The Protagonist Story Arc

August 1, 2014

I’ve just spent a week fighting with Dramatica, and it has helped. My issue with Dramatica is it drives the author into so much detail it is impossible to keep it all straight in your mind. Dramatica may be right, and may be good with authors who enjoy obsessing over detail, but I’m looking for conceptual frameworks not detail.

Dramatica has its good points. For example, it defines eight character arch-types. For example, in Star Wars the eight character arch-types are:

Arch-Type Character

Protagonist Luke

Antagonist The Empire

Cotagonist Darth Vader

Guardian Obi Wan

Skeptic Han Solo

Sidekick R2D2/C3PO

Logic Leia

Emotion Chewbacca

For me, this structure is helpful, because each of the arch-type characters interacts with the protagonist from their viewpoint. This helps set-up and define the protagonist’s conflicts to achieve the depth and diversity I spoke about in my previous post. This is exactly what I needed to straighten out my protagonist’s story arc.

My next step is to edit my manuscript with this in mind. The current plan is to take several passes at the manuscript, and focus on only one aspect of revision at a time. The order of revision is:

Story arc and characterization

Balance narrative and dialog

Add descriptions to bring in the six senses

Paragraph and sentence structure

Grammar and punctuation

Character Development

July 25, 2014

When I look at my protagonist’s story arc, the arc had direction, but the conflicts did not support the protagonist’s growth. I had let my protagonist get involved in the wrong conflicts in the wrong sequence. The conflicts should propel the character through his story arc, and shape his transformation. To tell a complete story, the author should walk the protagonist through a series of conflicts where the opposition is logical, emotional, moral, immoral, supportive, stalwart, and skeptical. The intent is to show the main character has experienced his flaw from a wide range of perspectives. These battles provide the backdrop for the protagonist’s decisive moment. A rich and diverse array of conflicts yields a vivid moment of truth, and greater reader satisfaction.

The issue is my protagonist if fighting the right battle, but his conflicts are unfocused, and do not support his growth. There is another issue I need to resolve. The protagonist starts out too weak, and flawed to complete his transformation by the end. Both of these issues add to the confusing character story arcs.

I know how to strengthen the protagonist early in the story, but I need to sharpen the nature of his conflicts. Dramatica and its Story Mind Theory could help (See my March 2, 2014 post). I fear going back into Dramatica with its arcane language and focus on micro-detail. I’ll try it.

I Hate It!!!!!!!!!

July 7, 2014

I read my manuscript yesterday. The experience was painful. Structurally, the manuscript is a jumble of disconnected parts. Character story arcs wander, and sentence structure is an assault on the English language; I hate every word in it. My loathing is total; I even hate the spaces between the words.

This happened a few times with Marathon Watch. There is no way to describe this experience. It is part self-doubt, and part valid criticism with a healthy dose of anxiety. It is a devastating attack on the ego coupled with recognition that I can do better. 

Echoing in my mind is an article I read years ago to help authors find their “voice.” The article concluded that after an author crossed out everything they loved leaving only what they hate, what remained was their voice. Perhaps I am only reacting to my voice.

Yes, I can do better, and will start with fixing issues with the character arcs.

I’m Back.

July 7, 2014

I went missing since late May. I want to be spending my time writing, but I have consulting clients that need care and feeding. In June, clients called wanting help, and I had to put in over eight hours a day to take care of them. That has not let up until recently.

In the midst of the turmoil, a month went by where I didn’t work a minute on my current novel. This was a disaster. When I forced myself to eke out time for my writing, I discovered I had lost a feeling for my characters, and their story arcs. The lesson I learned here is once I start a project, I have to stay with it, or suffer the consequences. 

Nonetheless, I worked through this and completed my first draft. My next step is to set it aside for a week, then read through it to decide what is next.

Thank you, Carol

i just received and responded to an email from a life-long friend. She is a writer,  and someone I can really talk to.  Without her, I never would have finished my first novel, The Marathon Watch, and I acknowledged her  contribution in the front the novel.

