posted
This seems to me to be a ridiculous problem, however here I am. Stuck. I have what I think are interesting characters. I have what I think is an interesting environment. I have what I think are some interesting features, and details, some of which may or may not make it into the final cut. I can't for the life of me figure out what my characters should do next. I joked in another thread that I like my characters too much, I don't want to put them through pain and suffering.
I think my fundamental problem is that I want to write character-driven sci-fi, however I realize for anyone to give a flying whoop about my characters, something has to actually HAPPEN to make them care, or to see the characters react so you can see what wonderfully interesting and good (though flawed) people they are. But again, I'm stuck on the *what should happen now* problem.
This can't be a unique problem. I've read some on Hatrack about writer's block. Mostly I've learned that true writer's block is often an indicator that you're trying to write the wrong thing and/or a lack of discipline (just sit down and write!) I think mine is more a lack of experience/fear of character conflict - because in an attempt to break the deadlock, I've started 2 other stories...and have landed in the same type of place. Argh! One's actually really funny and I love it, I just can't figure out where to go with the original premise (sentient food.)
Words of wisdom? Tips? I am trying to find some IRL friends/allies to do some brainstorming with me - my brainstorming exercises are generating nice story ideas but not full-fledged (or even half or semi-fledged) plot concepts/outlines.
Oh, and FWIW, the Amazon Angels are sending Characters and Viewpoints to me. I'm hopeful that reading more about the craft of writing will get me going.
Any help or prodding anyone can offer would be much appreciated, even more so if it comes without much (any) taunting.
posted
When OSC does one of his 1000 Ideas in an Hour, he talks about questioning your ideas to help generate more of them.
Some of those questions include:
What does your character want?
What would your character try to do to get it?
What could go wrong with that?
and then you keep asking what the character would do about what went wrong and what would the character do next, and so on.
Asking yourself questions, and coming up with as many different answers as possible, will help you. OSC recommends that you discard the first two or three answers because those are likely the most obvious ones. Try to come up with answers that other people might not think of, so your story isn't predictable.
posted
Well.......your characters need a problem, preferably one that changes the POV character in a fundamental way. If you have your cast and your stage, you still need a script or there is no play. Find your story and you can begin. Who are the characters? What will hurt your favorite the most?
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posted
My story is about a superspy former princess. She likes her life and doesn't ever want to be the princess again. So, what did I do to her? What else? I put her in a situation that forces her to assume the duties and protect her people even though she can't reclaim her title.
It's character driven. She goes from a self centered nit to someone gets branded as a traitor to her own country in trying to defend it.
As Stephen King once said, "Kill your darlings." It's thier journey that makes us want to go along for the ride.
posted
I picked up from an old commentary on Phillip K. Dick that he used to throw the I Ching to figure out what to do next in some novels. I've done it from time to time, and may yet again. (Not that I do it for anything else.)
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posted
If you have characters and setting then you should know what can go wrong with their lives. Try and think of what outside influence could cause a real and major threat to their happiness.
It doesn't have to be violence, though that works well, it could be anything;
For a happily married couple it could be a woman who starts working in the husband's office and seduces him. I know that this is very cliche but once you have a starting point you can then enlarge on it and that is when you make it less cliche. For instance you can make the reason she seduces him more complicated than simple physical attraction. She might see having an affair with him as a means to promotion, or she might be an old friend of his wife who wants revenge for when his wife stole her boyfriend.
The point I'm trying to make is that you take the people and look for something to threaten their happiness and that should give you the start of your plot. After that you can just build onto the basic idea by asking 'why?' about every aspect and not taking the most obvious answer.
posted
Spaceman and kings_falcon are right. If you get to the point where you really like your characters, the readers will be getting to that point, too. What will make you care about a character? If you like them, and they are in some type of danger (anything from destroying their career to life-threatening) you are going to care a lot more. And character stories are about how your protagonist changes--usually through some ordeal.
kings_falcon, you totally took this quote out of context:
quote: As Stephen King once said, "Kill your darlings."
