Is Your Idea Strong Enough? Story Structure Part 4

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Whether we are traditionally published, indie published or self-published, we must connect with readers and tell a great story. Structure is the “delivery system” for our story, so it’s wise to make it as solid as possible.

Welcome to Part IV of my Structure Series—Testing the Idea

I assume that most of you reading this aspire to be great novelists. Novels are only one form of writing and, truth be told, they aren’t for everyone. Stringing together 60-100,000 words and keeping conflict on every page while delivering a story that makes sense on an intuitive level to the reader is no easy task.

That said, all novels begin with an idea. But how do we know if our idea has what it takes to make a great novel?

Many new writers start out with nothing more than a mental snippet, a flash of a scene or a nugget of an idea, and then they take off writing in hopes that seed will germinate into a cohesive novel. Yeah…um, no. Not all ideas are strong enough to sustain 60,000 or more words.

Think of your core idea as the ground where you will eventually build your structure. Novels, being very large structures, require firm ground. So how do you know if the idea you have is strong enough?

Good question. Today we will discuss the fundamental elements of great novels. If your core idea can somehow be framed over these parts, you are likely on a good path.

James Scott Bell in his book Plot & Structure (which I highly recommend you buy & read, by the way) employs what he calls the LOCK system. Jim, being the SUPER AWESOME person he is, has granted me permission to talk about some of his methods, but these are just my notes, so get the book for the real meat.

When you get the first glimmer of the story you long to tell, the idea that is going to keep you going for months of researching, writing, revisions and eventually submissions, it is wise to test its integrity. The LOCK system is one method we will discuss today.

Lead Objective Conflict Knockout… or, LOCK

LEAD

First, we must have a sympathetic and compelling character. It is critical to have a protagonist that the reader will be able to relate to. Our characters should have admirable strengths and relatable weaknesses. Many new writers stray to extremes with protagonists, and offer up characters that are either too perfect or too flawed.

Perfect people are boring and unlikable and they lack any room to grow. Perfect characters are no different. New writers are often insecure and our protagonists are us…well, the perfect version of us anyway. Our heroines are tall and thin and speak ten languages and have genius IQs and rescue kittens in their free time…and no one likes them.

Seriously.

We need readers to rally to her team, to like her and want to cheer for her to the end. How do we do this? Give her flaws, and humanize her. Additionally, if our characters are fully actualized in the beginning, there will be no character arc so our story will be one-dimensional and flat.

Now, to look at the other side of the spectrum. Often to avoid the cliched “too perfect” character, an author will stray too far to the other end of extremes. The brooding dark protagonist is tough to pull off. In life, we avoid these unpleasant people, so why would we want to dedicate our free time to caring about them?

Oh, but the author will often defend, “But he is redeemed in the end.” Yeah, but we’re expecting readers to spend ten hours (average time to read a novel) with someone they don’t like. Tall order.

To quote mega-agent, Donald Maas (The Fire in the Fiction):

Wounded heroes and heroines are easy to overdo. Too much baggage and angst isn’t exactly a party invitation for one’s readers. What’s the best balance? And which comes first, the strength or the humility? It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that one is quickly followed by the other.

In my opinion, this was the single largest problem with the Star Wars prequels. Anakin Skywalker was a little-kid-killer, ergo never redeemable…EVER. He needed to die badly and slowly. Lucas should never have allowed his protagonist to cross that line. Heroes NEVER kill defenseless little kids. It was (my POV) an unforgivable action on the part of the “hero” that cratered the epic.

Objective

Our protagonist MUST have a clear objective. There are many times I go to conferences and I see all these excited writers who are all dying to talk to an agent. When I ask, “So what’s your book about?” I often get something akin to, “Well, there is this girl and she has powers, but she didn’t know she had powers, because, see. Hold on. Okay, her mother was a fairy queen and she fell in love with a werewolf, but werewolves in my book are different. Anyway she has a boyfriend in high school, but he is actually the leader of a group of wizards from another dimension and he is pitted against his inner demons because he lost his father in a battle against shape-shifters….”

Huh? *looks to wine bar in the corner of the room*

Your protagonist must have ONE BIG ACTIVE GOAL. Yes, even literary pieces.

Don’t believe me? Okay. Here’s a good example. The movie Fried Green Tomatoes very easily could have been just a collection of some old lady’s stories that helps our present-day protagonist (Evelyn Couch) bide the time while she waits for her husband to finish the visit with his mother, but that is far from the case.

