Jim Butcher - Compiled

Writing Advice
Jim Butcher's own blog is here: http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/

STORY OUTLINE

First - Write down your STORY QUESTION

Second - Write down your PROTAGONIST, his tags and traits and how you intend to
introduce him. Write down your ANTAGONIST, his tags and traits and how you intend to
introduce him.

Third - Jim says to draw an arch, but for simplicity’s sake I’m going to write it out like
this. Write down your PLOT. On the left, write a brief phrase about the OPENING
SCENE. On the right, write a brief phrase about the CLIMAX of your story. In the middle,
write BIG MIDDLE, or whatever event that starts the dominoes falling. Make a bunch of
tick marks along the way and fill in any scenes that you have in mind that you know you
want to do. Once you’ve done that, add in some more tick marks in between, and add in
phrases describing scenes that lead your character from one established tick mark to
the next, in a logical fashion.

Fourth - Do PLOT arches for all of your subplots. Make sure you know where they
begin, end, and what event causes them to be resolved.

Fifth - CHARACTER PROFILES. You need to profile every significant character on his
own sheet, just like you did your protagonist and antagonist.

Sixth - Outline SCENES and SEQUELS. Each of your tick marks and phrases should
describe either a story event (a SCENE) or a logical point that leads you to the next
story event (a SEQUEL). Stating from the beginning, outline your first SCENE on its
own page, then outline the SEQUEL that follows.

Seventh - Sketch out the CLIMAX.

STORY CLIMAXES

A story climax is, in structure terms, the ANSWER to the STORY QUESTION that we
talked about earlier.
Why is a story climax important? Remember earlier, how we talked about ways to hook
your readers and get them emotionally involved in the story? Well, if we’ve done that
right, then when you reach story’s end they are invested in its outcome. They want to
see what happens, preferably as vividly as they possibly can. By the time you’ve
reached the end of a story, a good writer has got their readers on the edge of their
seats, at 3:30 in the morning, and the pages are tearing every time they turn because
the reader is so excited. You’ve made an implicit promise by getting your reader so
bound up in the story. You’ve got to deliver on it, or that reader is going to freaking hate
you for doing that to them. That’s what a catharsis is: the release of all that tension and
sympathetic emotion that the reader has built up because of the writer’s skill at weaving
the story. Done right, your readers will cheer and cry and laugh out loud and dance
around their living room. Everything you did in your book leads up to this.

How do you build a climax? The same way you do everything else. You start at its
beginning. A climax officially begins where the Great Swampy Middle ends. To use an
overly-simple metaphor, the Beginning of your story dumps the dominoes of your story
out of your box onto the table. The Great Swampy Middle sets all the dominoes up into
a neat pattern... and the climax knocks them down. The Great Swampy Middle ends at
the first of the story events that starts the dominoes to toppling. The most dramatic point
is the actual confrontation between your protagonist and antagonist, where they are
directly contending with one another, and where both of them know that the story
question is about to be answered. For that confrontation, there are several structural
components that you can use to organize it that will be really helpful.

First - ISOLATION: At the end of the day, your protagonist stands alone. That’s why that
character is the protagonist. Oh sure, there can be other people around, but the one
who really counts is your protagonist. The more alone he is, the higher the tension
levels are going to be, and the more satisfying the climax is going to be for the reader.

Second - CONFRONTATION: Your lone protagonist, determined to follow things through

to the end, confronts the antagonist.
Third - DARK MOMENT: The confrontation Does Not Go Well. The odds are stacked
against your protagonist, or the situation swings out of his control, or he just plain gets
outclassed. Everything looks like it is in genuine jeopardy of going to hell. It looks
certain that the answer to the story question is going to be one that the reader is not
going to like.

Fourth - CHOICE: It always comes back to choice. The climax of the story is the acid
test, the crucible, where the rubber meets the road and the where the schisse hits the
fan. Your protagonist has to choose whether or not to stay true to his purpose or to let
himself be swayed by fear, by temptation, by weariness, or by anything else. In that
DARK MOMENT, he has to make the call that ultimately reveals who your protagonist
really is deep down. And the choice has got to be a bad one. If it’s an easy choice, there
isn’t any drama to it - no tension, no release for the reader.

