Stories begin with character. I usually develop a character by writing his or her thoughts, language and interactions. A more efficient writing style would first plan and construct character flaws to build the story.
“Write Fiction Like a Pro,” an online class by Steve Alcorn, defines a flaw as an emotional shortcoming of the character. All great stories build on the protagonist realizing and overcoming one of these flaws. The classic flaws include lack of self-confidence, lack of self-worth, insecurity, naivety, inability to put the past behind, inability to face the past, inability to trust others, inability to make a commitment, stubbornness, rashness, prejudice, selfishness, arrogance, envy and greed.
Earlier this year, the New Yorker published a short story, “All You Have To Do,” by Sarah Braunstein. One of the reviews claimed the narrator’s flaw was that he sees his world in a limited way. What kind of flaw is that? A real flaw might be naivety, lack of self-worth, or inability to make a commitment.
The next on the plotting block is the antagonist’s flaw. A story’s conflict originates from the antagonist’s opposing force with an equal but opposite flaw. For example, Divergent by Veronica Roth, pairs protagonist, Tris (lack of confidence) with Erudite leader, Jeanine Matthews (overconfident). Unlike the protagonist, the antagonist’s flaw is tragic and causes failure. The antagonist’s composition was perhaps my biggest take away from this online class.
My goal in any class is to refine my work-in-progress list. The target this time was a short story I wrote in March. The story was too big for 1500 words, and additional scenes were already forming in my mind. Then, Ginny Wiehardt posted Top 7 Signs Your Short Story Wants to be a Novel, and I knew what I had to do. My protagonist’s flaw was an inability to put the past behind. While he fought a secret enemy, the opposition was missing. I tweaked the teenage shopkeeper to focus on his own selfish future with a hint of sociopath in the mix. The lack of concern for others gave my protagonist a reason and a cause to live in the present.
Another exercise in the class included identifying the passion that inspires my writing. My answer was relationships, secrets and science. Consider the relationship of parents and their teenage children. Both are ready to part, fearful of the separation, and concerned about the secrets lurking between them. To practice flaws — opposition and a subtle mirroring — here is an example of characters I dreamed to life today: The parent, the story’s protagonist, selects the farthest seat from the incoming students at the matriculation ceremony. His folding chair, one of the few seats in the late afternoon shade, has a slight leftward tilt, the ground slanting toward the sidewalk of the college quadrangle. The protagonist takes a printed program, a quality piece designed for a permanent place in the bottom of some mother’s drawer, and finds his son’s name. The boy reminds him somewhat of his ex-wife but more specifically of his brother-in-law, currently housed at the federal penitentiary in Otisville, New York. He scans the other students’ names. From the thousand enrolled in the same graduating class with his progeny, one name is a blatant defiance of the strict and conditional wording that accompanied his generous gift to the college of science. He stands, tosses the program in the trash can and glances right just in time to see his son, the antagonist, hand lifted in a mocking wave as if nothing was wrong.
This character sketch offers many potential flaws to build a story. The protagonist is rash and unable to put the past behind. The antagonist hints at some arrogance and naivety. Many things could go wrong on a near perfect August day.
Another practice idea is to watch movies for the character flaws in the protagonist and the antagonist. Watch for the conflict, and you will find the flaws whether the movie is Silver Linings Playbook, Man of Steel, Run All Night, or Woman in Gold.
I’ve been asked on more than one occasion why I don’t go to the movies anymore, or watch drama television. My short answer is, ‘It puts me to sleep.’ Which is true enough, but when I analyze it, I realize it’s not the visuals that put me off, but the audio tracks. Every time someone of 007’s elk gets into a jam – which is about every other minute in most dramas – the producer decides to trump the scene with sound effects. It’s almost as if they’re trying to block your inner ear. And they succeed, overwhelmingly so. That’s the main reason I don’t watch what I write. Listening to pianos and violins while watching our hero and villain duke it out on the edge of a cliff is a stretch too far. Where’s the orchestra? To catch this on the page, the novelist would have to write something like… “With each punch I landed, violins screeched in my ear; with each punch he landed, a piano struck a low chord.” That’s about as ridiculous as it sounds!
