Write Your Novel Step by Step (24) “Selecting Your Cast”

Congratulations! Over the last few steps you’ve learned a tremendous amount of information about your characters’ attributes, self-image, outlook, and personal issues.

With all the work you’ve done, you probably have more characters than you need or want. Still, by keeping them around, you have had the opportunity to inject new blood into old stereotypes. As a result, your potential cast represents a healthy mix of interesting people.

The task at hand is to pare down this list by selecting only those characters you really want or actually need in your story.

To begin, make three categories, either as columns on a page or piles of index cards: one for obvious rejects, one for maybes, and one for the characters you are absolutely certain you want in your novel.

Put into the Keeper pile every character that is essential to your plot, contributes extraordinary passion, or is just so original and intriguing you can wait to write about them.

In the Not Sure pile, place all the characters who have some function (though they aren’t the only one who could perform it), have some passionate contribution (but it seems more peripheral than central), or are mildly interesting but not all-consuming fascinating.

In the No Way! Pile, place all the characters who don’t have a function, don’t contribute to the passionate side of your story and rub you the wrong way.

After distributing all your characters into these three categories, leaf through the “maybe” category, character by character, to see if any of them would fit will and without redundancy in the cast you’ve already selected.

If any would uniquely bring something worthwhile to your story that couldn’t be contributed by a keeper character, add them to your cast for now. If they would not, add them to the rejects.

Finally, look through the rejects for any individual attributes that you are sorry to see go – character traits you’d like to explore in your novel, even if you are sure you don’t want the whole character.

If there are any, distribute those attributes among your chosen characters as long as they don’t conflict with or lessen their existing quality and power. In this way, you will infuse your cast with the most potent elements possible.

You now have your initial cast of characters for your novel. In the actual writing to come, you may determine that certain characters are not playing out as well as expected. At that time, you can always cut them from your cast and redistribute any desirable attributes among your other characters.

Or, you may discover there are some essential jobs left undone, and you’ll need to create one or more additional characters to fill that gap.

But, for now, you have finally arrived at your initial cast – the folks who will populate your story’s world, drive the action, consider the issues, and involve your readers.

In the next step, we’ll explore the nature of your Main Character before turning our attention to your story’s theme.

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Never Be Stuck for a Plot Again!

A writer asked today:

Dear Melanie,

Could you please tell me where can I find some material on western genre plot building.

Let me make it much clearer. I have a character Marshal, A saloon girl, Rancher, Preacher, Blacksmith and bartender along with 4 outlaw gang and 1 leader og the outlaw gang.

What I am trying to find is a story of events that can occur within this small town. Which direction can I take to find some events to get me to page 75.

Darryl

My reply:

Hi, Darryl

Here’s a link to my article, The Creative Two-Step, that uses that example to begin to develop characters in an old Western Town:  http://storymind.com/content/41.htm

This technique can also be used equally well for plot events.

The idea is to switch back and forth between analytical mode and creative mode by asking specific questions about your emerging story, then answering them in as many creative ways as you can. Then, you repeat the process by asking questions about each of the answers and then answering THOSE questions. In short order, you end up with hundreds of plot points.

Example:

Question:

How does the Marshall first find out about the gang’s activities?

Answers:

1. The gang rides into town hootin’ and hollarin’

2. He is told about the situation, right after he accepts the job and pins on the badge.

3. He saw a newspaper account of the town’s gang problem and came there on his own to get the job to clean up the gang.

4. The gang sends a telegram to the marshall’s home to let him know they are in town shaking it down.

Okay, that’s the first step – analytical (the first question), followed by the second creative step (all the potential answers).

Then you repeat, asking as many questions as you can think of about each answer. I’ll just do one as an example.

Answer 3: He saw a newspaper account of the town’s gang problem and came there on his own to get the job to clean up the gang.

Questions:

1. Where was he when he saw the newspaper?

2. Has he done this kind of thing before?

3. Why does he want to interfere?

4. What makes him think he is qualified to do anything about the problem?

5. Does he notify the town’s mayor or governing body before he shows up?

Then, you repeat the second “creative” step and provide answers.

Example:

Question 2. Has he done this kind of thing before?

Answers:

1. Yes, he is independently wealthy and does this all the time as a hobby.

2. Yes, one time. His family was killed when he was a child and in his first adventure, he read a newspaper account of a child who was made an orphan due to a gang’s violence in a town in the East. He brought the gang to justice and found a foster home for the child. It was so fulfilling, his ordinary job has been miserable since, and this new article has made him realize he needs to step forward to give his live meaning.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Now, through this exercise, what events have we created for our story? Perhaps these:

1. A scene showing the Marshall as a young boy when his family was killed (by who and how and where can all be figured out using the Creative Two-Step).

