The burning desire is the beating heart of all great stories. Without the burning desire, the story will fall apart faster than a reality star who’s lost her hair extensions.

We’ve discussed story structure more times than I can count on this blog, and for good reasons. When we understand the fundamental parts of story and how they work, why they work, etc. THEN when something seems ‘off’ we possess the knowledge base and vocabulary to detect WHY the story isn’t working then fix it.

The Burning Desire for the BBT

I know it’s been a while, so super quick review. The first crucial ingredient for any story is a core antagonist to create the main problem in need of resolution by the time we reach THE END.

Since the whole ‘antagonist’ concept tied my brain in knots for YEARS, I finally invented my own term—Big Boss Troublemaker (BBT).

Why?

Because every story must have a core antagonist or, by definition, it isn’t a story.

That said, not all antagonists are villains. Villains are only one type of antagonist. Very useful in thrillers, horror, mystery, science fiction, and the like, but not so much in general fiction or literary fiction.

To understand more what I mean about the BBT, feel free to go HERE. If we fail to understand the BBT, then frankly the burning desire is a moot point.

While all stories must have a core antagonist (BBT), that alone isn’t enough. We must also figure out what drives the BBT. What is the burning desire fueling the goal that will eventually come at odds with the protagonist and (eventually) create a hero?

If we look back at some of the most iconic books, movies and series, we will see the writers NAILED the burning desire.

***I’ve detailed this on posts about real ‘flesh and blood’ villains, but also when we have a BBT that might be more everyday or existential.

Again, in the essence of time, I recommend taking a look at the posts I’ve hyperlinked.

BBT Burning Desire Done WELL

In this section, we’ll talk about some excellent examples from film as well as literature.

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 is an incredible, but terrifying, example of Man-Versus-Society. The BBT is a totalitarian government embroiled in endless (and pointless) wars. To keep the population from asking too many questions the government doesn’t want to answer…books are illegal.

The fire department, in this world, doesn’t exist to put out fires, rather to start them. A fireman’s goal is to hunt down any ‘offenders’ (people hoarding books), burn their stockpile, and possibly arrest them for crimes against the State.

IF, however, you read Fahrenheit 451, not ALL books are illegal. Only books deemed dangerous enough to encourage people to think, feel and, worst of all…QUESTION.

For a totalitarian government with a goal to keep people distracted and placated with fluff and nonsense, certain literary and cultural writings are deemed a direct threat to their agenda….ABSOLUTE CONTROL.

If people read, and maybe begin to think critically, then they might stop blindly gobbling down all the propaganda. Should that happen, then the powers that be could possibly lose power and—GASP—be held accountable.

Since it would be boring or even confusing for our fireman, Guy Montag (the protagonist) to simply ‘war with society,’ Bradbury gives us a proxy to represent the system…Montag’s mentor, father figure and closest friend Captain Beatty.

Montag’s desire to think for himself, to ponder the why of his world and be allowed to challenge the status quo comes in DIRECT conflict with Captain Beatty’s goal of keeping society ‘happy.’

Beatty remembers earlier times of complete social unrest bordering on anarchy, record rates of crime, suicide, depression, etc. and he genuinely believes people are better off ‘keeping it light.’

Bad pun. Oops.

I, Robot

The movie I, Robot was actually based off a collection of Isaac Asimov’s short stories and essays that questioned humanity’s increasing reliance on technology, robots in particular. How much free will were we blindly handing away in the name of convenience? What would be the ultimate consequence? Could the veritably sacrosanct Three Laws of Robotics be fully trusted?

Our protagonist, Detective Del Spooner, loathes technology, robots in particular. When a robot allegedly murders the leading scientist in the field of robotics (Dr. Alfred Lanning), Spooner believes he has all the proof he needs. Robots not only cannot be trusted, but they are dangerous and even deadly.

The ‘mind’ responsible for driving all the robots and their protocols is VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence). VIKI is there to ensure all robots adhere to the Three Laws of Robotics, so how can Spooner explain a robot directly defying the law dictating that no robot can harm a human?

It has to do with the burning desire. Granted, we are referring to an artificial intelligence. In Spooner’s mind, robots are fancy toasters, nothing more. What if, however, he’s wrong?

At what point do we—humans—create artificial intelligence that crosses over into a sentient creature that can reason?

Back to the burning desire. VIKI has been around long enough, observed human behavior long enough, that ‘she’ decides to make some changes. What Spooner comes to realize is that VIKI, and the legions of robots locking people in their homes, are technically ‘innocent.’

All three laws hinge on the first:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Isaac Asimov

Since VIKI witnesses that we—humans—can’t be trusted with so much as a swizzle stick, she decides to take the strictest interpretation of the law. By locking humans up at home and policing our every move, VIKI is making sure no human comes to any harm. Technically a noble goal, but…*runs screaming*

Ultimately, VIKI was only doing exactly what we humans asked her to.

When The Burning Desire Fizzles

Whether our story involves a serial killer, a society-gone-sideways, a power-hungry ruler, artificial intelligence, or even a well-meaning mother-in-law, the burning desire MUST pass muster.

When the burning desire is weak, absurd or outright STUPID, it wrecks the story. I’ve spent many years as an editor, teacher, story doctor, you name it. The two issues most new writers will run into are:

• Failing to even HAVE a BBT, which devolves the ‘story’ into a frustrating series of ‘bad things happening.’ Readers/viewers will stagger away wondering what was the POINT?
• If a writer does have a BBT, then the motivations are nonexistent, weak, nonsensical or downright lame.

Too many times, I’ve worked with new authors who are on the verge of tears when, to me, the problem was clear. The burning desire is missing or fizzling.

For instance, a sorceress wants to bridge two dimensions bringing hell to Earth. Okay. cool. But WHY? Why would she do that? A maniacal tyrant who simply wants to see the world implode. Fine, but again…um, why?

Joker & Hipocrisy as the Burning Desire

We certainly can have a BBT content with self-immolation or the annihilation of others (even innocents). They can make for some of the most frightening villains.

It all hinges, however, on the WHY.

In The Dark Knight, Health Ledger-as-Joker demonstrated this CAN be done (and become the stuff of legends). Some men cannot be bought, cannot be reasoned with, and they simply want to see the world BURN.

Though Joker comes across as a total madman—and maybe he is—he’s also a master manipulator. His goal for wreaking havoc in Gotham is to force Batman’s hand, and ultimately test his nemesis’s convictions.

Is Batman a hypocrite like other ‘heroes’ in Gotham?

The Joker is a wildcard in gambling…and as a villain. This said, Joker promoting all-out anarchy actually does have a point. Batman believes he must protect the seemingly unassailable integrity of Gotham’s public hero, Harvey Dent. To do this, however, Batman ultimately must take the fall for blood that rightfully should have been on Dent’s hands.

For Batman to win, he must also lose.

Joker forces Batman into a no-win situation where our Dark Knight has to make the toughest decisions of all. In my POV, Joker maneuvers Batman into a final showdown that’s actually a stalemate.

And he succeeds brilliantly.

When it comes down to any antagonist (villain or otherwise), we simply need to ask:

• What does the BBT stand to gain?
• Does their motivation merit the level of their actions?

The Burning Desire Goes Emo: Horsemen

Last weekend I watched a movie called ‘Horsemen.’ In theory, this movie had all the elements necessary for a flick I would LOVE. It has a dynamite cast of actors, a fantastic premise, and appeared to run along the lines of Se7en.

It even had a great tag line:

A recently widowed detective still grieving over his wife’s death discovers a shocking connection between a serial killing spree and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Premise for ‘Horsemen’

Okey, dokey. I am going to TOTALLY and UNAPOLOGETICALLY ruin this movie for you. Granted, I know not everyone likes dark serial killer movies with gore. I don’t necessarily have a problem so long as any violence ultimately has a POINT.

Horsemen is a great example of stupid, gratuitous violence…heavy emphasis on the stupid.

The protagonist, Detroit Detective Aidan Breslin, is a single dad rearing a teenage boy and a younger son after his wife’s untimely death from cancer. He’s a very sympathetic character, a man doing his best to balance home with work.

We also realize early on that there is a lot of tension at home, particularly with the teenager who resents his father for not ‘being there’ when his mother passed away…and for not being there in the years since. Fair point. Makes for a layered protagonist.

Breslin is already emotionally shredded and spread too thinly. The last thing he needs is a serial killer. Not a serial killer, but seemingly a group killing for some unknown (but vague and ‘biblically’ referenced agenda). And they don’t settle for killing innocent people…they butcher them.

By this point, I am all, ‘Meh, fine. Worked in Se7en. See where this goes.’

Where did it go?

Welcome to the Land of STUPID

Come and See. Better still? Don’t.

By the time we are into Act Two (Warrior), Breslin knows they are dealing with a group of murderers trying to make a statement. There are (allegedly) four killers, each representing one of the four horsemen from Revelations: Red (War), Green (Pestilence), Black (Famine) and White (Conquest).

There is no need to go into detail because, bluntly, it was beyond absurd. Suffice to say the Horsemen have some sort of justification for slaughtering regular people who’ve committed no crime. Must be a big deal, right?

Nope.

I’ll only concern myself with the White Horseman for a number of reasons. Mostly because I have a limit on how much idiocy I can handle, but also because the White Horseman is supposed to be the biggest and baddest of the bunch—the leader and thus our BBT.

….and it’s the detective’s son.

The burning desire that justifies wholesale butchery of innocent people is….*drum roll*

Daddy wasn’t there for him enough.

*primal screaming*

His father is a detective in one of the most crime-riddled cities in the U.S. and wasn’t there when his mother died. Um, maybe because Dad had to pay the bills for like food, shelter and health insurance? And Dad wasn’t there enough after Mom died. Again, he is grieving and remember he is a HOMICIDE DETECTIVE?

So the son’s great plan is this. His dad is absentee because he’s too busy solving murders, bringing comfort to grieving victims and the bad guys to justice.

What would be a great idea?

Go on a killing spree that um…makes your father keep having to ditch you to find out WHO is committing these heinous murders.

*rails at the heavens*

Finding the Balance…in a GOOD Way

Hopefully I’ve offered a nice selection of books/movies where the burning reason was done well. It’s tougher to find examples of when it’s botched because these books, movies and series are often forgotten for this very reason.

***I have a rant somewhere in the archives about the Pixar disaster we know as Finding Dory, but have too many posts and can’t find it .

There is a sweet spot when it comes to finding that burning reason for our story to exist. If the burning desire is missing, vague, overly complicated or absurd, that is a formula for a reader to toss a book across the room.

Or post a blog/rant about a movie/series.

In Horsemen, the screenwriters possibly could have salvaged the movie, but it’s very unlikely. If the writers wanted the White Horseman to have a cause worthy of the crimes committed, they’d have had to ditch their little darling….having the BBT puppet master being the detective’s son.

To make the BBT the detective’s son, would have meant sacrificing the protagonist and having no ‘hero.’ This makes my point that when we understand what makes a great story, we can fix it before it’s too late.

Had the Horsemen screenwriters asked the really tough questions, they could have had a contender. Actually, was a simple fix, but we might talk about that next time .

In the End, I LOVE Hearing from You!

I know I’ve been away far too long, and I missed y’all! Mom and Hubby both had emergency surgeries, I cracked two back teeth, had to get in all my work on this last book that was 91,000 words with at least 125 citations and AHHHH!

I was just beyond burned out. Thanks for being so patient. It gave me space to refill my mental and emotional reserves. These posts take a lot of time and research.

But back to this post.

What are your thoughts? Can you think of movies where you found yourself struggling with maybe ‘forgiving the unforgivable’ because the BBT had such a great burning reason? Like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs or Clyde Sheldon in Law Abiding Citizen?

What about movies, books, series that, like Horsemen, left you angry about losing hours of your life you can’t get back?

Also, I’d like to know what topics you might like me to cover, questions I might be able to answer, etc. I am rusty so suggestions are AWESOME!

I’ve missed y’all a ton and eager to get back in the groove.

