Writing Believable Scenes

 We had big fun at Beastly Books yesterday celebrating FaRoFeb! The delightful Vela Roth came up from El Paso, and A.K. Mulford and A.J. Lancaster joined us online from down under. The panel was also broadcast on Instagram Live and you can find a recording of it on the FaRoFeb Instagram account.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "How do you make your love scenes believable?"

By "love," I assume the asker means sex - though how to make the confessional of heartfelt love feel earned and not pasted on or saccharine is an interesting question. But, in truth, the answer to both, or even really ALL scenes - love, sex, fight, daily conversation - believable is to ground them in character.

This is true whether you are a plot-driven or character-driven writer. Stories are about the emotions of the people in them - what they want, what they can't have, what drives them to chase what they want anyway. So, a fight scene is never just about the choreography and who wins or loses. It's about what that win or loss MEANS to the characters, what impact their injuries might have on them beyond the physical.

Likewise, a sex scene is never just about tabs and slots fitting together. It's about emotional intimacy, what the sexual interlude means to the characters. It has nothing to do with whether or not multiple orgasms are believable or making first-time encounters awkward or including realistic body noises and accidental passing of fluids and gases. Those things might factor in if they relate to the characters' emotional lives, but by themselves, they don't change anything, one way or the other.

Because believability comes from emotional truth, regardless of everything else.

Jeffe's One Rule of Character Leveling-Up

This coming Friday, July 30, at 6pm Mountain Time, I'll be joining these great friends and powerhouse Fantasy Romance authors for an online panel! Tickets are free for this event sponsored by Love's Sweet Arrow bookstore in Chicago. Join me, Jennifer Estep, L. Penelope, and Lexi Ryan for a chat moderated by Jen Prokop. Ask us anything!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Leveling-Up: Is it necessary for protagonists to continually gain power/ability/expertise as a series progresses?"

I had to mull over the basic premise of this question. Do I do this in my own books? I don't always have the same protagonists in successive books of a series, but when I do, do they continually level up?

I guess... yes. That's the pattern I've followed. 

My usual rule with writing in general and worldbuilding in particular is, when I discover I'm implementing an element or trope without consciously examining it, that indicates some programmed ideas I need to investigate. 

Thus the mulling. 

So, is it necessary for the protagonist to continually gain power/ability/expertise? No, it's not necessary. BUT, character growth is fundamental to my concept of storytelling and the progression of ability to control one's personal power is a key metaphor in books that are about magic. I suppose you could have the magical/paranormal abilities remain constant and have the character grow in other arenas. As human beings, however, our lives are largely about gaining and refining our skill sets. That aspect of humanity makes it an evergreen topic of interest for us. 

Now that I think about it, it might be fun to have a wizard at the top of their game get tired of it and try a new career, learning an entirely foreign skill set. 

The rule I do cling to is, if a fundamental of the world is set as a limitation of powers, then that can't be discarded in order to level up later. This is akin to making a disability magically vanish, or an incompatible species couple suddenly have a magic baby. Some limitations should be real and permanent, not exploded for plot sparkles. So sayeth I.

Protagonists and The Promised Queen

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Avoiding Same Protagonist, Different Name, Different Story: How do ensure your lead characters are unique per series/standalone?"

This isn't a great topic for me because I ... don't. In that, I don't ensure or strategize this kind of thing. Maybe because I'm an intuitive writer? Characters come to me and tell me about themselves. I don't have to avoid finding the same one any more than I have to worry about running into the same people over and over in the larger world.

But that's cool because it's release week for me! 

THE PROMISED QUEEN - book three in the Forgotten Empires - comes out on Tuesday, May 25!

        

As far as protagonists go, an early reviewer said this to me:

Really appreciate how at no point did Con become some magically articulate prince. He still said "...stuff" instead of somehow finding a way to wax eloquent in the third act. Thank the gods.

I love that! In honor of Con's uneducated and rough ways that have him saying "stuff," here's a scene where he does exactly that.

******************

We walked in quiet for a few steps, Lia turning us at a four way intersection where all the paths looked the same to me. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.

“Metaphorically in my life, or literally in this maze?” she replied lightly.

“Now you sound like Ambrose.”

“He has his moments. The answer is yes to both.”

“You know where you’re going in life?” 

“That has never been a question for me. My life belongs to Calanthe.” Before I could say anything to that, she continued. “And there’s a pattern to the turns in the maze, which everyone knows, even if they never come this way. The maze is here primarily to prevent anyone from stumbling into the heart of the night court by accident.”