Films and television drama today are all eye candy, but the worst of the worst are sitcoms with laugh tracks. I think Seinfeld is great, but I can’t watch it for more than a few minutes. I’m old enough to judge what’s funny and would love to be able to see it without someone else’s interpretation. I love standup comedy, though.
Novelists have to appeal to more than just the eyes if they want to capture readers. The only way you can do that on the page is to get inside the head of your reader; open up their inner senses. Only on the page can you taste what’s cooking, feel the warmth of a touch, and smell the earthy dew at dawn. None of which comes across on the screen. Today’s film producers put so much weight on visual effects they’ve forgotten that silence speaks volumes.
Alfred Hitchcock was the master of silence. Hitchcock – whose logo was his bulbous silhouette – could keep an audience holding its collective breath staring at a pitch-black stairwell with only creaking footsteps getting louder. No soundtrack could be more frightening.
I enjoy watching most live sporting events. They usually do a good job with color commentary that adds to the coverage. But a few sportscasters just tell you what the cameras are showing, and that’s about as entertaining as having someone sitting next to you constantly saying watch this! Live auto racing is notorious for watch this commentary. Watching auto racing on mute is more dramatic, too.
I also enjoy watching programs that deal with nature, animals, science and history. Some of these programs are starting to introduce soundtracks, and I think they’re making a mistake. I guess they’re afraid they’ll lose the audience if they don’t put out something dramatic to hear while the lion slowly stalks the antelope on a starry night. I’d rather hear the crickets go quiet as the lion closes in. I’d rather see the antelope perk its ears at the sudden dead quiet. That would be much more dramatic, whether you’re rooting for the lion or the antelope. Instead, they cue the orchestra and rob viewers of nature’s voice. Where’s the remote?
My wife subscribes to Netflix and will watch hour after hour of the same series. She calls it binge TV. I call it nap time.
Sure, we all know that, but too often, we are frozen by the blank screen or paper we call Writers Block. At least, that’s the excuse we tell ourselves.
The only way to break down that wall is to write.
And that brings us back to the beginning. How do we begin writing? Where do we find ideas?
Blog Writing Challenges
Whether you have written or write for a blog, you need some social media presence to maximize this option. People are sharing their creative arsenal to battle the widespread war of writer’s block across the webisphere. These challenges are sites all across the Internet. Your journey is to find them.
I’m a fan of the social media site Twitter. Unlike Facebook, it’s an open media without memberships or restrictions. Connecting with writers and readers and celebrities is a Follow click away. Unlike LinkedIn, it’s not business-focused. Unlike Google+, this is not a new, unknown experiment. Twitter is established, creative and short to swallow with its 140-character limit in each Tweet. It’s easy to find similar topics and groups with a simple #hashtag search.
On the day I wrote this, I found an array of challenges with directed yet general hashtag searches. Some of these lead directly to the moderator’s website, while others simply group posts together under that specific hashtag.
Searching the Twitter hashtag #challenge showed writing and non-writing Tweets. Scrolling through feed, the most relevant ones came from users like @convince to post a photo with every Tweet for one week, @RonovanWriteswith his weekly haiku prompt and @lettrs posing a #WordOfTheDay challenge.
One of my favorite hashtags is #6WordStory, a challenge posed by @Kelsye. Other searches relevant and directed to writers include: #WritingChallenge; #poetrychallenge; #FiveSentenceFiction; #haikuchallenge; and #fictionchallenge.
Twitter is not case-sensitive, so upper- and lower-case usage is personal preference. The words get you to the same location. I like to capitalize some of the longer hashtags to make them easier to read.
The beauty of Twitter is the prompts are provided, and the ideas out there are bountiful. Once you find an inspirational idea, attack that challenge with all your creative energy. Many people link to their personal blogposts, but you don’t need a blog to participate. Create a separate file on your computer and dedicate 15 minutes a day to play with words. Do an email exchange with a friend or family member. If you are uncomfortable sharing, choose a journal to write in for your personal enjoyment.
