Structure Part 4–Testing Your Idea–Is it Strong Enough to Make an Interesting Novel?

For the past month, we have been discussing story structure. Part I of this series introduced the novel on a micro-scale. Part II explored the big picture and offered an overview of common plot problems. Part III introduced the most critical element to any novel, the BBT. Each of these blogs builds upon the previous lesson, so if you are new, I recommend reading the earlier blogs. I bring the best teaching in the industy right to your computer in an easy-to-digest form to make you a great storyteller. 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. In my novel writing boot camp, we have experienced first-hand that 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, by the way) employs what he calls the LOCK system. 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 must 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.

Think about it for a moment. Why do so many people demonize women like Angelina Jolie or Martha Stewart? Because most of us feel very insecure around women like these. They show us where we are lacking, and so we don’t like them. Most of us cannot wrap our minds around what it is like to be too beautiful or have zillions of dollars or the free time to carve pumpkins into sculptures while making our own curtains from recycled prom dresses. These individuals fascinate us with their “perfection,” yet we secretly wait for them to trip up so we can revel in their failure–I knew it! She isn’t perfect!

That’s why STAR Magazine can sell hundreds of thousands of tabloids with the promise of showing us that Angelina Jolie has cellulite. We want to tear her down and make her human. Not the best way to start out with your protagonist. If we make her too perfect, readers will revel in her destruction. Bad juju. 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.

Bridget Jones and Forrest Gump are two great examples. We can all relate to not being the prettiest or the smartest and so these characters are easy to love and root for. What if you are writing a thriller or a suspense, something that generally has a cast of uber-perfect people? Give them flaws. Perfect characters are passé. Don’t believe me? Watch the new James Bond movies, and contrast Daniel Craig with William Moore.

Now, to look at the other side of the spectrum. Often to avoid the cliched “too perfect” charater, 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 you’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.

Objective

Your 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.”

Huh?

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 week we talked about the Big Boss Troublemaker. Generally (in genre novels especially), it is the BBT is who’s agenda will drive the protagonist’s actions until almost the end. Your 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.

There is a scene from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles that I just LOVE. The prime villain, Hedley Lamarr, is interviewing scoundrels to go attack a town he wants to destroy so that he can build the railroad through it. There are all kinds of bad guys standing in line to give their CV.

Hedley Lamar: Qualifications?

Applicant: Rape, murder, arson, and rape.

Hedley Lamarr: You said rape twice.

Applicant: I like rape.

This sequence gets quoted quite a lot in my workshop. Why? Because there are many new writers who, upon noticing doldrums in their novel, will insert a rape scene. I am not making this up. And if I hadn’t seen it so many times in my career, I wouldn’t have brought it up. We can chuckle, but this is fairly common to the new writer, just as it is common for children to write the letter “c” backwards. It is a heavy-handed attempt by a new writer who hasn’t yet developed plotting skills to raise the stakes and tension. Robberies and rapes are justifiable conflict, if they genuinely relate to the story. Otherwise, it’s contrived and awkward.

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 of a mother-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…shenanigans.

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 coming weeks, 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’ll go first. Years ago, my first novel began with this mental image I had of a woman in Paris listening to opera on the rooftop of an apartment building. Beautiful scene that I developed into a 738 page convoluted nightmare with no antagonist and…no point. I still laugh about this novel. Yes, it is the one they were using in Guantanamo Bay to break terrorists. Please! I’ll tell you where the bomb is, just not another chapter of that boooook!

Now the shameless self-promo. We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media is designed to be fun and effective. I am here to change your habits, not your personality. My method will help you grow your network in a way that will translate into sales. And the coolest part? My approach leaves time to write more books. Build a platform guaranteed to impress an agent. How do I know this? My book is recommended by agents.

Happy writing!

Until next time….

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  1. I absolutely love the LOCK idea. It was the best thing I got out of Bell’s book and something I use on my writing–and all my friends’ ideas too. Yeah, they love that.

