I must start by saying that, if you don’t know what a love triangle is, you MUST read this post by Erica O’Rourke. I will not try to re-state her brilliant words, but let me just say that her main point about a love triangle is that the two choices must be equal. The main character must be torn between the two because they’re different, yet equally viable options. If you want to see an example of how this is done, read her book Torn.

What I want to talk about today is what I call a love teeter-totter. Often confused with a love triangle, a love teeter-totter is something you may have seen in books like Pride and Prejudice. It goes like this.

Stage One: Main character meets two new guys. At first, she may think they are equal.

 

 

 

Stage Two: But then something happens to make her think that the guy on the left is a dreamboat and the guy on the right sucks cheese.

 
 

 

 

Stage Three: Stuff happens to confuse main character. Now, both guys are equally dreamy and sucky. The main character is torn between the two. Note that this is the same as a love triangle except it doesn’t last for very long. In a love triangle, the two guys may go up and down slightly, but they’re usually well-balanced, which is why she is having difficultly choosing. In a teeter-totter, the guys do not stay equal for very long. The challenge is not so much the choice as it is the mystery of who is the good guy?

 

 

 

Stage Four: Main character realizes that the guy on the left slept with her sister and that the guy on the right is a dreamboat after all. In the end, there is no choice for the main character.

Before I had my son, I’d never seen a Star Wars movie. I called Darth Vader “Dark Vader” and I thought a Wookie was something you gave to someone you didn’t like.

Five years later, this is what a typical Sunday looks like for me. Note that we watched two Star Wars movies before this battle. Please also note that I asked for the blue lightsaber but was denied. Actually, that is not strictly true. I asked for the blue one, was allowed to have the green one but then that was taken away and I was given the red one (**cough, Dark Side**), at which point both of my children attacked me with two lightsabers and a Curious George bat. I digress…

The point of this post is not to tell you why I have a strange collection of bruises on my forearms, nor is it to tell you why my cat had to hide behind the couch for an hour. No, my dear Padwans, the point is to tell you something I have learned about Darth Vader, or more specifically, about Anakin Skywalker.

There’s no better antagonist’s character arc than the one you see for Anakin in the 3rd movie (Revenge of the Sith). 

Now, I know that Anakin is technically a tragic hero and does not become an antagonist until the next movie. Either way, I think the lessons from the arc apply to both. And here they are:

1) We have a reason to love Anakin at the beginning of this movie. The prophecy says he will put the universe in order and he’s a talented Jedi who is fighting for the good guys. Plus, we love Obi Wan and Padmé and they love him so he must be good, right?
LESSON HERE: A great antagonist needs to be likeable in some way, especially in the beginning.

2) Anakin’s motivations are good. He wants nothing more than to make sure Padmé survives.
LESSON HERE: On some level, we need to be able to understand if not agree with the antagonist’s motivation.

3) But he has flaws. Anakin has a hunger for success. He’s impatient and has a hard time trusting others. Both Obi Wan and the Council ask him to be patient and trust them, but rather than do so, he lets the Emperor convince him that the only way to save Padmé is to use the dark side. Because Anakin WANTS to be the hero and doesn’t want to wait, he’s easily convinced to take this path because his intentions are good, right?
LESSON HERE:  Usually around the midpoint of your novel, an opportunity presents itself which plays on the antagonist’s previously established weaknesses. At this point, the reader should still be able to understand why the antagonist is thinking what he’s thinking (although this is often when they start to think, Uh-oh…)

4) Then comes the choice. With every great fall in an arc, you will see a choice and this is one the clearest I’ve ever seen. The Emperor (dark side) and Mace Windu (good side) are trying to kill each other and Anakin can only help one of them. The Emperor says, YOU MUST CHOOSE ANAKIN. Anakin only sees what he believes is right and so he chooses. And he’s wrong.
LESSON HERE: There is usually a choice before the antagonist falls. Make it one that’s really difficult for him and you will create not just tension, but an antagonist that is truly sympathetic. If you are really talented, you might even create an antagonist that readers secretly root for.

5) Then comes the consequences of the flaw. Anakin cannot take back his choice and so he goes forward with the dark side. There’s still part of him that wants to be with Padmé and that still wants to believe he chose right. We haven’t totally given up hope yet because there’s still part of Anakin that wants to fix this even though we know he can’t.
LESSON HERE: The longer the antagonist struggles between good and evil, the longer the reader will stay entranced. If he becomes completely bad with the turn of a page, we will question whether he was ever good which means we will question YOU the narrator.

6) Time for the nail in the coffin. Obi Wan and Padmé still want to help Anakin but because Anakin doesn’t trust people, he’s easily led to believe that they have turned on him. Insert fierce battle and hot lava. Then the Emperor tells Anakin that he killed Padmé and Anakin has no more reason to be good.
LESSON HERE:  If you want to make your main character fall far and fall hard, take away his motivation (#2). And if you want everyone to think you’re brilliant, make him responsible for his own demise.