“Am I going to be shocked by what I see?” I blurted out, figuring I’d better ask.

She gave me an assessing look, eyes glowing with color, like the decorative lanterns did. “You might be. Do you mind? We can turn back.”

“No way. Not after I just confessed to regretting not learning what I could when I had the opportunity.” Besides, maybe I’d get some ideas about pleasing Lia. If I could figure out how to be a better lover for her, she might want to marry me again.

“You could still learn, you know,” she offered. “It’s never too late.”

For a pained moment, I thought she’d read that thought—then I realized she meant reading and stuff. “I’d feel like an idiot.” I could just picture it, sitting there like a hulk in some schoolroom, painstakingly reading aloud from a kid’s book. 

“You said you feel like an idiot most of the time anyway,” she countered.

“Good point.” We turned twice more, and I began to get the pattern now. “Two lefts, then a right, and repeat?”

“Exactly. Now you know.”

“Not that I’d come this way without you.”

“You could. The night court would—”

“I know, I know. You offered this before and I said I didn’t want it. Quit bringing it up.”

“No need to growl, grumpy bear.”

I laughed, a hoarse grating sound. “I thought I was a wolf.”

“It changes, moment to moment,” she replied. “And you’re not, you know.”

“A wolf or a bear?”

“An idiot. You’re a very intelligent man. One of the smartest men I’ve been privileged to meet.”

Is Death Truly Inevitable?

This week at the SFF Seven we're discussing The Necessity of Death.

In fiction, of course! 

We're asking "Do You *Have* To Kill Characters for there to be enough risk? What other threats work better or just as effectively?"

This is one of those topics readers and writers alike seem to debate often. The readers, of course, never want any character they love to die. This includes all animals and children, named or not. (As a reader, I agree!) 

Writers, however, often feel the pinch of this expectation. Death is, after all, a part of life. And without the peril of death, the stakes of any conflict can feel flat. Though we do enjoy making our readers cry, we also want them to be happy with the story. A cathartic ugly cry is a wonderful reading experience. Coming away from a book bitter and grieving? I don't like it, myself.

I recall an author asking this question on some writer forum a while back. He had a long-running series with a central protagonist. All along, he'd planned to kill this guy at the end. But, the series had gone longer than he anticipated, gaining many passionate readers. Seeing this character's fate coming, they'd begun writing to the author to beg him not to kill the character at the end. The author was seriously torn. He felt that this certain death was so integral to the story - as indeed it must have been, for readers to anticipate and write to him about it - that he worried doing anything else would be a cheat.

Would it have been? 

One well-known author killed her protagonist at the of a series, to great dismay from her readers. This was something she'd planned from the beginning, as she wrote the books in reaction to what she felt was a cheat ending to the Harry Potter series. She thought Harry should've died at the end, so created her own series to execute that exact arc. That author has defended the ending by saying that the series is about this character learning to be selfless and that only by making the "ultimate sacrifice" - by dying - could she truly learn that lesson.

But... is that the case?

This is the crux of what we're asking here. Is death of a character necessary to demonstrate something? You'll notice I put "ultimate sacrifice" in quotation marks, but is giving up one's own life really the greatest sacrifice? I'd argue that dying can be easier than living through difficulty. Making restitution to people you've wronged can take tremendous effort and suffering - something that arguably takes much more strength of character than escaping into death. 

With THE PROMISED QUEEN coming out next week, quite a few readers are revisiting the first two books in The Forgotten Empires - THE ORCHID THRONE and THE FIERY CROWN - and making guesses about how the trilogy will end. There are a few questions they want answered and one has to do with the quote above. I think I'm spoiling nothing when I say that I believe that repaying debts and suffering to truly change is far more meaningful for a character than merely dying. 

        

Myers-Briggs versus Stories

The Myers-Briggs Personality Types get used a lot in the corporate world in the US. If you ever worked for a large corporate enterprise, chances are good you've taken a version of this test. It's where I ran into it the first time many long years ago. It's interesting, but I find it lacking. I prefer the Gallup Clifton Strengths personality information.

It's strictly because the Myers-Briggs is so malleable. Depending on your mood, you can totally change your four letter descriptor. I'm INFP. The dreamy one. Until, as KAK said, I'm not. Turns out, the middle two letters are pretty interchangeable for me. Digging into further, more detailed testing, I straddle the line between INTP, ISTP, or ISFP. I test out 50% between N and S, between T and F. Finding that out explained a lot about me to me. Hooray, right? What does it mean in regard to writing? 

