Author Archives: Melanie Anne Phillips

Rising Tension in Character Relationships

Character relationships should come under strain over the course of your novel or screenplay so that tension in the relationship rises. To accomplish this, you need to create dramatic moments in which outside pressures put each relationship in an increasing vice-grip.

Conversely, overemphasizing tension might be detrimental, especially in particular genres. For example, in light comedy, action stories, and so on, relationship issues are not likely to be all that crucial or central. Nonetheless, relationship stress should still rise, just not to the same depth and degree. In short, keep an eye toward the overall mood you want for your story, and within that scope, bring tension to its maximum by the end of the third act.

Tension does not have to rise smoothly, but can lurch forward in fits and starts. ! The key is to mimic real life and the naturally uneven nature of the stress in our lives. Tension can rise slowly, then drop quickly in a momentary release, only to begin to rise again. Or, it can snap into place precipitously, only to gradually fade away. In fact, a single relationship might employ both of these techniques.

No matter how you get there, you will want to eventually arrive at a set of dramatic circumstances that brings each relationship to the maximum stress level. That is the point at which the relationship will stand or snap – the character climax of your story.

Characters’ Changing Emotional Relationships

Perhaps the most complex relationships among characters are the emotional ones because they can grow to any degree in any direction AND because both characters don’t have to feel the same way about each other!

For example, how many stories are written about “unrequited love” where one character is infatuated with the other, but the other is repulsed by them, yet in the end both may love each other, both hate each other, or they may have swapped positions, emotionally.

Another example is the younger brother who tags along with the older brother. To the younger, the older brother is his hero. To the older, the younger brother is a pest. Now, suppose the younger brother is attacked by a bully. The older brother may come to the rescue and defend his tag-along. But the moment the threat is gone and the younger brother looks up at his protector with glowing eyes, the older brother say, “Okay, get out of here and leave me alone.” Emotional relationships change with the slightest breeze and change back with the least provocation.

Consider the emotional relationships among the characters in your novel or screenplay. Now, consider your plot and also changes in situational relationships, such as who is second in command or married to whom. Go over the emotional journey of each of your characters as individuals. Then, imagine how each emotional relationships might shift, change, and grow for each of the characters due to changes in their situational relationships with others.

It is a fair amount of work, but you will find that this development more than any other will enrich your characters and the passionate experience of your story.

Introducing Characters: First Impressions

By Melanie Anne Phillips

When your reader/audience first meets your characters in a story, it has the same effects as when you are introduced to someone in real life. First impressions have a tremendous impact that you can use either to establish or mislead your reader/audience as to the true nature of each character.

You might tell your reader/audience all there is to know about a particular character right up front. But for another character, you may drop little bits of information over the whole course of the story. And, of course, you want to note how a character’s outlook and feelings change as the story unfolds.

Then there is the question of who shows up first? Joe, Tom, Sally, or the Monster? Characters introduced early on become more important to the reader/audience at a personal level, even though their roles may not be as significant in the story at large.

To elevate an interesting character who is not a major player, you may wish to introduce and follow him or until he or she latches up with a major character down the line. Or, you might reveal several characters together in a group activity to give them equal footing at that point in the story.

Who is your Main Character? Do you want to involve your audience immediately by bringing that character in first, or would you rather have them look more objectively at the characters and plot, introducing the Main Character later?

You know all about your characters while your audience knows nothing. It’s okay to reveal more about your characters later in the story, but you must lay the groundwork and reveal personality so that your audience can sympathize with them and feel for them as the story progresses. For complex characters, it may take the entire story before all their subtleties are revealed.

Sometimes an author may want to have a character with a dark side, or a hidden side that will be revealed only later in the story.  Try to introduce such a character’s facade as a complete persona, making it that much more shocking when you finally reveal their other face.

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For complete story development help, consider trying my
StoryWeaver Step By Step Story Development Software risk-free for 90 days.

And for even more personalized help,
contact me about my story consultation services.

Your Plot, Step by Step

Here are some general guidelines to help you structure your story’s plot, step by step.

Act One Beginning

The beginning of act one is the teaser. It may or may not have anything to do with the actual plot of the story. This is where you get the feel of the story and the feel of the main character. A good example is in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the very beginning Indiana Jones replaces a statue with a bag of sand and then gets chased through a lot of booby traps. This actually has nothing to do with the story to come, but it sets the tone and grips the audience.