...he was referring to the editing process and "darlings" were the flowery sentences we can sometimes be so proud of. Which, by the way, I am completely guilty of.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited March 16, 2007).]
posted
I. Ching was a Chinese philosopher (670-723) who established the idea of family relationships being essential to all relationships, including those involving nonphysical objects and logical constructs. Perhaps the most famous quote is "We chiong ba tu," meaning, "The semidemiquaver is the elder brother to the demiquaver."
Philip Dick used to throw a figurine of I. Ching across the room in frustration when he was plotting stories.
posted
The I Ching, The Book of Five Rings, and The Art of War are all chinese philosophy books. Each has a slightly different take on strategic approach to everyday life, but all are recommended reads for anyone trying to advance in management (government or private sector) or military fields.
kings_falcon, I apologize if you felt insulted. In no way was I implying that you didn't know what you were talking about. I find the advice important as presented, and thought it should be rightly represented. Anyone that hasn't read On Writing, should.
I think OSC has a quote that would be good here: ...happy people are boring. He was referring to his story not making a good one.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited March 16, 2007).]
Perhaps one suggestion is to approach your writing projects from the opposite direction.
Your approach has been to develop interesting characters, worlds, and premises, and then try to decide what happens next. The reason it is so hard to choose is there are infinite possibilities. There is a George Harrison song lyric that says "if you don't know where you're going, any road will lead you there."
Just for kicks, try this as an experiment. Before creating any details of your world or your characters, outline a simple plot in abstract terms. Keep it simple and consice, just the absolutely essential elements. And make it an important story. Remember Vonnegut's advice: "use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted."
Now, only after you are fully armed with the essential plot features, start building your characters and your world. Since you already know the whole story, you can make interesting and appropriate character and setting choices that will make your story powerful. While doing this, concentrate on what will work best for the ending, not the beginning of the story.
Don't start actually writing the story until you have made all the essential character choices.
I don't pretend to have enough experience to know whether or not this is the best approach to writing. It just seems to me that it would be a useful execise for someone who has a recurring problem deciding what the characters should do next.
posted
There should be overarching events, as in, the main storyline that your story focuses on. Then, you should have character development. Find out what can happen to each character that can define and change them. Don't be afraid to hurt them. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Of course, some things can kill you, and that happens too. It's good to love your characters, but you have to be able to put them through hell to tell the story. Otherwise, you might as well play with barbies (no insult intended ).
Maybe make it personal. Look at yourself and your friends and loved ones. What could happen to you or them that would make life tough or almost unbearable? What things can affect you to hurt your life? Losing a loved one? Losing a job? Being mugged?
Look at your milieu (the world your story takes place in) as well. If it's the present, what elements of society can cause problems for people? If it's a depression era story, think about loss of money, job, family. Or a war? Did a friend go to war? Do you worry about them returning? Were you drafted? Perhaps you're on another planet. Do you worry about airlocks? Maybe a friend was sucked out of a faulty airlock and your MC witnessed it. Maybe there's a power struggle that threatens the colony. Maybe a natural disaster, an alien attack. Think of the milieu you are using and what could go wrong there; socially, politically, geographically, galactically.
posted
Think of the I Ching as a method of fortune telling, and then think of other fortune telling or future casting methods you may know about. You can use any of them on your characters, if you like.
I like to encourage people to figure out what astrological sign best fits each of their characters, then get a book like LOVE SIGNS which talks about how each of the signs interacts. You can get some interesting ideas for character interaction as well as for character development from astrology.
posted
A little more specificity, at least as much as my fuzzy mind can provide...the I Ching is, indeed, an Oriental way of seeking advice. Details: You create a, whatchamacallit, an ideogram (?) of six lines, either broken or solid, by throwing three coins: three heads or three tails is a solid line and a mix is a broken line. (Or is it the other way around? Been awhile...) You build the ideogram from the bottom up.
