truth.

15. Winchester – a worship of writers

~ Neil MacDonald ~ 2 Comments

Who knew that the collective noun for a group of writers was a worship? I just looked it up. I might have hoped the noun to be “an eloquence of writers”, but that is reserved for lawyers, and lions have already bagged “a pride”.

So there we were on Saturday, a worship of writers at the Winchester Writers’ Festival. Under an overcast sky, the campus of Winchester University was thronged with writers, eager, hopeful, or stoic, each according to their own experience and temperament. Interestingly, there was a preponderance of women, including one striking blonde Amazon with rippling biceps. I’ll come back to an interesting gender issue later on. Old friends met up with cries of “who are you with now”, making me acutely aware I hadn’t yet been signed by anybody. Perhaps my two one-to-one meetings with an agent and a publisher would rectify that.

We streamed from building to building and from room to room, assessing each other with cautious insouciance, wary of encountering a “shrivel of critics”. Three of us from my writing group had a chance encounter, before the event even started, with one of the “shrivel”. She was a volunteer with the event, who, uninvited, joined our table in the coffee room and demanded to hear our elevator pitches and quizzed us about whether we were truly writing from our own experience. She showed no interest at all in what we’d actually written, in her desire to impress us with her own wisdom. “It’s just my opinion”, she wailed as we extricated ourselves. ‘”I’m just an amateur.” Indeed. Her ruthless and undeviating advocacy of the rules of writing spoke eloquently to this point.

Undaunted, my first stop was a dash to the noticeboard in the main conference centre, to see if either of my two entries to the short story competition had been short-listed. They hadn’t, though in act of nominative determinism, I was ticked to note that one D S Writer had made it through.

During the day I went to four workshops. I’ll just give you one take-away point from each of them. An agent said that she took on only two or three new clients a year. A publisher said that, though they won’t admit it, agents and publishers are looking for a reason to instantly bin the submissions they receive, because they can’t possibly read all of them. A novelist said that to find your own “voice”, you have to unlearn the rules of written English you learned at school (I don’t agree with this one). A maker of historical docudramas said that you can get away with imposing a story structure on the known facts, by exploring the drama of well-chosen characters.

I also had one-to-one meetings with an agent and publisher. The good news for me was that they both liked my writing. The publisher really liked it. And that was validating. From my slough of despond about A Prize of Sovereigns at the beginning of the year, I really believe in my book again. But neither of them offered to sign me, though both made really useful suggestions about other agents I should approach. The really interesting thing, though, was the gender issue I referred to at the beginning.

The agent was a man, the second male agent I’ve talked to about the book. And both of them said the same thing. They said it was neither history, because it’s not a true historical record, nor fantasy because there are no fantasy elements. I pitch the book as historical fantasy, because, though It draws on a lot of historical research, I’ve made what George R R Martin calls a “historical mash-up”. I’ve shortened time scales, and, in some cases, put events into a different order or into different places. Many of the major characters are real as well, though I’ve picked and mixed elements of different historical figures to create my characters. History for me, is a rich toolbox of fascinating events, great stories and strong characters. But I do this in the service of fiction, and use what I find in the box to drive the story. Because of this, I’ve set the book in a fictional location, though readers of history quickly recognize it as England and France during the Hundred Years War. I’m not so much interested in writing about the Hundred Years War as I am in exploring why rulers make the decisions they do, and what effect those decisions have on those they rule. So both guys have said this choice is a commercial problem and have urged me to make it straighter history or straighter fantasy.

The publisher was a woman, and had no such problem. For her, it would sell across both the historical fiction and the fantasy genres. Three female agents and a female literary consultant have also been of the same opinion.

Now, you can’t draw any meaningful conclusions about gender differences from a sample of two men and five women, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. My wife says it’s because men can’t multi-task.

Take a look at the book by clicking the link to it on this page (the first seven chapters are published now) and tell me what you think?

14. Rejection

~ Neil MacDonald ~ 5 Comments

The publisher who liked the first chapters of A Prize of Sovereigns and asked to see the whole book has turned it down. It’s another rejection, but at least it made it to the second stage. My thoughts are focussed now on the Winchester Writers’ Festival this weekend, where I have meetings with an agent and a publisher.