I mention this because she asked how my new novel is coming, and her question sent me to a wonderfully quite and reflective place. I know her, and I didn't think she was asking a simple question. I had to really think about this.

To explain how i was doing on my novel, I had to really understand my writing-creating process. This has puzzled me for some time since when I wrote Marathon Watch the process was chaotic and unfocused up to a point. Once I reached a magic point of inflection, everything became clear and writing the rest of the novel became easy.  This process appears to be repeating itself with my new novel. So, I asked myself, "What's going on; what are you doing?"

I'd like to share my answers with you.

James Scott Bell divides writers into outliners, and pants-ters. Outliners do just that, they outline their story in detail, then write from the outline.  Pants-ters just sit down and write from the seat of their pants.  I think i may be a third type of writer, a miner.

When i write I am looking for some universal truth that we can take away from the story as a lesson on life.  For me finding that universal truth is hard, very hard, but once I find it, it provides the structure, focus and necessary conflict in the novel.  After that, everything else is simply craft.

So how do I write.  I can't outline no matter how hard a try, and I can't just sit down and wing it. I start with a story idea (plot) and come up with several scenes that would fit within that plot and start writing.  After some undefined amount of time, the characters and events start to take shape. I call that my mountain of junk, because it is; most of it will have to be thrown away. That's when I start digging through my mountain in search of gems of universal truth amongst the junk.

I take those gems, and work with them and create a pile of tailings.  Ultimately, from those tailings the gem I am looking for will emerge. Once I have it, I can build a novel around it.

 I think that is what I have been going through so far. There has been so much confusion, delusion and frustration up to this point. Now there is nothing but clarity and focus. I pray that I will not regress and go back to repeat the process again; I don't feel that is likely to happen.

Switching the subject, one of my obstacles has been the main character of the book. His name is O'Toole. He also played a substantial role in Marathon Watch and has been universally loved by all my reviewers. He is a wonderful character, fully formed and otherwise perfect for his literary function.  He was also my favorite character (I wonder if there is a link there) because he is a delightfully noble, crusty, dogged, and irascible old sea captain.  My new novel occurs thirty years earlier when this character was a young naive, and immature man with a list of flaws too long to recount.  By the end of the book, he will emerge as a young version of the character in Marathon Watch.  I so loved the character in Marathon Watch, I couldn't let him go, and turn him into a flawed young man. 

As I built my mountain of junk, I found ways to give him noble flaws correctable only through noble action and transformation.  That is another gem I found in my mountain, and I am now at peace with him, flaws and all.

As I have progressed, the working title for my novel has changed.  The first title was "O'Toole," which is character centric.  That got changed early on to "The Cipher," which is plot centric. My new working title is "Burden of Command," which is theme centric.  Interesting.

Seems I am starting to ramble. I apologize, and hope I did not bore you, or turn you away with my philosophical wanderings.  Thank you for joining me in my wonderfully quite and reflective place.

Thank you, Carol.

Ring the bell for James Scott Bell; he rocks.

James Scott Bell is my hero.

He has several books on writing novels, and I have digested two of them. His insights are tremendous. I was struggling with the arc of my story and had lost track of the theme and objective. I followed his advice--it was hard work--but it paid off. I am back on track and getting really excited about my next novel.

I let my wife, Marsha, read almost everything I write and she agrees with me 100% that my output since my last post has been more dramatic, focused, and a whole lot better. Coming from her (she reads five to six books a week, and is a professional nit-picker--SHE DRIVES ME NUTS!--) that is saying  something. (That was three parentheticals in a row. Sorry!)

I think sometimes we don't get as much from a book as we might because the author's brain and the reader's brain are wired differently. I think with what I have read of Bell's work, our minds work the same. Everything just clicked. 

So where am I?  I lost track but I think I have wrote or fixed about 15,000 words since my last post. Over half of that was new material, and oh yes, I had to cut some out but I don't count what goes on the cutting room floor. I always save my scraps just in case I need them later. Of course, I never have, but it makes the process less tramatic.

