What Are Your Characters Afraid Of?

with guest Janice Hardy.

Fear is part of every story (and not just on the writer's side!). It motivates our characters, helps our readers understand what's at stake, and gives us emotional layers to plot with. It's a natural aspect of being human, even for characters who aren't swimming in the same gene pool as the rest of us.

Often, when we're creating a character and choosing their strengths and weaknesses, we look only at the big fears. These are the fears that are likely driving the plot or character arc and are central to the story. For example:

General fiction fears: Losing your job, your home, your children.

Romance fiction fears: Being alone, a cheating lover, meeting new people.

Fantasy fiction fears: Death of you or a loved one, a returning evil, the fate of the world. 

The type of story typically determines the type of fear at the core of that story, but all of these central fears could apply to any story regardless of genre. They're all something readers can relate to no matter where the story is set.

But that's not the only fear we'll toss into the mix. Our characters will have both rational and irrational fears, personal quirks and phobias, past traumas or experiences that left a mark, and so on. Odds are, whoever the character is, there's a deliciously deep well of fear to drink from. 

For example, being alone applies to everyone, as does losing things you care about, or having your "world" change in disastrous ways. A "returning evil" could be a dark lord from the Land of Guwen, or an old nemesis from high school who tormented you for four years. Losing a job, home, or child applies to the contemporary heroine as much as the fantasy hero or the romance couple. 

Which is a ton of fun to write, and why fears are vital to great storytelling. Everyone has them, and they affect everyone differently.

Let's explore how we can use our characters' fears to write compelling fiction.

Fear Is a Fantastic Character Motivator

Basically, people act to get something they want or to avoid something they don't want. Fear and desire are at the center of everything we do. 

Every story will have a goal and the protagonist will spend the story trying to achieve that goal. But it's also common in an early draft for the writer to not yet know why their protagonist is risking heart and soul to achieve that goal, and the story flounders.  

Look at the protagonist (and/or the other characters) and ask:

What are they afraid of in this story? In this scene? Fears affect the story in many ways, so you'll have big, plot-driving fears and small scene-advancing ones. You'll also have fears that affect the character arc or internal conflict. In pivotal scenes, you'll probably have multiple fears working against one another to create the most conflict.  

Why don't they want this to happen? If the goal is to avoid something, there's a reason, and it should be more than, "because the plot says so" in some way. Failure matters. 

Or...Why do they want it to happen? If the goal is to achieve or cause something, how will this benefit the protagonist? How will this avoid or alleviate a fear? 

How does the motivate them to behave? The fear in the scene will cause the protagonist to behave in a way that affects the plot, story, and/or character arc. Even if that fear causes them not to act, such as a scared romance protagonist being too afraid to talk to the love interest and missing a chance at love.

If the protagonist isn't afraid of something in every scene, that's a red flag there's nothing at stake. Low to missing stakes usually leads to a meh story that might be well written, but readers find themselves not caring about the characters or the outcome of the plot.

Fear Helps Our Readers Understand What's at Stake

One of the toughest questions a writer can get is from readers asking, "Why should I care about your characters and your story?" Stakes are a big reason why. This is why we see a ton of underdog stories about the little guy succeeding over the big guy, but very few about the successful folks winning yet again.

No one cares about winners who always win. We want to see the struggle not to lose.
What does your protagonist have to lose? They should risk something by getting involved or acting in whatever way the story needs them to, even if it's small. It could be something physical, such as a risk of injury, or emotional, such as a hit to their confidence, or major, such as their life or happiness. If there's no consequence for failing, there are no stakes. 
   
What will this cost them? If they fail in a scene, what happens? If they fail in the story, what happens? On the flip side, how does success in the scene affect them? Winning could demand a price just as easily as losing if the victory comes at the expense of a best friend or moral principle. 

If there's nothing at stake, that could be a red flag there's not enough conflict in the story, or the goal isn't personal enough for the protagonist. Remember--without conflict, there is no story.

Fear Gives Us Emotional Layers to Plot with
Since fears can be both rational and irrational, they're great tools to plot with. The desire for a goal drives the plot forward, while fear creates conflicts internally as well as externally to make achieving that goal a challenge. Phobias and past experiences might cause a character to behave irrationally in a critical situation and send the story in an unexpected direction. 

Where can you force your protagonist to face their fears? A great way to add conflict to a scene is to put the protagonist up against something they're afraid of. Not only do they have the external problem to deal with, it's compounded by the fear factor. It also offers potential scene settings that could play off those fears, such as a fear of heights, the dark, or social situations. Making the protagonist uncomfortable adds tension and keeps things unpredictable for readers. 

Where can the protagonist's fears make them fail? Sometimes you need the protagonist to fail without them looking like an idiot. Fear can give the protagonist a plausible reason to mess up without looking incompetent. This is also a great tool to cause a failure where readers least expect it.

