In our continuing quest to write 750 words a day, today, we will think like our opposites. Our enemies.

Drawing of the TinTin Villain

Today, write a scene from a character who represents the opposite side, the opposite take on things, the opposite point of view. Generally, this will mean your villain or your antagonist.

Read this three part series about villains:

• Villains Don’t Always Wear Black
• Strengthen Your Villain
• Villains to Imitate

Now, write 750 words explaining your villain’s point of view, exploring their backstory, understanding the whys and wherefors of this fella.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Random Prompts for Character Development

Last year, I bought Natalie Goldberg’s book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir. A friend saw Goldberg present at a bookstore about this book and was impressed, so I bit.

Now, I’m not much into writing a memoir. My life has been pretty average. But I’ve kept this book close for the last six weeks or so as I work through the revision on my novel-in-progress. Why? Because it centers on character description and a character’s inner life, and has tons of prompts.

Yesterday I reached a point where I knew that A was thinking about B and needed to decide to invite her over to visit. But how could A justify this, since they were so different?

Old Friend prompt: The Half-n-Half chapter (p. 199-200) reminded me to look around the setting. Goldberg says, “Public school had it all wrong with their topics: justice, morality, liberty, freedom, education.”

Instead, she suggests you look around your setting. Apparently, she was writing that chapter at a coffee shop, because here is part of her list: “half and half, sugar, cherry jelly, peppermint tea, Pepsi. . . .”

Oh, I remember now. Characters live in the particulars, the specifics of who they are, not in the generalities. When you describe your character and put him/her into action, the character description must include details. It took me only a few seconds of brainstorming to come up with band-aids. Yes, band-aids. A reflects on how B decided to get a plain skin-colored band-aids, not a neon color, or a Barbie or GI Joe one, or some other weird pattern, but just a plain one. That made B an okay person in A’s eyes. Short paragraph, in and out of A’s head in a blink.

That worked for me. Much better than the rambling thing I had tried before.

Old Friend has tons of short prompts, anything from one sentence prompt to a couple pages to explain something. It’s not that I couldn’t have come up with band-aids eventually; it’s just that these prompts, chosen randomly, seem to help me speed up the writing time, while deepening character.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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In part 1, I covered plot patterns beginning with character or beginning with a pattern such as the Hero’s Journey. This continues the discussion of 9 ways to plot.

5. Combinations of Plot Paradigms

Many descriptions of how to write plot combine a couple of these paradigms:

Overlaid with Three Act Structure.
Syd Field: Snowflake + Important Points Paradigm. Syd Field basically advises a Snowflake approach to writing plot, but overlays a paradigm that points to important events and connections among those events. His plot points aren’t labeled with reference to the hero and his journey, but with reference to the three act structure; often, however they coincide. Field works mostly with screenwriters, so is emphasis on the three act structure comes from that.

Emphasis on Inner Plot. Peter Dunne in Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot likewise has a chart of events, with a variation of the hero’s journey. Dunne, however, emphasizes the difference in the inner and outer plot, relegating most of the outer story to acts one and three, leaving act two as the character or inner plot. Same story, but with a variation when you want the story to be about two people changing each other. It won’t work, though, when the main antagonist is man v. nature or man v. himself.

To emphasize the importance of both inner and outer plots, Dunne recommends you write plot points on an index card with the outer conflict on one side and the inner conflict on the other.

Major Change at Midpoint. Another idea for patterns is from David Seigel, a screenwriting, who emphasized that at the midpoint of a story, there must be a change in the main character’s goal. It’s the understanding that interesting characters grow and their needs and wants change because of events. His classic example is from The Lion King. In the first half of the story, Simba wants to be happy; in the second half, he wants to be restored to his rightful place as king of the lions. Seigel said that without this major change, stories are ineffective. He basically falls in with the hero’s journey type structure, but puts his emphasis on this major shift of the story. (Seigel had his plot paradigm on line at one time, but it’s no longer available.)