So what's next?  That's the bummer. Here I am on a roll, fully engrossed in my characters and story development, and I've got to put down my quill for the next month. Seems I have clients that need tending, and I am starting an intense one-month consulting engagement with one of them starting Monday. I literally want to cry. It took so much effort to get into the zone. Now I have to bail.

Life isn't fair. If you don't believe me, ask my protagonist.

See you soon.

Left turn, Ralf

Okay, things were going so good, it had to be too good to be true. But more on that later.

I owe Jeanne an ginormous thank you for recommending James Scott Bell's, book Write Your Novel from the Middle. It is a quick read and loaded with stuff to think about.  His premise is simple. In the middle of your story your hero has to come to the realization that they have choices to make, and what's at stake. He has done some remarkable research, and he found that in classic movies or novels, there is such a moment right in the middle (based on page count, or running time) give or take 10%.

He contends that if your hero doesn't understand his choices, neither will you, or the audience, or  your hero. Without it your hero's battle is fought in an arena with no boundaries and there is no context to work within to get to the moment of truth. Very interesting.

Before I start talking about my current novel, I must digress.

Every now and then, something will remind me of my navy days, and when that happens I do what any good sailor would do; come up with a related sea-story. Most of these are funny because for some reason serious sea-stories, if they exist at all, are quickly forgotten.

For example, one day we fired a missile from my ship and there was a bit of a mishap.  Part of the launcher got torn away and launched along with the missile; the missile worked just fine, but the launcher part sailed in a truly graceful arc, and hit the sea about a hundred yards ahead of the ship. There was no real harm done, and I (as well as most of the crew) thought it was hilarious. The captain thought otherwise. Since I was the officer responsible for the missiles and the launcher, the captain asked me, "What have you learned from this?" I simply replied, "Launcher parts do not fly as well as missiles." Let's just say the captain adjusted by experience index up a few notches.

Over the years, Marsha, my wife, has heard many sea stories.  Marsha is also my sounding board for ideas on my current navy novel, so lately she has been getting more than the normal dosage of sea-stories. She now wants me to put all of these stories, or at least those fit for a GP audience, into a series of essays and package them as a book.  So I am. It will be good brain candy to play with in between bouts with my current novel.

Speaking of my current novel, here is what is happening. I had written the beginning, then the end, and was working toward the middle. Along the way, I grew uncomfortable about the arc of the story. Something was wrong. I had to put my writing aside because this thing called life continued to happen, and was demanding my attention. When I came back to the novel, I reviewed what I had written - I had lost track of the hero's inner struggle, and upon reflection, I wasn't sure what it was anymore. Not a good sign.

So I tried to follow the advice of James Scott Bell. I sat down to write the middle, and it was a disaster. The transformation my hero has to go through is complex with subtle shadings and colors. Now, I have been know to overt think things, so I asked myself, "Self, are you making this too complicated? It's okay for you to know all this stuff, but what is the headline you want to deliver to the reader? This is not a psycho drama. Keep it simple, stupid."

So that is where I am now; stuck in the middle of a muddle, trying to boil down the essence of my hero's struggle in one or two sentences. It's not as easy as it may seem.

Don't worry, I will get this novel done. And it will be something I am proud of.  Stay tuned. 

On a Roll

It's curious how things happen. Since my last post, I continued working with my characters and wrote several skits for each.  Despite being pulled away by other work and family stuff, the characters began to gel in my mind.  About a week ago, I arrived at what I call my holy grail of writing. Character possession took over and the characters started writing themselves. Hello, Piper Feakes. Could you tell me why you said that? He always has a good answer.

All my characters, suffering though they were, began clamoring for my attention. In the corner, there is a heap of notes about events and interesting things for the characters to do within my novel. I wanted to get at the pile and start writing, but my protagonist was pleading for closure and I was a little vague on how he was going to get there.  I grabbed my writer's clay and threw it on my writing wheel to shape the last chapter of the book. Six thousand words in an afternoon! I had never done that before.