Fifth - DRAMATIC REVERSAL: The intrinsic nature of the story or of the protagonist’s
character influences or causes the events of the confrontation to be changed in an
unexpected way, causing an outcome that is in harmony with the principles of poetic
justice. A quick word on CHOICE and REVERSAL. Not all heroes make the
self-sacrificial choice. Sometimes, the hero falters and makes the awful choice, to save
his own skin or indulge his own darker nature. In that situation, the reversal is still there
doing exactly the same thing--only this time, the justice that gets handed out is bad for
the protagonist. There’s a name for that kind of story: tragedy.

Sixth - RESOLUTION: Time to hand out the medals, kiss the girl, go to the wedding, put
the star on the Christmas tree, raise the curtain on the rock concert, attend the funeral,
or otherwise demonstrate that with the conclusion of the story, some kind of balance
has been restored. The catharsis is complete, the tension eased, and the reader can
catch their breath now. My advice to you on RESOLUTIONs: Keep it short. Once you’ve
gotten through the showdown, write as sparingly as possible to get to the end, and don’t
draw anything out any more than you absolutely must.

STORY QUESTION

The STORY QUESTION consists of a simple format:

*When something happens,
*Your protagonist,
*Pursues a goal
But will he succeed when the *antagonist provides opposition?
By getting your story broken down into its basic elements, you’ll help yourself focus on
the most important portion of the novel and avoid dumping lots of extra words into it.
Always write a story as lean as you possibly can (and still be happy with it).

Every scene and every sequel should be planned to move your story forward-and you
should have the purpose of the scene in mind as you write it.

SENTENCE STRUCTURE or just STRUCTURE

You have to create clear mental pictures of characters, objects and places of your
reader. The best way to keep that flow going is to understand logical-response. It breaks
down into something really simple:
Something happens to your character (stimulus).
Your character reacts to it (response).
Your character takes an action (stimulus).
Something happens (response).
STIMULUS-RESPONSE, STIMULUS-RESPONSE
Stimulus comes first, and for every stimulus you have one response.

CHARACTERS

First and foremost, your characters must be INTERESTING. Bottom line: without
interesting characters, your book is already dead.

What makes an interesting character?

EXAGGERATION: This can be almost any kind of exaggerated feature, be it physical,
mental or emotional. The purpose of exaggerating characters are twofold: First, it’s
inherently interesting. Second, it’s a device to create an acute mental awareness of your
character for the reader.
EXOTIC POSITION: Locating your character in an unusual location or situation is
another way to help create immediate interest. Whether it is a social, geographic,
intellectual or moral position, choosing something unusual enough to be memorable and
interesting will provide you with a significant advantage in grabbing reader interest.
INTRODUCTION: When your reader meets any given character for the first time, it is
critical to make sure you get the bare bones of your character firmly, you’ll make the
whole process of virtual-story-world-creation move more quickly and easily. There are
multiple techniques for planning a strong introduction, but I’m only going to hit on the
strongest one: CHARACTERISTIC ENTRY ACTION. A solid CHARACTERISTIC
ENTRY ACTION consists of introducing your character to the reader by bringing him
into the story in the course of an action which clearly, sharply typifies who and what he
is. Make the introduction count. This is something you can’t afford to screw up.
VERISIMILITUDE: is the second most important element in creating interesting
characters. When you are writing your characters, it is absolutely critical that you
convey to the reader the sense that your character is a whole, full person with his own
life outside the purview of this particular story. The single most important technique for
doing that is through showing your characters: EMOTIONS, REACTIONS, and
DECISIONS. The lion’s share of this work gets done in the process of writing
SEQUELS. TAGS are words you hang upon your character when you describe them.
When you’re putting things together, for each character, pick a word or two or three to
use in describing them. Then, every so often, hit on one of those words in references to
them, and avoid using them elsewhere when possible. By doing this, you’ll be creating a
psychological link between those words and that strong entry image of your character.
TRAITS are like TAGS, except that instead of picking specific words, you pick a number
of unique things ranging from a trademark prop to a specific mental attitude.
EMPATHY: If you can manage to create a vivid character in a reader’s mind, then
establish him as someone believable, you have a real shot at the Holy Grail of character
design. If you do your job, you will create a sense of empathy in your reader for your
characters. This is what makes people burst out laughing while reading. It’s what makes
readers cry, or cheer, or run off to take a cold shower. Like VERISIMILITUDE,
EMPATHY takes time to build and it relies heavily upon the skilled use of SEQUELS.
This is the entire goal of all this character work, because the reader’s emotional
involvement is the single most important factor in how well your story is going to fly.