The post The Burning Desire: The Difference Between Magnificent & Maddening appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Evil fascinates us, and has since the dawn of human consciousness. I continually emphasize that humans are story creatures, which is good news for writers, since we’re in the story business.

Though not all stories face off evil directly, all stories must include conflict to be considered a story. Conflict isn’t, per se, evil, but great storytellers paint with words and black is only the farthest extreme. Some stories might demand a LOT of black, but others will likely run along the spectrum of “evil.”

No, the department’s budget cuts that force your MC (Main Character) to lay off twenty hardworking people she cares about isn’t, per se, evil at work, but maybe it is. For your MC? It sure feels close to it in the moment. Especially when the cowards higher up force her to wield the ax hand out the pink slips…a week before Christmas.

***Quick question. Does anyone know what jerk made the official note you have NO JOB…pink? I could google it but I bet y’all have WAY better “answers” (place in comments, please) #PlotBunnyAlert.

Moving on…

Writers Must Embrace “Evil”

No, I don’t mean sacrificing your kid’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that you took as a Halloween “Candy Tax” to the Dark Lord to become best-selling authors. I mean that one of the reasons writers freak out ‘normal people’ is guess what, Kiddies?

Y’all ain’t normal.

Sorry. Maybe I should have led into that. Prepped y’all better. Eased you into it.

Alas, sadly (or awesomely) The Normal Ship sailed away long ago while we were all looking at new journals many of us will never write in #TooPretty.

Now that we’ve settled that you’re not normal, it’s okay because normal is highly overrated and frankly doesn’t exist…aside from being a setting on the dryer.

BUT, just because y’all might be ‘Abby Normal,’ doesn’t mean you (we) don’t need to grow *stern face* .

Why authors, particularly really amazing authors, fascinate regular people is that they have the capacity to torture their characters.

In fact, the mere existence of SO MUCH angst, drama, upheaval, and inner and outer turmoil in REAL life is precisely WHY audiences love to read the same stuff in amplified form in books or watch it in movies or television series.

Authors like J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin, J.D. Robb, Isaac Asimov and other legends (too many to name) have learned not to pull any punches and to keep going for the T.K.O. until the bitter end.

“Evil” Lite

I’m not picking on anyone in particular, because I did the same thing when I was a new writer. Ironically, the very quality we absolutely must possess ‘to DO’ our craft can be actually be our undoing.

We LOVE…words. Often, too much.

In my early attempts at writing stories, everything was amazing, each detail finely and intricately crafted down to the tiniest detail. The problem, however? Everything was awesome.

*hums song from The Lego Movie*

I wrote ‘scenes’ of lazy days in bookstores, fun-filled shopping sprees, dancing in Paris, traveling The Med, on and on. I used words to paint worlds I never could visit in real life, and never wanted to leave. That, however, was not fiction.

Much to my dismay.

Fiction, is an escape…but in a very different way. It isn’t a cruise ship, it’s catharsis. When we strip away all the evil, take away the troubles, flaws, trauma, setbacks, and dirty deeds done dirt cheap, we’re handing our readers a shill.

Or a shell. There’s no STORY.

“Evil” is Essential

See, the entire POINT of story is there is a lot of crap in life we struggle with. Life is messy, chaotic, unfair, unjust, cruel, and sometimes downright terrifying.

We see evil in all its many shades wending through our lives, the lives of others, and often we feel powerless and hopeless. Life is wonderful and precious and beautiful, but those attributes can only be fully experienced when cast against the backdrop of loss, frailty, hardship, pain, and suffering.

The point of all this isn’t to depress you, dear writer, rather it is to clarify your mission. There are hurting people out there living in a world where the rules are patently unfair. STORIES, however, allow them an escape where the rules work in their favor for a change.

Even those stories where everything isn’t neatly wrapped up with a bow at the end, the story itself brings order to chaos, which offers the tormented soul a respite.

Good stories make us think, talk, question, examine, and reexamine not because the writer wrote a glorious description of a moonlit night, but because the writer posed questions not easily answered.

For instance, Josh Malerman’s Bird Box, is a terrifying story just by genre. I’ll grant that.

Beautifully written novel. Yet, what grabbed me more than the prose was the story, the people and how they all reacted so differently to the same problem. What still staggers me is how many questions this story engendered, questions that I can’t easily answer.

Exactly what were people seeing that made them react that way? Were the crazy people really immune or simply crazy? If my survival rested on moving silently without use of my primary sense (sight), could I?

*crinkles bag of chips while pondering*

Nope. Strong nope there. Okay, ONE easy answer.

Chaos & Clarity

This blog covers many genres and forms of writing. Maybe you aren’t writing horror, dystopian, thriller, or science fiction. It doesn’t matter. Think about some of the most successful ‘book empires,’ for lack of a better term.

Debbie Macomber has written more books than I care to count. Her Cedar Cove series was adapted into a television series of the same name. No serial killers, doomed spirits, warlords, exorcisms, or fallen gods visiting Earth through a rip in space-time.

Nope.

Just humans, doing very human things, making very human choices/mistakes and having very human flaws and failings.

But why was a series like Cedar Cove so incredibly popular? Because, first of all, her world became a character (that’s for another post). Also?

She was brave enough to be honest.

Granted, my personal preferences are far more gritty (which is likely why I probably creep people out WAY more than a meeting with the lovely Debbie Macomber).

But, the first book in the Cedar Cove series, 16 Lighthouse Road, is about a woman who falls in love with a Navy submariner just after New Year’s Eve, gets pregnant, then complicates her life even further by marrying him. Complicates, as in she’s ill-prepared for the nomadic and lonely aspects of military life.

While her husband is at sea, their daughter is born premature and with a heart issue. Celia is forced to make life-and-death decisions by herself. Then, her daughter dies and Celia must bury her baby alone. Her mother tried to be there, but a storm delayed her flight. And her father? He’s is emotionally unavailable, and only good for a hastily written sympathy card, and little more.

Though Celia had sent message after message to her husband, Ian, about the problems with their infant, she never received a single reply. Her husband was on a nuclear sub under the polar ice caps at the time. The Navy limited all messages to 50-word “family grams.”

To make matters worse, Ian’s commanding officer decided to withhold the messages until he completed his ten-week tour. Not that it mattered much. Even if he’d known, what could he have done? Or said?

By the time her husband returns, he’s a wreck, but no explanations or apologies are enough.

She wants out. The only answer is divorce.

Or is it?

“Evil” Has Layers and Hues

The reason books like those in the Cedar Cove series resonate is they are LIFE in distillate. All of us (whether we read this genre or not) can relate to some aspect of all the story contains. Sometimes life hands us a no-win situation. We might not make a bad choice, only choose the least crappy of all way crappier choices.

We understand anger, rash decisions, disease, death, heartbreak, others who fail us when we need them most, or even judging people too harshly because we’re trapped in our own shame and guilt.

When people think “EVIL” or even about “CONFLICT” they immediately conjure spy movies, thrillers, horror or dystopian, but didn’t your guts just twist with that little bit of description of a HALLMARK STORY? Did anyone do anything particularly evil or even WRONG? Yet what a MESS! How many of us understand messes like these all too well?

So I ask you. When it comes to storytelling, how many of us are holding back?

We fashion our worlds or characters as if they’re blown glass, when they shouldn’t be.

Blown glass characters are good for sitting on a shelf…much like boring, unread books.

Characters and stories worth reading (and then worth reading again and again) are forged in the fires and furnaces of literal or personal HELL. They are pounded, forged, hammered, reshaped, tossed back into the forge again and again until they finally emerge as something magnificent.

Bad Decisions Make Great Fiction

Villains are incredibly interesting characters, though not exactly the same as what I call the Big Boss Troublemaker (core antagonist). Not all stories have villains, but all stories must have a core antagonist that creates the main problem in need of resolution by Act Three.

Yet, though the antagonist creates the problem, it’s actually the MC and his/her allies who generate a lot of the page-turning tension. It’s their human failings, weaknesses and bad or at least less-than-perfect decisions that make the story interesting.

Readers love stories for many reasons. It’s comforting to know that even people who make dumb (or horrible) decisions can turn out to be heroes. We like to know we’re not alone, and stories allow us to experience emotions in a sort of ‘safe space’ through imaginary people in a made up world.

They give us tools to handle life and see it through many different lenses to enjoy it more fully. We forgive ourselves or others, feel empathy, compassion, see life through perspectives other than our own. All this makes us more fully…human.

Stories aren’t there to offer spa music, unobstructed vistas, massage chairs and endless buffets of treats.

That’s an oasis, not an odyssey.

In the end, be bold! Forget blown glass worlds, blown glass stories peopled with blown glass figurines. They’re pretty to behold, but can’t withstand pressure required to deliver a heart-pounding story guaranteed to keep readers up way past bedtime wanting to know how it all works out.

A Little More “Evil“

Here are some other posts that might help you on this topic that I’ve pulled from the archives.

The Brain Behind the Story: The Big Boss Troublemaker (BBT)

The Evil Has Landed: Villains Could Be Much Like You…or Even Me

Bring on the BINGE! Creating Villains Audiences Can’t Get Enough Of

How to Create Legendary Villains

Enemy Without a Face: When Dealing With a Different Sort of ‘Villain’

I hope this all helps you guys with your writing journey!

What Are Your Thoughts? I LOVE Hearing From You!

And I am NOT googling who made pink slips pink. Though I am TOTALLY open for the best conspiracy theories in the comments! The wilder and weirder the better. Come on, we all need a good laugh right now.

Did this help clarify what might be missing in your writing? Are you coddling your characters too much? Maybe being too heavy handed with BLACK instead of layering in some pearl grays here and there? Can you see areas where you might be able to make your characters work that much harder?

We (readers) LOVE that! Who wants to watch any sports match where the score is like 120 to ZIP? BORING! We want characters (heroes) to suffer! To work for it! Yes, we will scream and shout and call you names, but we’ll love you in the end after we forgive you for keeping us up until 4:00 a.m. #PinkiePromise

So let’s chat!

The post EVIL: Our Love-Hate Relationship With Mischief, Mayhem & Destruction appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Inner demons can be one of the toughest concepts for new (and even not-so-new) authors to grasp. Yet, inner demons are essential to create a riveting story that connects with the audience.

Frankly, characters with no blindspots or baggage are B-O-R-I-N-G.

Bad decisions make great stories.

We humans tend to resent perfect people and, instead, connect more intimately and authentically via shared flaws. Audiences love rooting for their favorite character to overcome his weaknesses and come out the other side better and stronger than when the adventure began.

It’s like when they win, we win.

Without this internal angst, a story falls flat and characters become forgettable, interchangeable plot puppets.

In all my years working with writers, one of the greatest weakness I’ve witnessed is that new writers mistake melodrama (soap opera drama) for story drama.

Yes, this really is related to inner demons.

Melodrama works well for soap operas, but spells death for a novel.

Soap operas don’t require a solid core story problem with definitive structure…just great hair, fabulous makeup, and a cast with more issues than every Dr. Phil guest combined (and little or no interest in getting rid of those issues).

In soaps, it is perfectly acceptable to point out personal demons with neon lights.

Why? Because while problems are constantly being talked about (via fights, gossip, confessions)…nothing is ever fully resolved.

Ever.

And I am in no way dissing soap operas. There’s a good reason they’ve lasted as long as they have. Come on, Days of Our Lives has been around since 1965.

Yet, this type of storytelling is designed to hook in a very superficial way. Also, what audiences will tolerate in a television show will drive them bonkers in a book.

STOP TELLING ME THINGS I ALREADY KNOW!

NOTHING IS HAPPENING!

*primal screams*

In soaps, the characters have personal demons, but not really INNER demons. If the demons are obscured (as is necessary in a novel) then audiences couldn’t miss two…ten years of episodes and yet still be able to catch up in a week.

This is why there’s a lot of ‘As you know, Bob’ dialogue. The repetition is there to help anyone who’s missed some episodes to get back on track with the show.

Soap Opera writing is designed to be overt.

