|
What do you call it when you are knocking around, thinking of this and that, with no real goal in mind? Some may call that relaxing, I suppose. Another might call it procrastinating.
Most of us just call it boring.
So many manuscripts open with a static character awaiting an event that will interrupt his (boring) life and incite him to create a goal to either restore order or create a new order. That goal will raise an associated question in the reader’s mind: Will he be able to achieve this goal? At that point we readers will hop on board with your character and watch as he either moves toward (yay!) or is prevented from attaining (oh no!) his goal.
Certain literary (Robert Goolrick) or humor (Jerry Seinfeld) writers can write well about characters awaiting story, but write about boredom at your own risk. Once in the world, your story will compete with many other forms of entertainment—and boredom is the opposite of entertainment. If the reader wanted to be bored, she simply wouldn't read.
To make money from your writing, err on the side of entertainment.
So pluck your character from behind the wheel of her car, her school desk by the window, her poolside lounger, or any other place you’ve parked her so that she can have a long period of time in which to contemplate the cosmos, re-live backstory, gaze oh-so-dangerously at her bellybutton, or watch the weather while waiting for the story to start.
In order to create the sense of story movement that will draw in your reader, your protagonist must have a scene goal—and that includes your opening scene. Puttering about isn’t enough as she sips coffee, feeds the dog, or whatever constitutes a day in her life, because without a goal tied to a deep desire, she is simply “everywoman” to us—and therefore no one. A goal orients both protagonist and reader to the scene, directs your character’s intentions, and reveals her perspective and we get to know her.
The story won’t really start cooking until the incident that incites your character to set a story goal, as that will launch her trajectory through the story. So throughout your opening you want to head purposefully toward that moment.
Until then you need some sort of “bridging conflict”—and what that means for your character is that she needs an intermediate goal.
Tips for creating good bridging conflict
1. Create a goal that is close to being met.
Let’s say your character, Bonnie, takes art lessons because one day she wants to see her work hanging in the Louvre. That goal is distant, achieved by only a select few, and perhaps unattainable. Bonnie’s pursuit of it while taking “Sketching for Beginners” is vague, since we don't know why she desires it. We don't get a sense of what the stakes are if she doesn't make it. We won’t invest in her pie-in-the-sky goal because it will be too hard to assess how Bonnie’s doing on her path toward it, so we’ll fail to bond with her. And let’s say you interweave Bonnie’s pie-in-the-sky opening with a second chapter in the point-of-view of an
antagonist determined to do her harm. We may end up liking him more, simply because his goal-oriented behavior makes him more relatable.
2. Clue us in on immediate stakes should your protagonist fail.
You’ve revised: Maybe Bonnie’s father, who just died, was an artist and she wants to uphold the family name. Maybe a memorial exhibition will be held next year that will tour the whole region, and she is desperate to have a piece in that show. Closing the gap further: maybe Bonnie’s already technically accomplished, but is simply floundering for inspiration. If she fails to come up with a good idea she’ll miss out—not only on the opportunity to contribute to her father’s tribute, but also to gain the spotlight that could establish her as his heir apparent in the national arts scene.
3. Add more pressure.
Maybe she not only promised the work, but publicity has already gone out featuring its name, “The Colors of my Father.” And the show is next month, not next year—yet still Bonnie stands before a blank white canvas. She’ll be a laughing stock. Her father was right—she shouldn’t have spent her life curating his work if she planned to be an artist in her own right, she should have been painting. Ooh! Can you feel how that might work better?
4. Create relevant plot complications and then make things happen.
Yes, even in these pre-story, getting-to-know-you pages, we need more than exposition about the well-researched world of your character. Readers can spot fake story like teens smell hypocrisy, so you’ll need real complications. If Bonnie wants to honor her father with a painting, show her failing with an attempt that neither exudes her father’s passion, nor adequately expresses her love for him. Add a ticking clock—time running out. Any technique you use to ramp up tension in the story proper can be used to enhance your bridging conflict as well.
5. Bring on the inciting incident sooner.
What better complication can you introduce than the one that will launch the story you plan to tell? Bring on the antagonist and let’s get this party started! Perhaps he’s planning a huge heist of her father’s paintings at the museum where she’s worked as a curator. Once that happens Bonnie will sweep away her initial goal—saving the entire body of her father’s work is like extending his presence, she decides, and to Bonnie that’s more important than completing one painting of her own. Maybe her emotional arc will offer the awareness that she didn’t need to be daddy junior after all—her attributes as a curator are authentic and reflect her truer
nature.
In order to raise the right story question, inciting incidents must be finely tuned. Not all can be set up quickly. But with this kind of goal-oriented behavior and compressed time frame suggesting that the characters are about to intersect in a disastrous way, you can string the reader along because you’ve provided a sense of story movement. Just make sure that in every scene you are moving inexorably toward the intersection of these two story lines.
|