During my great quest to differentiate the dialogue of my characters, I’ve consumed a lot of ice cream. This hasn’t really helped with the dialogue but I thought I’d warn you of the side effects of this task. Anywho, one of the things I’ve done has been to create a diction list for each character. To do this, I asked myself some of these questions:

1) How well-educated are they? For example, I have a well-educated character in my WIP who says occurred (instead of happened), perhaps (maybe) and precisely (exactly). She rarely uses contractions and always speaks in full, unbroken sentences. At the same time, I also have several uneducated characters who use a lot of slurred words. So they say dunno (don’t know), coulda (could have), kinda (kind of), lemme (let me), woulda (would have), gonna (going to), lotta (a lot of) and so on. These characters sometimes conjugate their verbs incorrectly and they use slang such as ain’t (are not/is not) and got (have). In the case of my current WIP (where there is a great deal of profanity), every character uses different words when they swear. So one might say something softer like crap while another might pull out the F-bomb in every sentence.

2) How old are they? When referring to certain things, people of different generations use different terms. For example, I will give you a call implies the use of a phone whereas I’ll text you implies someone (possibly younger) who uses a mobile device. Some people say record or CD while others say track or song. Be mindful of this when your characters speak.

3) Where are they from? For example, I have a character who says y’all instead of you and another who says you guys instead of you. If you have a character from a certain area, do some research on the common terms said there and bring them into your character’s diction. Also, take into consideration the type of habitat they come from. A farmer might compare a screeching noise to a rooster while a city person would be more likely to compare it to a subway.

4) Do they speak slowly or quickly? I have some characters who abbreviate many of their words. For example, of course (‘course), between (‘tween). I also have characters who trail off their sentences a lot as well as characters who speak almost incoherently (going on tangents within tangents).

5) What are their common words? Every person overuses certain words or expressions and these should differ for each character. Some of these include: that, okay, just, like, totally, then.

The great thing about making a diction list for each character is that, if you’ve tagged their dialogue as per my previous post, you can very easily scan each character’s word choice or do a Find & Replace across their entire style.

If you have found any other methods that you use to differentiate your characters’ dialogue, I’d love to see them! If not, I will happily accept photos of ice cream.

In my quest to differentiate the dialogue in my WIP, I came across many sites that listed the differences between a man’s speech and a woman’s speech and so I decided to compile them into an easy reference. Before you read these lists, please note that there are as many sites that refute  these points as there are ones that make them so you know, grain of salt and all that stuff. And here we go…

Men

1. Use commands more than questions (“Do this” not “Can you do this?”).
2. Don’t use tag questions (e.g., …, is it?) as softeners but will use them as confirmation.
3. Less likely to speak at the same time as someone else but more likely to interrupt someone else speaking. 
4. More likely to ignore someone else’s comments/questions.
5. Don’t use adjectives, fillers, adverbs.
6. Resist commands or implied commands, especially from women. (For example, “We should” is seen as a command).
7. Look for solutions or actions in other’s speech.

Women

1. Use more lexical hedges or fillers, (e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see).
2. Use more tag questions, (e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?) as softeners.
3. Use more empty adjectives (e.g. divine, charming, cute) and emphatic stress (e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance),
4. Are more precise with adjectives such as colors (e.g. magenta, aquamarine).
5. Use more intensifiers, such as just and so (e.g. I like him so much).
6. More likely to be polite (e.g. indirect requests) rather than commanding.
7. More likely to avoid strong swear words.
8. More likely to speak at the same time as another women, but wait their turn with men.
9. Look for sympathy, understanding, relationship building.
10. Less likely to use humor.

For further reading on this subject, there are some great posts from Traci Marchini and Lynne Kelly.

Let me start this post by admitting that I’m a bit of a geek. In my “normal” life, I have to find ways to convert print documents into an XML format with a very strict DTD and, well, I know I’ve lost you already so I’ll go back to speaking to a writer.

I’ve been working on trying to differentiate the dialogue of the many characters in my WIP and I came up with this really cool way to manage it. Now I realize that most of you will hear nothing but “blah blah blah” as soon as I say the words Microsoft Word, but for those of you who don’t, here it is:

1) Open your manuscript in Microsoft Word. Depending on your version, click either Format/Styles and Formatting or click the Styles flyout on the Home tab.

2) Follow the steps to create a new style for each of your characters. Make sure you name the style after them. Also make sure the style is based on “Normal” or whatever you call your regular text so you won’t have to read your manuscript in 12 different fonts. Well, unless you want to read your manuscript in 12 different fonts. In that case, skip to step 3.