Storylines are crafted to keep going on and on with only enough ‘closure’ to introduce a new hook (evil twin, amnesia, insider trading, hostile takeover, murder, infidelity….*looks to drop-down menu*).

Novels, on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of rambling on for decades. Unlike soap operas, novels have to actually end.

***Wow, the things I learned with my first novel.

This means we (the author) must introduce a core problem (early) that we’ll resolve—fully or at least satisfactorily—by the final page.

Sudsy Demons

Why am I bothering to talk about soap operas? Because I see A LOT of soap opera writing in new manuscripts, and I want y’all to understand why this style works on screen but not in novels.

In soap operas, it’s perfectly acceptable for a character to wax rhapsodic about his or her personal demons in cheesy monologues.

It has to do with the medium.

Soap operas got the name ‘soap operas’ because the stories were originally created for housewives to listen to when doing the wash or cleaning.

Initially, these stories played on the radio, but the storytelling style didn’t change much even when soaps shifted to television.

Writers scripted stories and dialogue in such a way that the audience didn’t have to be LOOKING at the screen to keep up (which is why you’ll notice there are a lot of characters calling one another by name which—in life and in a novel—is plain weird).

‘As you know, Anastasia, the reason Fabio and I had to run away to Cabo is because Dr. Fandango has been hiding the fact that Fabio has multiple personalities. And yes, I confess. I helped Fabio escape Dr. Fandango’s facility. Why? Because Dr. Fandango refuses to admit he’s my biological father. I know abandonment, Anastasia. And I want Dr. Fandango to know it, too….’

*dramatic music here*

As a Texan? I LOVE me some Telemundo. Telenovelas are da BOMB! Everything is over the top, and even though my Spanish skills are rudimentary at best, I can become easily addicted in ONE episode…

Unless We’re Writing Episodes of As the World Turns…

We’ll need to deliver those personal demons with a little—okay a LOT—more finesse. We can’t be as blatant or the story will be…um, weird.

This means we must have a solid plot because the problem with inner demons is they are, well…inner. The author’s job then, is to draw the demons out (via a STORY PROBLEM) so they can be overcome.

Plot and structure is how we do that.

Did I Mention Inner Demons are INNER?

Many new writers begin their ‘novel’ with a character doing a lot of internalization and thinking and thinking and more thinking and pondering over personal issues.

That, or the MC is fully self-actualized and well aware of his/her ‘issues’ and talks about them…a lot.

This is problematic for a number of reasons.

First, the entire POINT of the story problem is to shove the MC out of their comfort zone and into a place where he or she has no choice but to face the inner demons or LOSE BIG.

When we begin a story with an MC who’s already fully aware of his shortcomings, this character will quickly grow tedious and ring false. This is also a formula for a character readers will HATE.

How many of you LOVE people who KNOW they have a problem, but still do dumb crap anyway?

What, no takers? Thought so.

Secondly, revealing inner demons too early—and spelling them out in Crayon—spoils the mystery/adventure. Part of what readers love about a good story is that, like a therapist, we see what the MC’s issues are long before they do.

The main reason we turn pages until three in the morning is we want to find out if the MC figures out their problem before it’s too late.

Thirdly? When we introduce the story with inner demons—our MC droning on about emotional damage—it is too SOON. We (readers) just don’t care.

Nothing personal, but we have our own problems. We don’t have the time or energy to give a fig about a stranger’s drama.

The story problem is what hooks us and makes us care. So about these inner demons, remember…

Demons Hide in the Blind Spot

One key thing to remember about inner demons is they hide really, really well. If they didn’t, then shrinks would starve and be treated like writers. 

Wow, you’re a psychotherapist? Really? What’s your ‘real’ job? Seriously, people PAY you to listen to their problems? 

This is another reason we don’t begin with a protagonist thinking about her inner demons. Odds are, she is oblivious they are even there. She isn’t yet that self-actualized.

Denial is more than a river in Africa.

In fact, the stronger the denial, the better the story (or, if you’re a therapist, the better the $$$$$). This is why your protagonist, if pitted against the antagonist in Act One, should lose. He/She has not grown enough in order to defeat the core story problem

Plot is What Exorcises the Demons

The plot is the crucible that will fire this demon to the surface so the character can then defeat it. This is why understanding plotting becomes so vital. A great plot problem is going to sprout directly from that inner demon. Why?

Because fiction is the path of greatest resistance.

What good is a plot problem unless it pits the character against her deepest flaw?

Some weaknesses might be fairly obvious—grief, betrayal or addiction. The problem, however, is no one wants to read 300+ pages of someone whining about a loss or a compulsion. We would probably want to smother such a person to get her to shut up.

Whining is not a plot.

Also remember that there is a reason for the grief, feeling of betrayal or addiction, and THAT is the real inner demon that must show its head.

There has to be an outside challenge that forces the character to eventually choose to remain the same or to evolve (Act III).

You gonna keep hiding in a bottle? Or are you gonna face/defeat WHY you drink so you can walk your daughter down the aisle?

Not all inner demons are as obvious, though. In fact, the tricky demons can look a hell of a lot like our greatest strengths.

Remember that every character strength has a corresponding weakness.

***For a SUPER efficient way to find interesting blind spots, check out Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s AMAZING Positive Trait Thesaurus. There’s also the Negative Trait Thesaurus. I recommend you just treat yourself and buy the entire collection. You’ll thank me later.

Anyway, inner demons can be a real bugger to spot because these ‘strengths’ have served the character really well (or at least the character believes they have).

In fact, these inner demons might be the very reason the character has always been successful…until you (Evil Author Overlord) hand her a problem where the old tools no longer work.

New level, new devil, baby .

Willingness to work eighty hours a week is fabulous for climbing the corporate ladder, but what about keeping a marriage together?

Hmmmm….

Positives Can Be Negatives

Let’s say our imaginary protagonist has a heart of gold. We’ll call her Helpful Hanna for today’s purposes.

HH is always there to help a friend, lend an ear, or fix a problem no matter what. Helping is the core of her identity.

But what happens when, one day, she has the chance to pursue her dream?

She decides to open her own cupcake bakery (but over time) will come to realize that she’s spending so much time helping other people that her bakery’s doors might never open.

If she’s rescuing others at all hours and no matter the inconvenience, how long until she crumbles under the pressure?

Before her cupcake bakery dream, she had the luxury of bending more than the karma sutra to lend a hand.

The plot, however, forces her to finally see that others are actually using her. She might even realize that she wasn’t helping after all…that she was really enabling or even controlling.

Maybe those around her never expected her to constantly help and would actually love a chance to give back to her for a change.

*mind blown*

Hannah must eventually choose.

Eventually, the story should force Hannah to a crossroad—either she can do all the things for all the people, or she can have her dream.

But she cannot have both.

The pressure is what makes Helpful Hanna acknowledge her inner demon and face what’s really driving her compulsive need to help.

Perhaps Hannah’s ‘helping’ is more about power, control, or being ‘needed.’ Could be a lot of things.

When the outside challenge—opening a cupcake bakery—reveals the cracks in Hannah’s core identity, what will she DO?

We answer this question in Act Three.

See, before Hannah had a dream of a cupcake bakery, she could be there for everyone, anytime and all the time.

The plot problem (in the form of a dream), however, drives the demon to the surface and our MC has to learn or lose.

Notice how the problem (outside goal) helps this become a story, not just 300 pages of tedious navel-gazing. We show Hannah has a problem, then show her realizing she has a problem, and then show her overcoming that problem.

Flawed People Make Fabulous Fiction

In the end, remember that inner demons make a better story. And not every book requires some huge, over-the-top trauma.

My entire planet was wiped out, and I am the last of my kind.

Yeah…ok. I got head lice in third grade. Was super embarrassing.

In fact, those ‘smaller’ demons—sibling rivalry, abandonment, false shame, false guilt, family expectations—can be far more resonant because the audience can relate.

What are your thoughts? I LOVE hearing from you!

Did you struggle with soap opera drama early on in your writing? I know I did. Hey, there is a LEARNING curve to this.

Have you ever been hooked on a soap opera? Which one?

In college, I made fun of my roommate for watching Days of Our Lives and would pick on her during the show. A week later? I was changing my class schedule so I could find out if Bo and Hope were EVER going to get back together.

*hangs head in shame*

Do you feel a little better about plot? Does it make it simpler to see that the ‘inner demons’ don’t have to be huge to be HUGE?

Heck, I still need therapy for the dumb stuff adults said to me when I was a kid.

Too bad you aren’t as pretty as Such-And-Such.

Or as an adult.

You’re a writer? How cute. Well, your cousin—the one who married the astronaut—just gave up fashion modeling to cure cancer. Isn’t that fantastic?

*screams*

Surely I am not the ONLY one from a jacked up family. Feel free to share!

…really.

Anyway…

Just FYI, I’m extending the CLEARANCE sale a little longer, until new classes begin. We need to test the new Event Espresso license and this site’s functionality (we’ve updated everything). If you need a good plotting or character class, NOW is the time to get it.

I have to free up space on our servers. All my classes are detailed and average 2-3 hours. These are On Demand classes you can watch at your leisure and have fun while you learn (for classes, scroll down).

This not only is to help you guys get the training you need (affordable summer school), but it will open up room for the new recordings of new classes.

Please take advantage of the sale! I rarely drop prices this low.

After July 17th, these classes will no longer be for sale (and will be slated for deletion).

Some, I will offer again later in the year. Others? I won’t be offering again the same way (will be likely splitting them into two classes because they ran long).

Thanks so much for your support!

ON DEMAND CLEARANCE ON BRANDING & CRAFT CLASSES!

Available until July 17th, 2019

CLEARANCE Branding, Social Media & Sales Classes

ON DEMAND T.K.O. BUNDLE: Branding, Blogging & Sales for Authors

$99 (Regularly $165)

ON DEMAND Brand Boss: Branding for Authors

$35 (Regularly $55)

ON DEMAND Sales for Writers: Sell Books Not Your SOUL

$35 (Regularly $55)

ON DEMAND Blogging for Authors

$35 (Regularly $55)

Also Offering:

ON DEMAND Social Schizophrenia: Building a Brand WITHOUT Losing Your Mind

$35 (Regularly $55)

CLEARANCE Craft Classes

Plot Boss: Writing Books Readers Want to BUY!

$35 (Regularly $55)

Fiction Addiction: The ‘Secret’ Ingredient Readers Crave

$35 (Regularly $55)

Story Master: From Dream to DONE

$35 (Regularly $55)

The Art of Character: Creating Dimensional ‘People’ in Fiction

$35 (Regularly $55)

Beyond Bulletproof Barbie: Creating Strong Female Characters for a Modern World

$35 (Regularly $55)

The post Inner Demons: Soap Opera Drama vs. Story Drama appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Perfect is the crystal meth of the soul. We know perfect is bad for us, that we should avoid it because it is impossible to attain. Yet, when we fail to remain vigilant, perfect’s promising high lures us in. Perfect whispers in our ear that we’re in total control and can stop any time we like. But that’s the lie, the hook. Oh, and once those hooks sink deep, the only way free from perfect is to bleed.

I know it seems like I’m being a tad dramatic, but anyone who dares to pursue anything remarkable must know the enemy and this one is a doozy. Why? Because this is the perfect enemy.

Why is perfect so deadly, especially for writers? Oh SO many angles, and we’ll explore those later.

A Perfect Mess

We’ve been talking a lot about the log-line lately and how we can use this one sentence to test a story idea before we’re 30,000 words deep in an unfixable mess.

Conversely, if we’re already tangled in a story we can’t wrangle under control, the log-line can pinpoint what specifically is going awry.

If the story is grand, but we failed to make the stakes high enough, then we can quickly and easily fix THAT. Instead of wasting time adding in more subplots or more detailed description, we know the MC needs to have more skin in the game.

The log-line also saves a lot of time rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If we’re missing a core story problem then we don’t have a novel, we have 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000 words. Pretty big difference.