Once you've completed the ideogram, you look it up in the book, and see what advice is offered. (I suppose after awhile you've memorized it and know without having to look it up, but I never got that far.)
You're supposed to let this advice guide your actions and your life, but I don't need that, so I'll stick to letting it help me with stubborn plot points. (Right now in my novel I'm plotting one or two chapters ahead of my writing, but who knows how long that will last?)
posted
Hey Babbler, not annoyed or insulted on this end.
The problem is sometimes we like our characters too much. OSC has it right. Do you want to read a story where everything is perfect? No. Do I want things to be messed up and care whether and how the characters I like deal with the problem? Yes. Figure out what will hurt the MC most.
Does she think she's aprincess when she's really a decoy? - The Princess Decoy . Is she a Valkerye who is sworn to kill vampires and then one day she finds the one she can't kill? (Sorry, but that title escapes me - right now). Is she a unicorn who just learned that she is the last? - The Last Unicorn - Peter Beagle . Is he a farmer who inherits a ring that could destroy his entire world? Lord of the Rings .
Anyway, you get the point. Once you start the first "what would happen if X" question, others tend to naturally follow.
posted
Some days it's helpful to me if I just pull all of my characters out of the story and throw them into a one-shot fluff. Stick them all in a kareoke bar--what songs would they choose to sing and why? Would they even sing? Try re-writing the scenes you have from a different character's point of view--that may open up a new outlet for the plot.
[This message has been edited by Amciel (edited March 20, 2007).]
posted
Kathleen, your idea of using fortune-telling systems to create plot intrigues me, but I know nothing of such systems. I looked up I Ching on Wiki and it looks pretty complex to understand. Is there a SIMPLE-to-understand (IOW, it won't take me weeks or months to figure out) fortune-telling system that might be helpful in plot development?
posted
If you are as close to your characters as you say then you know them quite well, their moods, their humor, sensitivities and other quirks. All that is needed is conflict, or a road block, or anything to disrupt that perfect harmony.
You can go to the “what if” file. Ex: What if an obnoxious new character arrived to annoy and insult everyone?
With your inside knowledge, it would be fun to discover and describe their individual reactions and the interplay between them. Not only will the staid characters bud and flower, they will become real.
posted
Lynda, all you need to do is pick up a deck of playing cards.
Make up some meaning for each numbered card (aces may mean some way of being alone, twos may mean either togetherness or a one-on-one conflict, three's a crowd, four means teamwork, and so on -- maybe seven means good luck, ten means completeness, another number might mean news or knowledge, and another might mean pain of some kind).
Then make up some meaning for each suit (I think clubs are usually related to power/wands, hearts of course to love/emotion, spades to fighting/swords, and diamonds to money).
The face cards can represent characters (with the jack being a young person of either sex), or they can represent big events.
Then figure out how each number's meaning works in its suit. An ace of spades might mean a lonely battle, while an ace of clubs might mean time to meditate, and an ace of hearts might mean unrequited love, and an ace of diamonds might mean being at the top (it's lonely) or poor and rejected.
And so on. You can also have a reverse meaning if the card is upside down when you turn it over.
Then all you need to do is decide what your question is, and turn over a card.
If you want something more related to plot-building, you can use something like what fortune-tellers use and turn over ten cards, with each one dealing with some aspect of your plot:
1--the main character
2--the antagonist (or some other obstacle)
3--the background
4--recent events
5--current events
6--what's around the corner
7--other characters, or expectations therefrom
8--the main character's hopes/strengths
9--the main character's fears/weaknesses
10-the final outcome
And then you "brainstorm" with your subconscious to figure out how the results relate to the story you are trying to tell.
Also, if your tenth card doesn't seem very helpful as far as resolution goes, have it be the first card and turn over nine more.
You can also do a different set of ten (after shuffling) for each of your main characters (including your antagonist), because they should each have their own goals and their own stories which can be subplots, or at least have impact on the way the character behaves in the story.
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But again, I'm stuck on the *what should happen now* problem.
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