3) Go through your manuscript and tag every line of dialogue with the speaking character’s style. I KNOW this will be tedious but, trust me, it’s worth it.

4) And now for the good part…once you have determined how you want your character to speak (more on that in another post), change the color for only that character’s style and then read the manuscript for only their speech.

Cool? Yeah, I know. Back to my XML.

I have nothing against the idea of living under a rock, but unless you’ve been doing so for several years, you’ve probably already heard about Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat technique for making a character likeable. What I want to talk about today is how to make a character not likeable. Now you’re probably thinking it’s ridiculous to even consider this a challenge. All you need to do to make a character not likeable is get them to kill a cat in scene one and you’re done right?

Right?

Well, here’s the problem. In romantic arcs, the main character is supposed to grow to like the love interest. So while you do need to give the main character reason to dislike the love interest initially, you can’t make it something she won’t be able to forgive him for later (like, for example, intentionally running over her cat with his car).

So what can you do instead? Well, this is something I personally struggle with so I thought I’d take a look at some Jane Austen’s romantic arcs in order to see if I could find an answer.

1) Pride & Prejudice. In their first encounter, Mr. Darcy refuses to dance with Elizabeth and then calls her ugly. Later, he also calls her family a bunch of trailer trash (I paraphrase, of course!) This is what I’m going to call Insulting the Cat.

2) Sense and Sensibility. Elinor discovers that Edward is engaged to some self-centered skank from down the road. This is what I’m calling Saying you don’t have a cat when you really have 12 cats, 4 dogs and a donkey named Steve.

3) Emma. Mr. Knightly yells at Emma after she plays a bad game of chess with a bunch of people’s personal lives. This is very similar to #1 in that it is insulting the cat, however it’s not as strong as #1. So while #1 would be like saying, “Your cat is the ugliest, laziest SOB I’ve ever seen and I bet his mother grew up in a ditch,” this is more like, “I don’t dislike your cat. I dislike cats in general.”

And now to work some cat insults into my latest WIP…

Sometimes, I write these posts because I’ve just read another brilliant post on Kidlit.com and don’t want to enter a comment that’s 400 words long. This is one of those times.

In today’s post, Mary talks about Telling versus Interiority. Specifically, she addresses when it’s okay to tell in a story. As she mentions, this is a very difficult thing to master and I think it’s especially difficult in third-person limited where you (the author) have the oppotunity to tell at any moment. For first-person however, I think the rules are a bit easier. Why? Because the concept of “telling” shouldn’t really exist in first-person. If we’re in the main character’s head, they should never tell us (the reader) anything because we don’t exist. Ever.

Does this mean the main character is are allowed to tell themselves something instead? No. Generally speaking, people don’t need to tell themselves how they’re feeling because, um, well they already know.  Unfortunately, writers need to find ways to let the reader into these feelings which means finding ways to communicate the already known without pulling the reader out and yelling YOU ARE NOT ME, YOU ARE THE READER!

So how do you do this? Depending on the situation, you choose one of four ways:

1) You show (sorry!) how the main character is feeling by giving them obvious thoughts or physiological reactions. For example, if the main character runs into her ex-boyfriend, she can say she feels like punching him in the face and we’ll interpret that as anger. You could also say she immediately clenches her fists when she sees him but I’d caution against doing this because it’s walking away from what the main character is actually thinking which is I want to punch him in the face and not I want to clench my fists. Having said that, there are times when a character does not acknowledge their own feelings and those are the times where you can and should use this kind of removed showing.

2) You get the main character to question their feelings. For example, it doesn’t make sense for the main character to tell themselves that they’re feeling angry (since they already know!) but they can think something like, “I haven’t seen him in six months. Why do I still feel so angry?” Or even better, “Why do I still feel like punching him in the face?”

3) You convey the main character’s feelings as a reaction to another character’s actions. For example, “The way Jane chewed her gum made me want to punch her in the face.” Again, this is showing the anger more than telling it. 

4) You get another character to acknowledge or question the main character’s feelings. For example, the main character might be staring off at the ex-boyfriend and her best friend might walk up and say, “Jane, why do you look like you want to rip his head off?”

Clear as mud?

I have written some stuff in 3rd person but I predominantly write in 1st. I personally find 1st person easier to write and so it amazes me when I see people break the cardinal rules of the 1st person POV. These are:

1) The reader must experience everything the main character sees/thinks and ONLY everything the main character sees/thinks.

This is a two-part rule. The first part means that, if your main character looks at a squirrel, the reader must see the squirrel at the same time. If the main character thinks, “poor squirrel”, the reader must see those thoughts on the page.

The second part of this rule means that the reader cannot see/know what the main character cannot see/know. This should be an easy one but I can’t tell you how many times I see a narrator sneak in with something like, “Joan thought about her answer before she responded.” Really? How does the main character know this? Is he psychic? Because Joan might actually be pausing while she tries to remember what time her hair appointment is at.