For those who’ve not yet read the post, the log-line formula is simple:

An Intriguing MC + Core Story Problem (Antagonist) + Active Goal + Stakes + Ticking Clock = Story

Perfect Characters

One of the single largest problems I encounter is that the MC is way too perfect. This is an easy mistake to make, especially for the newer writers.

When we’re first starting out, we lack confidence. We lack confidence because—despite what the world may believe—writing a GOOD novel is ridiculously difficult. There is a learning curve and writers need talent, training and time.

Many emerging authors are far more eager to give their MC a black belt in Judo than a black eye from a dirtbag spouse or lover. Characters have dream jobs, dream lives, and are fully self-actualized. Thus, all that remains is the oily residue known as whining. I want to get one thing straight before we go any further.

Fiction is about one thing and one thing only—PROBLEMS.

In order for an MC to be interesting, he or she must have some flaws. Juicy, interesting ones. That’s why I put the Intriguing MC as the first ingredient in our recipe for a spicy story. I will riff off a common enough example to demonstrate my point:

An immortal god with superpowers must understand his past in order to rescue the universe.

Even if we fixed all the other glaring problems with this log-line, can you spot IMMEDIATELY why this story is doomed?

If our MC is immortal, he isn’t ever risking his life. He can’t die. Also, he has superpowers so he’s already better than well-equipped to tackle even big problems. Can any of you intimately and personally relate to an immortal god with superpowers?

This all adds up to a steaming pile of WHO CARES?

Perfect Description

Since perfect characters come out of the brain bubble-wrap fully self-actualized, ideally prepared to take on any problem without breaking a sweat or a nail, this doesn’t leave much to work with. Perfect people are boring, and so is delving into their psyche.

Unlike seriously damaged characters—who have psychological warehouses crammed with skeletons and baggage—the PMC’s (Perfect MC’s) psyche is a spacious, orderly California Closet stocked solely with cruelty-free items.

FYI: This is bad news for a great story.

When we make characters fully evolved from the get-go, this defeats the entire purpose of story. Story is the crucible that will reveal the MC’s flaws, fire out his/her impurities and eventually forge the self-actualized hero.

If we’re starting our story with a California Closet, we really don’t have anywhere to go…unless….

We describe everything IN the California Closet, which obviously will be perfect *flips hair*.

It will also, by default, be extremely superficial because we don’t have anything else to work with. This is how we have so many MCs with emerald eyes (bet no one ever thought of THAT description) and flaming red hair (oh, another one I’ve never seen) or porcelain skin (*stabs self repeatedly*).

***Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I did this, too.

Give yourself permission to be NEW. This said, if we can walk into a fast food place and any random person off the street can come up with the same descriptions we did? THAT is a problem.

While descriptions of the PMC might fall flat, there’s “good” news. Since there’s no actual core story problem, we have plenty of room left over to gloriously describe…everything else.

This might be all right except description alone is not story. Many of us will sense this on some level, sense our reptile brains are nagging us that something NEEDS to happen after the MC goes shopping/has a meal/gets dressed.

I swear there is a drop-down menu somewhere in the zeitgeist.

Click to Insert: a) PMC gets party invitation, thus desperate need for new outfit and makeover b) Unexpected news that PMC is hosting a ball and requires new gown(s) c) Prophecy that war is looming and need to choose armor.

Perfect Pitfalls

Perfect characters lend themselves to page after page of description and a lot of nothing happening. Why? Because nothing CAN happen. Perfect has the hooks in and soon, short of alien abduction, we’re putting anything in the WIP just to say we’ve written SOMETHING.

There’s a reason this is happening…

If someone is rude, the PMC will handle with utmost diplomacy. Should a problem arise, our PMC will find the perfect spell instantly. And, since he or she is ridiculously powerful, talented, intelligent, the PMC can and will master whatever is necessary within a few pages.

But reptile brain is still there telling us we need to create PROBLEMS. Reptile brain has seen every season of Jerry Springer, worships Maury Povich, and believes that Dr. Phil is a total party pooper. Reptile brain is a huge fan of family holidays and always spoiling for drama.

Reptile brain, of course is right. Something DOES need to happen but, since we began with a perfect character, he or she can’t ever make bad decisions, which leaves generally two options.

Option One

The first option is the PMC has a lot of internal navel-gazing and angst which doesn’t make the PMC flawed, it only makes them unlikable and ungrateful. No one likes a whiner. And no one is going to feel sorry for a rich socialite who jets around the world and has looks, brains, and everyone’s unmitigated adoration waxing rhapsodic about how lonely she is.

*gagging sounds*

Our PMC often will also be more sensitive than a pre-menopausal mom caught in Christmas traffic with a mini-van full of hungry teenagers. The PMC completely overreacts to, well, pretty much everything.

And how we love THOSE people in life.

Or not.

Option Two

The second option is the PMC makes mistakes that render our PMC TDTL (Too Dumb to Live).

If I had a dollar for every perfect princess gifted with unrealized magical powers, the sole protector of her kingdom, the sole guardian of her people from certain doom…who for some seriously bizarre reason decides to go for a late night horseback ride.

Alone.

In the dark.

When she KNOWS her kingdom is on the verge of disaster, and that if anything BAD should happen to her, it’s game over for the kingdom.

Alas, despite fully understanding her hefty responsibility, she goes for a midnight ride. No guards or escort so she can do more…thinking. And, of course, she dismounts her favorite steed for a water break where she can conveniently gaze upon her spun gold/flaming red/black as night hair in her reflection.

All is magical and surreal (describe this part A LOT) until…

DUN DUN DUN!

She glances up and sees WHO?

*Refer To Dropdown Menu*

Our PMC is unarmed, unguarded and OF COURSE this would be the one time the a) evil wizard b) power-thirsty warlord c) demented rival ruler d) Other Bad Man So Long as He’s SUPER HOT would arrive.

OMG! I never saw that comi—yeah, saw that from a mile.

Why So Perfect?

As a reminder, I DID THIS TOO. I kid you not, in my first “novel,” I spent no less than six pages describing a flower market *face palm*. Again, give yourselves permission to be NEW. It’s wonderful to be new. It means you stepped out to do something grand. Just because we begin as amateurs, however, doesn’t mean we want to remain amateurs. Right?

Which is why I’m here to help shorten your learning curve .

Why many (newbie) stories fizzle flat has less to do with talent and more to do with insecurity and fear.

We’re prone to casting perfect characters because we’re not yet comfortable with the most valuable creative currency. CONFLICT.

When it comes to stories, handing out conflict is like tossing countless crisp hundred dollar bills into the air for everyone at the party #MakinItRain.

This is why authors who dole out the best (and the most) conflict have the largest entourage (Refer to George R.R. Martin, Tana French, Nora Roberts, etc.).

Is it okay to describe our characters and setting? Of course! That’s a ton of fun.

Is it okay to have hot MCs with superpowers? Sure it is! Ever heard of DC or Marvel? Certain genres even call for these over-the-top and larger-than-life characters.

All of this works…so long as the characters are imperfect.

Imperfect Makes Perfect (for Stories)

In order to be captivating, our MC needs to have baggage (more than carry-on, please). Issue them plenty of inner demons, a graveyard of skeletons in the closet, and decent-to-large helpings of weaknesses, addictions, and/or limitations.

Even the great comic book heroes are seriously messed up.

Batman is emotionally unavailable, filled with repressed anger, driven by false guilt, false shame and is prone to depression and masochism. He’s the great self-appointed martyr who believes he must sacrifice everything—love, family, Netflix—for the thankless Gotham City…even though no one ever asked him to.

***Hmmm wait a sec. HOLY CRAP! Batman is my NANA?

Feel free to give your MC some fantastical power…so long as there’s a cost (a BIG one preferably).

For example:

In the HBO series Carnivale, the Oklahoma farm boy Ben Hawkins has the ability to heal, but there’s a catch.

When Ben gives life he must also take life. The energy to heal comes from somewhere, and never from a source he can predict. Someone or something else must pay the price for Ben’s “gift.” In essence, Ben is stealing a life he has no real right to give away. Talk about some inner conflict and outer drama.

Do Some Damage!

And now that we’ve explored all this, we can return to our original “log-line” and fix at least PART of what is wrong aside from a crap-ton of redundancies:

An immortal god with superpowers must understand his past in order to rescue the known universe.

How about…?

When an egomaniacal god recklessly breaks an old and tremulous truce, thus igniting a needless war, he is stripped of his powers and banished to the mortal realm on Earth where…. (Refer to Thor).

See how it was perfectly fine to cast an immortal god with superpowers? It works, so long as we (Author God) take them away .

Weak is Strong

In the beginning, I mentioned the allure of perfect. It’s natural to be afraid of giving characters flaws because we still need training, practice and confidence. Perfect attracts us because it’s easy to write.

It doesn’t take tremendous skill to write a 2,000 word “scene” where the MC shops for a new designer dress and giggles with her best girlfriends. Anyone semi-literate with half an imagination can write this sort of a “scene” where the only problems might be typos or grammar mistakes.

On the other hand, it takes far more skill to write a scene where the MC shops for a new dress and giggles with her best girlfriends…but it’s all a ruse. She’s living in a house of cards about to blow away.

On the surface she’s normal. Inside? She’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She doesn’t WANT to be at Neiman Marcus, but she has to keep up appearances (WHY?). The MC is terrified (WHY?) because she lost her sweet high-paying job a month ago and her severance pay has run out (WHY IS SHE KEEPING THIS A SECRET?).

She’s sweating bullets hoping her credit card isn’t declined because if it is, she will be nothing and no one. She will cease to be the only person she knows how to be—The Gal Who Has Everything.

This is a taller order. Our MC has to maintain the facade, but the “friends” will sense something is off. She’s edgy, jumpy and feels ill about lying. Why is she lying? What does this say about HER? None of her “friends” are aware of her dire situation, so what does that say about THEM?

Notice how the first “scene” is information dump. There are no QUESTIONS to keep us (readers) turning pages. The second example, however, is bursting with tension.

And we didn’t even need to travel to her childhood to find it .

In the End

Writing fabulous books readers love takes skill. This is a tough gig, albeit a fun one. Regardless of genre, messes make magic. We want characters we can relate to, and don’t know about y’all, but I am far from perfect. Questions hook readers because we don’t like loose ends. We’re a nosey species that longs to know “Why?” and “What happened?” and if whatever happened can be resolved.

Pretty prose doesn’t make us turn pages, PROBLEMS do. So go make a mess, so your MC can grow up and clean the mess up. Your readers will thank you.

What Are Your Thoughts?

I love hearing from you! Questions? Do you feel liberated to go mess up some lives now? It’s okay. Your MCs can fix them by the end (which is kind of the point, LOL).

What do you WIN? For the month of OCTOBER, for 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).

Upcoming Classes for OCTOBER!

SPOOKTOBER!

PARANORMAL: GETTING REAL WITH GHOSTS, ANGELS, AND DEMONS

Instructor: Cait Reynolds
Price: $55.00 USD
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: Friday, October 12, 2018. 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. EST

REGISTER HERE!

Ever get the feeling that a paranormal romance WIP is turning out more reality ghost-hunting television than Demi Moore pottery party?

How about when a demon ends up sounding more like a goth teenager than an all-powerful agent of everlasting darkness? Or, when angels get confused as to whether they are supposed to be Nicholas Cage in ‘National Treasure’ or ‘City of Angels’?

Let’s not forget the time when asking friends and fellow writers for advice turned into a 172-comment trolltastic thread debating minutiae of scripture and ended with all our ‘Team Long Island Medium’ friends blocking our ‘Team John Edward’ friends.

All of this comes from a fundamental paradox in writing about the paranormal:

We are trying to define and describe the unexplained and unexplainable for the reader.

Well, get your EMF ghost meters and EVP recorders ready, because in this class, we’re going to turn off the lights and turn on the night vision cams…

This class will cover:

• Ghostbusters: five questions every writer needs to answer when writing about the living-impaired;
• Chills, chills, chills: writing the spooky stuff so readers feel like they’re really there;
• Flirting with danger: walking the fine line between the mysterious angelic stranger and creepy stalker demon (hint – one of them stalks your Facebook);
• The demon is in the details: from scripture to spirit boxes, how to get your ‘facts’ right, avoid trolls, and find that unique angle that will make your story stand out.