Evelyn is having trouble in her marriage, and no one seems to take her seriously. While in a nursing home visiting relatives, she meets Ninny Threadgoode, an outgoing old woman, who tells her the story of Idgie Threadgoode, a young woman in 1920’s Alabama. Through Idgie’s inspiring life, Evelyn learns to be more assertive and builds a lasting friendship of her own with Ninny (per IMDB).

Learning to be assertive is an active goal. Building is an active verb. Gaining the self-confidence to make your own friends shows a change has occurred, a metamorphosis.

Oh, but Kristen, that’s a movie. Novels are different.

Um…not really. I use movies as examples of storytelling because it saves time. But, here is an example in the world of literary fiction to make you feel better that I am steering you down the correct path.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan could have been just a collection of tales about three generations of Chinese women, but they weren’t. There was an active goal to all of these stories.

The mothers left China in hopes they could change the future for their daughters, and yet the old cycles, despite all their good intentions, repeat themselves and echo the same pain in the lives of their daughters. Actually the protagonist in the book is the collective—The Joy Luck Club.

The stories propel the living members of the Joy Luck Club toward the active goal of finding courage to change the patterns of the past. The mothers seek forgiveness and the daughters struggle for freedom, but each is actively searching and eventually finds something tangible.

We will discuss this in more detail later, but keep in mind that running away from something or avoiding something is a passive goal. Not good material for novels. Novels require active goals…even you literary folk ;).

Conflict

Once you get an idea of what your protagonist’s end goal is, you need to crush his dream of ever reaching it (well, until the end, of course). Remember, last time we talked about the Big Boss Troublemaker. Generally (in genre novels especially), it is the BBT is whose agenda will drive the protagonist’s actions until almost the end.

The protagonist will be reacting for most of the novel. It is generally after the darkest moment that the protagonist rallies courage, allies, hidden strength and suddenly will be proactive.

Riddick, for most of the story, is reacting to the Lord Marshal’s agenda. Riddick’s goal is to defeat the BBT, but there are all kinds of disasters and setbacks along the way. Logical disasters are birthed from good plotting. One of the reasons I am a huge fan of doing some plotting ahead of time is that it will be far easier for you to come up with set-backs and disasters that make sense.

Knockout

So your novel has thrust a likable, relatable protagonist into a collision course with the Big Boss Troublemaker. The Big Boss Battle must deliver all you (the writer) have been promising. Endings tie up all loose ends and sub-plots and, if we have done our job, will leave the reader a feeling of resonance.

Your protagonist MUST face down the BBT. No fighting through proxies. Luke had to face Darth. By employing the Jedi skills learned over the course of the story, he was able to triumph.

Same in literary works.

Evelyn Couch had to stand up to her husband and her monster-in-law. She couldn’t send in Ninny Threadgoode to do it for her. In the movie’s climactic scene, Evelyn employs the “Jedi skills” she learned from stories about Idgy. Her Jedi skills are confidence and self-respect, and she uses them to defeat her oppressors by refusing to take any more of their sh—enanigans.

This is why all this “my protagonist is the BBT/antagonist” WON’T WORK. In Fried Green Tomatoes, Evelyn is her own worst enemy. She is spineless and weak. But, the real enemy resides in those who desire to control and bully Evelyn. In each act of the movie, we see Evelyn learning confidence so that by the end, the BIG battle, she can tell her abusive mother-in-law to stuff it.

She isn’t having an argument with herself. She is standing up to a very real antagonist…even though this is a character/literary story. Characters having inner angst for 80,000 words is therapy, not fiction. Humans do better with the tangible. Existentialism is great, but for a mainstream successful novel? Not the best approach.

So when you get that nugget of an idea and think, Hmm. THAT is my novel. Try using the LOCK system. Ask yourself:

Can I cast a LEAD who is relatable and likable?

Is this OBJECTIVE something that will keep readers interested for 60-100,000 words?

Can I create a BBT and opposition force capable of generating plenty of CONFLICT to keep my lead from her objective?

Does this story problem lend itself to a KNOCKOUT ending?

This is just a taste of the good stuff that James Scott Bell has to offer in Plot & Structure so I recommend buying a copy for your writing library. In the upcoming lessons, I will be using this book for reference, among others to help you guys become master story-tellers.

What are the biggest problems you guys have when it comes to developing your ideas? What are some setbacks you have faced? Do you guys have any recommendations for resources? Or, feel free to commiserate and laugh about all the good ideas that went oh so wrong.

I do want to hear from you guys! What are your thoughts? Questions? Concerns? I LOVE hearing from you.