2. A scene showing the Marshall see the first article and decide to get involved.

3. Several scene, perhaps in a montage or in a scrapbook of how that first adventure went.

4. A scene of him encountering this new newspaper article and how it affects him.

5. A scene of him quitting his job (how much he needs the money, what kind of job, and so on can be created using the two-step)

6. A scene of him arriving at the town.

7. How he gets the job (again, use the two-step to come up with ideas for this)

8. His first encounter with the gang (casual, antagonistic, high or low tension, anybody get hurt?, did the gang know he was the Marshall when they first encounter?)

Okay, again, I could go on and on and so could you. Just use the ol’ two-step method and then stand back, see all the ideas you’ve generated and create a plot sequence from all the notions like I just did above.

The details in each scene can be created using the very same method, once you have the main plot line sequence.

Melanie

Write your novel or screenplay step by step…

Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 9 “Author’s Intent”

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story

Simply having a feeling or a point of view does not an author make. One becomes an author the moment one establishes an intent to communicate. Usually some intrigu- ing setting, dialog, or bit of action will spring to mind and along with it the desire to share it. Almost immediately, most authors leap ahead in their thinking to consider how the concept might best be presented to the audience. In other words, even before a com- plete story has come to mind most authors are already trying to figure out how to tell the parts they already have.

As a result, many authors come to the writing process carrying a lot of baggage: favorite scenes, characters, or action, but no real idea how they are all going to fit to- gether. A common problem is that all of these wonderful inspirations often don’t belong in the same story. Each may be a complete idea unto itself, but there is no greater meaning to the sum of the parts. To be a story, each and every part must also function as an aspect of the whole.

Some writers run into problems by trying to work out the entire dramatic structure of a story in advance only to find they end up with a formulaic and uninspired work. Con- versely, other writers seek to rely on their muse and work their way through the process of expressing their ideas only to find they have created nothing more than a mess. If a way could be found to bring life to tired structures and also to knit individual ideas into a larger pattern, both kinds of authors might benefit. It is for this purpose that Dramatica was developed.

Annotation

Finally, here at part 9, do we come to a section of the book that I think says exactly what it intended to say.  And, in fact, that is what the section is all about – saying what you intend to say.

Having an experience or an insight doesn’t make one an author.  SHARING an experience or an insight does – or at least attempting to share.  How successful you are at communicating the logic and passion of your intent determines how skillful an author you are.  How interestingly you convey that information determines how compelling an author you are.  Together, they determine how good an author you are.

If I were to add anything to this section at all, it would be something the Dramatica book intentionally avoided: giving advice on how to write.  We wanted to focus on explaining our model of story structure (our intent) and that is what we did (success).  But, we had no interest in making it interesting.  Which, by my definition above, means that we weren’t very compelling authors and, overall, were not very good authors.

And so, let me simply suggest that it pays to not only know what you want to share with your audience, but to determine what impact you’d like to have on them, i.e. to scare them, motivate them, inform them, illuminate them or any combination of multiple intents.  In that way, even without a structural road map, you always have a beacon, a lighthouse to guide your communications and the manner in which you present your information.

~~Melanie Anne Phillips

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Writing Exercise: 108 Year Old Movie Clip 6 Days before San Francisco Quake

Narrative isn’t everything.  Many experiences in fiction and real life have no narrative at all.  While movies are often thought to be one of the most story-oriented media, here is a film clip that has no story, yet has tremendous meaning.  It was shot in San Francisco in 1906, just six days before the Great Earthquake.  Though there is no narrative, we cannot help but wonder what stories unfolded for the people we see just one week later.

As a good writer’s exercise, pick a person or two that you see in the clip and write a short article that might have been published in the newspaper a week after the quake about their experiences.

Write Your Novel Step by Step (23) “Characters’ Personal Issues”

We all have personal issues – trouble with co-workers, family difficulties, unfulfilled hopes or dreams or a moral dilemma.

Though it is not necessary, every character can benefit from having a personal issue with which it must grapple or a belief system that comes under attack.

A moral dilemma, worldview or philosophy of life helps your characters come off as real people, rather than just functional players in the story. In addition, readers identify more easily with characters that have an internal struggle, and care about them more as well.

Consider each of your potential cast members, one by one. Read their entire dossier so far consisting of their list of attributes, self-description and perspective on your story.

If a belief system, personal code of behavior, philosophy, worldview, moral outlook or internal conflict is indicated, note it and write a few words about it in their dossier.  If a character has emotional issues regarding themselves, their world or the people in it, note that as well.

If you don’t see such an issue already present, read between the lies to see if one is inferred. If so, write a few words about that.