A recording of this class is also included with purchase.

URBAN FANTASY: SALT CIRCLE NOT INCLUDED

Instructor: Cait Reynolds
Price: $55.00 USD
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: Friday, October 19, 2018. 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. EST

REGISTER HERE!

Be honest. How many voodoo dolls have you mutilated in your quest to become the next Laurell K. Hamilton or Sherrilyn Kenyon?

• 0-9: You’re probably too virtuous to ever get published.
• 10-19: Equivalent of the New Year’s resolution of voodoo…fizzles in week 2.
• 20-29: You’ve won NaNoWriMo once or twice and wear lucky writing socks.
• 30+: Now, we’re talking.

In all seriousness, urban fantasy has emerged as one of the strongest and most competitive categories in publishing, building on the momentum of legends like Anne Rice and expanding to embrace all kinds of sub-genres such as YA, satire, and romance.

But for all its badass convention-breaking, urban fantasy also a genre boobytrapped with the worst pitfalls of all the genres it borrows from.

If we’re not overdoing the Mickey Spillane-esque hard-boiled grit, we’re confusing which supernatural creature has which power. Or, we’re creating characters that are so wrapped up in their love lives with <insert hot supernatural guys here>, they almost miss the climactic battle between good and evil happening a couple blocks over.

Fear not! Strap on your vampire-hunting gear, grab your wolfsbane gris-gris, and don’t forget to bring your sarcastic sidekick to this class where I will help you navigate the mean streets and treacherous back alleys of urban fantasy!

A recording of this class is also included with purchase.

BLOODY BEASTS: VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, AND OTHER BEASTIE BESTIES

Instructor: Cait Reynolds
Price: $55.00 USD
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: Friday, October 26, 2018. 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. EST

REGISTER HERE!

Every few years, publishing declares, “Vampires are dead!” and technically, this is correct. They are undead. You can’t keep a good vampire down. Or a good werewolf. (Down, boy!)

Like a dog with a bone, readers keep coming back to stories about vampires, werewolves, and other creatures because there is something irresistibly compelling about the danger of the ‘other’ that makes us question what it means to be human. Plus, vampires and werewolves can be totally hot, amiright?

However, trite tropes and careless creature creation can raise a reader’s hackles faster than a bad batch of AB negative. Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the awful mixed metaphors and puns. Still, a story that doesn’t offer anything new or compelling will suck the life out of a reader’s interest faster than day-old vampire…yeah, I know…bad joke…sorrynotsorry!

This is going to be a super fun class with a lot of juicy stuff to sink your teeth into…can’t-stop-won’t-stop….

This class will cover:

• Only human: how to walk the fine line between immortal angst and everyday relatability and create characters so cold, they burn, baby!
• Sparkle, shmarkle: picking through the mystery, history, and science of vampirism to create your own believable and betwitching bloodsuckers;
• That time of the month: from caricature to cryptozoology, what writers get right…and wrong…about werewolves and wolf shifters;
• Mortal problems: Do vampires pay taxes? If a hunter shoots a werewolf, is it involuntary manslaughter? ignoring these details can deal a fatal blow to a reader’s suspension of disbelief.

A recording of this class is also included with purchase.

THE CREATURE FEATURE CLASS BUNDLE

Instructor: Cait Reynolds
Price: $110.00 USD (It’s LITERALLY one class FREE!)
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: (see below)

REGISTER HERE!

• FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12 – Paranormal: Getting Real with Ghosts, Angels, and Demons
• FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19 – Urban Fantasy: Salt Circle not Included
• FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26 – Bloody Beasts: Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Beastie Besties

Recordings of all three classes is also included with purchase.

About the Instructor:

Cait Reynolds is a USA Today Bestselling Author and lives in Boston with her husband and neurotic dog. She discovered her passion for writing early and has bugged her family and friends with it ever since. She likes history, science, Jack Daniels, jewelry, pasta, and solitude. Not all at the same time. When she isn’t enjoying the rooftop deck that brings her closer to the stars, she writes.

The post The Perfect Enemy: How “Perfect” Destroys Perfectly Good Stories appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

What really makes a great story? I read an insane amount and always have, but it really wasn’t until I decided to go pro that I began looking at books very differently. Why were some books so utterly forgettable and others? I couldn’t get out of my head. What made the difference?

Why do I still revisit The Hours, The English Patient, Big, Little Lies, A Girl on the Trail, Gone Girl, The Luckiest Girl Alive? And others? I can’t recall if I even read them. I look at my Kindle menu and it claims I read it but…

This said, I’ve been putting a lot of thought lately into character. Reverse engineering it so that I can better understand what makes it tick. I’ve mentioned the raging debate about character-driven stories versus plot-driven stories and really all great stories are both.

Story is a machine. An engine. And if story is a machine, then plot and character are cogs. If one is flawed or weak or breaks? It cannot help but impact the overall machine.

But today, we are going to focus on the character cog. How do we create characters with resonance?

Who Are You?

Now, I know a lot of writing books recommend doing character sheets. There is nothing wrong with that. Get it out. Free write on the page. Think about who the character is, where she came from. Social class, religion, economic status, childhood, etc. Tell his or her life story and get it down.

But now I want you to dig a little deeper—ok, a LOT deeper—and ask…

What is my character’s paradigm?

This is to say, what is her reality? Her framework? What defines her? And, most importantly, what is its center? How does the character define his or her worth? Because a background sheet is nothing more than facts without context. To create a dimensional character, context is king.

Paradigms offer that context.

Though sociologists and self-help experts have used the notion of paradigms to assist personal growth, as a writer I felt the need to use this idea for a far darker purpose. Instead of using the paradigm to fix messed up people, I use it to create them.

So I bring you…

The Seven Habits of Seriously Messed Up People

Great fiction is about problems. It is about people with problems. And the more messed up they are? The better.

This means that to write any great story, we are going to need to create some seriously jacked up people.

So to do this, we need to know the character’s paradigm. But before we go further, I want to explain a bit how a paradigm works. Stephen Covey explains the paradigm as a set of lenses through which we see ourselves and our world. Rolling with that metaphor, a quick story to help you relate this to creating memorable fiction.

When I was pregnant with Spawn I suddenly needed glasses after having perfect vision my whole life. So I get glasses and can see! Yay! I just assumed I was getting older and accepted I now wore glasses.

But then something strange happened.

When Spawn was about three I kept getting headaches. My eyes hurt. I couldn’t see detail. Naturally I assumed I needed a stronger prescription so I went to the eye doctor. Turned out? I no longer needed the glasses. My vision had returned to 20/20.

So why did I feel the need to share?

When creating the character, take all of that background information then go deeper and reflect on what lenses the character is using. Our protagonist in the beginning wears a set of lenses that he or she is unaware no longer work. Maybe they did in the beginning, but life has changed. Maybe they never worked at all but the character has no basis for comparison so is unaware.

Regardless, they (our characters) believe their vision is correct, but we as Author God know that it isn’t. Our characters are suffering the headaches, strain and fatigue but are not necessarily aware what is causing such discomfort.

Plot is what will reveal that the old lenses are flawed and trade them for newer, corrected lenses that finally offer the clear picture and alleviate the strain.

Let Me Demonstrate

For instance, in Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies the character Madeline has a family-centered paradigm. Her worth is determined by her effectiveness as a mother and being needed by her children.

In Jessica Knoll’s Luckiest Girl Alive, Tif-Ani has a status-centered paradigm and believes social position and wealth are the most important things in life, that they are what will make her happy. Her dream job and marrying old money define who she is.

In Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller has an achievement-centered paradigm. Winning is paramount because winners get paid. He does not see himself as a justice-seeker, which is why he only defends those he is sure are guilty.

When we pan back and look at these great stories with the idea of paradigms in mind, then the genius of plot becomes far more obvious. We have the characters, we know them and now we have the perfect way to make them scream. We are going to show them that what they believe to be true really isn’t, that what they see is inherently flawed. That is what all three of these authors did in these three remarkable stories.

Madeline gets tossed through the parenting wringer, Tif-Ani is forced to confront the demons of her past that are driving her future, and Mickey Haller is confronted with the client he always feared. And to me, THIS  is what elevates stories like these from mundane to magnificent.

All great characters have their paradigm challenged then shattered then reformed. Paradigm melds character and plot into one. Plot problems are more than just “bad stuff happening” and instead, are direct challenges to the ego. Without paradigm, characters are one-dimensional puppets passively reacting to ill fortune.

Paradigm=Character

Paradigm is what adds depth to that backstory because backstory alone is not enough. We need to get to the interpretation of the backstory.

Game of Thrones. Every single one of the Lannister children is remarkably different even though they are from the same family…because of paradigms.

But even if we simply wrote ONE character background, we could have the same background and create countless variations off of it. How? Paradigm.

One woman grows up in a big domineering over-involved family and can’t wait to run away and do her own thing. She has no interest in marriage or children and wants a career.

Another? Has no idea why you wouldn’t want to live across the street from all ten of your relatives. She can’t imagine a world where family wasn’t meddling in everything. She can’t wait to get married and have lots of babies.

Same back story. Different interpretation. You, Author God, get to choose .

The Shattered Paradigm

There are all kinds of paradigms. There is family-centered, money-centered, relationship-centered, status-centered, enemy-centered, friend-centered, etc. Most people have an amalgamation of more than one paradigm, and so do good characters. Think of The Godfather. That is a delicious combination of family-centered, money-centered, power-centered, and status-centered.

Game of Thrones?

*head explodes*

So study it. Go to your favorite movies and series and think about the characters using this notion or paradigms and I believe you will see and be able to then add an entirely new level of genius to your own work.

That and now you can use “paradigm” in a conversation to impress your family and friends .

What are your thoughts? Does this shed new light on character for you? Maybe you can see what I am talking about in your favorite stories?

I LOVE hearing from you!

****The site is new, and I am sorry you have to enter your information all over again to comment, but that is a ONE TIME deal. After you do it once, WP will recognize you as a regular *sings Cheers theme song* once I approve the comment.

Also know I love suggestions! After almost 1,100 blog posts? I dig inspiration. So what would you like me to blog about?

Talk to me!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of MARCH, 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).

I will announce February’s winner next time! I was going to announce it this time, but I lied. I am a writer and that is what writers do. We lie.

*smooch*

SIGN UP NOW FOR UPCOMING CLASSES!!! 

Remember that ALL CLASSES come with a FREE RECORDING so you can listen over and over. So even if you can’t make it in person? No excuses! All you need is an internet connection!

NEW CLASS!!!! Hollywood Producer Joel Eisenberg’s Master’s Series: HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR EARNING POTENTIAL AS A FULL-TIME AUTHOR (Includes all classes listed below) Normally $400 but at W.A.N.A. ONLY $199 to learn from Joel IN YOUR HOME.

OR, if it works better, purchase Joel’s classes individually…

Potentially Lucrative Multi-Media Rights $65 February 21st, 2107 (AVAILABLE ON DEMAND)

How to Sell to Your Niche Market $65 February 28th, 2017

It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Who Knows YOU $65 March 7th, 2017

Making Money Speaking, Teaching, Blogging and Retaining Rights $65 March 14th, 2017

Individual Classes with MOI!

Blogging for Authors $50 March 30th, 2017

Pitch Perfect—How to Write a Query Letter and Synopsis that SELLS! $45 March 20th, 2017

Hooking the Reader—Your First Five Pages $40 March 18th, 2017

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

The post Creating Characters—The 7 Habits of Seriously Messed Up People appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Original image courtesy of flowcomm, via Flickr Commons

All righty. So we have spent a couple of posts talking about getting our head right when it comes to doing this writing thing. Once we get our heads in the game, then the practical How To advice gets a heck of a lot more mileage. Today we are going to talk about the writing of the actual novel.