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/deadly-sin-of-writing-7-treating-the-reader-like-a-
moron/
For a character’s nature: If you want to create a cad, think what actions cads do that
would make everyone in a room label him the same way—checking out every woman
who walks by, openly flirting with other women, using breath spray every 5 minutes,
telling sexist jokes, etc.
For a character’s mood/mental state: Regardless of culture, we can tell if someone is
mad, hurt, sad, or happy by body language. Make a list of all the body language cues
for the mood you wish to create. A book on body language can be extremely helpful for
the more subtle stuff. For instance, people who lie often rub a body part (wringing
hands) or tap. Why? Unless a person is a sociopath, it usually causes mental stress to
lie, so the rubbing or tapping is a sign of energy displacement. See, these are the sort
of details that make good writing into much better writing.
http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/how-to-raise-your-characters-above-the-status-quo
1. VARIABLE STATUS IS THE KEY TO DIMENSIONALITY.
So what exactly is status?
Simply put, in every social interaction, one person has (or attempts to have) more of a
dominant role. Those in authority or those who want to exert authority use a collection of
verbal and nonverbal cues to gain and maintain higher status. But it’s not just authority
figures who do this. In daily life all of us are constantly adjusting and negotiating the
amount of status we portray as we face different situations and interact with different
people.
Novelists have the daunting task of showing this dynamic of shifting submission and
dominance through dialogue, posture, pauses, communication patterns, body language,
action and inner dialogue. To do so, you’ll need to recognize some basic status cues:
●​ Dominant individuals exude confidence through a relaxed demeanor and loose
gestures and gait; submissive people constrict their stride, voice, posture,
gestures.
●​ Looking down, crossing your legs, biting your lip and holding your hands in front
of your face are all ways of hiding. Concealment lowers status.
●​ Eye contact is a powerful way of maintaining dominance. Cultures differ, but
North Americans prolong eye contact to intimidate, control, threaten or seduce.
●​ Stillness is power. Dominant people delay before replying to questions not
because they can’t think of anything to say, but to control the conversation. They
blink less frequently than submissive people and keep their heads still as they
speak. The more fidgety, bedraggled or frazzled a person is, the less status he
has.
●​ Submissive people apologize and agree more than dominant ones. They try to
please and are easily intimidated. To act as if you need something lowers your
status; telling someone they can be helpful to you raises it.
●​ Effective negotiators mirror the status of the people with whom they’re doing
business. This way they neither appear too aggressive (intimidatingly high status)
or too willing to compromise (unimpressively low status).
Status varies with respect to three things: relationship (a father has higher relational
status than his 8-year-old), position (a boss has higher positional status than her
employees) and situation (if you’re attacked by a team of ninjas and you’ve never
studied martial arts, you’d have significantly lower situational status than your
assailants).
Although the level of relational, positional and situational status might be out of our
hands, our response to it is not. The daughter might manipulate her father, the
employee might quit, and you might summon up enough moxie to frighten off those
ninjas. So, in determining status, choices matter more than circumstances.
When readers complain that a character is one-dimensional, flat or “cardboard,” they
may not realize it, but they’re actually noting that the character—regardless of the social
context in which she appears—always has the same degree of status. She might
always be angry or ruthless or heroic, but the more uniformly she responds to everyone
and everything, the less interesting she’ll be.
People in real life are complex.
Fictional characters need to be, as well.
So what’s the key to a well-rounded character? Simple: She doesn’t have the same
status in every situation.
Each supporting cast member is in the story to bring out different traits of the main
characters. Dimensionality, depth and complexity are all brought out by showing subtle
