Words Come Alive

Conflict's Pacing

Your character enters the dark room, hearing the ticking of the bomb, ready to explode. But as we place our characters into the major conflict of the story, how do we blend the mini-conflicts? Who set the bomb could be one question. What prompted the character to a life of danger, or are more than two factions fighting, could be other questions.
 
These questions go beyond the writer who craves to build a story. These methods of analysis help anyone who views the news, faces daily stress or tries to solve problems.
 
Pacing the conflicts allows you to blend the mini-conflicts with the major obstacle so you can round out your story.

Three steps can help —
Link the mini-conflicts by thinking about the social, political, ideological, cultural, and economic forces in the major conflict.

Find a way to segment the time when the conflicts strike.

Find a way to segment the way the power is used in the story.

Let’s explore this with a hypothetical example. While the following comes from the world of fantasy, the concepts apply to any conflict — lover’s quarrel, court room drama, or health crisis. In this case, let’s have a protagonist who must prevent the Dark Lord from using some magic within a stone that enslaves people.
 
Link Major Conflict With Minor Ones Using SPICE.
Notice how SPICE can stand for Social, Political, Ideological, Cultural, and Economic forces. Those are forces that surround the character.
 
 
You could design a mini-conflict around the magical stones being held only by nobles or a member of a high caste elite, hence a social issue. However, the leaders of the society are the Quarry Masters who rule over the location of the stones. This could be the political issue. In the mix, you might have a requirement that only Shamans can give blessings for the use of the stones, which produces an ideological and cultural dimension. Then add to the blend the idea that the magic can only be found in rare stones, which supplies an economic factor.
 
 
¶ Segmentation Divides the Time.
 
You can add to the suspense of the conflict by setting a time frame on the protagonist. Break up the activity of the protagonist into solving mini problems on the path to the overall goal. 
 
Maybe the protagonist needs to prevent the enemy from seizing a key quarry and that means taking the character one week to accomplish. Within that week, other problems confront the protagonist. To start the process, the protagonist could be assisted by a Shaman where the priest’s blessings are necessary. That could take one day. On the way, the character needs to find noble support. That might demand him to side track his goals for two days. But the protagonist needs to warn some key quarry leaders and that obstacle could lead the person on a three day trip. All of this happens within that week where the character has to seize that one vital stone quarry.  
 
¶ Segmentation of Power in Magic
 
Divide the power in the magic so several factions have some control.
 
By segmenting the power, you can design twists in the overall conflict. Think about the possibility that the stones only work when held by nobles. But even those nobles need the Shaman’s blessing to work the magic. Maybe the stones fail when the necklace is chipped. Chip fixers become important even though they are low on the social hierarchy. Stone power could change to the opposite energy when the bearer is ill from herbs. Herb masters could be used by nobles to protect the power. Then necklace makers might harness a separate power that controls part of the magic.
 
In the combination of these steps, think about how the blending helps you create twists and suspense. One description or way is to think about a disaster-hope connection. Solve each mini obstacle by giving the character some answer to the overall goal. You can then take that answer and use it to create larger obstacles or new conflicts in upcoming scenes.

Words Come Alive

Novels Require Translators

Readers might be swept away following the exploits of a former slave who started a Gandhi-like resistance in the 1850s. They might be amazed at how the former slave threatened the plantation owners’ militia. But the readers would become glassy-eyed if they had to follow the organizational chart of three economic groups that vied for power. Those readers could feel lost with the political infighting among Southern and Northern senators. So we dare to ask how the author becomes a translator to more effectively bring the reader into a complex story. Readers become engaged with people. In many ways the writer translates the forces in his story into gripping concerns that affect individual characters.

Translation means more than explaining words from one language to another. The term could mean explaining how specific people are affected by concepts.

Writing stories cries out for a blending of the characters with the concepts. But the focus has to lie with the characters.

Writers need outlines to prep for a novel, and those outlines are guided in part by the concepts in play, whether the story is an SF, historical romance, comedy or mystery. Themes such as the misuse of power, trusting the masses, the fear of technology or the loss of ethics, allow writers to develop variables around which characters can move.

But when the scene development arises, the writer has to translate the material into a personal zone. The outline frames the basics of the movement in the scene. For example, the writer might have listed that the protagonist needs to find an ally in the midst of a peace conference. The outline further could list that the conflict arises when the protagonist faces the disruption of the conference.

The author has to delve into the personalities of the characters to translate the material. That means explaining the connection between the protagonist and the drive for the peace conference. Why was he caught up in the peace effort? If the conference is disrupted, then who is the agent and what connection does the agent have with the protagonist?

Another level of translation has to occur. Once the writer has answers to those questions, he has to explain those answers in a certain way. He could simply tell the reader in some prose. Yet that usually comes across as slow and too distant from the action. The author could show the reader by having his characters act out or verbalize the answers to those needed questions.