If you want to publicly share your accomplishments submit these, or parts of it, on your social media or link posts to your personal blog. If you want to make a visual expression of your art, use a smartphone app like InstaQuote or Notegraphy to create a graphic to share with others or save to your camera roll.
Using photos allows your social media reach to increase. The Twitter user @asilartist tied her #9WordStory challenge together by cross-posting from her @reclaimed poet Instagram account. The same hashtag exploration applies there. I found creative posts with the tags: #WritingChallenge; #PoetryChallenge; #threewordstory; #poemaday; #flashfiction; and #4WordStory.
Beware! Most users will use more than one tag, adding several related hashtags so their post can reach various audiences. As your curiosity increases, you will find yourself winding through a maze of related hashtags so that you can forget the original hashtag you started searching for. It’s glorious. It’s frustrating.
There are worse things than being lost in a new tag that connects to a newer tag that inspires you to search for a personal interest of yours. It’s the only way to drag yourself over that tall writers block wall.
The music was too loud and Sienna’s head was pounding. It was too soon to be wearing a dress so tight she actually had cleavage and spiked heels so tall she felt like she would fall on her face. But Megan said she looked killer when she helped pick it out. And if she happened to come across Layton while out, well, dammit, she wanted to look and feel like a goddess.
“Ugh!” Sienna lifted her hand and tried to block the flashing lights searching for Megan. Her friend would be pissed. But if she didn’t get out of this club this instant, she was going to have a total melt down, witnesses aplenty. When Megan appeared dancing between two very tall, very hot men, Sienna sighed and made her way over to the man sandwich.
Megan’s smoky done-up eyes lit with glee. Her brows dancing in a, look-at-these-hot-guys kind of way. She couldn’t help but smile, until she yelled to the guy behind her, “Dance with Sienna,” she said, “her ex-boyfriend is a total dick.” Megan snuggled her butt to his pelvis so close when she spoke, she could claim they knew each other more than just this one encounter. Why did that notion piss her off? Sienna frowned as a surge of jealousy straightened her spine. Never mind, she shook her head at the thought, and regretted it. Her groan washed out by the music. Grabbing her head to settle the spinning, her bed and dark room her only thoughts. She needed to get home.
The one Megan spoke to finally looked at Sienna. She barely could raise her head to see his stare. Appraising and heated his scan started at her toes, winding his way up and over every inch of her overheated skin making her tingle in all the right places, her pain momentarily forgotten. He tilted his head and his fiery gaze changed to a questioning glance that was surprisingly more open and approachable. She saw actual concern.
Sienna took him in, cataloging his attractiveness. Too perfect. She tried to clear her mind negating her interest she felt stirring. Thoughts of getting involved with another man, with perfect hair and perfect bone structure and well…perfect everything should be the last thing on her mind.
“I’m going home,” she yelled to Megan. Her friend stopped gyrating, turned and gave Sienna her full attention.
“You can’t leave yet!” Outrage rung in her tone, but Sienna knew Megan would let her do what she needed to, if she wasn’t feeling well.
“My head’s pounding,” which proved truer then she would have liked, when the song changed and the bass got even deeper, harder, and possibly even louder.
Sienna swayed as flashes of light in her vision made standing more precarious and the pounding in her head not even related a little bit to the music. The light turned to a vibrating rainbow of zigzags, the strobe lights on the dance floor nowhere near the plethora of color needling her eyes like fractured glass. She felt hands wrap around her shoulders.
“Are you okay?”
Sienna blinked and the man that went with the voice bent at his knees to look into her eyes. Her vision cleared in what she knew was only a short reprieve. Grabbing onto the man so she wouldn’t fall, she realized she was moving, bodies pushing and swaying into her, with each jostle her nausea grew.
“Megan?” She questioned, her voice floating away into the sea of bodies.
“I’m right here baby-cakes,” her best friend said, “Stuart’s got you.” She heard a masculine laugh behind her that was deeper than the man’s that was helping her. The other man must have been the one grinding on Megan earlier, she thought. Then she realized Megan had told her her rescuer’s name.