Act One Middle

The middle of act one is the set up of the situation and goal. Even though you should reveal the goal in this section, you don’t need to have the protagonist accept the goal.

If your goal requires a lot of preparation before starting on the quest, then you might want to have the acceptance of the goal by the end of this section and the preparation in the next section.

In contrast, if your protagonist needs to think or do something before accepting the goal and/or there is no preparation needed for the goal, then the acceptance of the goal can happen in the end section of the first act instead.

Act One Ending

By the end of this section everything should be ready to embark on the quest. All preparation, all acceptance is completed. Just as when you are going on vacation you turn off all the lights, pet the dogs, lock the doors, put the suitcases in the car, get in the car, put on your seatbelt, start the car and drive off out of sight… all this is the first act. The second act begins with the car on the road.

Act Two Beginning

This section presents the beginning of the quest. It is the start of the actual journey. In many stories, this is an upbeat or at least hopeful time. Everything goes as planned. Keep in mind that throughout act two the difficulties in achieving the goal are constantly increasing. This is the section before that starts to happen; when it seems as if the journey will be a piece of cake.

Act Two Middle

This is possibly the most important section you will write. It is the midpoint, the exact middle of your story.

Act two has in it, either in the this second or the end section, a special problem, often called a “plot twist.” The stakes are raised in an unexpected form, and in so-doing the whole picture is changed.

In an action story it will change what the characters think they need to do and make the goal more difficult to achieve. In a character piece, this problem makes it more difficult to resolve their personal problems; it complicates them.

Now you have a choice to make. If your plot twist will require reorganization or recovery by the characters, then it should be in this section. But if the plot twist simply sends things in a new direction, then it should be at the end of the next section.

Act Two Ending

Now you have either put the ground shaking problem in the previous middle section, or you are planning to put it in this one. Remember that if your problem requires reorganization of material or the scheme, then the problem should have been in the last section leaving this section for reorganization and/or recovery. If you want to put the problem in this section, make sure the problem does not require reorganization.

So you can have act two go out with a bang if you drop your plot twist right at the end of this section. Or, if the the bang was in the middle section you can have this section (and act two) go out with a whimper.

Now don’t let the name fool you, a whimper can be very effective. As an example, suppose in the middle of Act Two a natural disaster occurs as the Plot Twist bang. All the food the group has with them is scattered to the winds. After this disaster, all the food that can be found must be found.

The end section of act two in this story would involve finding the food, patching bags, rounding up lost horses, fixing what’s broken and so on, recovering. At the very last, everything is ready to go, and the man who is carrying the food sees a last grain of rice on a rock, picks it up, drops it in a bag, gets on his horse and leaves.

That moment with the single grain of rice is the whimper. It ends the act with a subtle sense of closure and the anticipation that Act Three will begin with a new sense of purpose for the characters.

Act Three Beginning

Act three is the buildup to and, of course, the climax itself. All the plot points in the story have been set up in the first act, developed in the second, and the third act is where everything comes together for better or for worse.

The beginning of the third act is a response to the plot twist of the second act. If you put the twist in the middle of the second act, then the characters spent the remaining part of act two recovering from that set back and getting ready to start again. In such a case, the beginning of act three feels like the beginning of the quest all over again – with renewed resolve.

If you put the twist at the end of the second act, then it dropped like a bombshell and changed the whole purpose of what the characters are trying to achieve. In this case, act three begins with the characters setting off in a whole new direction than at the beginning of the quest.

Either way, the reader/audience should be made to know that this is the start of the final push toward the ultimate climax or reckoning.

Act Three Middle

Throughout the story, although the Protagonist and Antagonist may have come into conflict, there have always been extenuating circumstances that prevented an ultimate conflict. In the middle of act three, these circumstances are dismantled, one by one, until nothing more stands between these two principal characters.

At the end of this section it is clear that a final face-off is inevitable.

Act Three Ending

This is climax of your story. It is where the antagonist and protagonist meet for the final conflict. Your entire story has been leading up to this moment, with rising tension and suspense. All the stops are removed and the momentum cannot be turned aside.

When the Protagonist and Antagonist meet, they start with the small stuff, sizing each other up. This is true whether it is an action-oriented story or a character study. The dynamics are the same – only the weapons they use are different.