6. Emphasis on Writing in Scenes

One other variation in writing and plotting novels is the emphasis or de-emphasis on writing in scenes. Screenplays and theater plays must be written in scenes, but novels can be fuzzier about this and still succeed. However, I think there’s value in learning to write in scenes, as it keeps a story focused better. Dwight Swain’s classic Techniques of the Selling Writer, is followed by Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. One of the most helpful on scene writing is Sandra Scofield’s The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer.

When you write in scenes, it’s possible to plan every scene in a novel, as Swain and Bickham recommend. But generally, you need some other paradigm of the overall structure to do a good job of it.

7. MICE quotient

There are other approaches to plot patterns that I find less helpful; nevertheless, knowing them sometimes makes it easier to be bold in doing something different. For example, Orson Scott Card in Character & Viewpoint discusses the MICE quotient: stories are governed either by their milieu (For example, fantasy which invents and explores a new world), an idea (mysteries), a character (romance or character novels) or an event (an imbalance in the world, an injustice that must be put right). The author’s focus on one of these elements determines what actually makes it into the story.

For example, on The Lord of the Rings, it could be classed as an event story, with the Dark Lord disturbing the balance of the world order. Card argues, though, that it is rightly understood as a milieu story. The story begins in the Shire, travels through Middle Earth, and as it is destroyed by the battle, it returns to the Shire; Frodo can’t remain there, though, because he’s been too damaged by his contact with evil, and takes the boat ride with the elves across the Western Sea. If it was just an event story, the story ends with the defeat of the Dark Lord. But as a milieu story, it doesn’t end until we see the end of Middle Earth.

8. Author’s idiosyncratic plot pattern

Hero’s journey overlaid with the process of grief. Pattern can also come in the shape of any process of change or growth that a human might undergo. For example, in my novel, The Wayfinder, I used the process of grief as a structure: loss, denial, acceptance, healing, You can even combine several of these structures: the process of grief overlays the hero’s journey for a more complex structure.

Patterns can come from any other source: you can think of a novel as peeling away layers of an onion; as way-stations on a long journey; as episodes.

What plot patterns work best for you?

Books Mentioned in This Series

• Bickham, Jack. Scene & Structure
• Card, Orson Scott. Character & Viewpoint
• Dunne, Peter Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot
• Field, Syd.
• Noble, June & William. Steal this Plot.
• Scofield, Sandra. The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer.
• Swain, Dwight.Techniques of the Selling Writer
• Tobias, Ronald. 20 Master Plots
• Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey.
• Vorhaus, John. The Comic Toolbox.

Websites Mentioned in This Series

• Free Write to Let Characters Reveal Themselves
• Idea, Idea, Character, Character, Character, Setting
• Plot Starts with Character
• Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method

Next: Enhancing the Basic Plot

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Your villain can be strengthened in several ways. Wait. Do you HAVE a villain, don’t you?

Do you need a villain?

One question I often hear is, “Do I really need an antagonist/villain” Usually, these writers have the main character struggling against something like a storm, or an evil empire, or something more abstract. In these cases, no, you don’t have to have a villain; but if you can embody the evil from that abstract opposition in a character, you’ll have a stronger story.

Create a single storm or give the reader a military general to hate (think Darth Vader). Your story will be stronger with a strong antagonist, because it will focus the main character’s efforts. Let’s assume you have a good villain and in the next revision you want to strengthen your villain. In general, you’ll want to look at what you’ve already done and push it to a more intense level. Because villains are a different sort of character, there are some cliches that work when creating them. But be sure to work against these cliches and make your villain fresh and interesting.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE–Two options

1. UGLY Their ugliness outside mirrors their evil inner nature.

• dirty–hands, clothes
• eyes–pale, blue, cadaverous, sinister, stone cold, blazing, uncanny, narrow, oblique, filminess, sharp, strange, awful, flaming with passion, keen, piercing, dark, bold, brilliant, black
• rank breath
• voice–sharp, cruel, think, harsh, often breaks into falsetto
• deformed in some way–hunchback, missing leg (Long John Silver), scars
• fleshy or fat from over-indulgence of fleshly lusts
• hands–short stocky fingers, fat/fleshy, large, white, ruthless, sharp nails, hair on palms
• facial hair–queer whiskers, cruel mustache
• bony
• skin–sallow, sunburned almost black
• physically strong–strong, but not intelligent
• laugh–hyena-like, laughs at odd times