  2. Kristen, thanks for the blog. I have learned a lot and appreciate the condensed nature of the information!

    1. Thanks, Anita. Yeah, for blogs they are long. But these are essentially Cliff’s Notes of the best structure books. I found structure books particularly hard to read and absorb, which is why I took on writing these blogs. So it is great to know that you guys are enjoyeing them and benefitting. Thanks for taking the time to comment! 😀

  3. What I discuss is having a protagonist who has an anomaly. While it is good to have a protagonist who is sympathetic, it is more important that the reader be engaged with them at a very deep level, even if it’s not sympathy. Tony Soprano and Vick Macky are not sympathetic. They’re psychopaths. In Deadwood, Bullock was supposed to be the protagonist, but by the end of season one, Swearingen has taken over, even though he was technically the antagonist in the beginning of the season.
    Give your protagonist some trait that at first doesn’t make sense or doesn’t fit. The reader is hooked, wanting to understand why the character acts this way.

    1. Yes, but I found all the characters you named, to a degree, to be sympathetic. All three of them come from worlds that are unusual and dark. Their “goodness” I perceived in relation to the rest of their world’s “Badness.” These unusual worlds permit me to give them some leeway (I.e. The Mob Underworld). These characters are psychopaths. But psychopaths are charming and manipulative. These characters are like a bad relationship. They showed me just enough of a spark of humanity and redemption to hope they could be redeemed, but over time, of course, I discovered they could not…but by then I (the viewer) was hooked.

      Also, I think we can learn a lot from film, but I am sure you would agree that we have to be careful strictly cross-applying the same techniques. In film, particularly television, I think writers can get away with characters that wouldn’t fly in a novel. In series like Deadwood, we have the span of multiple seasons to develop a highly complex character. In Deadwood, for instance, if the writers had instantly come out of the gate with Swearingen as the protagonist, they might not have enjoyed the same success. Swearingen was an excellent antagonist to hook us into the series and then hold us transfixed as the roles changed over the course of months.

      I don’t think Swearingen would have made a good protagonist in a novel. Or, he would, but the writer would have to be far more skilled than I am. You could probably do it, :D.

  4. Great post, Kristen. It’s funny, true and helpful.

  5. What about this?

    Set-up: The protagonist starts out after the inciting incident wanting a certain thing. Halfway through the book he gets said thing, but what he wants has changed as his character has grown. Then he wants a new thing, and the writer crushes the life out of that dream before the end resolves whether he gets it or not.

    Thoughts?

    Amy

    1. Generally not a good idea. The goal needs to be clear from the onset. Hard to say from the information you have given. But the goal needs to be clear at least to the reader. Think of the movie “Some Kind of Wonderful.” The protagonist thinks he wants the beautiful popular girl, but who he really wants has been right there all along…his tomboy best friend. Now the audience KNOWS from the get-go that the besrt friend is who he really needs and wants, but it takes the events that transpire after the inciting incident for our hero to figure that out. But, the goal was always present. Changing goals mid-stream is going to be really hard to make work.

      Did that answer your question?

      1. Yes. It’s an issue of the audience/reader knowing what the ultimate goal is (i.e., what’s really “best” for the protag). So even if the protag *THINKS* he wants the one thing, the audience sees from the beginning that there’s another goal out there.

        I think that’s what I’ve done. That’s what I tried to do…. My beta readers seemed satisfied with the plot/hero’s journey. I have a couple of fresh eyes reading it now. We’ll see what they say… 🙂

        Thanks!

    • Terrell Mims on November 23, 2010 at 12:07 am
    • Reply

    My problem is pacing. I need to slow down.

  6. My problems are character conflict and objectives. I am just learning how to build them better. I still need to write a couple more practice novels before I finally have an idea.

  7. Love the idea of “LOCK.” I’ve had a few ideas that I soon found were not able to be sustained for the length of a novel. Thankfully, they were not total crap, and worked well as short stories.

    You presented some good examples to think about…thanks!

  8. Thank you so much for this post! I’m planning to start working on the second draft of something I’m writing within the next couple of weeks, and I know it’s going to be hard work – I’ll be referring to this, though, as I read it through, and I’m really grateful for all of these structure posts!

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  2. […] to plot, the Big Boss Troublemaker, and last week I gave you a tested method to make sure your core idea was solid enough to be the foundation for an entire […]

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