Lynette Mirie is the winner over at my Dojo Diva blog. Today at Dojo Diva, we are talking about the POWER of QUITTING. Since this is a new blog (and a way shorter one), I am running a separate contest for commenters so the chances of winning are A LOT better!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of MAY, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook

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  1. Reblogged this on linkluvsocialsharing and commented:
    Good job..I ready this with all my heart 🙂

  2. Awesome post. My Plot and Structure book just arrived, and can’t wait to read it. Love the LOCK system. I am a fan of plotting and story analysis as well. If I wait till later, I find errors in my characterization of the MC and plot structure, especially that could have come across much stronger if I had thought things through more prior to writing

  3. Reblogged this on The Compass Locket.

  4. Loving this series of blog posts, Kristen. I ordered my copy of Bell’s book too. Hurry up mail-person!

  5. Great Blog – I’m excited about this series. I’ve read Bell’s books and I have to say, you added some real incite to his LOCK method. Thank you

  6. Reblogged this on Con Gusto and commented:
    Kristen Lamb’s blog is an excellent resourse for beginning writers and writers dedicated to craft. https://wordpress.com/read/post/id/8132324/17236/

    In this post she talks about structure, which is near and dear to my heart right now. Go read it. I’d only add this:

    See if you can hone your lead’s primary objective into a single word. SURVIVAL. LOVE. Sure, your hero is more complicated than a single objective can encompass, but the exercise will sharpen your focus and tighten up your tension in a sprawling or diffuse plot. Have characters in the story voice this primary objective as observation, exhortation, or comments of disbelief.

    My hunch is that the Ghost of Hamlet’s Dad was a late-draft addition to Hamlet, when Shakespeare realized he had a nattering, complacent do-nothing for a main character who’s primary objection wasn’t clear to the Bard. Shakepeasre wisely put the motivation for his main character (“REVENGE”) in the form of a murdered and unredeemed spirit from beyond beseeching his son to take action.

    If you can’t boil your main character’s motivation down to a single word, your hero might need a “Hamlet’s Dad’s Ghost.”

    • R. A. Meenan on May 13, 2015 at 12:31 pm
    • Reply

    Loving this series. Again. XD It’s helping me rebuild some of my confidence as a writer!

  7. It’s amazing how instead of discouraging writers by telling them that their idea won’t work you actually inspire them to adjust and keep working!

  8. Awesome post. I’ve been having trouble with the middle of my wip and this have definitely helped me realize sources/structures to revise. Thanks.

    • Pena, Peggy on May 13, 2015 at 1:12 pm
    • Reply

    DO YOU AND JAMES SCOTT BELL GOT A THING GOIN ON?? JUST SAYING :D?¦

    1. He was one of my mentors and the first one who helped me truly understand structure. There’s no better teacher 🙂

  9. What revelation and so reassuring that I’m on the right path. I love Fried Green Tomatoes but haven’t watched it for many years, think I might put that right soon. 🙂

  10. Reblogged this on jean's writing and commented:
    Every time I sit down to write, I ask the question, “Is my idea good enough?”

  11. I purchased his book, and ate it for breakfast and lunch.
    boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. So much to digest. oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Methinks to be a better writer you have to write a book first, write another one, then another. oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Then you have to read books such as this one to prefect your craft. oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.
    Sorry I took so long to say that.

  12. Reblogged this on olarbatak and commented:
    Must read.

  13. Inspired!

  14. Thank you for this series of invaluable advice for novices such as myself. I am not commenting to try and get your critique of my work (though I would not refuse it), I am commenting because I love reading your posts and learning from your sage wisdom.

    Please keep up the good work.

    Nairn

  15. With my first two books, I could not have answered your LOCK questions when I started them (though my second book follows it anyway). Yep, I’m a total pantser. However, I’m currently working on my first book where I actually have a good idea of the “knockout” (as well as all the other LOCK components) and I’m not even 20 pages in. This could be because it’s inspired by the fascinating childhood of my grannie, though the “knockout” part will be quite literally a knockout and contrived. It’s nice to know I’m on the right track and growing as a writer. 😀

  16. Reblogged this on Christina Anne Hawthorne and commented:
    Continuing with the series on Structure…

  17. Yus! I am now feeling much better about my novel draft and excited about knocking it into shape. Although this might be because I am hacking my way through the middle of redrafting a stage-play and I may have reached the stage when anything else looks preferable. Except root canals. I’m not that far gone.