2. BEAUTIFUL Their outside contrasts with inner evil nature

• movements–graceful, catlike
• intelligent–a worthy foe
• sexy
• hero-like, often tries to imitate a hero, a king, a warrior of old, etc.
• voice–melodious, husky, sexy
• hair–thick, beautiful, long
• clothes & accessories–splendidly horsed, impeccable taste in clothes,dashing appearance

CHARACTER QUALITIES

These are some character qualities to consider as you define your villain.

• All villains must enjoy their villainy.
• Cruel.
• established by reputation of past crimes/past corpses
• puts others in position to fail, then punishes when they do fail
• revenge
• no mercy
• Treacherous–no loyalty. Insinuates into positions of trust, then betrays.
• Cunning, sly, conniving
• Bully–physical and mental abuse
• Childhood–unstable, frustrated, unhappy, reform school
• Charisma–mesmerizes the weak (often female)
• Ruthless–gets own way regardless of what it takes
• Frustrated ambitions
• Shrewd business-like sense
• Foul language

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS

• Often foreigners or different ethnic group. (Not politically correct these days, of course, but still often done.)
• Often wears black. (Another politically-incorrect notion, but color can be useful in designating groups. Could also use some other visual tag, for example, gang signs, tattoos, etc..)
• Tools/House–Often these are sinister. In other words, make the setting echo their villainy.
• How is this character larger-than-life? What does s/he do, say, think that would totally shock even themselves?

MOTIVATIONS

Deepen your character’s motivations and emotions by considering these.

• Give the villain an inner conflict. What do they most want? What’s the opposite of that? How could the character want both at the same time?
• Raise the stakes. Even villains can have the stakes raised! What could happen that would make the villain’s goal matter even more?
• Have you plotted the villain?s character arc? Usually, the villain’s character arc ends in tragedy (s/he is defeated!). Do you show-don’t-tell your villain?s emotions at the climax?

Read About More Characters

• Villains Don’t Always Wear Black
• Villains to Imitate
• Strengthen Your Villain
• 30 Days to a Stronger Character Series
• Novel Diagnosis
• 30 Days to a Stronger Novel.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

What does your character want more than anything else? Sharpen and deepen the desires of your major characters, and your story will be richer.

5 Questions to Ask Your Characters

I want to win a race!

1. Character Goal
   What do you want? Or not want? Need? Or not Need?
   This question lays out the character’s goal for the entire story. What is the character trying to achieve as s/he faces the challenges of this story?
2. Changing Goals
   Does the character’s desires change as the story progresses?
   One paradigm for stories says that the character’s goal should change halfway through a story. Think of the “Lion King,” where Simba’s goal at first is to have a good time, and later, to take his place as leader of the pride. Changing goals represent character growth. It could also represent a changing from External Goals (can I win the trophy for this race) to Internal Goals (can I run with integrity, no doping, no cheating, etc.).
3. Obstacles to Goal
   What prevents the character from obtaining his/her desire?
   Strong obstacles, including strong villains, makes for a more exciting plot. Create a series of increasingly difficult obstacles.
4. Sacrifices for Goal
   What must the character give up to obtain his/her desire?
   This isn’t present in every story, but it’s something to consider. What must a character give up, in order to obtain this thing. Freedom, some privelege, money, integrity?
5. Satisfied or Disappointed
   What will the character feel when they obtain his/her desire?
   Ultimately, will the character be satisfied if s/he obtains his/her desire? There are 4 options:
   • Character achieves Goal/Goal satisfies (happiest ending);
   • Character achieves goal/Goal does not satisfy (tragedy);
   • Character fails to achieve Goal/Failure satisfies (still a happy ending, possible character growth because character now understands why it was a bad goal to begin with);
   • Character does not achieve Goal/ Failure does not satisfy (tragedy)

Think hard about your character’s goals because it affects the plot, the outcome, and the overall tone of your story.

Read more in 15 Days to a Stronger Character

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win