Imagine the scene taking place in the following manner. The protagonist enters a conference room of the UN to find his contact on the floor, dying. The man whispers as he dies that he failed the protagonist’s goal. Medical supplies will not be brought to a key village, and a lasting peace will not be found. He regrets failing, and knows his death will stop the conference. As the protagonist rises, he discovers his lover, standing in the corner with a gun. She stopped his plans to help the village because she needed the supplies to be developed so they could have a larger quantity. She offers him the chance to use his skills at distributing medicine to a greater degree because the peace conference would have held up development of the medications.

When writing a novel, the author might have wanted to show how ethics and peace could be entwined, but the application of the theme has to be translated into personal terms. Take the concept in the outline. Find the key force that moves the central idea of the concept. Then find a way to show the protagonist dealing with those forces and ideas based on his personality traits. Dare we think like the translator who explains the words from another language? We aim to show the full picture, but we need to bring the concept into the story by showing how a character deals with those concepts.

- Tom Pope

Image courtesy of clipartof.com

Words Come Alive

When Should We Shift the POV?

Your character’s falling into a trap because he didn’t know his wife was waiting for him. You did — you were in her head in the previous chapter. That’s an example of when we should change the point of view (POV). If most editors advise shifts in POV only rarely in a novel, why do you often see shifts within the same chapter? Dare you ask when you should shift?

Much is written about POV because the device aids writers in character development and conflict setups. Yet, the many faces of how to use the device require examination. Many experts prefer one POV throughout although they will also see advantages in a shift, so what’s the guideline? Newcomers are advised to avoid the technique because the misuse comes across as confusing. Some editors advise to keep within one POV for a length of time, usually for the span of a chapter. Others allow a shift after a scene. So the answer must be related to time — right?

Not quite. The answer is more appropriately linked to the timing of when you want information shown about the conflict or characters. In a scene where information shows the protagonist hesitating to call the police because he fears their action from a previous encounter, that info has to come from his POV. That scene has to show him hesitating. You have to exist inside his head to understand his past thoughts.

Yet the interaction from that scene could spur the need to shift in the following scene. The protagonist’s friend doesn’t know about the reasons for the hesitation. You probably showed the friend in a confused state earlier. If you develop a new obstacle for the protagonist by having the friend confused about the hesitation, then the following scene could show the friend’s confusion. Now you’re inside the head of the friend because you want to show how he feels about that hesitation. You can’t be certain about the ideas of the protagonist because you’re not in his head. This could lead to a new direction for the friend.

Develop the POV to get inside the friend’s head from the timing of the information you develop about the conflict. Part of this setup reveals another aspect about the timing of the shift. You don’t want to shift POV unless you have a decent amount of space devoted to the character. You don’t want to get inside the character’s head just to answer a question from someone. You want to get inside that person because you have material only that person knows. Despite the confusion about the shifting, think about your timing of information. The timing of when to shift can depend on the information held by each character. Let that be the guide. Let the tool happen because you have the vital details needed to shift that POV.

Words Come Alive

Show and Tell or Both?

We want readers to enter the mind of our characters, so we don’t TELL readers she’s anxious, we SHOW them how Jane wrings her hands, drops a pen, or covers her mouth with her hand. That’s the essence of SHOW versus TELL, and we’re always instructed to use that device. But dare we ask when we should tell instead?

Actually a few major reasons help us decide when to use either show or tell. Think in one case whether we are trying to move the plot between scenes or write about the action between characters. In one case, we’re filling in background or describing images. That’s different from where we want to enter the character’s head. Another reason in making the decision comes when we want to prompt a general image in the mind of the reader, which may call for telling instead of showing. Especially with dialogue when body language informs the reader about the mind of the characters.

Are we moving the plot, or standing inside the scene? If we’re trying to get Carlos to the meeting with Jorge, we may want to tell about where Jorge’s house lies, or the difficulty in driving past traffic. We may want to remind the reader about the ties Jorge has with certain other people. That’s the realm of telling. But if we want to bring in why Carlos was frustrated with Jorge, we might have him sweating with clammy hands on the steering wheel. We might want to be inside his head as thoughts go back to the last meeting. Carlos felt belittled and shrank from Jorge. Then we would want to show how Carlos looked, or acted.

How do we decide between show and tell when we’re in the middle of a scene? Actually a balance of the two might be important. Show means describing the action or body language of a character. Tell means using a word that informs us of the character. We could say Jorge was confused because we want to tell the reader in a short amount of time so we can focus on a more crucial item. But we could avoid that by showing his movement as he walks to one desk, picks up a paper, then without looking at it, places it down, only to walk to another desk and shake his head. The focus dictates whether we use show or tell — what’s more important in the development of the scene?

Dialogue can include the best example of a balance of show and tell. Lead off the dialogue with telling, and then show at the same time through body language and the dialogue. Carlos had a shocked look on his face. He dropped the stack of papers. “How could she leave him that way?”
Notice the way the blending of the two devices works together. We don’t know how the reader will actually understand the dropping of the papers. We reinforce that by indicating the word shocked. But we use the showing description of the papers to add to his comment about the situation.

When we dare to ask when to use the devices, we should think about how much we’re in the head of the character, whether the necessity calls for giving information quickly, or how we can blend the two in describing the action. We should ask ourselves what is the crucial activity in the scene. That will help us decide on the device.