When I started out wanting to become a writer years ago, I was so clueless I didn’t even realize I was clueless. I had an overinflated ego from all those years making As in high school then college English. I believed I could write so when it came to reading craft books? I thumbed through them and decided I didn’t want my writing to be “formulaic” *flips hair*.

Trying to take a short cut cost me a lot of time and wasted words because I failed to appreciate that writing a work spanning 60K-100K words might just be a tad more difficult than that five page essay.

Once I realized how much I really didn’t know, I set about reading every craft book I could find, seeking out mentors, reading blogs and articles and taking classes until finally I actually became an expert.

In being an expert though, I run into a lot of writers who say the same things that I as a fledgling newbie said. I remember being utterly perplexed and most of the instructors I came in contact with had no good answer to my questions. Now in the position of teacher? I hope to give you what I had to find on my own.

You need to start in the action.

I did! How much more action do you need than blowing up a building with cyborg ninjas?

You don’t have any conflict.

Sure I do!

What is your book about?

Well, it isn’t about any one thing. Oh, but a lot of stuff happens to my character. She has a lot of issues.

What is your plot problem?

Oh, mine is a character-driven story.

Yeah.

This said, the single largest problem of most first time novels is there is simply no story. It really isn’t a novel, rather a collection of clever vignettes.

What is a STORY?

Pirate Code=Writing Rules. Clearer now?

Okay so one of the major problems I had when I started out is I was too narrowly focused on the pretty prose on the page. I had spent a lifetime being applauded for my brilliant use of language and since I was weak at structure, I relied on what I did well. BS and glitter. But the problem is that pretty prose does not a story make. A novel is not just a collection of cool sentences and witty dialogue. There must be a destination.

The destination is what the entire book is about.

Yes, this even applies to literary fiction so there is no copping out. In fact, when an emerging writer says, “Oh, my book is literary” or “My book is character-driven” I hear “I have no plot and really no clue how to create one.”

Bear with me…

All stories have a CORE SINGULAR PROBLEM that must be resolved in Act Three (or four or five—It doesn’t matter which structure we use, it is all basically Three Act Structure). So for the sake of simplicity, it needs to be resolved at the end.

And yeah yeah I am giving you “rules” but to break the rules we need to know and understand the rules. Yet on this one? Break it at your peril. We don’t want readers lost because we have failed to pick what our book “is about.” We also don’t want them getting all the way through the book then tossing it against the wall because we don’t understand story and thus delivered a frustrating and unsatisfying ending.

Me with sooooo many books.

Back to the core problem…

Now, this core problem can have all kinds of subplots (and often does) but they are ALL tributaries feeding into the same river. For instance, in Lord of the Rings the core plot problem is to drop an evil ring into a specific volcano before a power hungry necromancer takes over Middle Earth.

Simple.

But there are all kinds of subplots (I.e. Aragorn no longer running, facing his failures and reclaiming his place as king. Arwen standing up to her father and sacrificing to be with the human she loves even though she is an elf and he is a human who has a lot of baggage with Dad).

But all of these smaller dramas impact the resolution of the story. If they don’t? They are plot bunnies that need to be caged.

Even in character-driven stories, there is a core plot problem. In The Road Man and Boy must make it to the ocean. If at the end, they are not at the ocean OR they are at the ocean but resorted to snacking on humans? They failed.

In The Joy Luck Club Jing-Mei (June) must make a decision whether or not to get on the boat to China to meet her missing twin sisters. If she doesn’t take the lessons from the stories, she will continue to hide and the sins of previous generations will continue. If she doesn’t get on the boat, it will mean she has failed to understand and thus forgive her mother. She fails.

Notice how even in these literary examples there is a physical representation that the character has succeeded—ocean and boat.

When there is an end-goal in mind, then it is far easier to deliver the character change. How the protagonist confronts the problem initially won’t work. The character will have to conquer inner demons and evolve into a hero in order to triumph.

This is why I STRONGLY recommend being able to write what our story is about in ONE sentence. If we can’t do that? Houston, we have a problem.

Conflict Versus The “Bad” Situation

If we do not have a plot problem it is impossible to generate authentic dramatic tension. I will give you an example.

Kristen oversleeps through her alarm. Worse, when she wakes up, she steps into squishy carpet. The toilet has overflowed. Then she tries to clean that up and the power goes out. Since she has places to be she packs up her stuff to shower at the gym. But after showering and dressing at the gym, she is then caught in bumper to bumper traffic and only once she is an hour away from the house does she realize she has forgotten her purse and has no I.D. or money.

Sounds like a pretty bad day, right? On some level you sympathize. But here is the deal, since this is all happening sequentially with no larger context, it is just bad situation after bad situation. It sucks, but there is no conflict.

Now, let’s add in one little thing. The end goal.

Kristen’s goal was to make an international flight. She is flying to keynote in Australia and this is the make or break of her career. If she fails to make it on time to Australia, she not only forfeits her speaker fee, she will wreck her reputation and also have to pay back the $2,000 for the flight. On top of that an entire hotel of people who have paid for a conference to see her speak, now will have no keynote.

NOW when these setbacks happen, because we know the goal (and what is at stake) we are practically white with tension. We know this isn’t just any other day and that THIS day is vital and so is every decision Kristen makes.

Starting in the Action

Starting in the action has less to do with car chases and bombs and fight scenes and more to do with getting as close to the story problem as possible. Using my example above, we wouldn’t want to start our story with the day Kristen left paper sales to become a writer. No. We would start as close to the day she is leaving to keynote and kick off the problems there.

Obviously there is a lot more to this writing thing, but starting with a solid core plot problem will alleviate a lot of problems. It won’t matter how witty the dialogue, how bad the bad situation, how glorious the prose if all of these are not feeding into the same goal—RESOLVING THE CORE STORY PROBLEM.

If you are struggling with that, sign up for my class about query letters and synopses this Saturday. I will teach you how to whittle your plot to bare bones and find and fix weaknesses. Also, sign up for my Master’s Series (all listed below and recordings come with purchase). I have one for Craft and though the Plotting for Dummies has passed and you can’t attend live, you will get the recording. These Master’s Series give you three classes for the price of TWO. The social media series literally has ALL you need to know to build a brand.

I also have a TOTALLY new Master’s Series with Hollywood Producer Joel Eisenberg. Normally this sells for $400. It is three classes, two hours a piece and Joel is offering it through W.A.N.A. for only $199. How to Maximize Earning Potential as a Full-Time Writer. So hello? Valentine’s Day gift? *wink, wink*

So what are your thoughts? Do you struggle with plot? Do you find yourself drifting off after plot bunnies?

I love hearing from you!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of JANUARY, 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).

SIGN UP NOW FOR MY UPCOMING CLASSES!!! 

Remember that ALL CLASSES come with a FREE RECORDING so you can listen over and over. So even if you can’t make it in person? No excuses! 

All you need is an internet connection!

NEW CLASS!!!! How to Maximize Your Earning Potential as a Full-Time Author Learn from Hollywood Producer Joel Eisenberg in your HOME. This series is normally $400 but W.A.N.A. is offering it for $199.

Branding Master’s Class Series with Kristen Lamb THREE social media classes, ONE low price. Only $99. It is literally getting one class for FREE!!!! 

Craft Master’s Class Series with Kristen Lamb THREE craft classes, ONE low price. Only $89. One class is FREE!!!! Includes my new class The Art of Character.

Individual Classes with MOI!

Pitch Perfect—How to Write a Query Letter & Synopsis that SELLS January 28th

When your Name Alone Can SELL—Branding for Authors February 10th, 2017

Social Media for Authors February 11th, 2017

NEW CLASS!!!! The Art of Character January 27th, 2017

Blogging for Authors February 3rd

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

The post The Single Largest Problem of Most First Time Novels appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

One of the toughest concepts to grasp in writing fiction is this notion of “inner demons.” In all my years working with writers and busting apart countless manuscripts, the single greatest weakness I’ve witnessed with writers is a failure to truly understand how to plot. And before anyone breaks out in hives that I am encouraging detailed outlines, I’m not.

But the problem with inner demons is they are…well…inner. This means that our job as writers is to draw the demons out so they can be destroyed. It’s kind of like The Exorcist, though green puke and spinning heads is all your call.

You might laugh but if you have ever seen any movie involving an exorcism, what is the general progression?

The victim starts acting weird. Not herself. At first it might be written off as depression or lack of sleep or not enough caffeine. Then as the demon gains a toehold, the outward symptoms become more pronounced. Maybe physical changes (growling voice, speaking in Latin). Priests intervene and stuff gets cray-cray but to defeat the demon, what has to happen?

The demon must give its NAME.

You know you watch far too many horror movies when you are no longer scared, but are yelling critique.

But the point of this I want to make clear is that the one thing these exorcism stories pretty much all have in common is the demon must be NAMED and manifest OUTWARDLY to be defeated.

Same in fiction.

Inner demons are tricky for a number of reasons we will talk about today. The trick is finding the plot problem that will drive the demon to the surface so it can be defeated.

Inner Demons are Inner

Yeah, I already mentioned that but this is kind of a big deal. Many new writers begin the novel with a character doing a lot of internalization and thinking and thinking and more thinking.

This is problematic for a number of reasons but the biggest is we (readers) just don’t care. We haven’t spent enough time to be vested in a stranger’s emotional baggage.

Do any of us like spending time in person with folks who do nothing but talk about their character flaws and problems? NO. So we are unlikely to want to pay to endure this too much in a book. Can we get there eventually? Sure.

Just like dating. I would hope by the time we dated someone a couple months we might know they haven’t talked to their father in three years and we would care about this problem. In the first fifteen minutes of a first date?

*backs away slowly* *slips barista a $20 to create a distraction to cover ex-fil*

Demons Hide in the Blind Spot

One key thing to remember about demons is they hide really really well. If they didn’t then shrinks would starve and be treated like writers.

Wow, you’re a psychotherapist? Really? What’s your “real” job? Seriously, people PAY you to listen to their problems?

This is another reason we don’t begin with a protagonist thinking about her inner demons. Odds are, she is oblivious they are even there. She isn’t yet that self-actualized.

Denial is more than a river in Africa . In fact, the stronger the denial, the better the story (or if you’re a therapist, the better the $$$$$). This is why your protagonist, if pitted against the antagonist in Act One should lose. He/She has not grown enough in order to defeat the core story problem.

Plot is What Exorcises the Demons

The plot is the crucible that will fire this demon to the surface so the character can then defeat it. This is why understanding plotting becomes so vital. A great plot problem is going to sprout directly from that inner demon. Why?

Because fiction is the path of greatest resistance. What good is a plot problem unless it pits the character against her deepest flaw and weakness?

Some weaknesses might be fairly obvious—grief, betrayal or addiction. The problem, however, is no one wants to read 300+ pages of someone whining about a loss or a compulsion. We would probably want to smother such a person to get her to shut up.

Whining is not a plot.

Also remember that there is a reason for the grief, feeling of betrayal or addiction and THAT is the real inner demon that must show its head. There must be an outside challenge that forces the character to eventually choose to remain the same or to evolve (Act III).

You gonna keep hiding in a bottle? Or are you gonna face/defeat WHY you drink so you can walk your daughter down the aisle?

Not all inner demons are as obvious, though. The tricky demons look a hell of a lot like our greatest strengths, because…..um, they are.

Remember that every character strength has a corresponding weakness.

These inner demons are a real bugger to spot because they serve the character really well (or at least the character believes they do). In fact, this inner demon might be the very reason the character has always been successful…until you Evil Author Overlord hand her a problem where the old tools no longer work.

New level, new devil, baby .

For instance, maybe your protagonist has a heart of gold. She is always there to help a friend, lend an ear, or fix a problem. Helping is the core of her identity.

But what happens when she wants to open a new cupcake bakery but then realizes she is spending too much time helping people who really don’t want to help themselves?