  18. Reblogged this on strengthloveandgrace.

  19. The real nugget of gold in here that stands out from other essays on the subject is the part about seeing the difference between the perpetrator of the conflict and the inner issues that the character must overcome in order to be able to face the perpetrator. Fried Green Tomatoes is a great example because it is literary enough that many people would say “oh no, that’s a character story about inner conflict.” But there is a real live antagonist and although that antagonist may not be very scary to a protagonist who is already confident, the story works because of the combination of inner issues and the external conflict. It links back to the idea of character arc related to plot arc. The character cannot be the same at the beginning and at the end. At the end the protagonist can defeat the BBT but only because of change. Thanks for putting this in clear terms.

  20. Reblogged this on 10 Minutes Past Coffee and commented:
    Borrowing from James Scott Bell’s LOCK system of structuring your novel, Kristen Lamb continues with Part 4 of her Story Structure series with “Is Your Idea Strong Enough”.

  21. Loved this post Kristen, it was very clear and helpful. I especially loved your example of the author/agent pitch. That was me. Every time someone asked me, “What is your book about?” I rambled on with incoherent babble. I knew something was wrong. I took an online class with an agent, Paula Munier. She asked me the title of my book. I told her I didn’t have one yet. She told me I didn’t have a title yet because I didn’t know what my story was about. She told me when I figure it out the title would come. And that is exactly what happened. I can vividly remember where I was when that happened. And, just like she said, the title came to me! She opened my eyes to the problems and encouraged me to find the answers. I didn’t give up. I restructured, and edited again and again. When I finally published, Dear James, I felt satisfied and accomplished. I am now working on my second novel and this post has helped me on my path, once again, to a clearer vision of my story! Thank you!!

  22. Reblogged this on Nancy Segovia and commented:
    L.O.C.K. and you will have a novel loaded for success!

  23. An excellent blog post with so much good information, and Bell’s book is next on “to read” list.

    Smiles, Nancy

  24. As always, great reminders for me in my daily writing. Thank you so much for continuing the business blog.

  25. Reblogged this on Dictator of Taste.

  26. Love your articles & your use of examples!! Thank you!

    • Melanie on May 17, 2015 at 6:39 am
    • Reply

    This makes a lot of sense. I wrote my first novel (I still feel like an utter poser saying that) utterly by the seat of my pants without even knowing there was a word for it. I am trying to follow a plan with this one and it is sort of easier and sort of harder. I think my protagonist is likeable and I have to be careful not to make antagonist too despicable because he has to become a hero. So… Tightrope anyone.
    It helps when smart people who know what they are talking about give me simple instructions… Thanks heaps.

  27. You state that the protagonist is going to be reacting through much of the story. Mine is also doing the acting. She decides to sidestep what she is told to do and does what she thinks is best. She does do some reacting too, but it’s more of a half and half.

  28. Thank you for making this so clear and specific. Its just what I needed right now. 🙂

  29. Reblogged this on scribblings007.

  30. Reblogged this on writersback and commented:
    Story Structure Part 4. Keeping readers interested in the objective of the POV through 80,000. words is a must and can’t be done without CONFLICT that is applied like pressure to a wound till the very end. If the reader thinks their POV is ok; they will take a break, wash their hair, watch tv and maybe never finish the great story you’ve literally sweat blood and tears in writing.#Conflict, conflict, conflict.

  31. This article came just at the right time for me. Trying to start third book in a trilogy and getting bogged down. Will go back to the drawing board and think again. BTW James came out to Australia last year and did an all day workshop. It was great.

    1. That is SO my dream. I want to go to Australia so badly. Le sigh.

  1. […] rendered her unlikable.  (For more on the perils of saddling your hero with too much baggage, see the subsection titled Lead of Kristen Lamb’s excellent, just-published blog post.)  If you’ve ever had a friend who couldn’t snap out of a funk, you know what I’m talking […]

  2. […] this point, you should also be able to decipher a good idea from a not-so-good idea and then, once decided, state what your book is about in ONE sentence. You can have up to three, […]

  3. […] draft, Marcy McKay mentions 3 traps to avoid when writing a rough draft, and Kristen Lamb asks is your idea strong enough? and discusses James Scott Bell’s LOCK method. Janice Hardy gives us a lesson in writing […]

  4. […] This week Kristen Lamb writes on how we can test the strength of our ideas, such as the method &#822…My favorite is the part about the lead’s objective, because that is what I alllllwaaaays have the most difficult time with and it’s, like, the whole point. […]

  5. […] Is Your Story Idea STRONG Enough? Part Four […]

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