It means that I have a lot more personality quirks to feed before I can toddle off and produce work. I can't just be the dreamy Introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving personality and emotional type I default to.  I have to keep an eye out for that Sensing and Thinking part of my spectrum, too, especially thinking. If you get into the Clifton Strengths testing, you'll find your personality broken into 34 specific traits that are stack ranked. Your top 5 are your home base. Your top 10  are the neighborhood where you're comfortable walking after dark. Part of my top 5 are learner and input  - both big thinking traits. The point to this is to learn how to play to your strengths while writing. While you're working on books and producing content.

The profit of personality tests in corporate America was to help us deal with our coworkers who might operate from a different set of personality letters than we do. Theory held that once we understood that, we'd have better interaction and rapport. As if a personality test could change the fact that Al from marketing is a jerk. 

In writing, I suspect the personality types give each of us particular strengths. Because I'm INFP, I want my characters to speak to me. I want scenes to just come to me (and they usually do). I don't want to have to work too hard at writing which sounds utterly inane, but my particular strength is synthesizing at the threshold of consciousness and trusting that whatever is brewing back there will rise from the deep haunted water of my psyche. Some people have to consciously work through a story and there are times I do as well, but mostly, stories come to my head fully formed. (Except this past year where pretty much nothing has entered my head because health anxiety especially for my father.)

The biggest personality trait that affects my writing is the fact that I'm an all or nothing person. That means I'm all in or I'm all the way out. There' not in between. If I'm going to write a book, there's the door. Hush up. Don't say goodbye, just go. The sooner the better. Then I'll spend the next 72 hours doing nothing by writing and drowning in story. And making tea. INFP means I need to understand a scene emotionally. Until I do, I cannot write it.

Normally, I don't even think about personality types. I don't type my character personalities. I think more in terms of strengths and wounds and build my story arcs around that. 

I'm interested in knowing if you know which combo of letters you are and where you did your first test.

Making it Personal: Backstabbing Best Friends

 

Our topic for the week is all thanks to the Ides of March and legendary backstabbers. Who's the best backstabber in fiction?

Dear people, I give you Fernand Mondego.

What a jerk, right?

I have ridiculous love for The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I've been taken with the tale since I was a teen and am currently working on a fantasy novel inspired by it. When the movie with Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce released in 2002, you can imagine my delight. Though the story and characters had been changed pretty drastically, the essence of the original work remained. And I LOVED IT. Still do. I will never turn down an opportunity to catch a viewing, and I'm re-reading the book this year, too.

In my opinion, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the best revenge tales ever written--if not THE best. However, the betrayal in the film felt even more severe than in the novel. How? Why?

Because Fernand's character received an excellent revision, IMO.

In the film, Edmond and Fernand are best friends. In the book, the young men are merely acquaintances (Fernand is Mercedes' cousin). Because there's no personal history between the men in the book, the knife of Fernand's betrayal, though still buried deep, doesn't strike the reader's heart quite so sharply. 

Until I prepared for this blog post, I'd known the villain in my novel was missing something, some detail, some WHY for his dastardly behavior, but wildly enough, even given how much I adore The Count's tale, both film and book, I couldn't put my finger on the issue. Last night, the answer hit me.

The deception is awful, but it's not personal enough. It doesn't cut to the bone.

I even recalled some old writing advice I'd read and stored in the cobwebby corners of my mind: MAKE EVERYTHING PERSONAL. MAKE IT HURT. The stakes, betrayals, loss, etc. will affect our characters and readers much more if raised to that next degree--the emotional degree.

It was like a lightbulb went off in my brain, though I felt dim for not having seen the answer before. Thus is the writer's life, I suppose. Betrayal hurts more when committed by someone we believe loves us, or at least a person who possesses some level of loyalty and familiarity. This also affects the villain/protagonist relationship across plot points, because the game totally changes when a character is up against someone they know well--or thought they knew well. There's soooo much writers can do with this type of conflict, so many twists to explore. It's FUN, y'all!

So, if you're wondering how to amp up the conflict in your tale or if something feels off, examine the emotional layer. Is the conflict personal? Can you revise and dig deeper? Don't be afraid to try.

