A thought to try out

Here’s a thought.

I’ve always said that every chapter needs to destabilise the situation that prevailed at the end of the previous chapter.

And that’s true.

The simplest way of thinking about this is:

• What was my character’s relationship to his or her goal at the end of the last chapter?
• Has that relationship been destabilised (even ever so slightly) in the course of this chapter? Are we now in a new place at the end of it?

That disciplined way of thinking essentially never fails, but maybe there’s a more interesting way to look at it, too.

The way I’ve just phrased it puts the emphasis on the exterior. (Does Bond defuse the bomb? Does Lizzy Bennet get closer to her Mister?)

But what if we look at the same thing in interior terms? So the questions might shift to something a little bit more like these:

• What was my character’s state of wisdom / learning / emotion at the end of the last chapter?
• Have those things been altered (even ever so slightly) in the course of this chapter? Are we now in a new place at the end of it?

Obviously, that interior focus will work quite badly for some books. Any geo-political thriller shouldn’t really be too interested in Jack Ryan’s state of maturity and wisdom. Those books really do need to care, mostly, about saving the world. Likewise, crime fiction that’s written as part of a series can’t really do the Ascent to Wisdom journey time after time after time. (Yes, you can have some personal challenges / insights in each book, but they won’t have the scale and import of those in standalone novels.)

But a rule with exceptions can still be a pretty handy rule. If you’re writing a coming of age novel, or a romance, or really anything with an emphasis on interior development and learning, then this is a very handy rule to set alongside the other.

And just as you find familiar tropes emerging when you use the exterior rule, you’ll find familiar tropes emerging when you use this interior approach, too. For example:

• Your character faces a challenge. She trains and fails. She trains and succeeds. When the Big Challenge arrives, she is nervous but prepared.
• In a romance, your Mister is deficient. He fails with his future Missus. He works on that deficiency in some way and fails. Works again and succeeds. Everything goes swimmingly with the Missus.
• Your young adult protagonist has never really had an encounter with the other sex. But the girl/boy has some mission to do with a boy/girl, and they become highly engaged in that project, and then they develop feelings for each other… and that manifests as romance, not just as project work.

You’ll notice that in all these cases, the themes are learning, training, development, new accomplishments. I suppose that’s because those things are the nature of life, or at any rate the bits of life that a novelist is most interested in. And following these tropes just isn’t a negative. You’re not being unoriginal; you’re delivering to the reader the exact thing that brings them to the book in the first place.

And of course, you can have learnings of this sort that a character is only jerkily aware of. So let’s say that you have a 14-year-old girl training for a big karate fight. She can enter a chapter believing she’s going to lose. She can end the chapter thinking the same thing. That wouldn’t violate our rules, so long as the reader sees that some kind of transformation is happening, unaware of it though the character may be.

As a matter of fact, imperfect self-awareness in a lead character is a really excellent thing to make happen. It creates real texture in the book. You’re forcing the reader to read your character, not just your words – because yours words aren’t (directly) revealing what’s going on. Readers love those challenges, so the more of them the merrier.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Character blind spots

Again, there are two FF options this week. One for those taking the Plan Your Romance Novel video course, one not.

Plot Your Romance Novel video course task: Write a short profile of your ideal romance reader, including: the types of tropes they enjoy, what emotional experience they want from a story and what kind of ending they expect. Share this profile in the forum.  

General task: Show me a 250-word scene that exhibits a blind spot in your character. I do know that’s hard to understand out of context, so please be generous in giving us the context we need. Also, as ever, title and genre, please.

I’m happy with blind spots (a) where the character doesn’t see him/herself properly but those around them do, or (b) where the character and everyone else are in the dark. Just show us the character failing to understand him or herself. When you’re ready, upload your stuff here.

Til soon. 

Harry