How might the protagonist's fear cause them to struggle? For stories with strong character arcs, fear is vital, because it creates that necessary struggle to overcome a problem. Struggling is good, as it makes readers care more about the characters they like and causes them to root for them. A lack of struggling suggests a lack of conflict, which could mean the characters are just acting out the plot and not truly driving the story.

If there are no emotional layers or struggles to be found, that could be a red flag for unengaged characters that are just doing what the plot tells them to do. For highly plot-driven stories, such as thrillers or procedurals, this might not be an issue, but for more emotional stories, such as romances or contemporary fiction, it hints at a serious problem. 
Fear might not be fun in real life, but it's a wonderful tool to use in a story. It rounds out a character, causes them to act, and shows why acting is important to the overall tale. It binds a story together and weaves through the plot, subplots, character arcs, and even theme to tell a tale readers will lose themselves in. 

What are your characters afraid of?

 How does that fear influence the story?

Check out my newest book, Understanding Conflict (And What It Really Means), an in-depth guide to how to use conflict in your fiction.

Today Seekerville is giving away an ecopy of Understanding Conflict (And What It Really Means) to one writer. And if you are a reader joining us today, we have a $10.00 Amazon gift card. Winner announced in the Weekend Edition.

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the fantasy trilogy,  The Healing Wars, and multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure and Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft. She's also the founder of the writing site, Fiction University, and a frequent speaker at writing conferences across the country. For more advice and helpful writing tips, visit her at www.fiction-university.com or @Janice_Hardy.

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Guest Blogger Patty Smith Hall: EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK: Building Conflict in Our Stories (and giveaway!!)

When Julie asked me about writing a blog today, I was knee-high in entries from the ACFW Genesis contest. I’ve got to say that the manuscripts I had the pleasure of reading were impressive! The thought-provoking ideas, the new voices, an exciting twist on an old theme—all of these excited me about the direction Christian Fiction is heading while reminding me how far we’ve come since the days of Catherine Marshall’s Christy or Janette Oake’s Love Comes Softly. But even in my excitement, I noticed a problem that ran through most of the manuscripts I read.

Little to no internal conflict.

I can only speak for myself but personally, I don’t like conflict in my daily life. The thought of working through a problem, agonizing over making the right choices, sometimes patterns that you’ve been living for a lifetime are, at least to me, EXHAUSTING. But in writing fiction, internal conflict is a necessary evil.

Why do we need internal conflict in our stories?

My husband claims that he fell in love with me one Sunday evening. I was asked to come forward and sing a request during evening service and as I made my way up the aisle closest to the wall, my stiletto got caught in the heating duct. With everyone in church watching, I pulled the duct out of the floor and placed it in a pew along with my other shoe then proceeded to the front of the church, laughing at myself. Dan said that in that moment, he knew that he wanted to spend his life with someone who could so easily laugh at herself.

It’s a cute story but in reading it, it’s just that—cute. But what if you knew the struggle going on inside me at this time? What if I had been trying to prove to this strapping young man that I was an elegant woman; that just speaking to him made me tongue-tied, that I had already lost one boyfriend who thought I was too goofy and clumsy? Then it makes the whole episode seem like a horrible experience, something that would send me running from the sanctuary in embarrassment, thinking my klutziness had once again lost the man I loved.

Now it’s a story loaded with internal conflict!

Internal conflict usually comes from our hero/heroine’s deep desire for that elusive something they think they NEED in order to be happy. So how do you do that? How do you get your characters to spit out what their deep, dark needs are?

Get in Touch with Your Inner Two-Year-Old!

The other night, Dan and I were sitting in a pizza parlor when this man comes in with this adorable little girl. Sunshiny blonde hair with the perfect button of a nose, she spent the next fifteen minutes, pointing her pink-tipped finger here and there, and asking the age-old questions of every two year old on the planet.

Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

When developing our characters, we need to ask the tough questions. While finding out what your character looks like or how they came to be in this place in their lives, the questions most readers are interested in having answered are the motivations behind the hero/heroine’s actions. As writers, we seem to run away from digging into these motivations and shying away from conflict. Is it because deep down, we hate the idea of conflict in our own lives so much, we can’t stand the thought of finding out the problems of our fictional characters, fearful they might mirror our own?

In my book, Hearts in Flight, Maggie Daniels is determined to do her patriotic duty and fly B-29s as part of the Women’s Army Service Pilots. Sounds like a great thing for her to do, doesn’t it? But when I dug deeper, I discovered her reasons were very personal and not nearly as noble as I had thought—that she was intent on proving herself to a family who never really believed in her. She was dealing with a respect problem and to a lesser degree, a pride problem that was keeping her from what could truly make her happy.

If you’re looking for more direction in this department, I recommend Laurie Schnebly’s Plot Via Motivation class Plot Via Motivation that’s she’s teaching the month of June. It is a phenomenal class, and one that changed my whole way of plotting conflict and helped me get sold.

