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| Cheryl St.John |
A lot of
writers have had trouble reading Dwight Swain’s book. I did for a while, too.
It kept putting me to sleep. But as a new writer, I was hungry for the
principles it held, hungry for the education, and so I persevered. Finally,
after many tries, a light bulb went off over my head and I understood what his
teaching was telling me. I got it! I saw the techniques in every book I had
ever loved. And my writing changed forever.
Everything
that happens in your story, every piece of information learned, every obstacle
faced, every conversation, should propel the story toward the conclusion—something
I learned and took to heart from Techniques
of the Selling Writer. Keep your character's goal in mind. Everything should
impact the main character and his goal. Make things worse for him. Make sure
that all the changes that happen complicate things. Box him in. Impede his
goal. Each obstacle should change things for the character
> Change
forces your character to adjust. Change won’t let him stand still. Your character
must react to what is happening. Your character needs a reason why he can’t
simply quit. At each disaster ask, "Why doesn't the character quit?"
and you should have a powerful reason why. The reader will lose interest in a
character that is fighting without good cause. Your hero is only as strong as
the villain or the force opposing his goals.
> Make the
stakes high enough to fight for. Each person in the story should have something
at stake that makes him willing to fight. Increase intensity. Drag your
character further and further from his goal.
> Make sure
the conflicts are important—life threatening or life changing to your character. Remember anything can be
important. We’ve all seen entire movies based on saving a single tree or a
coffee shop or an animal. Your job is to use the focal character to show the
reader why he should care and make him believe. If it’s important to your story
person and the reader cares about
that person, then the outcome is important to the reader. Show the reader why he should care. Never forget for a
minute that your story is about feelings.
> Box in
your character. Keep whittling away until you take away his choices. Take away
the heroine's options, run down the clock, increase the degree of the threat,
make each action result in a dead end. This forces your story person to make a
choice between two specific courses of action. Keep the reader guessing. Turn
an assumption on its head. Slam the hero with a disastrous surprise. Kill off
someone. Crush a dream. Do anything to keep the reader turning pages and
wondering what will happen next.
> Balance
peaks of action with valleys of introspection or humor. Hook the reader with
action, but allow him to catch his breath before you drag him back into the
dilemma. You want a peak and valley pace that will keep the tension from
exhausting your reader. At the same time, never end a scene or a chapter
without a hook or a dilemma so that your header is forced to keep going.
> In action
scenes use short sentences and vivid words. Use longer sentences and a gentler
story rhythm to slow the pace. Choose your words carefully, and contrast them
with the tension of the peak that happened just before. Give the character
something to ponder. After the action of the previous scene, make the character
figure out what to do next. This is a good time to show who your story person
really is because of his thinking process and his courageous or wise or
heart-felt decisions. Change of viewpoint dissolves tension, so explore another
person’s reactions.
> Don't use
trivial scenes or conversations just to impart information. Too often I see new
writers having their character tell another character something that they both
already know, just to get the info into the story. Fill your scenes with true
conflict and action, and end them with a disaster or dilemma.
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> Don’t
rehash. And I know we hear repetition in classes and we often repeat things in
real conversation, but don’t repeat yourself. Remember
readers aren’t dummies. They got it the first time. You’ll insult your reader,
or at the very least, irritate him with repetition. If there’s a television
show you’re invested in, take note of how quickly events happen and how you can
miss something important if you miss an episode or a scene. Yes, some things
are repeated for effect, but that is mostly for the sake of characterization.
For example, I think Meredith Gray and Christina Yang, started the whole
“Seriously? Seriously,” thing when the show premiered ten seasons ago. And
several times Meredith herself says she’s all “dark and twisty.” But for the
most part, don’t have your character thinking the same thing in chapter six
that she thought in chapter three. If it’s something important that
characterizes and makes a point, show
the dilemma or personality trait in a different way to emphasize.
Seriously,
if you don’t have a copy of Techniques of
the Selling Writer, do yourself a favor and order one now. It’s a training
manual for writers.
And
guess who is speaking at the Writers Digest Conference in NYC this August? I am
still incredulous over the invitation and will appreciate your prayers for the
trip. Sherri Shackelford is joining me, and I am so thankful and excited.
Neither of us have been to NYC, so we’re going to enjoy every minute. Thank you,
friends, for helping to make Writing With
Emotion Tension & Conflict a popular book among writers! So many of you
have recommended it. It has an average 5 star rating on amazon. I am completely
humbled and grateful.
Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a Kindle copy of any book of your choice of Cheryl's.
xoxo
