Eventually, I will stop going on and on about the things I learned from the Donald Maass writing workshop. But not yet…

If there is one thing you don’t want, it’s a flat plot. For example, imagine this was your plot:

Bob wants Eggos for breakfast tomorrow but the store closes in an hour. Drive to the store, pick up a box, walk to the cash, TRIP, buy the Eggos.

Why is this plot bad? Aside from being about as exciting as watching flowers wilt, both Bob’s goal and the obstacles in front of it remain unchanged for the entire plot. 

Maass’s idea for fixing this is to MAKE THINGS WORSE, either by upping the stakes or by extending the effects of failure to other characters. For example, to up the stakes in the story above, we could make Bob’s car run out of gas. We could make the store close early for a bizarre town ritual. We could make the store run out of Eggos. To extend the effects of failure in this story, we could say that Bob also has to feed his twelve, hungry children who refuse to eat anything but Eggos for breakfast. We could say that the store owner is overrun by Eggos and must sell them all that day or the store will go bankrupt.

The point is to create a plot that is constantly changing or “hooking” the reader. If you give them the highest stakes and the list of all possible obstacles on page one, they might as well just flip to the last page and read “The End.”

Now, I must go eat some Eggos.

Say what? Why would I want my antagonist to be likeable??? I mean, he’s the one the protagonist wants to defeat, right?

Yes and no. The antagonist is the character who is trying to stop the protagonist from reaching her goal, but that doesn’t mean he should be all bad. According to Donald Maass, the scariest antagonists are not the ones lurking in the corner, cackling Mwoo-ha-ha. No, the scariest antagonists are the ones that are smart, likeable, and right. Here are some of Maass’s tips for creating a three-dimensional antagonist:

1) Give the antagonist a goal of his own and make it one the protagonist could agree with on some level.

For example, the antagonist wants to steal the Mona Lisa. This is wrong. But make him want to steal it because he needs the money to pay for his mother’s cancer treatment and suddenly, the goal seems justified. The protagonist may not agree with the antagonist, but she will understand him and maybe even sympathize with him.

2) Find one way to make the antagonist’s “way of looking at things” right.

For example, despite being a hardened criminal, the antagonist might believe in universal health care. The protagonist will be able to agree with him on this point, making it harder to hate him full stop.

3) Right before the climax, get the protagonist to agree with the antagonist. 

Using the example above, maybe the protagonist is about to stop the antagonist from stealing the painting, but she sees his dying mother in the hospital and can’t do it, at least for a moment. Yes, the protagonist will eventually have a change of heart when she realizes that innocent people may die during the heist. But by making the decision difficult for the protagonist, you will create more tension in the pull.

This past Saturday, I attended a writing workshop run by Donald Maass (aka, The God of Writing). He spent the morning of this workshop on protagonists, the first task of which was to make them likeable.

According to Maass, there are three kinds of protagonists and each comes with specific challenges:

1) The ordinary person – This is the every day Joe. He is you or me or the guy next door. Nothing special. Nothing grand. But if you want to make readers care about Joe, you need to give him some kind of heroic quality. Maybe he’s a bit of a jerk but he loves his five-year-old daughter more than anything on Earth. Maybe he loves his dog. Maybe he gives all of his money to the blind. Whatever it is, Joe needs to do something in the first 5 pages to show us why we should care about him.

2) The hero – The hero spends every moment of his life helping people. He’s a fireman, a soldier, a cop. But readers won’t necessarily care about him just because he helps people. This type of character is too perfect. He needs a flaw that makes him a regular human to which readers can relate. Maybe he has an annoying neighbour who always steals his newspaper. Maybe his dog pees on his bath mat every freaking morning. Maybe his mother has cancer. Whatever it is, the hero needs to do something to show us he is just like us in the first 5 pages.

3) The dark protagonist – The dark protagonist is usually not human. He’s a vampire, a werewolf, a fallen angel. If you want readers to care about this type of protagonist, you need to show one way that he wants to be a normal or happy being. Maybe he’s a vampire who just wants to die. Maybe he’s a fallen angel living in Hell who just wants to repent. Whatever it is, the dark protagonist needs to do something to show us that he wants to not be dark, in the first 5 pages.

The key message here is that you must give the reader a reason to care in the first 5 pages.

On a side note, if you get the chance the attend one of Maass’s writing workshops, I’d highly recommend it. He will open your mind to things you never thought about before (and he’ll probably make you laugh your ass off too!)