shifts in your character’s status as he interacts with the other players.
In my novels featuring FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers, I’m careful not to let him
appear weak or cowardly: I want readers to respect and admire him. Whenever he’s at
a crime scene or standing up to a bad guy, he has the highest status. He’ll never back
down, never give in, never give up.
But to have dimensionality he also needs relationships in which he has low status. So,
as a single dad he struggles with knowing how to handle his sharp-witted and surly
teenage daughter, and, lacking some social graces, he fumbles for the right things to
say to women he’s attracted to. Without his daughter or a love interest to reveal those
low status aspects of his characterization, he’d be one-dimensional, and certainly not
engaging enough to build a series around.
If you want readers to invest in your protagonist, you’ll need to find areas where he has
a weakness, low status or something to overcome. Remember, even Indiana Jones is
afraid of snakes, and Superman is vulnerable to Kryptonite.
2. WORD CHOICE DETERMINES CHARACTERIZATION.
In theater the phrase “stealing the scene” refers to instances in which another person
upstages the star. Actually, it’s just another way of saying that the star (or protagonist)
no longer has the highest status.
When this happens on stage, it will annoy the star.
When it happens in your novel, it’ll turn off your readers.
And you can shatter hundreds of pages of careful characterization with one poorly
chosen word.
A person with high status might shout, holler, call or yell, but if she screams, screeches,
bawls or squeals, her status is lowered. Similarly, a character who quivers, trembles,
whines or pleads has lower status than one who tries to control the pain. For example:
1. Adrian drew the blade across Sylvia’s arm. She shrieked and begged him to stop.
2. Adrian drew the blade across Sylvia’s arm. She clenched her teeth, refused to give
him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
In the first example, Sylvia’s uncontrolled reaction lowers her status beneath that of her
assailant. In the second, however, her resolve raises her status above that of Adrian,
who has evidently failed to intimidate her.
Rather than appearing victimized, she has become heroic.
Your protagonist must never act in a way that lowers her status below that of the
antagonist.
Take a moment to let that sink in.
You might find it helpful to imagine high-status movie stars playing your protagonist. I’m
not sure about you, but I have a hard time imagining Liam Neeson, Jason Statham or
Bruce Willis pleading for mercy or screaming for help.
Remember, choices determine status. So, while revising, continually ask yourself what
you want readers to feel about each character. Do you want them to be on this
character’s side? To cheer for him? Fear, despise or discount him? Every action, every
word of dialogue, every gesture—even every speaker attribution—communicates a
certain status, so be sure the words you choose support the impression you’re trying to
make. If Betty stomps across the floor (showing lack of self-control) or struts across it
(implying the need for attention) she’ll have lower status than someone who strides
across it (showing composure and confidence).
Even punctuation affects status:
1. “I know you heard me! Move away from Anna! If you lay a hand on her, I guarantee
you will regret it!”
2. “I know you heard me. Move away from Anna. If you lay a hand on her, I guarantee
you will regret it.”
In the first example, the exclamation points cause the speaker to come across as frantic
or desperate. In the second, the periods show him to be controlled, measured,
authoritative. That’s how a hero responds.
A wimpy protagonist isn’t interesting.
A wimpy antagonist isn’t frightening.
In marketable fiction, both heroes and villains need high status. When villains aren’t
frightening or heroes aren’t inspiring, it’s usually because the author let them act in a
way that undermines their status. Don’t make that mistake.
3. PROTAGONISTS NEED OPPORTUNITIES TO BE HEROIC.
When I was writing my novel The Rook, one section gave me a particularly difficult time.
Agent Bowers is at the scene of a suicide when Detective Dunn, a street-smart local
homicide cop, shows up. Dunn is tough. He’s used to calling the shots, to having the
highest status. In this scene, he makes an aggressive, high-status move by getting in