The plot forces her to recognize she sucks at putting down boundaries. She might even realize that she wasn’t helping after all…she was enabling or even controlling. She might come to finally see that the dark side of her helping. Deep down she doesn’t trust and so she always has to keep the ledger balanced in her favor. Or she could really believe she doesn’t deserve to be successful and helping others is a way of avoiding risk of failure.

Well, as soon as I get my brother sobered up, THEN I can focus on the cupcakes.

When the outside challenge—opening a cupcake bakery—reveals the BS of her core identity, what will she DO? See, before she had a dream of a cupcake bakery, she could be there for everyone and every problem. The plot problem, however, drives the demon to the surface and shows its real face.

Notice how the problem (outside goal) helps this become a story, not just 300 pages of tedious navel gazing and infighting. Without the goal, there is no real way to see if our imaginary protagonist succeeds. Yet, add in a cupcake bakery and it is pretty easy to spot failure. If, in the end she is still nagging her brother to stop drinking and does not have a successful cupcake bakery?

She failed.

Every side trip to rescue others that stops her from realizing this dream makes us worry (dramatic tension).

In the end, all great stories involve inner demons (character arc). But even in literary fiction, the outside problem is what is going to make that inner demon manifest. So take time to really think about how your outside plot problem can make the protagonist squeal then make them suffer…a lot. It’s good for them .

***NOTE: Pick up a Positive Trait Thesaurus for help finding your protagonist’s weak/blind spots.

What are your thoughts? Does this help you understand how to better make readers care about the internal struggles of your characters? Any questions? Suggestions? Additions? Recipes for holy water?

Remember I am holding the very first BATTLE OF THE PAGES and slots are filling up FAST! (Information below).

To prove it and show my love, for the month of JUNE, 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).

May’s winner will be announced next time .

Upcoming Classes

All W.A.N.A. classes are on-line and all you need is an internet connection. Recordings are included in the class price.

Again, I am trying something new and offering an open and interactive workshop. Is your first page strong enough to withstand the fire?

Battle of the First Pages

June 16th, 7-9 EST. Cost $25

This is an interactive experience similar to a gong show. We will upload the first page and I will “gong” when I would have stopped reading and explain why. We will explore what each writer has done right or even wrong or how the page could be better. This workshop is two hours long and limited seats available so get your spot as soon as you can!

So You Want to Write a Novel 

June 17th, 7-9 EST. Cost is $35

Just because we made As in high school or college English does not instantly qualify us to be great novelists. Writing a work that can span anywhere from 60,000 to 120,000+ words requires training. This class is for the person who is either considering writing a novel or who has written a novel(s) and is struggling.

We will cover the essentials of genre, plot, character, dialogue and prose. This class will provide you with the tools necessary to write lean and clean and keep revisions to a minimum.

Character & Plotting (NEW CLASS!)

June 24th, 2015 7:00-9:00 P.M. EST. Cost is $35

All great plots are birthed from character. The core plot problem should be the crucible that eventually reveals a hero in Act III. This means that characterization and plot are inextricably linked. Weak plot, weak character. Blasé character, blasé plot.

This class will teach you how to create dimensional characters and then how to plot from inner demons and flaws. Get inside the heads and hearts of your characters in a way that drives and tightens dramatic tension.

This is an excellent class for anyone who wants to learn how to plot faster and to add layers to their characters.

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. 

The post Write About Inner Demons Without Boring the Reader into a Coma appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

We can Twitter ’til we flitter and Facebook ’til we face plant and that won’t matter much in the greater scheme of things if we fail at our single most important job—writing a great book. Our single greatest challenge is to hook the reader hard enough to buy (and then read) our novel.

Sales ultimately are impacted by reviews and if no one reads and no one finishes?

Exactly.

Yes, covers are important and social media is vital, but those sample pages can mean the difference in No Sale and Big Hit.

One writing book every writer should have is Hooked by Les Edgerton. I think this was the first craft book that truly woke me up and showed me all I really didn’t know about writing.

As a new author, there were far too many elements I believed were important when in reality? Not so much. Additionally, because I was focusing on the wrong “stuff” I was failing to develop the “right” stuff.

What I love about Hooked is how Les demonstrates how all the factors that go into making great beginnings don’t just evaporate. These are tactics we must keep employing throughout the work to keep the reader engaged and turning pages. Our job is to obliterate sleep, to send our readers tired and grouchy and over caffeinated to work…but ultimately satisfied.

Let’s talk about some common ways beginnings fall flat.

The Writer is Easing Into the Story

Nope. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had writers wail, “But you don’t understand! The story really starts on page 50.”

Okay, then cut off 49 pages and you’re golden.

Modern audiences simply don’t have the attention span for us to go on too long. Yes, I get that the authors of yesteryear got away with this, but they were competing against shoveling manure and shoeing horses, not YouTube, Facebook and 24-hour entertainment. Additionally, writers back in the day were often paid by the word, so that sucker was padded worse than a freshman term paper.

These days we need to get to the point as quickly as possible and fiction is about one thing and ONE thing only. Problems.

Readers Don’t Need a Set-Up…Really

We writers can be really guilty of brain-holding. Readers are smart. Really. We don’t need to go ten or twenty or fifty pages to “set up” the story problem so the reader doesn’t get lost.

Even Andy Weir’s The Martian begins with:

I’m pretty much f**ked.

That is my considered opinion.

F**ked.

Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare.

Weir doesn’t start with the crew landing on Mars and bonding and working to “set up” the sandstorm that strands Watney on Mars. He starts right in the guts of the problem and we (readers) keep up just fine.

We Don’t Care Why

Often new writers will begin a novel with a lot of telling and flashbacks in an effort to explain why a character is a certain way. We don’t care. That is the realm of psychotherapy, not fiction. Want to see who a person (character) really is? Toss them into a problem.

Sure, later in the story we can divulge the character was abused or abandoned or whatever, but the beginning is not the place for that. Yes, we eventually know that Connelly’s character Detective Hieronymous Bosch grew up an orphan after his mother (a prostitute) was murdered. We eventually find out that these circumstances fueled Harry’s choice in occupation and even his world view. But the Bosch books never begin with this. That is for later.

Why?

Because the past is in the past and cannot be changed, therefore it is not a story worthy problem. It is a bad situation, not true drama.

In fact, we as the writer need to know these details, but sharing them might not always be a good thing.

Hannibal was far more interesting before he was explained.

Readers are perfectly fine with meeting a fully formed character (flaws and all) and just rolling with it from there. In fact, the wondering why a character thinks or acts a certain way often drives the reader to turn pages hoping that it eventually will be explained.

Inner Demons

My previous point dovetails nicely into inner demons, which we will explore in another post for sake of brevity. I get a lot of novels that begin with thinking and more thinking and waxing rhapsodic over “inner demons.” Here’s the deal, we don’t like people who go on and on about their personal problems and character flaws in real life. Why would we pay to endure that in print?

Fiction is therapeutic, but it isn’t therapy.

Remember that we are using the story problem to make the reader care about the protagonist. If we jump the gun too soon and start dumping a lot of emotional baggage on the reader, she is going to feel like she is trapped in the checkout line with that stranger who feels the need to share details of her ugly divorce.

We have to earn the privilege of the reader caring.

Beginning with thinking and internalization presents a structure problem as well. Internalization is part of what is called a sequel. Sequels can only happen as a direct consequence of a scene. Scenes are action and goal-oriented. All fiction begins with a scene (problem/conflict).

Outer Problems Versus Inner Problems

Humans feel far more comfortable with outer problems (initially) and it is what draws us in. If you have ever visited a major city like NYC, then think of it this way.

On the sidewalk there are countless faceless people.

If we notice someone crying? We might (big on the might) get involved, but we wouldn’t feel very comfortable. If, however, a person is carrying a briefcase and the latches give way spilling out the contents? Most of us wouldn’t think twice about helping the person gather her papers.

We also would feel far less weird if after we helped gather the papers, we “found out” the person was discombobulated because she was upset over a personal problem (was just fired). We might even want to know more because we’ve established enough rapport to activate empathy.

This is the difference in using an outer problem to hook versus inner drama.

Good fiction goes right to a tangible outer problem.

Beginning with Melodrama

Any time I see a book that opens with a funeral, a death, a hospital scene, I cringe. This is going to sound cruel, but we really just don’t care. If we have not been introduced to the characters who are clinging to life or recently deceased? We have nothing emotionally vested and so sections like these are just tedious.

***This goes along with a protagonist starting things off by relaying her abuse history as a child.

And the more the writer tries to amp up the “feelings” the weirder it gets for the audience.

I get that the story might be prompted by a death or a tragic event, but there is no reason to drag us along if we don’t know the dearly departed.

Remember that even in Star Wars, we did spend at least a little time with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru before they were butchered. If the story would have started there? It would have just been weird.

There are a lot of other things that go into crafting excellent beginnings, but we will talk about those another time. I am trying something new, though. Thursday, June 16th I am holding a Battle of the First Pages. If you’ve ever been to a conference and to an agent gong show, this will be similar.

I will upload your first page in the W.A.N.A. virtual classroom (all you need is internet and pants are optional) and will read until the point I would have stopped (or, conversely, where I am hooked). Then we will parse the first page sample for what the writer did well or what could be done better. Sign ups are limited but it is only $25 for two hours of fun and games and the recording is provided for free with purchase.

Anyway, I do love hearing from you! What are your thoughts, opinions, questions regarding beginning?

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).

Upcoming Classes

All W.A.N.A. classes are on-line and all you need is an internet connection. Recordings are included in the class price.

Again, I am trying something new and offering an open and interactive workshop. Is your first page strong enough to withstand the fire?

Battle of the First Pages

June 16th, 7-9 EST. Cost $25

This is an interactive experience similar to a gong show. We will upload the first page and I will “gong” when I would have stopped reading and explain why. We will explore what each writer has done right or even wrong or how the page could be better. This workshop is two hours long and limited seats available so get your spot as soon as you can!

So You Want to Write a Novel 

June 17th, 7-9 EST. Cost is $35

Just because we made As in high school or college English does not instantly qualify us to be great novelists. Writing a work that can span anywhere from 60,000 to 120,000+ words requires training. This class is for the person who is either considering writing a novel or who has written a novel(s) and is struggling.

We will cover the essentials of genre, plot, character, dialogue and prose. This class will provide you with the tools necessary to write lean and clean and keep revisions to a minimum.

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. 

The post Botched Beginnings—Common First-Page Killers appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Image via Flikr Creative Commons courtesy of Zoetnet.

As mentioned in a previous post, one of my all-time favorite series is True Detective. There is a line that’s repeated in the series and it is SO perfect for our purposes today.

Sometimes your worst self is your best self.

It’s tempting for us to create “perfect” protagonists and “pure evil” antagonists, but that’s the stuff of cartoons, not great fiction. Every strength has an array of corresponding weaknesses, and when we understand these soft spots, generating conflict becomes easier. Understanding character arc becomes simpler. Plotting will fall into place with far less effort.

All stories are character-driven. Plot merely serves to change characters from a lowly protagonist into a hero….kicking and screaming along the way. Plot provides the crucible. 

Plot is the push that drives the change. Without the plot problem, the protagonist is never forced to face weakness and can comfortably remain unchanged. Plot forces the protagonist to face the worst self in order to eventually unveil the best self.

One element that is critical to understand is this:

Everyone has Secrets

To quote Dr. Gregory House, Everybody lies.

All good stories hinge on secrets.

I have bodies under my porch.

Okay, not all secrets in our fiction need to be THIS huge.

Secret #1—“Real” Self Versus “Authentic” Self

We all have a face we show to the world, what we want others to see. If this weren’t true then my author picture would have me wearing a Batman T-shirt, yoga pants and a scrunchee, not a beautifully lighted photograph taken by a pro.

We all have faces we show to certain people, roles we play. We are one person in the workplace, another with family, another with friends and another with strangers. This isn’t us being deceptive in a bad way, it’s self-protection and it’s us upholding societal norms. This is why when Grandma starts discussing her bathroom routine, we cringe and yell, “Grandma! TMI! STOP!”