13. Scenes, Sequels, and MRUs

~ Neil MacDonald ~ 7 Comments

In the last post I looked at some techniques for plotting out a novel. In this post, I’ll look at one technique for improving the writing of the scenes that make up the plot. I’ve been looking through Randy Ingermanson’s advice on writing the perfect scene. I mentioned his Snowflake method in the last post.

You can find his advice on writing the perfect scene here: http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/

I’m not going to go through the whole technique. You can look it up if you’re interested in the detail. Basically he talks about the large-scale structure of scenes and their small-scale structure. This is tried and tested stuff, he says. All scenes are either SCENES or SEQUELS. A SCENE is structured, he says, into Goal, Conflict and Disaster.  A SEQUEL is structured into Reaction, Dilemma, and Decision.  Sequels follow scenes and give rise to new scenes.

He writes “You may think these patterns are too simple. You may think this is reducing writing to Paint-by-Numbers. Well, no. This is reducing fiction to the two patterns that have been proven by thousands of novelists to actually work. There are plenty of other patterns people use. They typically work less well.”

I thought it would be interesting to try out his technique on my novel A Prize of Sovereigns. I analysed Chapter 1, and it seemed to fit his idea of a SCENE.

He then goes on to say it’s not enough to create a structure of SCENES and SEQUELS. You have to actually write them, which is where the small-scale structure comes in. The small-scale structure, he says, is a chain of MRUs. MRUs are units (the U) of objective Motivations (the M), followed by subjective Reactions (the R). A scene is just a string of MRUs. He gives the following as an example of a motivation, objective and external: “The tiger dropped out of the tree and sprang toward Jack”; and this as an example of a reaction, internal and subjective: “A bolt of raw adrenaline shot through Jack’s veins. He jerked his rifle to his shoulder, sighted on the tiger’s heart, and squeezed the trigger. ‘Die, you bastard!'”. Anything which isn’t a Motivation or a Reaction should be ruthlessly purged, he argues.

So I analysed my chapter into MRUs. You can see the beginning of it below. I’ve colour coded the motivations in blue, the reactions in red, and other stuff in purple. After the analysis, I rewrote the chapter according to his stipulations.

Original

MRU 1
What a fragile thing a man’s head was. So easily stove in with a hammer. Or lopped from the neck with a swing of a broadsword.

Byrom’s thoughts were oddly detached as he watched. He yielded only the hint of a shiver as Nye Stokys’ severed head bounced on the wooden planking of the bridge.

BACKSTORY
Byrom, of the House of Simmister, had claimed his share of heads in battle. He liked war,
MRU 2
but as he watched the rebel’s headless body crumple and then slowly fall, he knew this was different. This was the first time he had taken a head under a flag of parley. From here, there was no going back. There was no honour in this. But the meaning of that word depended on who you were. The honour of Kings lay in safeguarding the realm.

Revised version
MRU 1
Nye Stokys’ severed head bounced on the wooden planking of the bridge.

Byrom’s thoughts were oddly detached as he watched, yielding only the hint of a shiver What a fragile thing a man’s head was. So easily stove in with a hammer. Or lopped from the neck with a swing of a broadsword.

BACKSTORY

Byrom, of the House of Simmister, had claimed his share of heads in battle. He liked war,

MRU 2
But this was the first time he had taken a head under a flag of parley. From here, there was no going back.

As he watched the rebel’s headless body crumple and then slowly fall, he knew this was different. There was no honour in this. But the meaning of that word depended on who you were. The honour of Kings lay in safeguarding the realm.

The results were interesting. Mostly the Chapter fell out into MRUs and backstory. The MRUs were often inverted, with the reaction coming before the motivation, which was something I hadn’t noticed before. Also, a no-no in Ingermanson’s method, some paragraphs mixed motivations and reactions,as you can see. So in the rewrite, I put motivations before reactions, and separated them into distinct paragraphs. It’s the reaction that puts you into the character’s head, so it’s important to give it prominence. I also checked that the reactions followed a logical sequence – from feeling, to reflex response, to rational action and speech. I eliminated everything that wasn’t an MRU.

Did it make the chapter better? It makes sense, but I’m still not sure. I certainly wasn’t happy about losing the backstory or other elements, such as the description of the main character. I don’t see how you can do away with dropping in backstory. As for the strict sequence of motivation followed by reaction, I don’t know whether readers will find it harder to identify with an MRU if the reaction comes before the motivation. Do we always need to see the zombie before we hear the scream, or is the scream primal enough sometimes?