In action stories there will be physical weapons. In character stories, the weapons will be emotional. In stories about a single character grappling with personal problems, his or her demons come to bear, slowly but directly, building to the final breaking point.

In all kinds of stories, this section builds as the two camps (and their followers) pull stronger and stronger weapons out of their arsenal, since the smaller ones have proven ineffective.

The battle quickly becomes more heated, more imperative, and riskier. Eventually both the antagonist and protagonist have employing all the weapons they have at their disposal except one. They each retain a trump card, one last weapon that they have not yet used for fear that it might backfire or take them down along with their opponent. With the use of this last weapon the battle will be decided, one way or another.

The final moments of the ending of act three might take one of two directions:

1. The weapon (physical or emotion) is employed and the results are seen as the smoke clears.

2. The weapon is employed and the result is left in limbo until the conclusion (epilog, dénouement or “wrap-up”)

Conclusion

The conclusion is the aftermath and epilog. The climax is over and it’s time to take stock of all that has happened. The conclusion is both a cool down period for the reader/audience after the excitement of the climax and a wrap up of loose ends.

How did it all turn out? What was gained and what was lost? Was the effort to achieve the goal successful or not. Or, what the Goal only partially achieved, and was it enough?

In a sense, the conclusion is a new “set-up.” Just as the opening of your story set-up the way things are when the problem begins, the conclusion sets up how things are, now that it is over.

What kind of new situation has come into being through the changes wrought by the climax?

What Happens in Acts One, Two and Three?

By Melanie Anne Phillips

Here’s a good general template for beginning writers that outlines some of the key events and activities that are best addressed in each of your three acts.

ACT ONE

Act one is about the Set Up. It establishes the way things are when the problem begins. It introduces the problem, establishes the goal and its requirements, as well as the consequences if the goal is not achieved.

Many stories include a journey or quest that leads to the goal. In such stories, the first act concerns discovery of the need for and nature of the quest, the acceptance of the quest, and preparations to embark. Act one then concludes with the final preparations and a restatement of the necessity of the quest by reminding the reader/audience of the potential consequences.

In all stories, by the end of act one, the reader/audience must understand what the story is about, what is to be achieved, and how the effort toward that end is expected to proceed.

Keep in mind that for storytelling purposes you may intend to fool your audience into believing the goal is one thing when it will later turn out to be another.

Also, the plot of many stories includes a “teaser” at the very beginning of the act. The teaser is an emotional “hook” meant to snare reader interest and draw them into the book or movie. Almost every television episode begins with a teaser to keep the audience from changing the channel.

Teasers may or may not have anything to do with the story at large. Sometimes they are simply exciting emotional or action-oriented extravaganzas which are nothing more than entertainment, and add nothing to the structure of the real story about to begin.

In any event, by the end of the first act, your reader/audience must feel it understands what the story is about and the direction it appears to be taking.

ACT TWO

This is the Act of Development. The second act develops plot points that you set up in your first act, adding richness and detail to your story.

If there’s a journey in your story, act two is about the beginning and progress of that quest. As progress is made, the obstacles to progress become more substantial. Every step taken towards that goal increases in difficulty.

Somewhere in Act Two there is a major plot twist, either physically or due to information uncovered, that throws the whole story into left field. In some stories this twist happens in the middle of the act. The second half of the act is spent trying to recover from the set back and begin anew. In other stories, this twist occurs at the end of the second act, driving the quest in a whole new direction with the beginning of act three.

ACT THREE

This is the Act of the Climax. The whole of the third act is leading up to that point, creating tension and suspense. This is what your entire story has been leading up to. You want your third act to be more fast-paced than the rest of your story, and a lot more suspenseful.

The most compelling stories build the forces for and against the goal so that each becomes stronger and stronger. At the point of climax each is so powerful that something has to give – the tension is just too great. And yet, since they are balanced, the outcome is still uncertain.

The progression of the third act of plot is often heavily influenced by genre. For example, a compelling mystery might be designed to spread suspicion even wider than before, rather than narrowing in on just a few characters. Therefore, the sense of building tension may spring from increasing confusion, rather than understanding.

In all cases, act three must draw all dynamic forces to a head and eventually tie up all loose ends.