Bowers’ face and then taunting him. I struggled with showing that as bold and brash as
Dunn is, my hero still has higher status. After hashing through numerous drafts, here’s
how the encounter finally played out (from Bowers’ point of view):
[Dunn] stepped close enough for me to smell his garlicky breath.
“This is my city. The next time you and your pencil-pushing lawyer buddies from
Quantico decide to stick your nose into an ongoing investigation, at least have the
courtesy to go through the proper channels.”
“I’d suggest you back away,” I said. “Now.”
He backed up slowly.
Bowers refuses to be baited and isn’t intimidated by Dunn’s aggressive posturing. If he
were, readers would lose faith in him and side with Dunn. Instead, Bowers remains calm
and, by exhibiting poise and self-control, induces Dunn’s submission. (Also, by adding
the speaker attribution “I said,” I inserted a slight pause in Bowers’ response, subtly
adding to his status even more. To see the difference, read the sentence aloud with and
without the pause.)
At the end of the scene when Dunn steps back, there’s no doubt in the mind of the
reader who is in charge.
Readers will not empathize with a weak protagonist. They expect protagonists who
have strength of conviction, moral courage and noble aspirations. It’s true, of course,
that during the story the protagonist might be struggling to grow in these areas, but
readers need to see her as someone worth cheering for along the way.
If you can spot weaknesses in your protagonist and are grappling with how to
strengthen her, try one of these ways:
●​ Have your protagonist sacrifice for the good of others. The sacrifice might be
physical (stepping in front of a bullet), financial (anonymously paying another’s
debt), material (volunteering for the Peace Corps) or emotional (forgiving
someone for a deep offense).
●​ Have her stand up for the oppressed. I’ve seen all too many authors try to
show how “tough” their protagonist is by portraying her as cold or
unfeeling—especially at a crime scene. Bad idea. Readers want the hero (or
heroine) to be compassionate and life-affirming. Let’s say your female medical
examiner is at a crime scene and one of the other cops gestures toward the
corpse and quips, “They stab ’em; you slab ’em.” Your protagonist needs to
uphold the dignity and value of human life. She might reproach the cop, or
remind him of the victim’s grieving family. If you let her make light of something
as precious as life itself, you’ll end up devastating her status.
●​ Have her turn the other cheek. If someone slaps your protagonist and she
looks the guy in the eye and refuses to fight back, her self-control raises her
status above that of the attacker. Strength isn’t shown only by what a person can
do, but by what she could do but refrains from doing. Self-restraint always raises
status.
4. STATUS CRYSTALLIZES AS THE STORY ESCALATES.
As your story builds toward its climax, the status of both your hero and your villain will
also rise. The bad guy will become more and more coldhearted or unstoppable, and the
good guy will need to summon unprecedented strength or courage to save the day.
Status has more to do with actions than motives, so even though the hero and villain
have completely different agendas, you can raise the status of either one by giving him
more 1) self-control, 2) courage and/or 3) resolve.
Remember, stillness is power, so if you decide you need to make a villain more
imposing, try slowing him down. Show readers that he’s in no hurry to commit his evil
deed—he has such high status that he can walk slowly and still catch the person fleeing
frantically through the woods.
Villains become less frightening when they’re self-congratulatory or cocky. You actually
lower a villain’s status by giving him the need to prove himself. Sadistic, chortling,
hand-wringing villains aren’t nearly as unnerving as calm, relentless ones who are
simply indifferent to the suffering of others.
If your story calls for multiple villains, try staggering their status levels so that the top-tier
bad guy has the highest status and is therefore the most threatening and dangerous
person for your protagonist to encounter at the story’s climax.
Let your protagonist enter the final showdown at a disadvantage—weaponless, injured,
poisoned or exhausted from fighting his way past all the antagonist’s henchmen. An
underdog who overcomes impossible odds is a hero we can believe in.
And one we will want to read about again.