I’d be really interested to hear from anyone else who’s tried the technique.

12. Tools

~ Neil MacDonald ~ 1 Comment

A poor workman may always blame his tools, but a good workman always makes sure he has the right tools for the job. I mentioned in the third post, Plotting out a Story, the character tool I use. Perhaps you might be interested in knowing a little more about tools.

Perhaps of course, you won’t. For some writers, the idea of tools is anathema. If you follow a format, they might say with some justification, the writing will become mechanical – it will impede creativity. Such writers enjoy the roller-coaster ride, hanging on for dear life as their characters and their subconscious lead them through a winding plot.

The counter-argument would be that if you’re not sure where your story is going, or who your characters are, you can spend months writing a 100,000 word first draft that doesn’t hang together, and lacks continuity. It’s worth remembering that, since millions of whatever currency they work in are at stake, screenwriters and film directors never trust their work to whims of the Muse, and to the vagaries of their memories.

There’s absolutely no reason why you should use any tools at all, but, if you don’t, be prepared for some pretty savage editing after your first draft.

So let me talk about tools. I said in an earlier post that, for me, the elements of good story-telling are the plot, the characters, and the quality of the writing. I’ve already written about the tool I use to keep track of my character, so let me talk about plot. Perhaps in a later post I’ll talk about tools that can help good writing.

There are lots of theories about what makes a good plot structure. A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. After a set-up, tension should rise to a climax and then be resolved. This is the basis for the Three Act Structure, much used in screen-writing. The first act sets the scene, introduces the protagonist, and contains the inciting incident, which drives the rest of the plot. The inciting incident poses a problem. The screenwriter, Michael Hauge in his book Writing Screenplays that Sell, says there are five possible goals that flow from the set-up:

  • To escape
  • To stop something from happening
  • To deliver something of value to where it’s needed
  • To retrieve something of value and return it to the right people or place
  • To win something (a contest, love, respect etc.)

The second act, is one of rising tension as the protagonist struggles to solve the problem posed by the inciting incident. In this, he or she is usually added by others, and foiled by an antagonist. Conflict is an essential part of tension. The author, Randy Ingermanson, creator of the Snowflake writing method (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/), is a great believer in combining disaster with the Three Act Structure. He believes in a “three-disasters-plus-an-ending” structure, with the first disaster at the end of Act 1, the second in the middle of Act 2, and the third at the end of Act 2. You can buy his tool as software, but you can just as easily create it yourself on a spreadsheet.

The third act, the ending, provides the resolution to the problem.

This, of course, is only one way of thinking about plot. Joseph Campbell, in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, said that all stories were variants of one “mono-myth”. George Lucas followed Campbell’s recipe in the making of Star Wars, and there is another writing method that is built on this basis – the Agile Method (http://agilewriters.com). I used my own variant of the Agile formula for the book I’m working on now, The Golden Illusion. Just to see what would happen, I plotted the story arc into four phases:

  • Set-up
  • Discovery and growth
  • Decline and despair
  • Climax and dénouement

It worked pretty well for keeping track of the story, though it escaped the boxes in every direction. You’ll notice this structure only gives me one major disaster, where the Snowflake method advocates three. The protagonist was thwarted in his drive to the goal, and lost his girlfriend and best friend into the bargain. But there were, of course, other minor setbacks as well as triumphs on the way there.

Other people disagree vehemently with Campbell’s mono-myth idea. Critics have argued, for example, that he was oblivious to the stories women tell. As I mentioned above, Michael Hauge believes there are five basic stories. Christopher Booker, influenced by Jung’s psychology, believed there were seven basic stories. Vladimir Propp analysed Russian fairy tales, and claimed to have identified 31 different plots, while Georges Polti advocated for 36 fundamental dramatic situations. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

However you design your plot. It helps to plan (or at least record as you write) the essential elements. You need something that will keep track of your timeline, so you don’t get jumps in sequence, or time of day, or sequence. You need something to keep track of where the action is going – particularly if you have several threads interwoven in your story. This is my master story-board template for The Golden Illusion

storyboard

I took out the details, so there are no spoilers when the book finally, if ever, sees the light of day. But, you can see the grid is divided horizontally into the four elements of the arc, with an associated time-line, and vertically into the main plot, and the three sub-threads (A, B, and C). These sub-threads were: the protagonist’s search for the secret of an ancient Egyptian magic trick, which he believes will be a “Golden Illusion” that will make his fortune; the unfolding story of a group of nineteenth century villagers that seems to be connected to the Golden Illusion; and the protagonist’s problem in emotional commitment. There is also a column for characters, so the main events that happen to each character can be tracked.