Don’t’ be afraid of throwing the kitchen sink at your characters.

The fun begins once you know what your character’s deep dark desire is. I call it the kitchen-sink phase because this is where I look at my historical data I’m using as a setting and figure out what will cause my characters the most problems. This use of external conflict can rev up the internal conflict to the next level..

For example, the heroine/hero from my second World War II novel have two very different desires. My heroine, a 3^rd generation American, is running away from a shameful secret—her brother enlisted in the German army. Now after I ask her why she ran and got down to the bare bones of her deepest desire, I discovered she seeks self-preservation, just to get through the war unnoticed, almost invisible. My hero (who is probably my favorite character of all times!) was a bad boy who found God in a POW camp and has returned home to prove to everyone that he’s not the man he use to be. By now, you’ve probably guessed that his deepest desire is to find acceptance from the family and friends he left behind.

So what kind of real life history would pump up the internal conflict in my fictional characters? When I started planning out this book, I found so much local history (a natural suspicion of outsiders and the fear of German spying, a hospital that only had four beds for black patients, a polio outbreak that shut down schools) that would challenge my hero/heroine’s long- term desires, throwing the kitchen sink at them came easily. Use external problem to heighten your characters’ discomfort over their internal conflict/deepest desire.

Conflict (in a story) is your friend.

In closing, don’t run from injecting conflict in your stories. That’s what makes a reader pick a book and read it—to see how a character works through a problem they themselves might be going through. Conflict makes your characters believable and compelling while giving hope to those of us who love to read Christian fiction.

How do you build conflict in your stories? Leave a comment to enter a drawing for a copy of Patty’s debut novel, Hearts in Flight.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The only girl in a family of military men, Maggie Daniels knows what it's like to deal with a brood of overprotective males. But with all her cousins on the front, she's finally free to go after her dream--ferrying bombers for the newly formed Women's Army, Service Pilots. And no one, not even Captain Wesley Hicks can keep her out of the cockpit.

After the loss of his sister over the skies of London, Wesley has one battle plan--to captain the Flying Fortress into the Pacific Theatre. Training WASP Maggie Daniels wasn‘t in his sights. But when hostilities are fired at the spirited yet tender-hearted woman, he finds himself focused on a new objective--winning Maggie's love.

ABOUT PATTY:

A romantic at heart, Patty Smith Hall is an award winning, multi-published author. Her stories of encouragement and hope can be found in Guideposts, Journey and Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul. Her Genesis award winning manuscript, Hearts in Flight, will be released by Love Inspired Historical in July, 2011. Patty resides in her home state of Georgia along with Dan, her husband of 28 years. You can visit Patty’s blog at: Patty Smith Hall.

Internal Conflict

I love to read books on the craft of writing. My book shelves overflow with texts on characters, plotting, how to write romances, how to write Christian romances, mysteries, suspense, grammar (not my favorite) etc. You name it, I’ve got it.

So when I found a book about writing Christian romance from the perspective of the reader instead of the writer, I immediately bought it. It’s a non-fiction book called Romancing God, Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction by Lynn S. Neal. As a writer, I couldn’t resist learning what a researcher and non-evangelical had to say about Christian romance, its authors and its readers. I discovered most of the information is common knowledge to inspirational writers since obviously most, if not all (I’d say all),are believers who write from a Christian perspective.

Ms. Neal says the fundamentals of Christian faith overlay the basic structure of the romance plot. That’s not earth-shattering news although most authors strive to integrate their spiritual message into the fabric of the plot not just gild it with faith. But maybe that’s what she meant.

In these stories, the obstacles that keep the hero and heroine apart come from their faith or lack of faith. That caught my eye and raised several questions.

Do the internal conflicts of the hero and heroine always emerge from a spiritual problem? If so, must it always involve faith? What about other spiritual problems like lying, cheating, stealing? These are behavioral sins, not difficulties with belief and unbelief.

Or can the internal conflicts come from something else such as a difference in personality, temperament etc. which have nothing to do with faith? Is the spiritual conflict a separate thread to weave in and does it always concern faith?

I wonder what you think—or know.

Also, does the spiritual problem become the theme? In many of the inspirational romances I’ve read lately, the themes involve God’s love for us, his faithfulness, trust or forgiveness. I’m afraid I’m probably forgetting some important ones. Can anyone add to the list?

Do inspirational romances ever have non-spiritual themes?

According to Ms. Neal, evangelicalism has three major beliefs: the authority of the Bible, a personal conversion experience and witnessing to one’s faith. She says George Marsden adds two more: salvation through Christ and a spiritually transformed life.

One or more of these tenets are woven into most Christian novels to one degree or another. Readers like this. I think it’s the Christian values that separate inspirational romances from secular even more than the behavior of the characters. But this also tends to make Christian books a bit predictable and similar to each other.

So how do we make our novels unique and not a sermon dressed up as a story? Any ideas??? I think it’s a challenge we all encounter.