Automatic Writing Experiment

The phrase “automatic writing” can have a number of meanings.  In the case of this post, I’m talking about entering a hypnotic trance in which you ask a question of your subconscious and let it answer by writing the answer down on a piece of paper for you.  The theory behind this is that your mind actually has access to more knowledge than you realize, and has sometimes figured out the solution to problems you haven’t consciously solved yet.  There is actually some scientific basis behind this.
In my case, the question I sought to answer was how I can solve a long-standing problem in my writing:  “How can I solve the lack of conflict in my writing?”  For some time now, I’ve realized that I haven’t done a good job challenging my characters and providing them with meaningful problems to overcome.  As a result, much of what I’ve written has been terribly boring… even to me, the writer.

At the end of the trance, my subconscious had written down the following items:

• Be sadistic. Take joy in the character’s pain.  In other words, even if you love your character, you must be willing and able to throw the nastiest, most challenging obstacles you can in his or her face.  You must take delight in giving them a problem so hard that you’re not even sure you can solve it.
• Switch roles.  Often, when I’m writing a story I tend to put myself in the point-of-view character’s shoes.  Being in that position, it’s hard to throw obstacles at the character while (in a sense) being that character.  I need to slip out of the character’s head, and into the head of the “sadistic torturer” above.
• Ask how it can be even worse.  It’s not just enough for the character’s problems to be bad.  You need to figure out how to make them as bad as you can, to challenge them.
• Theme inspires problems.  For a story idea I’m working on, a theme behind the story is that society can very easily turn on a hero if there’s something to be gained by doing it (e.g., money).  Knowing that theme in advance, I can imagine a bunch of problems this character might have to overcome.
• What’s his weakness?  In other words, the conflicts a character is faced with should relate directly to some weakness in that character.  Is she afraid of heights?  Make it necessary for her to climb to the top of a tall tree to solve her problem.

I suspect for me the biggest problems are being inside the character’s head while trying to devise problems for him/her, and being afraid of giving a character a challenge so tough that I (the author) can’t figure out a way for him/her to solve it.  Perhaps the solution is to combine all of this while trying to suspend my fear that I’ll create a problem so tough that the character and I won’t be able to overcome it.  I will need to test this theory out.

Read More

Notes on Creating Conflict in a Novel

While attending Gen Con 2010 this year, I attended the "Creating Conflict" panel in the writer's track. The panelists included Anton Strout, Chris Pierson, Brad Beaulieu, and John Helfers. The seminar description was:

Make war, not peace! Ruffle the feathers of your characters. Stir the pot of emotions. Add a fistfight or two. Craft a clever and entertaining argument among your heroes. Not all conflict has to be bloody or increase the body count, but it does have to keep the reader turning the pages. Our panelists discuss the art of adding a dash of conflict to your pages.

Below are my notes from the seminar:

• Conflict drives everything in a book.


• Conflict happens whenever two or more characters (or forces, or philosophies) are in opposition.


• Conflict should build over the course of the story, starting small and growing larger.


• It's important that you, and your reader, understand "the bad guy" and why that person does what they do. You don't have to AGREE with the villain, just understand what makes them do what they do. Few, if any, human beings are intentionally "evil".


• The term "psychometry" refers to knowing the history of an object at first touch. (One of the authors used that in a story. Sounded interesting to me so I made a note of it.)


• Having characters make the wrong choice because of their personalities can help build conflict.


• In achieving a goal, the character should try an easy or obvious solution, but fail. Then try a harder solution, and fail... and so on until the goal is achieved.


• Consequences of characters' choices and actions should be explored. They might achieve their goal, but at what cost?


• Characters (and by extension, the reader) may not know the "right choice" for solving a problem.


• The two important points to consider in a conflict: What are the stakes? Why should we care?


• Conflict should be meaningful and advance the plot.


• Conflict should start as early as possible in the story.


• During action scenes (like fights), you want a level of descriptive detail that is appropriate to what a character in that situation might actually notice. For example, during a frantic martial arts battle, we shouldn't see something like this:

The blow connected with Fred's chin, knocking his head back. As his face turned toward the ceiling, Fred noticed the wallpaper border around it. The pattern looked familiar somehow. Of course! It was the same border his mother had put around the walls in their home on the Cape. He wondered if he would ever get back to that house. The summers there were so relaxing...

(A sequence like the above would stop the action DEAD in the story, and it's unlikely anyone in the middle of a fight is going to reminisce about wallpaper and summer homes from their childhood. They might think back to a similar hit from a previous battle and how they reacted, but even that recollection is likely to be short and to the point.)

Read More