Remember: If Dumas can benefit from a revision, we all can ;)

Explosions as Plot Devices

Marcella stares hard at the gauntlet laying at her feet. She nods and picks it up. If you read Jeffe Kennedy's Sunday post, you may have noted that she mentioned I defend explosions as plot devices. It's true. I've said that often. It's my own lame attempt at a joke, as well as an attempt to give stuck writers (especially me) permission to escape what feels like a dead end story loop. Don't know how to resolve a scene/section of your book? Fine. Blow something up and move on. Give yourself that permission. Nine times out of ten, that random act of silliness will move you past boxed-in thinking and you'll get back to focusing on the narrative arc. Once that happens, you're likely to solve the plot/character arc problem that I suggested solving with the placeholder explosion. So there you are. Tacit permission to use fireballs as a means to distract yourself when you're stuck. This is by no means permission to light your entire manuscript on fire, however. The flames stay in the words you put on the page. Only rule.

I can't disguise the fact that I love blowing stuff up. In fiction. I don't think there's a book or story I've written yet where a hero or heroine doesn't bomb something. Thus the joke about explosions as plot devices. However, I'm a character driven writer rather than a plot driven writer. That means that plot comes from who my characters are, what their wounds and fears are, and what challenges they need to face in order to become better versions of themselves. If they're going to. So when I talk about explosions, whether literal or metaphorical, not only am I writing a fight scene, sex scene, political struggle scene, or sabotage scene that destroys an object or objects in a story, the action of the scene must also destroy my protagonist in some vital way. I'm either shattering arrogance or confidence or trust or defenses. Or possibly, I'm shattering a character's view of themselves as incompetent. Whatever it is. Every explosion has to have corpses. I'm just bloodthirsty enough that while there may be actual dead bodies on the ground or floating in space, there's also some aspect of the MC that dies at the same time.

A fight has to have a point and I'm happiest if that point skewers good guys and bad guys in some way all in one go. So in that regard, the only good explosion (plot device) is one that ends up with unforeseen collateral damage. I love walking my characters right up to what they imagine is their strong suit, having them deploy it to devastating effect, only to have them discover that their most prized weapon cut them in some vital way, too.

Damn it. I can't believe I'm sitting here effectively arguing for 'cost of magic' when the whole notion in fantasy offends me. But it is what I'm doing. Crap. 'Cost of magic' is the notion that every talent your protagonist possesses comes at a cost. Where does the energy for magic (or explosions or ability to pilot a spaceship) come from and how does that impact your MC and the people around them? It makes sense from a physics standpoint - every action having that equal and opposite reaction. It's just that in fiction, we get to widen our definition of equal and opposite reaction. In fact, I think we have to. I can write reams about the physics of recoil in space, but that's far less interesting than the recoil inside my characters or inside the structures they've built in their lives. It's far more interesting to me to have a character blow up a bad guy's hide out and discover she's also unwittingly blown up her rocky relationship with her dad.

So this is me, hugging my explosions tight, and saying, "Yeah, but EMOTIONS." I'm defending the right to blow things up. Just remember to scorch the eyebrows off whoever lit the fuse.

Road Maps for Complex Plots

News: I have a release date for Enemy Within - July 17, 2019. 

I also have a new foster cat. She doesn't have a name yet. She had been dumped at the feral colony a few months ago. She integrated very well with the other cats, so we assumed she was fine, then one day, she showed up limping. We managed to pick her up and run her to the vet. Something bit her - either one of the other cats or a racoon. She's got an infection brewing in there, so she's had antibiotic shots. She'll have oral antibiotics for a few weeks, too. 

She's a sweet girl with a deep love for being brushed. She'll be with me until she's healed up. We'll be looking for a rescue placement for her so she'll have a chance to find a home that won't discard her ever again. 

Complicated plots. That's what we're here for today. You, my friend, have come to the right place. Complicated plots (some might say convoluted) R I. How do I keep it all straight? Pff. Who says I do? 

I absolutely lose track of what the hell I'm doing and have done. But there's almost always a roadmap that I can refer to - not an outline. Character profiles guide my way. Because for me, all plot comes from what the characters need in order to force them into their arcs, all the complications arise from what the characters need, too. I do pretty intense character work, digging into psychology, deep motivation and the bits of my characters' natures that lead them astray.

Any time I lose my way, I return to my character profiles and remember why we all called this party in the first place. From time to time, like the book I just shipped to beta readers, I *really* lose my way and not only do I have to go back to the character maps, I have to redraw those maps entirely while inching my way along the story, trying to figure it out as I go. We'll see what the beta readers have to say about how I did. 