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SCENES

Scenes are important. Scenes are where all the plot in your book happens. Any time
your character is actively pursuing his goal (as opposed to a character who is persuing
to reflect or react emotionally to the events of the story) he is engaged in a SCENE.

The basic structure of a scene is simple. Your POV character sets out in pursuit of a
specific goal. Someone else (usually, but not always, the antagonist) actively, knowingly
tries to stop him. There is a conflict. The reader is left to wonder whether or not the POV
character will succeed (which can also be thought of as the SCENE QUESTION). The
result of the conflict is ‘always’ a setback of one kind or another (also thought of as the
SCENE ANSWER)--at least, until you get to the end of the book.

Scene format -
POINT OF VIEW CHARACTER: is always pick the person with the most at stake,
emotionally, in the scene.
GOAL: This needs to be an active, specific goal, not just something vague. Your goal
doesn’t always have to be life-shatteringly important. The most important thing about it
is that it must be clear, apparently attainable, specific, and important to your viewpoint
character.
CONFLICT (SCENE QUESTION): is what happens when someone, for some reason,
up and decides that your character needs to fail in his goal, or else is pursuing a goal
which, if met, will prevent your viewpoint character from reaching his goal. Conflict is all
about characters. It happens between characters.
SETBACK (SCENE ANSWER): is the result of the CONFLICT. Your character set out to
accomplish a certain goal--and he doesn’t get it. There are a number of ways you can
end a scene--or phrased another way, there are a number of SCENE ANSWERS to the
SCENE QUESTIONS.
Answer 1: Yes! It’s the simplest, leaves you with the least drama and the fewest options.
It’s predictable, almost inherently comes with less conflict, and gives you the worst odds
of keeping a reader’s attention.
Answer 2: Yes...but. This one is a lot better. In this scenario, your hero accomplishes his
scene goal all right--but there’s a complication of some kind, and one that might have
consequences down the line. Generally, the more dire and/or disastrous the potential
consequence, the better.
Answer 3: No! Another solid scene resolution, from the writing standpoint. The hero sets
out to attain his goal, but is flatly denied. Maybe he gets shut down by the antagonist.
Maybe he makes a mistake and blows it completely. Either way, he gives it his best shot
and is slapped down. Now he’ll have to back off, re-evaluate the situation and try
something else. Use this scene answer with some caution, because it can have the
effect of bringing your story to a halt. Too many of them can become frustrating for the
reader, and can make your character look foolish and/or impotent, thus reducing reader
empathy and the tension of your overall story.
Answer 4: No! and furthermore! My personal favorite scene answer. Not only does your
hero not attain his goal, but he manages to make matters even worse, along the way.
It’s best if the worsening of the situation is your protagonist’s fault, because that’s just
fun, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. This answer is really the one that gives you
the most interesting scenes, provides the meat for the most interesting and endearing
sequels, and is generally the Big Gun you pull out when your plot is slowing down.
Warning: it does force you, as the writer, to get a little creative, because it multiplies the
problems your hero has to solve. But hey, if you weren’t at least a little creative, you
wouldn’t be here.

I also came across this advice from Writer’s Digest about scenes -

Action launches tend to energize the reader’s physical senses. To create an action launch:
1. GET STRAIGHT TO THE ACTION. Don’t drag your feet here. “Jimmy jumped off the cliff” rather than
“Jimmy stared at the water, imagining how cold it would feel when he jumped.”
2. HOOK THE READER WITH BIG OR SURPRISING ACTIONS. An outburst, car crash, violent heart
attack or public fight at the launch of a scene allows for more possibilities within it.
3. BE SURE THAT THE ACTION IS TRUE TO YOUR CHARACTER. Don’t have a shy character choose
to become suddenly uninhibited at the launch of a scene. Do have a bossy character belittle another
character in a way that creates conflict.
4. ACT FIRST, THINK LATER. If a character is going to think in your action opening, let the action come
first, as in, “Elizabeth slapped the Prince. When his face turned pink, horror filled her. What have I done?
she thought.”

A narrative approach is best used with the following launch strategies:

5. SAVE TIME BY BEGINNING WITH SUMMARY. Sometimes actions will simply take up more time and
space in the scene than you would like. A scene beginning needs to move fairly quickly and, on occasion,
summary will get the reader there faster.
6. COMMUNICATE NECESSARY INFORMATION TO THE READER BEFORE THE ACTION KICKS
IN.Sometimes information needs to be imparted simply in order to set action in motion later in the scene.
Opening sentences such as, “My mother was dead before I arrived,” “The war had begun” and, “The
storm left half of the city underwater,” could easily lead to action.
7. REVEAL A CHARACTER’S THOUGHTS OR INTENTIONS THAT CANNOT BE SHOWN THROUGH
ACTION.Coma victims, elderly characters, small children and other characters sometimes cannot speak
or act for physical, mental or emotional reasons; therefore the scene may need to launch with narration to
let the reader know what they think and feel.

These final three methods can create an effective scenic launch:

8. ENGAGE WITH SPECIFIC VISUAL DETAILS. If your character is deserted on an island, the reader
needs to know the lay of the land. Any fruit trees in sight? What color sand? Are there rocks, shelter or
wild, roaming beasts?
9. USE SCENERY TO SET THE TONE OF THE SCENE. Say your scene opens in a jungle where your
character is going to face danger; you can describe the scenery in language that conveys darkness, fear
and mystery.
10. REFLECT A CHARACTER’S FEELINGS THROUGH SETTING. Say you have a sad character
walking through a residential neighborhood. The descriptions of the homes can reflect that
sadness—houses can be in disrepair, with rotting wood and untended yards. You can use weather in the
same way. A bright, powerfully sunny day can reflect a mood of great cheer in a character.

SEQUELS

And no, we’re not talking about book 2. We’re talking about the original meaning of the
word sequel--the part that comes after, the next in the sequence. In the scenes of a
book, you’re getting all your plot-pursuing and action-taking and choice-making done.
Now you get to the hard part. Getting your reader to give a flying frack about it. To do
that, you’ve got to win them over to your character’s point of view. You’ve got to
establish some kind of basic emotional connection, an empathy for your character. It
needn’t be deep seated agreement with everything the character says and does--but
they do need to be able to understand what your character is thinking and feeling, and
to understand why they are doing whatever (probably outrageous) thing you’ve got them
doing.