No one wants to be trapped in a long line at a grocery store with the total stranger telling us about her nasty divorce. Yet, if we had a sibling who was suffering, we’d be wounded if she didn’t tell us her marriage was falling apart.

Yet, people keep secrets. Some more than others. Most of us have secrets we keep even from ourselves .

In fact, if we look at The Joy Luck Club the entire book hinges on the fact that the mothers are trying to break the curses of the past by merely changing geography. Yet, as their daughters grow into women, they see the faces of the same demons wreaking havoc in their daughters’ lives…even though they are thousands of miles away from the past (China).

The mothers have to reveal their sins, but this will cost them the “perfect version of themselves” they’ve sold the world and their daughters (and frankly, themselves).

The daughters look at their mothers as being different from them. Their mothers are perfect, put-together, and guiltless. It’s this misperception that keeps a wall between them. This wall can only come down if the external facades (the secrets) are exposed.

Secret #2—False Face

Characters who seem strong, can, in fact, be scared half to death. Characters who seem to be so caring, can in fact be acting out of guilt, not genuine concern for others. We all have those fatal weaknesses, and most of us don’t volunteer these blemishes to the world.

In fact, we might not even be aware of them. It’s why shrinks are plentiful and paid well.

The woman whose house looks perfect can be hiding a month’s worth of laundry behind the Martha Stewart shower curtains. Go to her house and watch her squirm if you want to hang your coat in her front closet. She wants others to think she has her act together, but if anyone opens that coat closet door, the pile of junk will fall out…and her skeletons will be on public display.

Anyone walking toward her closets or asking to take a shower makes her uncomfortable because this threatens her false face.

Watch any episode of House and most of the team’s investigations are hindered because patients don’t want to reveal they are not ill and really want attention, or use drugs, are bulimic, had an affair, are growing marijuana in their attics, etc.

Secret #3—False Guilt

Characters can be driven to right a wrong they aren’t even responsible for. In Winter’s Bone Ree Dolly is driven to find her father before the bail bondsman takes the family land and renders all of them homeless.

Ree is old enough to join the Army and walk away from the nightmare, but she doesn’t. She feels a need to take care of the family and right a wrong she didn’t commit. She has to dig in and dismantle the family secrets (the crime ring entrenched in her bloodline) to uncover the real secret—What happened to her father?

She has to keep the family secret (otherwise she could just go to the cops) to uncover the greater, and more important secret. She keeps the secret partly out of self-preservation, but also out of guilt and shame.

I’m working on a fiction series and currently outlining Book Three. But in Book One, my protagonist takes the fall for a massive Enron-like scam. She had nothing to do with the theft of a half a billion dollars and the countless people defrauded into destitution. Yet, she feels false guilt. She feels responsible even though she isn’t.

This directs her actions. It makes her fail to trust who she should because she’s been had before. When she uncovers a horrific and embarrassing truth about someone she trusts and loves, she withholds the information (out of shame for the other person) and it nearly gets her killed.

This embarrassing secret is the key to unlocking the truth, yet she hides it because of shame. Shame for the other person and shame that this information reveals her deepest weakness…she is naive and has been (yet again) fooled.

Be a GOOD Secret-Keeper

This is one of the reasons I HATE superfluous flashbacks. Yes, we can use flashbacks. They are a literary device, but like the prologue, they get botched more often than not.

Oh, but people want to know WHY my character is this way or does thus-and-such. 

Here’s the thing, The Spawn wants cookie sprinkles for breakfast. Just because he WANTS something, doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for him. Don’t tell us WHY. Reveal pieces slowly, but once secrets are out? Tension dissipates. Tension is key to maintaining story momentum. We WANT to know WHY, but it might not be good for us.

The Force was more interesting before it was EXPLAINED.

Everybody LIES

They can be small lies, “No, I wasn’t crying. Allergies.” They can be BIG lies, “I have no idea what happened to your father. I was playing poker with Jeb.” Fiction is one of the few places that LIES ARE GOOD. LIES ARE GOLD.

Fiction is like dating. If we tell our date our entire life story on Date #1? Mystery lost and good luck with Date #2.

When it comes to your characters, make them lie. Make them hide who they are. They need to slowly reveal the true self, and they will do everything to defend who they believe they are. Remember the inciting incident creates a personal extinction. The protagonist will want to return to the old way, even though it isn’t good for them.

Resist the urge to explain. 

Feel free to write it out for you…but then HIDE that baby from the reader. BE A SECRET-KEEPER. Secrets rock. Secrets make FABULOUS fiction.

What are your thoughts? Questions? What are some great works of fiction that show a myriad of lies from small to catastrophic? Could you possibly be ruining your story tension by explaining too much?

Quick Announcement: Due to popular demand, I am rerunning my Hooking the Reader—Your First Five Pages at the end of the month and I am doing something different. Gold Level includes me looking (and shredding your first five) but I have added in some higher levels and will look at up to 20 pages. This can be really useful if you’re stuck. I can help you diagnose the problems. It’s also a great deal if you have to submit to an agent and want to make your work the best it can be.

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of JULY, 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. 

The post Lies, Denial & Buried Secrets—How to Create Dimensional Characters appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Last time, we talked about how to deepen characters and how EVERYBODY LIES (thank you Dr. House). Lies are critical for great fiction. To become excellent writers, we need to become great secret-keepers. Denial is more than a river in Africa .

I’d started a series on this a few months ago and Shingles got in the way of the next posts I had planned. But, the first of the intended series was about THE WOUND.  Check it out if you have a bit of time.

Most of us don’t go around lying because we are pathological liars. We lie because of our wounds. And, if you read the post, wounds don’t have to be big to be BIG.

Newer writers sometimes think we have to have a rape or death for it to be “enough” but never underestimate “smaller” wounds. They are far more common, very damaging, and readers have a lot likelier time empathizing and thus connecting.

Though I had my fair share of big wounds in life, strangely enough, the small ones did just as much damage and maybe even more. It was the jokes about me being ugly or fat from family members or schoolmates. It was being teased that my clothes were from Kmart (had a single mom).

It was playing sports, competing in martial arts, or being first chair in clarinet and playing a key solo…yet every kid had a parent/family member in the audience but me.

These wounds drove me to being more of a perfectionist, a people-pleaser, and insecure about my body and looks. One can only be called “Thunder Thighs” so many times. To this day, I refuse to wear shorts even though, when people made these comments, I was 11% body fat. I just happen to be built for strength and “willowy” is an adjective that will never describe me.

Me at 5’3″, 165 pounds and a Size 10.

Yet, though the wounds did their fair share of damage, they also created a person who learned to be self-sufficient VERY early….which is a mixed bag. Also, I learned to ignore other people’s opinions. This helped A LOT when I was blogging about how social media would change the world and had others calling me a lunatic.

But, I can also say there are times I maybe should have been better at listening to counsel and opinions. Learning to discern when to listen and when to ignore is still a struggle for me…because of the WOUNDS.

Beyond “The Wound”

Today, we’re going to explore an extension of the WOUND. The BLIND SPOT. There are no perfect personalities. All great character traits possess a blind spot. The loyal person is a wonderful friend, but can be naive and taken advantage of.

The take-charge Alpha leader can make a team successful, but also inadvertently tromp over feelings or even fail to realize that others have great ideas, too. Maybe even BETTER ideas.

Often the antagonist (Big Boss Troublemaker) is a mirror of the protagonist, especially in the beginning of the story. In the first book of the series I am currently writing, Romi (my protagonist) is LOYAL. She believes everyone has some good and the world will reward you if you simply are good and work hard.

How she ends up in trouble and the number one suspect in an Enron-like scam is that she trusted the wrong people and they let her take the fall for the scheme.

Romi is VERY Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde.”

To arc and be able to beat the antagonist and solve the core story problem—Find money and clear her name—she’s going to have to grow up. Her bright-eyed naiveté is an asset. Others (ALLIES) gravitate to her because she is such a Pollyanna. They are there to buttress her weaknesses and even mentor her growth.

Yet, by story’s end, she cannot be the same. She’s going to have to be more realistic and see truth about people in order to come out alive.

Conversely, the antagonist is betting that the original blind spot used to make Romi the sucker will remain. The antagonist is banking that she will refuse the call and thus not grow. The antagonist’s blind spot is pride and opportunism. Being able to manipulate.

Yet as Romi grows, she learns to see who people truly ARE, not what she simply wants to see and that is a large reason the antagonist fails.

Application

To use an example from a movie we have likely all seen. In Top Gun, what makes Maverick the best pilot is his complete lack of fear. He has the cajones to do what other pilots wouldn’t ever consider.

He’s driven by his wound, the lie about his father. This has made him one of the best pilots (trying to overcome his tainted history and impress a ghost) but he’s missed the lesson on how to be part of a team.

Yes, maybe breaking all the rules makes you “the best”, but it can get others killed. It isn’t all about HIM.

This is why when I refer to “the antagonist” I prefer my made-up term Big Boss Troublemaker. The antagonist isn’t always “bad.” The antagonist is simply the person responsible for creating the core story problem.

Iceman isn’t a bad guy. He isn’t evil with a plan to take over the world or infiltrate the Top Gun school as a sleeper terrorist.

He’s simply a by-the-book fighter pilot who believes Maverick shouldn’t be there. He loathes Maverick because he thinks he’s a danger to himself and others (and, frankly, he has a very valid point).

The plot provides the crucible. Maverick butts heads with Iceman over and over in a um, man-part-measuring contest. But what happens when Maverick loses Goose? Crisis.

A hard event (PLOT) has now forced Maverick to face the truth about himself. For the first time, he SEES the blind spot Iceman and others have been pointing out (which has been the core source of conflict). This loss forces him to go searching for answers deeper than buzzing the tower.

He finally recognizes others might actually have a point.

The beauty of this movie and why it’s remained so timeless (aside from hot guys in Navy dress) is it’s a movie exploring people. Real, broken, hurting people blind to who they really are. By story’s end? Everybody arcs.

Maverick learns there are other people in the sky besides HIM and that he is part of a TEAM. Iceman lightens up and recognizes that Maverick, too, has a point. Sometimes one just has to toss out the rulebook.

Thus, when creating characters in any story, to deepen them, we need to KNOW them. What DRIVES THEM? How would they react according to their past, their wounds and their blind spot?

As a writing exercise, take a scenario. Maybe an attempted mugging. How would different characters react?

For instance, when I was in college, I taught Jui-Jitsu during the day and sold papers in the evening. One dark winter night a drunk tried to mug me in a dark apartment complex and take my hard case briefcase.

Because of MY background, growing up powerless and determined to be in CONTROL, I’d taken years of martial arts. Also, when I was eight, I witnessed my 6’8″ male family member raise his hand to hit my mom while she was cooking….and she beat his ass out the front door wielding a mad hot cast iron skillet.

This left a mark (though likely more on said family member).

Thus, 12 years later when a MUCH larger drunk came up behind and tried to mug ME, he got beaten heartily with a briefcase and then chased until I lost him.

But why did I fight, not just hand over the briefcase?

I’d always been POOR. I was very poor in college and had worked long hours to buy a really nice briefcase in hopes of landing a better job than selling and delivering papers. There was no money in the case. I could have handed it over but because of MY wounds, the briefcase was more than a briefcase.

Clearly my BLIND SPOT is I have an alligator mouth and a pekinese @$$. I could have lost and ended up hurt or dead.

But what about a person with a different background? A different wound? A different blind spot?

What if the person mugged was a trust fund baby who could easily buy another briefcase? Or a person who’d been beaten badly in formative years and would do anything to avoid experiencing that pain? What if the person was elderly? There are a lot of variables that make a VERY rich palette to create characters with LIFE.

Think of your own life and personality? What is your greatest strength? How does it create your greatest weakness? What is YOUR blind spot. Play a little armchair psychiatrist and what you find might be really interesting . Feel free to share about you or even your favorite characters you’ve read or even written.

I love hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of JANUARY, 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. 

The post Creating Dimensional Characters—The Blind Spot appeared first on Kristen Lamb.