SUMMING UP

Certainly there are a lot of other structural and storytelling tasks readers or audience are used to encountering in each act, such as character introductions and growth, exploration of your theme, and employment of dramatic elements specific to your genre.

Still, using this template as a foundational guide can help provide a framework for additional development and insure that the spine of your dramatics is sound.

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For complete story development help, consider trying my
StoryWeaver Step By Step Story Development Software risk-free for 90 days.

And for even more personalized help,
contact me about my story consultation services.

Character Relationships Baselines

Relationships begin with a “baseline” and then evolve. You will need to establish how your characters feel about one another at the beginning of your story. Later, in as things unfold, you’ll describe the growth of these emotional relationships over the course of the story.

Both characters need not be present to establish a relationship between them. You might your readers a look at one character’s room where he keeps a score of framed pictures of the second character, his female co-worker, in a little shrine. Then, you describe the second character’s room where there is but a single picture of the first character which has been made into a dart board. It is obviously well-used due to the great quantity of dart holes. There are three darts in it as another slams in to join it, thrown by the second character.

One character might write a story about the other for a newspaper or a school report. A photo album might show two people in a series of pictures over the years. In Citizen Kane, the relationship between Kane and his wife is established by a series of vignettes over the years in which the size of their dinner table grows, moving them farther and farther away from each other.

Of course, in real life most emotional relationships are not a single melody but a rich and complex symphony. You may want to develop a different specific means of revealing each aspect of a complex emotional relationship, or you might prefer to have a single illustration that reveals the complexity all at once.

Keep Your Protagonist Human

Characters have dramatic functions, but the reader or audience needs to identify with them as real people as well. A necessary but difficult task is to intertwine the personal and structural aspects of each character so that they blend seamlessly together and become interdependent in a unified person.

If your character is a protagonist, for example, what personal qualities or previous experiences have led them to become a protagonist, the Prime Mover in the effort to achieve the goal? Similary, if your character is wishy-washy, how does that affect their ability to function as a protagonist?

By integrating both the structural and personal elements in every character, each will seem to be driven by real motivations, enacted in a truly human manner.

The Core of Your Protagonist

The Protagonist is one of the most misunderstood characters in a story’s structure. When creating your Protagonist, don’t let him or her get bogged down with all kinds of additional dramatic jobs that may not be necessary for your particular story.

It is often assumed that this character is a typical “Hero” who is a good guy, the central character, and the Main Character. In fact, the Protagonist does not have to be any of these things. By definition, the Protagonist is the Prime Mover or Driver of the effort to achieve the goal. Beyond that, he, she, or it might be a bad guy (such as an anti-hero).

Being the Central character just means that character is the most prominent to the audience. For example, Fagin in “Oliver Twist” is perhaps the most prominent, but he is certainly not the Protagonist. So, a Protagonist may actually be less interesting than the Antagonist, or may actually be almost a background character.

In addition, the Protagonist is not always the Main Character, who could be any one of the characters in your story who represents the reader or audience position in the story.

So, the only attribute you should consider in selecting your structural Protagonist is whether this character is the one with the most initiative toward reaching the Goal.

Success or Failure?

A story without a clear indication of success or failure is a failure with your readers or audience. You need to work out exactly how the audience will know the goal is achieved or not.

This might seem obvious in an action story, but may be much more difficult in a story about character growth.

Success and Failure don’t have to be binary choices; they can be matters of degree. For example, the effort to bring back a treasure may fail, but the adventurers discover one large ruby that fell into their pack. Or, someone seeking true love might find love but with someone who is rather annoying.

Whether either of these examples is a partial success or a partial failure depends largely on how you portray the characters’ attitudes to the imperfect achievement. To ensure a sense of closure in your readers/audience, make sure they know exactly how things end up on the success/failure scale.

Creating Extra Tension with Consequences

A goal is what the characters chase, but what chases the characters? The consequence doubles the dramatic tension in a story by providing a negative result if the goal is not achieved.

Consequences may be emotional or logistic, but the more intense they are, the greater the tension. Often it provides greater depth if there are emotional consequences when there is an external goal, and external consequences if there is an emotional goal.

Your story might be about avoiding the consequences or it might begin with the consequences already in place, and the goal is intended to end them.

If the consequences are intense enough, it can help provide motivation for characters who have no specific personal goals.