Now don’t beat your head against the wall looking for something that may not be there. If a personal issue isn’t indicated, it makes no sense to try to impose one. Some characters are better off without them.

For this step, just look over what you already know about each character and then single out and describe any personal issues it might have.

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Dramatica Theory (Annotated) Part 8 “Communicating Through Symbols”

Excerpted from the book, Dramatica: A New Theory of Story

How can essential concepts be communicated? Certainly not in their pure, intuitive form directly from mind to mind. (Not yet, anyway!) To communicate a concept, an author must symbolize it, either in words, actions, juxtapositions, interactions — in some form or another. As soon as the concept is symbolized, however, it becomes culturally specific and therefore inaccessible to much of the rest of the world.

Even within a specific culture, the different experiences of each member of an audi- ence will lead to a slightly different interpretation of the complex patterns represented by intricate symbols. On the other hand, it is the acceptance of common symbols of com- munication that defines a culture. For example, when we see a child fall and cry, we do not need to know what language he speaks or what culture he comes from in order to understand what has happened. If we observe the same event in a story, however, it may be that in the author’s culture a child who succumbs to tears is held in low esteem. In that case, then the emotions of sadness we may feel in our culture are not at all what was intended by the author.

Annotation

As I read this over, I think our intent was good, but we were a little off the mark.  Here we state in the opening paragraph that to communicate a thought, concept, feeling or experience you need to symbolize it first.  That’s not technically true.  For example, suppose you want your friend to feel terror.  Well, you could just throw him out of an airplane and I’ll bet he’d pretty much experience just what you had in mind.  Nothing symbolic about that!

More accurately, we can communicate by creating an environment that causes our reader or audience to arrive just where we want them.  In other words, we set up an experience that, by the end of the book or movie, positions our reader or audience into just the mindset we want them to have.

More sophisticated, or perhaps less end-product-oriented narratives are designed to position the reader or audience all along the way as well, so that the entire journey is an experience right along the logical and emotional path of discovery the author intended for his followers.

None of this requires symbols, however.  It can all be done simply by creating a series of artificial environments presented in a given sequence.  But, symbols can streamline the process.  If you don’t have to build the environment for the reader or audience but merely allude to it, then you can get your point and passion across simply by invoking an element of common understanding.  A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but a symbol is worth 1,000 experiences.

So, what we wrote above is not wrong per se, but rather is short speak that (though it communicates) is open to criticism because is skips over a number of steps to streamline communication.  And that, is exactly what symbols do – they get the content to the recipient in the quickest fashion possible yet open the message – the story argument – to rebuttal because wholesale parts of the communication are truncated, leaving gaps in the actual flow, though if the author is in tune with the audience’s symbolic vocabulary, the complete extent of the original concept may, in fact, be fully appreciated.

Bottom line – know your audience and you will be able to put far more logical and passionate density into the pipeline than if you had to spell everything out.

–Melanie Anne Phillips

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Write Your Novel Step by Step (22) “Character Points of View”

Now that you know something about the personalities of your potential cast members, it is time to find out how they see your story.

In this step, you’ll have each character write another paragraph from their point of view, but this time describing the basic plot of your story as it appear to them.

This will make your story more realistic by helping you understand and describe how each character sees and feels about the events unfolding around them.

Some characters may be integral to the plot. Others may simply be interesting folk who populate your story’s world. Be sure each character includes how they see their role (if any) in the events, or if they seem themselves as just an observer or bystander. If they are involved in the plot, outline the nature of their participation as they see it.

Again, you don’t want to go into great detail at this time. What you want is just an idea of how your story looks through each character’s eyes. This will help you later on not only to decide which characters you want in your story, but how you might employ them as well.

In the next step we’ll get to know your characters even better by investigating any personal and/or moral issues with which they grapple.

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Write Your Novel Step by Step (21) “Auditioning Your Cast”

Now that you have mixed things up a bit with your potential characters, there is one last task to do before selecting which ones to hire for your novel: the audition!

Each character is currently just a collection of traits – the parts with no sum. To know how each might play in your story, you need to get a more organic sense of them. In other words, you need to get to know them as people, not just as statistics.

To do this, have each of your potential cast members write

a short paragraph about himself or herself in their own words, describing them, their attitudes, outlooks on life and incorporating all the attributes you’ve assigned to them.

Try to write these paragraphs in the unique voice of each character and from their point of view. Don’t write about them; let them write about themselves.

This will give you the experience of what it is like to see the world through each character’s eyes, which will help you understand their motivations and also make it easier for you to write your novel in such a way that your readers can step into your characters’ shoes.

In the next step, you’ll use these auditions to pare down your potential cast members to those who really belong in your novel.

This article is drawn from:

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