Sequels are what happens as an aftermath to a scene. They do several specific things:
1) Allow a character to react emotionally to a scene’s outcome. 2) Allow a character to
review facts and work through the logical options of his situation. 3) They allow a
character to ponder probably outcomes to various choices. 4) They allow a character to
make a CHOICE--ie, to set themselves a new goal for the next SCENE.
1) Scene--Denied!
2) Sequel--Damn it! Think about it! That’s so crazy it just might work! New goal!
3) Next scene!
Repeat until end of book.

Here’s the basic structure to a sequel:

EMOTION: An immediate emotional response.

REASON: A review of what happened, applying logic and reason to the events and why
they turned out that way, and of what options are open to them.
ANTICIPATION: of what might follow the pursuit of those options. Never underestimate
the effects of anticipation on a reader.
CHOICE: Your character makes up his mind and decides what to do next.

Now, it’s possible to skip some of these steps, or to abbreviate some of them so severly
that you all but skip them. But you can’t change the order.

Sequels, frankly, are what really make or break books. How you choose to show your
reader your character’s reaction determines everything about the reader’s response to
the events of the story.

Sequels are where you apply the color to your story. It’s the best point at which to
manipulate your reader’s emotions.
Each genre has its own bias towards a given part of a sequel. Romance, for example, is
very heavy on EMOTION and only slightly less on ANTICIPATION. Mystery and SF lean
very heavily on the REASON portion of the sequel. Action novels go light on everything
but CHOICE, and give you just enough sequel to get you through to the next scene.
Horror loves to linger on ANTICIPATION.

If that wasn’t enough, Sequel-to-Scene ratio is the single largest factor for controlling
pace. Sequels have a unanimous tendency to slow the pace of your story, while scenes
have the opposite effect. It’s a balancing act, and how you stack up scene-to-sequel is
going to depend on several factors, including your genre and your audience.

THE GREAT SWAMPY MIDDLE

Every writer runs into this, generally in every single book. The middle. It lurks between
the beginning of your book and the exciting conclusion, and its mission in life is to lead
you right down into the yucky, mucky mire in order to prevent you from every actually
finishing.

One way to help yourself is to create something to help you keep on track-a structure
specifically designed to keep the pace of your book strong through out the middle. My
favorite such construct is called THE BIG MIDDLE.

THE BIG MIDDLE

Here’s the nutshell concept: Plan a great big freaking event for the end of the middle.
You want it to be a big dramatic confrontation of whatever kind is appropriate to your
genre. The fallout from your big bad BIG MIDDLE event should be what boots the book
down the homestretch to reach the story’s climax. Really lay out the fireworks. Hit the
reader with everything you can. Plan THE BIG MIDDLE event. Then, as you work
through the middle, work to build up to it. Drop in the little hints, establish the proper
props and motivations and such. Make sure that everything you do in the middle of the
book is helping you build up to THE BIG MIDDLE.

MINI ARCH
Some authors get through the GSM by creating a whole little storyline of its own and
plopping it down smack in the middle. Normally, it’s intertwined with the main story in
some fashion, but the focus of the characters shifts onto anew track, one that is wholly
contained in the middle. It is, essentially, a smaller story, which interfaces with the
overall story well enough to expose cool character stuff that is relevant to the main plot,
that kind of thing.
NEW SUBPLOT
A watered down version of MINI ARCH, a new subplot is just that--a subplot that
suddenly develops and has to be dealt with, without actually becoming a big
overwhelming part of the story on its own. The new subplot begins and ends in the
middle, and generally introduces you to some cool characters or threats native to that
subplot.

NEW CHARACTER
A new character tromps out onto the stage in a more flamboyent or memorable fashion
than most supporting characters would do. They aren’t on stage long, but they serve an
important role in forwarding the story, and they entertain the hell out of the audience
while they do it.

KEEP WRITING
The ultimate way to get out of the GSM is to keep on plowing ahead. Sooner or later,
you’re bound to pop out the other side or else stumble onto a discernible path. Solid
outlines are the best way to stay on it, but they aren’t an easy way, either.

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