Both the antagonist and protagonist came alive in an epic battle of wits, internal anguish, triumph and defeat. The ending is tricky. Both the protagonist and antagonist win and lose their internal struggle, but wind up in a satisfying place. It's a little like the movie, "Enemy Mine."

As written, the ending is still not perfect, but it gave me tremendous insights into the journey they were both on.  Yes,  I know all that stuff was in my outline and notes, but now I get it.

I immediately turned to the middle of the book and wrote two chapters of high conflict that set up the moment of truth. This morning, I sat down to write the conflict prior to the middle and saw Jeanne's comment to my blog. She suggested I start in the middle, and offered a good book as a resource.  Thanks Jeanne, serendipity happens!

After I read the book Jeanne recommended, I'll know more, but I think the ideas are similar even though I chose to start at the end.

Where am I headed now? Not too sure, but my instinct is to take the major characters, stick with them and write them middle out.  This will pull in the minor characters, but not all of them. I have three subplots that weave through the story with characters that never directly interact with the major characters. Those are character-centric sub-plots, and I think I will write each character's plot line one at a time so I can stay with the character.

If all goes right, I will end up with a bunch of pieces to slice, dice, and stitch into the final novel.

Stay tuned.

Thanks Jeanne.

Frustrated Beyond Frustrated

My goal for the week was to get the first four chapters written.  Well, I almost made it; I got about 14,000 words written then I went into a deep brain freeze.

I think the brain freeze is due to two problems.

The novel is set aboard destroyers during World War II.  I want it to be a story of internal struggles driven by the war - I don't want it to be about the war.  I don't want an action thriller with lots of guns going off and people getting killed. I feel that type of writing is easy and I want to offer the reader more. Something to think about such as moral dilemmas, cultural conflicts, bigotry, search for meaning, or something positive.

The second problem flows from the first, I think. I have been working on the characters but I have not been working WITH the characters enough to really get to know them in a way that I can say I understand and empathize with their internal conflicts.  Until I know these characters well, I will be stuck with a plot driven shoot-em-up novel which is what I don't want.

I have a great line-up of interesting characters.  Here are a few:

Piper Feakes, an Australian coast watcher who goes by the name Pip. He has a general tendency to understate the facts and is not above a little petty larceny. He is the son of a convicted buglar.

Captain Kakuta is the commander of a Japanese cruiser and O'Toole's nemesis.  Son of a diplomat, his father married a Chinese woman. He was raised in several foreign countries and is sensitive cultural differences and the nationalistic tendency of all societies that discounts the value of different cultures. He has grave doubts about the war and realizes Japan can't win.  On top of that, his grandparents and family members on his mother's side were murdered by the Japanese Army when Japan invaded China. Despite his doubts and hatred for what Japan did to his mother's family, he soldiers-on to perform his duties as a naval commander.

Admiral Yasuda was pressed into service by the Japanese Navy to work on new cryptographic equipment. He is a mathematician and has devised an unbreakable code that will alter the course of the war - unless O'Toole stops him.

There are several more interesting characters; probably too many to actually use in the story but these are some of the more interesting characters in my mind.

This next week, I intend to write several "skits" with the main characters that would cover situations that the characters would find themselves in and would put them in conflict with their environment.  I am hoping that will thaw my brain freeze.

Victimized by Technology

That was exciting, I pretty much took March off.  It's that ADHD thing spiked with a touch of incurable curiosity. 

The story's milieu is onboard a destroyer in the South Pacific during WW II. I had a rough outline and a few random ideas.  However, unlike Marathon Watch, I had no first hand knowledge of WW II ships, weapons, tactics or battles.  That means I had to delve into the realm of the author dreaded R-word: Research. In past years that would have required endless days at the library and perhaps visits to one or more museums, but this is the age of the internet - that black hole of focus and concentration.