For my next book, the sequel to A Prize of Sovereigns, I have modified this template and added two new elements. The first is a summary of the whole book. There are two summaries: a one sentence summary, which is the pre-cursor of the elevator pitch (see post 4: After the writing is over – publishing), and a one-paragraph elaboration of the elevator pitch. Previously I have written these only when the book was finished, but Randy Ingermanson advocates doing this at the beginning in his Snowflake method, so I thought I’d give it a try. At least I now know exactly what the book is about, and am half way to the pitch and synopsis. The second new element is a scene list, again a suggestion from Ingermanson, with a one sentence description of each scene.

I have used a version of scene lists before. In the past, I’ve written one paragraph summaries of each chapter, but only after I’d drafted the chapter. This made it easier to keep track of where I had got to if there was a break in writing, as well as vastly simplifying the writing of the synopsis. What is new this time is that I’ll write the scene descriptions before I draft. I’m curious to see how that works out. In theory, it should make writing the first draft much quicker.

11. Some more encouraging numbers

~ Neil MacDonald ~ Leave a comment

Twelve wasn’t a great number, but I got some more encouraging numbers today. Today I asked for viewing figures on the serialisation of A Prize of Sovereigns. The first four chapters have appeared now, with the fifth due out tomorrow. There have been 262 unique views in the month since the first chapter was published. Which is still not 20 million, but it’s not unrespectable. The publishers seem pleased.

I haven’t said much about A Prize of Sovereigns yet. Which is remiss of me, since a major point of writing a blog is to promote my writing. One of the promotional pieces I wrote for it runs like this.

War is coming to the kingdoms of Ceweth and Lorrador. Byrom, King of Ceweth, is a bad man. But he hopes to be a good king. Aurthur of Lorrador is a thoroughly nice man, but a weak prince. The fate of both realms depends on the decisions they make. Told from multiple viewpoints of princes and peasants, statesmen and storytellers this is a tale of intrigue, betrayal, war, and revolt. As the story develops, it assumes a strange familiarity; in the end, it is our own, and asks the eternal question: what does it mean to be a good person?

I wrote it to explore that question about goodness, and once I had decided to locate it in a medieval setting, I began to add elements. I was in the middle of reading George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones series then. I loved the story, and the way he used what he calls “historical mash-up”. I adopted “historical mash-up” with glee. I created the main aristocratic characters by amalgamating several real people. I created the events of the war between Ceweth and Lorrador out of real events in the Hundred Years War between England and France, but not necessarily in the precise sequence in which they really happened. Unlike Martin though, I was interested in exploring the strategies rulers employ, and how they may have unintended consequences. And, also unlike Martin, I wanted to explore what ordinary people felt. The ordinary people, called smallfolk in Game of Thrones, barely appear. I guess you could say I wrote the Game of Thrones I would have liked to have read. Or you might say, A Prize of Sovereigns is George RR Martin meets Ken Follett.

Actually, that’s not bad. I might use that line with the next agent I talk to.

10. Social media – 19,999,988 to go

~ Neil MacDonald ~ 1 Comment

I guess the one major thing in a writer’s bag of tricks I haven’t commented on yet is the use of social media. These days, every author needs a blog, a Goodreads account, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account to network with readers and build a following. It’s not that I don’t do these things, or some of them, it’s that I’m not very good at it yet.

Take this blog for example. I started it on May 17, 2015. It’s not a unique idea, but it seemed there ought to be quite a lot of interest in how a tyro writer negotiates his way into publication (or not, of course). So I’ve posted away for two weeks, and waited for the world to come to me. But of course they haven’t. I don’t mean you, you’re reading this. I mean all the others. It has been viewed 90 times, by 30 distinct visitors – 82 of the views were from the UK, and 5 from the US; the other 3 were untraceable. I have 3 followers, 5 likes, and only one view led to a click through to my book.