“You don’t look like a Stuart,” she mumbled, the pain in her head making speech her words slur.
He leaned in and touched his lips to her ear from behind. She would have shivered from delight, him being so close, but her head hurt too damn much. “Call me Saint.”
The next thing Sienna knew she was leaning against a very large, very tweaked out F-150 Ford Pickup.
“Sienna, Saint is going to drive you home.”
“What?” Her mind was reeling with all the things wrong about that statement. Her mind screamed the words, “I can’t go home with a complete stranger,” but the words came out on a whisper. The next thing she knew Saint buckled her into the seat. “Megan? Megan!” Both her hands held her head still as she struggled not to vomit.
“Right here, honey.”
Sienna turned her head and looked down. Megan stood at the open door.
“Stuart,” she said and then laughed as a growl came from the driver’s side. “I mean Saint, is driving you home and his friend and I are going to follow behind to make sure you’re all tucked in and comfy in bed. Her brows danced up and down again. She tended to do that when she was drunk. Okay, so her friend was useless right now as it related to driving. Great! She whined in her head. Then moaned again closing her eyes leaning back against the headrest, taking deep inhalations through her nose and out.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she said.
“Mmm.” That’s all she could utter. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
“You all set?” the low voice next to her said.
“Mmm hmm.”
Her door slammed and she flinched. Saint started his truck and they took off. Sienna wanted to look behind her and see if Megan was following in the car, truck, whatever, behind them, but she was afraid if she moved even a millimeter, that vomit that threatened earlier would decide to make an appearance.
When the truck stopped, she didn’t move, trying to concentrate on anything but the pain. When her door opened and arms went under her knees and behind her back, and Saint lifted her into his very strong arms, she let herself fall against an extremely hard and sculpted chest. Yeah, she thought. That would do it. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
“Baby, keys.”
“Huh?” she muttered.
“Baby, I can’t open your door if I don’t have keys.”
“Oh, right.” Opening her eyes slowly, as if superglued shut, she looked around for her key. “Where’s my purse,” she finally asked.
She felt a feather light touch across her cheek. That felt nice. “It’s in your hand sweetheart.”
“It is?”
She started to float down until her feet hit her porch. Not steady on her stilettos she didn’t let go of Saint. Lifting her hand, she stared at her purse hanging from her wrist as if she’d never seen it before. Saint laughed softly, took it from her and opened it, reached in and grabbed the key.
He unlocked the door and helped her inside. He went to turn on the lights and she said, “No! Leave them off.” Sienna swayed on her feet, her voice too loud in her head. Her belly sunk and flipped with acid, her knees started to shake and sweat started to bead on her face. She needed her bed. She took a step forward and, sure enough, started to go down. And then she wasn’t. Arms lifted her up and she was floating again.
“Saint?”
“I’m still here.”
“Okay.” She could feel the corners of his mouth turn up in a smile as he held her close, but she didn’t dare look. Any movement would bring on more nausea. She needed darkness, quiet, and if possible she needed to be completely still until she could sleep.
Sienna heard loud bangs and giggling. Megan had followed them home as she said she would. When she hit soft comforter she thanked God for the respite. It wasn’t much, but she would take it.
“Do you need anything sweetheart?”
“Pill. Larger orange bottle. Bathroom cabinet,” she said, just audible.
She heard him moving around and didn’t care if he ran across her tampons or condoms. All she wanted was a migraine pill. Sienna felt the bed depress and a calloused hand wrap around her neck, lifting her head up. She cracked an eye open and saw what she needed. It wasn’t at all the man holding the pill.
“Open up, baby.” She pressed her lips tight. This man was a stranger. What was she doing? On a shaky inhale she opened up, he set the pill on her tongue, which was so intimate she didn’t know how to feel at the moment. Saint tipped the glass to her lips. She took a sip and swallowed. With the utmost care, he let her head come down onto her pillow and gently swept away the hair falling in her face.
“You going to be alright now?” He asked.