My typical day went something like this - I would set off at 8AM trying to verify the range of the US Mk II torpedo. Along the way I would find interesting comments about anti-aircraft guns, depth charges, Fletcher Class destroyers, the Japanese 18-inch guns, the state of the art in Radar and Sonar, the Navy's rating and specialist system, berthing compartments, the samurai warrior culture, depth charges, ship repair facilities, the number of ships lost in the Pacific, and twenty-four other topics that I can't remember but which at the time seemed irresistibly interesting. The nefarious authors of this internet information cornucopia always included the dreaded hyper-link. For more information all one has to do is click; it's so easy!

The IHL (Internet Hyper-link) is a weapon of mass mental destruction and researchers report that IHL's are 100% fatal when used against curious people with ADHD.  Due to IHL's, my day would end in a cascade of ever increasing disasters.  About 6PM my browser would crash because I had too many browser tabs open. Marsha, my wife, would call me to dinner, and I would ignore her.  I knew she was pulling my leg since I had only been at my computer for fifteen or twenty minutes - max. 

Never at a loss for a back-up plan, I would reboot my computer and turn to my ever-present yellow note tablet to see what I was supposed to be researching. The top page of my note pad would be crammed notes, links, ideas, and half-thoughts written in three different colors of ink and in at least fourteen different angles. As always, items of special interest were crammed into a corner and the writing would curve down to avoid the edge of the page.

This wasn't as disorganized as it seems.  Some entries would have a nice little box drawn around them and the really important stuff would have arrows or stars next to the entry.  Using this advanced form of organization, I could quickly ascertain that I was looking for data on water temperature near Samoa in February even though I couldn't remember why, but it seemed interesting and that entry had a box, two stars AND an arrow.  About an hour later, Marsha would retrieve me, feed me cold leftovers, turn off my computer and hide the power cord.

After about ten days of this, I had learned so much about so little that I realized I knew absolutely nothing about everything.  That's just about the time, I learned something about modern medical science. My doctor had switched one of my medications to a new wonder drug that could cure anything, and as I would soon learn, that included ADHD.  This particular medicine takes about ten days to build up in the blood stream, and it has only one side-effect: it makes the patient drowsy.  By the eleventh day, I was sleeping about twenty hours per day which, considering the progress I was making on my research, didn't impact my effectiveness one iota. Besides my ADHD was completely gone!  On the twelfth day, Marsha managed to wake me up and suggested I go back and talk to the doctor, who promptly put me back on the old prescription. 

Soon the fog cleared and I was wide awake trying to figure out what to do next.  As it turns out, all was not lost, Scrivener (remember the writing tool from the previous blog?) came to my rescue.  One of the neatest features of Scrivener is that it allows you to save and organize research material.  You can cut and past stuff right from the internet into folders and pages, save pictures and write notes. In Scrivener, I had a treasure trove of information on almost any subject I would ever want to know about relative to the US Navy during WW II. All I had to do was reorganize it a little bit and I was ready to go. 

It was time to start drafting.

My goal is three chapters in the next week.  Let's see how that goes.

The Sport of Writing Software - or How Not To Do a Cyber-header

Okay, I choked. Not a single idea for the story.  I know, I'll do some free writing. Disaster. I couldn't connect a noun with a verb if my life depended.

Time to change strategy.  If I am going to write another novel, I want to avoid some of the manuscript management problems I had with The Marathon Watch; keeping versions straight and moving stuff around etc.  In other words, I wanted to find a way to put off the outlining and character development while wasting time in the name of working on my next novel.   I decided to look at tools to help me manage my manuscript and Voilà I found two potential software tools that not only helped manage the manuscript but would also help develop outlines.

The first was scrivener.  A great tool for novel development. It allows you to manage multiple versions of each scene, move things around and keep everything straight. It even lets you organize and keep your research and bible inside scrivener so you don't have post-it notes, paper and binders all over your desk.

The second was Dramatica. The intriguing thing about Dramatica is that it comes with a large manual that describes the physiological theory of "The Story." With it, the author claims, you can create complete stories that support your theme and leave your readers with a sense of closure and completeness. I am naturally curious and am always looking for things to learn. Learning  the theory (while putting off the inevitable) seemed like it was going to be fun.