Early days, I tell myself. I’ve mailed all my friends in my writing groups. Now I need to work my other networks. An author needs, as I said, several online networks. Facebook and Twitter are the big ones. I still don’t have a Facebook account, I’m not sure why. I will one day. Two weeks ago, I didn’t have a blog. I do have a Twitter account, but I never tweet. I’m verbose. I can’t think why I’d want to express myself in 140 characters or less. So that’s why I started to blog instead.

There are some other key social networking sites that authors should know about. And I’m on them. Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com) is probably the most important. Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. I’m not sure how many members it has. It reported 20 million in 2013. So you can potentially connect with over 20 million readers. Of course I don’t.

I have four friends, four people have liked book reviews I’ve posted, and four people have added my book to their lists and two people rated it. That’s not too many out of 20 million. Yesterday I only had three friends. I made the fourth one by joining a couple of Goodreads groups. This is going to be harder than I thought, but I seem to be on the right track. Of course you don’t just join Goodreads (or any other social networking site) and say “hey guys, you need to read my book, it’s awesome.” Nobody appreciates being marketed at like that. You get respect by being a member of the community, posting reviews of books and joining in discussions.

The other site I joined is Wattpad (http://www.wattpad.com). It’s basically a site where writers can connect with readers who want to read free stuff. There are stories of authors having their work ripped off from there, but nothing more than rumours. I posted the first three chapters of A Prize of Sovereigns there, and then provided a link to the site where it’s being serialised. I’ve got 4 followers, 7 people who rated it, and 6 who left comments.

Apart from the Facebook page, I’ve got a presence on the right social networking sites. You should probably get all of those. So, I’ve got three followers for this blog, four followers on Wattpad, and four Goodreads friends – 12 down 19,999.988 to go.

9. Lying to your readers

~ Neil MacDonald ~ Leave a comment

Should you ever lie to your reader? Yes, of course. All the time. That’s what a plot twist is – you lead your readers’ expectations down one path, and then flip them. The mechanism is somewhat similar to a joke, which also leads the hearer down one path only to flip it. The physiological response to a joke is the explosive outbreath we call laughter.

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Especially with short stories laughter is often our response to a good plot twist.

There are some standard devices for doing this. The most obvious is the Red Herring, and the closely-related McGuffin. Detective stories are full of red-herrings, clues that seem to lead to the solution but are in fact illusory or mistaken. The term “McGuffin” I think originated with Alfred Hitchcock. A McGuffin is a plot device, some object, person or goal that the protagonist pursues. The McGuffin is often illusory or recedes into the background in the course of the story.

The book I’m currently working on, The Golden Illusion, has the protagonist, a stage illusionist, chasing the secret of a 4,000-year-old illusion performed by the Egyptian magician, Djedi, for the Pharaoh Kufu. It is a McGuffin. I’m still struggling with making the real ending, as spectacular as Djedi’s decapitation and re-animation trick.

Other common devices where you lie to your readers are the False Protagonist and the Unreliable Narrator.

The False Protagonist works by leading the reader to believe that a character is the protagonist of the story. This character then vanishes, often by being killed. This has huge shock value. George R R Martin used it to great effect in Game of Thrones by killing Ned Stark at the end of the first book of the series.

The Unreliable Narrator isn’t so much about lying to your readers as leading them to doubt the version of events given by your narrator. You might do this from the outset, by having your narrator character make a statement that is plainly false or delusional. Or you might leave this reveal until later in the story. If you leave it until the end, it becomes a plot twist. William Riggan, in his book Pícaros, Madmen, Naīfs, and Clowns: The Unreliable First-person Narrator, suggests there are five types of Unreliable Narrators:

  • The Picaro, or braggart
  • The Madman, who may be experiencing psychological defence mechanisms, or deeper insanity
  • The Clown, who does not take narration seriously, and plays with convention, truth, and the reader’s expectations
  • The Naif, a narrator whose point of view is limited through immaturity or ignorance
  • The Liar, a narrator who deliberately misrepresents himself, often to cover up misdeeds

I’ve never yet had the courage to use the Unreliable Narrator device. But I should. I’m fascinated by the way different people read the same situation so differently. Perhaps it’s my academic training that leads me to be so unadventurous with the truth. I did write a short story in which the protagonist is autistic, but that’s as far as I’ve dared go so far.