“Mm hmm.” His fingers caressed her cheek again. Why did that feel so nice? God! She didn’t need another man sneaking in behind her already shattered shields. Layton had done enough damage to them already. Her trust of any man should be non-existent. But somehow, this man taking the utmost care with her made her feel safe.
Giggling interrupted the contemplation of all her bad choices.
“Oh, sorry,” Megan whispered, snorted, as she fell into the room.
Saint got up and looked down at her.
“You coming, man?” she heard Hot Guy Number Two say.
“Yeah,” Saint replied. He started to walk toward the door, Megan and Saint’s friend exiting before him.
Saint had just walked under the doorframe about to leave when Sienna blurted one word she wanted take back—the concept so asinine–the instant it floated past her lips.
Tempted by the forty free online writing classes available at my public library, I enrolled as an experiment. The full catalog of 350 courses competed with MOOCs (massive open online courses) and delivered a shorter continuing education opportunity in writing and other business topics. I joined with a hundred online learners from across the country and Canada for a brief six weeks of creative writing lessons. The interaction and other classmates were as interesting as the course content.
The exercises began innocently enough asking each student’s reason for taking the class. I’ll share several of my submissions. For instance, here’s my introduction:
The dog made me do it. He worries about neglecting important things like watching sunsets, skipping rocks at the lake and hiking nearby trails.
It was irreverent compared to the other classmates’ expressions of genuine excitement and unbridled nervousness. They used their first name, their full name or a nickname like Jelly Bean, Milwaukee Maiden, GalSal or Mother Bird. The anonymous classroom became a haven for over sharing. I discovered, most of the class was currently in crisis – death of a loved one, newly retired, birth of an infant, empty nests, schizophrenia, cancer, abuse, graduates from high school or college, English lit major wanna be’s, traumatized veterans, divorcees, joblessness, dead end jobs, stressful “on the verge of quitting” jobs, sexuality concerns, and caregivers to parents and spouses. The class offered an outlet to cope, a catharsis for the traumas of the past, present and future.
To that note, I was not so far removed from crisis myself. One of the assignments required writing about a candle. Pent up emotions spilled into this exercise. Yes, tears fell on the keyboard over an imaginary candle with a fictitious past.
The tin box sits next to an empty and worn book of matches from a Mexican restaurant near my mother’s old house and a cigarette lighter I confiscated when my teenager flirted with smoking. Graphic whirls of block printed roses decorate the lid. The image resembles both my college hand-carved block printing and my Connecticut rose garden including the wicked, hateful thorns of the floribundas deceptively named Cinderella. Yet, the tin hints of a different Cinderella – purses, crowns, wavy flourishes and little flower dots of pink – and a costume, plastic face mask on top of a printed rayon tunic visible through the cellophane window of a shallow cardboard box. I lift the candle’s lid, smell the sickly perfume of roses and remember my mother. I spark the lighter. The candle wick, a charred nub at the bottom of a melted ring in the wax, fails to light. I return the heart-shaped tin and matches to the drawer with other keepsakes and throw the lighter in the trash under the sink.
Two months after writing about that candle, I reread my passage and still feel the complex emotional mother child relationship, filled with roses, thorns and cigarette lighters. Fortunately, the next assignment was safe from my own memories and focused on a prompt, an ex-spouse arriving on a bus in a snowstorm. Each student chose a point of view and present or past tense. My classmates, more savvy to the woes and causes of divorce, wrote of anger, betrayal, infidelities, abuse and addiction. Instead, I wrote of a homesick young man uncertain of his future.
John jolted awake at the bus driver’s announcement of Grand Haven. The snow globe effect of pelting white flakes obscured the view of his hometown bus depot. He grabbed his backpack and rushed to the door to find whichever family member drew the short straw and had to pick him up in this miserable weather. His mom probably paced at home at the front door waiting for him, having planned a family get-together to hear his tales of living in New York, the small bit part in an off Broadway theater and his new friends in the city. Bounding down the steps, John slipped on the last wet step, tumbled out the door and landed spread eagle on top of a woman waiting with her bag. Expecting her to be angry or hurt, John jumped up only to discover Martha hysterically laughing and joking about his daring dive and poor timing to wait until their divorce was final for a grand effort.