2) All thoughts must be exactly as they would occur IN THE MAIN CHARACTER’S HEAD

Okay, I get a little testy about this one because it bugs me even more than when people say they’re going to speak to a subject. But enough about that restraining order. When a book is narrated by one character, all of the narration should come from that character’s head as if they were THINKING not as if they were SPEAKING TO SOMEONE ELSE. I can’t stress this enough. Yes, I know, it’s possible to adopt a style of writing where your main character speaks to the reader for the entire book. If that’s your style, don’t pass GO. Close this page now. If it’s not your style however, every word you write (other than dialogue) must come from the main character’s thoughts. This means that your main character can’t think something just because you need to explain it to the reader. I will give you an example of this because it’s the mistake I see more than anything (and the one that makes me want to throw bananas at the wall).

The door opened and I saw Sarah Jones, my brother’s wife of ten years.

I’m going to grit my teeth now while I explain why this is SO DAMN WRONG. Say, for example, that you are the main character and you just opened the door to find your sister-in-law standing there. Would you think, “Hey. There is FULL NAME OF YOUR SISTER-IN-LAW, the woman who married my brother ten years ago?” NO! You would think, “Hey, there’s Sarah. Doesn’t her hair look nice?” or something like that. And for the love of twelve kinds of cheese you would not think, “Doesn’t her brown hair look nice?” When is that last time you thought about the hair or eye colour of someone you have known for more than 5 minutes? Let me guess…never! Finally, please remember that this rule applies to all descriptions of all people the main character knows. So his mother is “Mom” not “my mother” (unless he is speaking to a non-family member) and his best friend is “Jake” or whatever he calls him and not “my best friend Jake” or “my friend of twelve years, Jacob Jones.”

Okay, I’m done now. And I need some cheese.

This may come as a shock to you but I’m a planner. I plan things. A lot. And I like planning things. I like doing plotcards. I like sketching out new ideas from start to finish. I like outlining every single chapter that’s going to appear in a book.

But here’s the problem with being a planner. If you’re like me, you also like shiny things. While this is great when you’re looking for a new idea to plan, it’s not so great when this happens:

Do-dodo… carefully following outline… do-dodo… staying true to meticulously planned arc… do-dodo… making sure to OH LOOK A SQUIRREL! KA-POW!!! Entire outline blows up.

Is it necessarily a bad thing when a squirrel enters your tight plot? Maybe, maybe not. You can go back and write the squirrel in from the beginning. You can find a way to make the squirrel an integral part of the main character’s transformation. But ask yourself this first: do I need the squirrel or am I just adding him because I’m bored and he’s shiny? If it’s the latter, maybe it’s time to walk away from the book. Read something else. Start something else. Then, after a while, come back and ask yourself if you need the squirrel again. If it really works, leave it. If not, prepare yourself for feedback that sounds something like this:

I really liked the scene where the nuns are studying in the Vatican library but I felt like the flying squirrel came out of nowhere.

There are two ways to describe detail in a setting:

1) Forest to trees: With this method, you start with the big and work down to the little. For example, your character sees a house. Notices it’s red brick. Has a white porch out front. Sitting on the porch is a flower pot filled with orange flowers. A hummingbird hovers over these.

2) Trees to forest: This method is exactly the opposite. The character sees the hummingbird first. Then the flowers, the pot, the porch, the house.

What you don’t want to do is jump from one method to the other. You don’t want to see the hummingbird, then the entire house, then the tiny flowers, then the porch. Why? Because your reader is trying to focus as you describe a scene. It’s like a movie camera panning in and out. The camera is supposed to start far away and pan in or start close and pan out. If the camera went IN OUT IN OUT really fast, the audience would be left dizzy and confused.

The next question to ask yourself is which method to use when. I find it generally depends on how the character is seeing the setting. If they’re slowly approaching from afar, they would definitely use forest to trees as that is how our eyes work. But if they’ve just woken up and are surveying the scene immediately in front of their eyes, they’re more likely to do trees to forest.

The last thing you need to ask yourself is about speed. Much like the panning camera, the speed at which you give detail dictates the speed at which the character is observing. So if your character is out for a leisurely stroll, they would probably spend a few minutes looking at the detail on someone’s porch, which means you probably want at least one sentence per thing they’re observing. On the other hand, if they’re flying by in a Z4, they’re likely to only see a quick blur which probably means only one sentence or a series of really short sentences.

TIP: If you’re not sure how much time to spend on detail, try reading your description while acting out the motion. If you can’t read it in the time it takes your character to perform the action, it’s too long. And if you’re done reading and they’re supposed to be standing there staring for another five minutes, it’s either too short or you need to transition to another scene.