The problem was the poorly written manual uses terms a physiologist would use, but not a writer. Despite the insistence on using the strange vocabulary, the author uses supposedly precise terms inconsistently leaving the reader wondering what was being said. The biggest complaint I had against the manual is that it did not go from the general to the specific, or from the known to the unknown, it started at the ultra-specific level without context and then kept piling it on. I struggled mightily to decipher the manual and failed. To put this in perspective, when I was in college I solved third-order differential equations in my head while driving to keep my mind occupied.

Fear not. I am fearless. All I need is some practical experience and it will all come together. Time to dive into the software tool that implements the theory for the author. And, I reasoned, it would get me started on the outlining and other prep work that needed to get done. Ouch!

The dive in quickly turned into a painful cyber-header. As I struggled to use Dramatica software, I found that it broke the story elements down into extremely fine detail with no way to pull it back together. Very quickly I developed hundreds of Dramatica elements for my story, but had completely lost track of where I was or where I was going. I did learn a great deal from Dramatica in terms of character structure, outlining and ways to build a novel bible so the effort wasn't totally lost. In short, Dramatica seemed to hold great promise, but failed me miserably as a tool and as a theory.  I abandoned Dramatica.

Well, that was fun and I managed to waste almost two months. What I had to show for it was a rough outline of plot, a muddy idea of theme, and pieces of the novel bible. I guess it was time to get to work.

Well, almost . . .

 

Dilemma Resolved - Or out of the frying pan back into the fire

Ok, where was I?

On the horns of a dilemma. Either go for the money with The Marathon Watch (but the money might never materialize), or Write the Ethosian Sci-fi series. First writing books like The Marathon Watch (which I consider serious fiction) is very difficult for me - I have to put so much of myself into it. On the other hand the Ethosian book series would instead be fun. Money vs. enjoyment. Hard work vs fun.

Seems like a no-brainer right?

Well let me add one more bit of information. I had 20 beta readers for The Marathon Watch, and everyone of them emphatically said I should pursue the Marathon trilogy. That's powerful persuasion.

Then there was the final nail in the coffin. Marsha, my wife, "suggested" I continue with the Marathon trilogy. I learned long ago that Marsha's suggestions carry the force of law - unless I want to be miserable for a long time. But I am no wimp. I fought back and finally had to put my foot down. Decision made.

I decided to work on the Marathon book, although I still dream about my Ethosian world in my spare time and it is becoming more real to me every day. When I do write it, it should be a killer.

Now what? The task before me seems enormous. Develop theme, characters, plot and outline. When I wrote Marathon Watch, I had trouble keeping everything straight so I wanted to see if there were authoring tools available that could help. I wanted to improve my skill, are there night classes available?

A long list of things to do and I decided to start on the outline and characters. No problem right?

Blank page-itus.

Complete mental vapor-lock.

Blank stare at the wall, mouth agape.

My muse had caught the last train for the coast without warning.

Choke.

Do not fear, it is always darkest just before it turn pitch black. More in a few days.

Finding the Shore

Okay, a little set-up is necessary to get this journey started.

My first novel, The Marathon Watch has been published. It is a serious novel with a serious and universal theme. I had ten beta readers. They all went nuts over the book. Despite the fact that the story was set aboard a US Navy Destroyer, even the female readers loved it because of the theme. This was not expected.

The next thing that happened is one of the beta readers gave the book to an agent, who also went nuts over the book. He is now representing me and wants me to turn my one novel into a trilogy, and is now working to sell the trilogy as a combined book and movie deal. Wow, I hadn't sold a single copy yet. But the plot thickens . . .

Before my beta readers got back to me, I had started outlining a science fiction novel which would be the first in a series titled "The Ethosians." I fell in love with the concept and the characters, especially my strong heroin who would become queen.

Now I am torn. Money says bet on your Marathon Watch Trilogy, my heart says to go build the Ethosian world.

We will resolve that dilemma in the next installment.