Flying at Night: The Search for Your Story's Core

There you are, flying at thirty-five-thousand feet above the earth on a cloudless, moonless night, and even with interior lights dimmed you can’t see much more out your window than the blinking of a wing light or a single far off pinpoint glimmer below. Your own faint reflection obliterates the stars.

It’s a perfect time to think about your latest story idea--which for some reason just isn’t coming together.

Ideas are wonderful. Those as yet indefinite, unformed conceptions can be found everywhere around us and are limited only by our imagination. So many choices. So much potential to be tapped into! But sometimes, even after you begin to develop those brilliant ideas into plot points, to dream up scenes and wedge them into a logical order, to give the hero lovable quirks and a decent external goal to strive for, deep down you may sense something isn’t quite right.

Despite the twists and turns and quirky characters you’ve incorporated into what you’re thinking might even be a “high concept” idea, the story may feel wooden, flat, and ho-hum. It’s as if something vital is missing. Maybe the pieces are coming together on the plot, you’re applying the recommended craft “rules”--but where’s that spark that brings it to life? The ember that ignites your enthusiasm and generates the energy required to write all the way to The End?

Maybe you’re even beginning to fear that this uncertainty, this feeling that you’re flying in the dark will be picked up on by readers--readers who will lose interest halfway through the journey you’ve placed before them and reach for the remote.

There could be lots of reasons for this nagging impression. Maybe it’s an undercurrent of concern that the scope of the story is beyond your ability or experience to tell it. Perhaps it requires more research than you have the time or inclination to tackle. You’ve bit off more than you can chew.

OR MAYBE it’s just that you simply need to re-examine the CORE of your story. Perhaps you need to not only think about “all this stuff happens to them when Dick and Jane search for the treasure,” but what do Dick and Jane learn about themselves as they search for the treasure? How does this search change them, grow them? What can they do or be at the end of the story that they couldn’t possibly have done or been at the beginning? Maybe you need to spend time going deeper and thinking about what the story is REALLY about--what the “takeaway” is that will linger in a reader’s mind long after the last page is reached.

To do that, let’s fly a bit closer to earth. Get back down to a level where you were just beginning to gain altitude for a long writing flight where ideas--like lights sparkling below—appeared as endless handfuls of glowing diamonds scattered across a field of black velvet. As with basic story ideas, character growth ideas are endless. Again, so many to choose from, but choose you must to pin down the heart and sustaining substance of your story.

So where do you begin? I always ask myself questions.

- Who is it you most admire and why do they inspire you? Have they always been that way? If not, how did they get to where they are now? Share those insights with your hero.

- What specific issues and character flaws do you see the world around you struggling with? What would need to happen deep inside to bring about positive change? Are these things your hero could also struggle with, an area of needed change?

- What personal character challenges do you wrestle with? How would you like to change? What steps can you take—or what circumstances might lead you—to grow? What lessons has life taught you or is currently teaching you? Give those same challenges and life lessons to your hero.

- What truth is your hero blind and deaf to--something he’s rejected either consciously or unconsciously?  Are others aware of it?

- What lie / misbelief does your hero hold about himself? About others?

- What will happen to your hero, to others, and to the story itself if he doesn’t change? What will happen if he does?

In answering some of these “core” questions as they relate to your own story, do you feel a little less as if you’re flying in the dark of night? Do you feel some substance to your story beginning to surface? A glimmer of light?

 

Of course on that final page of your manuscript you can’t simply wave a wand over your hero to make his inner transformation magically happen. You need to incorporate character growth into your entire story. What needs to happen to bring it about? Weave that in around the plot points you’ve given so much thought to. Readers want to experience the inner struggle as much as the outer one, to be a part of the change as it comes about. To see it illustrated at the end.

- At what point does the hero recognize his shortcomings, misbeliefs, the need to change?

- What events can you build into the story to bring about the hero’s needed change in behavior, attitude or beliefs?

- How can you illustrate this change as the story progresses and how will it make a difference in how the story ends?

Today please share in the comments section what, as a reader, your thoughts are on are on the importance or unimportance of character growth in the books you most enjoy. As a writer, do you consciously incorporate character growth into your story? Is it a forethought or an afterthought? What tips and tricks can you share with us regarding how you satisfactorily illustrate a character’s growth?

If you’d like to be entered in a drawing for a copy of my May Love Inspired release, “The Nanny Bargain,” mention it in the comments section, then check the Weekend Edition to see if you’re a winner!

Glynna

 

GLYNNA KAYE treasures memories of growing up in small Midwestern towns--and vacations spent with the Texan side of the family. She traces her love of storytelling to the times a houseful of great-aunts and great-uncles gathered with her grandma to share candid, heartwarming, poignant and often humorous tales of their youth and young adulthood. Her Love Inspired books--Pine Country Cowboy and High Country Holiday--won first and second place, respectively, in the 2015 RWA Faith, Hope & Love Inspirational Reader’s Choice Awards. “The Nanny Bargain” is on the shelves now, and coming in October is “Mountain Country Cowboy.”

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