To keep track of specific threads for complex plots, I keep a notebook for each story. Mostly, it's silly notes about DON'T FORGET THE THING! Remember you meant to do x with this event and this character! Stuff like that. It's one of those things - if I write it down, I'll remember it and not need to consult my notes. If I don't write it down, I will only remember that I'd meant to do something cool AND I'd failed to make any useful notes. O_o I do try not to get too het up about continuity until the editing stages. That's really where I get a little OCD about making sure every thread is caught up in the larger weave of story. If they aren't, they either have to be snipped, or woven in and tied. 

It isn't a foolproof process, but it does seem to work for me so far. I hope.

Star Wars Last Jedi Rant With Spoilers.

Tis the season wherein no one knows who they are, much less what day of the week it is. No one reads the blog this last week of the year. Therefore. I CAN RUN AMOK. Haha. I will bring it back around to writing/story craft, though. I promise.

If you haven't yet seen the latest Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, TURN BACK NOW. I have seen the movie and I HAZ OPINIONS. There will be swearing. There will be spoilers. You have been warned.

Here. Have a winter sunrise to shield your tender eyes from what is to come whilst you attempt to flee this spoiler-laden rant.

All righty. Let's get straight to the geek talk. For that silent ten seconds of the most glorious and gorgeous bit of film I've seen outside of the Wonder Woman movie, I adore this film. However. I am sorry to say that the writer(s) broke faith with their story consumers. Herein lies my rant.

Can we all agree that at heart, the Star Wars franchise is Joseph Campbell's work made space opera manifest? It's a HERO'S JOURNEY. Well. When it's done correctly. And in this case, there's an entire story thread where our intrepid writers got hopelessly lost. Hopelessly. 

I'm talking about the Finn and Rose story line. I wish I could call it an arc, but that's the problem. There isn't one. An arc implies characters in need of change - they begin their story with a flaw, a flaw which prevents them from achieving a goal. You see this done very plainly with Poe, right? Leia demotes the dude because his hubris got people killed. His goal is plain, too: He wants to lead. But he can't until he learns that not every problem can be solved with a gun. What's Finn's flaw? Rose's?

Anyone? I'll wait. That's right. Neither of them HAS a flaw. How about goals? You know. Past playing fetch in order to save everyone? Nopers. Nothing there, either. No clue what either of them wants. 

So you have these two people, sent off on a wild damned goose chase that fails - not because they cannot face and conquer their failings - but because of shitty luck. Not once. Not twice. THREE TIMES they fail to do anything remotely meaningful to contribute to the theme of the story and there's no WHY to the failures.

In a hero's journey, the hero reaches for a goal and fails because internal change has not yet taken place - it's that failure that spurs change - the character must make a choice - own the flaw and mend it or don't. If they cannot mend themselves or learn their lessons, they cannot reach their goals and that character becomes the star either of a tragedy, a literary novel, or a cautionary tale. So when I talk about failures needing a why, for story to work in the Western psyche, we need that flaw/goal/antagonist cycle. These were clear for Rey and for Poe. They were totally absent for Finn and Rose. 

Note this is not the fault of the actors! This debacle rests firmly at the feet of whoever wrote that story thread. In every single case, they fail their short term goals (find the code breaker! Oh no! Arrested for parking violation! But they find a different code breaker, but they get caught because luck! So code breaker betrays everyone. Need I go on? I swear. If it weren't for bad luck, Finn and Rose would have no luck at all.)

There was no character development of these two people because neither of them changed. Neither of them were called to change. They merely went galloping off into danger because - I dunno - they'd just mainlined every last episode of the original Scooby Doo and kids cruising into danger sounded like fun? Sure, sure, we find out some backstory on Rose, but frankly, without knowing what her goal is, I have no reason to care. And those segments that followed the pair of them dragged. The scenes were hollow and wooden. They didn't resonate. Not the way scene of Poe turning away from a fight to yell at everyone to listen - and then, having learned his lesson, leading them to escape.

So anyway. I'd like to slap some sense into the Last Jedi writer(s). Years and years ago, L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp put together a how to book for writing speculative fiction as they preferred to call it. They spent a chapter convincing the reader that luck and twists of cruel fate were lazy writing. If you spend pages and pages getting your character off that planet filled with man-eating iguana people, tuck the heroes safe into their get away ship only to have them hit and destroyed by an asteroid, you aren't clever. You're just a jerk. Though maybe the how to guided didn't actually use that wording. Whoever wrote the Finn and Rose story thread never read this how to guide, apparently, and subsequently robbed the characters and the viewers of the hero's journey we'd signed up for.