So What? That’s the question you must get past in your fiction. Why should a reader care?

Keep Reader’s Interest: Make Everything Matter More

The best way to make a reader care about your story, your novel is to make things matter more, put more at risk, up the stakes.

Personal Stakes

This can be accomplished on multiple levels. The first is a personal level. We must care about your character for some reason. A typical kid in a typical school is boring. Why do we care about this character?

• Moral Character. Because they are honest or loyal, kind or brave, respectful or trustworthy, loved by one and all. Some character trait must endear them to us and that usually has to do with a high moral character, at least on some level. And of course, your story will challenge that moral fiber
• Someone Loves Them. It’s important that you Show-don’t-Tell that someone loves this character. We like likeable folks; especially if you have a rough character, someone must let the reader know that the character is still lovable. It might be just a dumb animal who loves and is faithful to Mr. Rough Mouth, but it must be something or someone.

Public Stakes

In the world of your story or novel, something must also be happening that has consequences. If A doesn’t figure things out, then X, Y and Z will happen and those things add up to one major catastrophe for the city or nation, the neighborhood or the ranch, the business or the spy endeavor.

• Stretch out the tent pegs. Give the story’s consequences a wider influence than you had originally planned. The events reach tentacles into the very fiber of society (on whatever level is appropriate).
• Price of Success. What’s the price your character must pay to succeed in their quest? How can you increase the price in terms of moral character or personal relationships? How can you make the character hurt more, while also taking the results to a wider field?
• Self Sacrifice. Funny–if a character volunteers to endure something, we admire him/her. If they are forced to do it, we sympathize, but we don’t admire them as much. A willingness to pay an unusually high price will raise the stakes.
• Extreme Effort. Here’s where a story can easily go wrong: you make the trials and ultimate resolution too easy. Instead, push your character to his or her physical limits, mental limits, emotional limits. You love this character that you created, yet you MUST tighten the screws in every way possible, make them suffer, force them to fight for every inch of success. Whatever trials and conflicts you’ve thrown at them, intensify it. Think about extreme sports: the triathon combines on three hard races for a grueling competition. And yes, it’s no accident that upping the public stakes can hardly be separated from its impact on your character.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Use Character Traits to Make Your Character Sympathetic

Yesterday, we looked at 9 character traits that can be used to develop sympathy for your character. Today, we’ll look at using those traits in your story. It’s not enough just to tell yourself, or write on a checklist, that your character has these traits and is, therefore, instantly sympathetic. You must USE these traits. How?

Literary agent Donald Maass is a master of telling us how to use traits to create break out novels. He pushes you to go farther and deeper at ever turn.

Using the Character Traits

• Flaws. For character flaws – a necessary part of a sympathetic character, since perfect characters are not sympathetic – try making the character aware of his/her problem. When the character berates him/herself for being so grouchy in the morning, we have sympathy. When I announced to my 5:45 a.m. spinning class that I was a Grouch, that I had gotten up on the wrong side of bed, they all laughed and were extra kind to me that day. (The instructor still made me work hard, but at least I didn’t have to talk to anyone and pretend to be nice.)
• Hero or Heroine. Take any of the character traits we talked about before and push or shove it until it becomes heroic. Be careful not to become comic or melodramatic; but push the limits of what you can do with one trait.
• Multiply. Remember we said that victims get a certain amount of sympathy and pity. What if your character is a victim of multiple things? Pile it on and we’ll sympathize even more. Not only is your character in a wheelchair from a car wreck, but the bank is about to foreclose on her business; and she’s about to discover the cure for the common cold. That piles it on AND gives it a wider, public scope. Be careful here or we’ll get that contempt for this poor victim who can’t rise above her circumstances. But multiplying conflict is one way to increase sympathy for a character.
• Inner conflict. Give your character conflicting Dreeds and Plopes (dreams, needs, hopes, plans) and you increase sympathy. How can your character possibly choose between justice and the ineptness of the justice system?
• Paradox: While characters should be consistent, if you can add a believable paradox, you quicken our interest. The key is making it believable. What is it that your character would never say, do or think? Have them say, do or think it! But make sure you make the motivations and emotions clear.
• -Er or -Est a Trait. Push the trait to an extreme: Bigger, smallest, most vulgar, funnier, more clever, clumsiest. Make sure the reader notices your character!
• Raise the Stakes. Take their Dreeds and Plopes and make them matter more, put more at stake. The outcome of the hero/ine’s sacrifice will affect their family, their profession, the world. Why do you think evil men are always trying to “take over the world”? So they have the widest possible stakes. Take a cue from that cliche, though: make the increased stakes believable.
• Inner Change is Apparent. Finally, what character quality, trait, attitude, dream, need changes for your character. Yes, many things should change for a character. But your story should show a reader that people can change this one quality. What is it? Can you map a narrative arc for that one quality? From disbelief to faith; from a loner to accepting help; from defiant to accepting; from dependent to independent. Map it out. Raise some stakes and add some -er and -est.

Wow, I have some work to do on my VNovel! Because I want you to love G, even when he fails.

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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Does your Scene Pass this Checklist?

1. Where/When. (Setting) Did you orient the reader at the beginning of the scene? Does the reader know where this takes place: room in house, city, state, country, etc? Does the reader know when this takes place: time of day, season of year, place within chronology of story? If the answer to where or when is no, do you have a firm reason for leaving the reader disoriented?


Do NOT Pass Go Until You've Passed this Check List

2. Stakes. Are the stakes of the scene goal clear? If the protagonist fails, do we understand the consequences? Are the consequences substantial? Can you put more at stake, or make it matter in some way?
3. Structure. Is the structure clear, with a beginning, middle, pivot point and ending? Is the chronology of the scene clear (did you use transitions such as then, later, before, after, etc.)?
4. Actions. Are the actions of the scene interesting, and told with active verbs and great clarity?
5. Emotions. Are the emotions clearly stated or implied? Can the reader empathize with the characters? Does the reader weep or laugh, even when the character can’t or won’t?
6. Dialogue. Does the dialogue move the scene forward or is it empty chit-chat? Are there minor conflicts embedded in the conversations?
7. Language. Are you telling or showing? Does your storytelling have clarity and coherence?
8. Voice. Does the language create the proper mood, tone, voice?
9. Transition. Does the scene make a smooth transition to the next scene? If you use a scene cut, does the reader have enough information to follow the cut without getting confused?
10. Cohesive. Do all the elements work together to create a gestalt, a scene that is better than the sum of its parts?

Where does your scene fall down? Revise. You know the drill.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win