The most joyful assignment embraced free writing – unfiltered and unedited. The instructor explained about Galumphing and Bricolage. Galumphing was to select an item from three different categories – a person, a place, and an object. I chose Bricolage which was to write whatever comes to mind about trivial objects, such as a candy wrapper.
The iridescent candy wrapper rested in my palm, a tidy two inch square of yellowish cellophane. In my kitchen, I sucked on the hard candy, mystified at the pleasant, yet unrecognizable, exotic flavor. And when I glanced again at the wrapper, it was twice the size. I scratched at my head, pondering where had I found this odd candy. Oh yes, it was in the console of my car after I had let my lost, and recently found, relative Larry take the car for the week to Burning Man. I wanted to ask him about the candy, but Larry, was still sleeping in my guest bedroom, a walk-in closet if you want to be precise, and by the sound of his snoring, probably out of contact for the next four to six days. Now, the candy wrapper was weighing heavy on my hands and increasing to the size of a poster board. I reached for the ruler in my kitchen drawer and found I was too short. The wrapper had not grow; I had shrunk. Naked, I slipped out of my very large clothes and tore a bit of the wrapper to use for petite clothing. I vaguely remembered seeing other candies in different colored wrappers. If the yellow wrapped candy made me small, what did the others do? Which color should I eat next?
For each of the assignments The instructor urged the class to follow the golden rule of feedback – give comments to receive comments. My fragile crisis-fraught classmates needed support, encouragement and praise for their brave undertakings. And every evening, I returned to the class website to see the comments left for me, such as the ones below on my Bricolage candy wrapper exercise.
Jenn on 5/28/2015 10:09:51 AM
What a great twist! I love it! Makes me think of Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So creative!
GalSal on 5/28/2015 12:46:57 PM
Wow–I was so fooled until you said you had shrunk. Great imagination!
Chuck on 5/29/2015 8:17:01 AM
Great creativity, it kept me spellbound. Are we having fun yet?
Joy on 5/29/2015 5:27:38 PM
I struggled with bricolage but you made it seem easy to be creative with something so simple
Dave on 5/30/2015 10:10:56 AM
A great start and you could take it in two interesting ways. The obvious, fantasy way, is to go on a hunt for the other candy. The other way, the candy having come from Burning Man, is that the character is tripping and she might have some explaining to do to people that wonder why she is running around naked with a piece of candy wrapper for clothing.
Lea on 5/30/2015 6:42:35 PM
It also makes me think of Alice in Wonderland! I like the normalcy at the beginning while it slowly starts to become magical. Great 🙂
Mama Crow on 6/1/2015 5:53:07 AM
What an adventurous piece! Great job keeping the imagination vividly strong!
Milwaukee Maiden/Linda on 6/3/2015 4:52:21 PM
Very good storyline with a twist. I enjoyed reading it. You will make a great writer.
The course made me appreciate the ability of technology to engage humanity across the country. The encouraging comments were fun and an unexpected treasure. Before the class ended and all the words deleted, I copied the comments to a file and saved them for a time when I might need generous and supportive comments. For now, another class begins.
The parent, the story’s protagonist, selects the farthest seat from the incoming students at the matriculation ceremony. His folding chair, one of the few seats in the late afternoon shade, has a slight leftward tilt, the ground slanting toward the sidewalk of the college quadrangle. The protagonist takes a printed program, a quality piece designed for a permanent place in the bottom of some mother’s drawer, and finds his son’s name. The boy reminds him somewhat of his ex-wife but more specifically of his brother-in-law, currently housed at the federal penitentiary in Otisville, New York. He scans the other students’ names. From the thousand enrolled in the same graduating class with his progeny, one name is a blatant defiance of the strict and conditional wording that accompanied his generous gift to the college of science. He stands, tosses the program in the trash can and glances right just in time to see his son, the antagonist, hand lifted in a mocking wave as if nothing was wrong.
