Not quite bogged axle deep, but close, or so it felt. I had the start of the story, then … episodes, but no true plot, nothing driving the story, nothing disturbing the protagonist from cruising along the way he was used to doing. Which might work for certain types of literary fiction, but not for this book. Readers don’t want an exciting (or mysterious) start and then nothing for a couple hundred pages. The antagonist, or possibly two of them, had arrived and were not doing anything.
Right. Time to go back to the books, in this case Swain and one I’d not read before, but saw on a friend’s bookshelf and started nibbling before I bought my own copy. How do you get a plot moving? You make the protagonist miserable … or at least shake up his/her/it/who knows’ world. The MC has to get knocked out of his rut and forced to make some choices. In some ways, he’s not truly mature, not really an adult. If the story is going to move, that has to change.
So, what would make the MC stop observing and start doing. Well, he was already doing, but not … book-hero doing. Internal conflict was just not there, neither did he face a clear antagonist. He would have to stand up and make hard choices, and be willing to sacrifice everything. Or to have everything ripped away and be forced to mature and rise to the moment, face the enemy/antagonist/villain and do what had to be done. Hmmm. What did the MC value the most?
This is where I had to step back and really think about the MC, his values, and what he thought the most important in his life. I had not done that. I didn’t know his Big Picture motivation. In other words, it was time for serious soul-of-author and soul-of-MC searching and working out what the character’s deepest values were and how to show those in the story before everything went to heck. Or before the antagonist made himself or itself known. I’d been foreshadowing something, but what was it?
This is the point where, after I sorted out what the Big Problem was going to be, and what the MC valued so highly, and what his two greatest weaknesses were, I realized that this wasn’t exactly the character-driven novel I thought I was working on. Oops. This is in part a milieu novel, where the setting is driving the story to an extent. That gave me, perhaps, an antagonist, but not enough of one, maybe. I still had several options for villain, and again returned to the sketching board to work out which of them, if either, would be the MC’s problem.
Now, I am experienced enough that reading the two books (Swain and Chester), then really forcing myself to dig into the MC and his world and fellow characters, I could find the problem and start working out how to fix said problem. When I hit things in Chester that made me balk and twitch, that was a CLUE that my subconscious realized the problem. This doesn’t work for everyone. I didn’t have to sit down with the plot-thus-far and sketch out every rising and falling action, all the characters and their motivations. Someone else might, or might find it a useful guide for the next part of the story. If you can’t find the main conflict, you need to add one, or really dig into the characters and situations thus far, and sort out what makes everything work or not work.
Mad Genius Club 
14 responses to “My Story’s Stuck—Time to Get the Tow Truck”
Alma, what is the title of the Chester book?
Fantasy Fiction Formula. I wasn’t sure how useful it might be, but seeing things from Swain packaged in a different way helped knock some things loose. I freely admit, I wasn’t excited by the book at first, but once I dug in, I found a lot of helpful-to-the-problem ideas and exercises.
thank you, it sounds interesting.
It’s the book by the teacher Jim Butcher credits as helping him break through his blocks with Dresden Files. There’s a condensed workbook available, too, that I found really useful.
She’s another of those faculty that are or were that one writing program at OU, that produced Butcher. (Who was Chester’s student.)
Chester is something like Swain’s student’s student.
There basically seem to have once been more than one faculty in that group at a time at the university of Oklahoma. Swain credits several people there for giving him parts of what he used, if I correctly remember what I read. (Which was I think somethign once, somewhere on the internet.)
(Swain and Chester) — are, who? The advice is interesting, but I have no idea what these books are.
Dwight V. Swain – Techniques of the Selling Writer (A rarity, in that it’s a how-to-write-for-the-market book by a pulp writer who really had been there, did that, and got the paycheck.)
Deborah Chester – The Fantasy Fiction Formula (Think of this as Swain’s book updated in slang, marketing, and genre by 40 years, and focused on fantasy, by one of his students who went on to be a decent midlist fantasy writer before becoming a teacher in turn.)
They’re both great books, and having both lets you look at the same subject – often, same advice – from two completely different working authors, so when one doesn’t make sense, the other will let you go “Ah, I understand now!”
Thanks for the clarification!
I apologize. I forget that some blog readers are not familiar with Dwight Swain’s work. He used to be referenced more than he is today.
You and Sarah are doing great work to change that!
It happens! <g> Now, put a post-it note on your monitor so you don’t forget the next time!
I have been known to drag out the Hero’s Journey and see if i can point to spots in what I’m working on that hit those points. And if not, why not?
And occasionally when I’ve made a real mess, I have to say “What is _the_ story problem? How can it be solved? And who can do that?” *Ahem* Have been known to have to change Main Characters.
I’ve used skeletons from time to time. Though more often to ensure that there are sharp turns in the story and prod for those.
It can be interesting, what blocks need.