Others' Goals

Last week, I told you about a first chapter I read, and I talked about the danger of having a Scene Stealer Secondary Character at the beginning of your novel.  

To remind you, here’s a plot summary of the first chapter.

The heroine enters an expensive restaurant and sits down at her father’s table.

He complains she is late, which she is not, and proceeds to berate her for various failings, none of which she thinks she has.  They share a prickly conversation full of personal history subtext and anger.

He tells her that his corporation is having financial troubles, and he’s arranged to have a corporate investor meet him on his private estate for the weekend.  He wants his beautiful daughter there to entertain the corporate savior and show a positive side to his personality.

The heroine has her own financial success thanks to her own hard work and acumen, and she has less than charitable feelings for her father who threw her and her mother out so he could marry a trophy wife and have the son he wanted to inherit the business.  She agrees, however, because she’ll get a chance to see her much younger half-brother whom she adores.  

In the next, much shorter scene, the handsome corporate investor, aka the hero, arrives at the estate in his private plane.  Rather than the limo and the designer clothes her father wanted, she shows up in the caretaker’s Land Rover and she is wearing riding clothes.  Despite this, sexual sparks fly, and they share a bit of banter.  They head to a meeting with Daddy Dearest.

What’s the second major error in this first chapter?  The only person with a strong goal in the first chapter is Dearest Daddy.  The heroine refuses to buy into this goal.

At best, one of her goals is to see her little half-brother which is fine on the small scale but hardly strong to carry a chapter, let alone enough to carry a whole novel forward.  

Her second goal is to annoy her father by not helping him gain the funding.  This goal could carry the whole novel forward, but it isn’t a worthy goal and makes her a heroine the reader can’t root for.  If anything, this goal makes her appear remarkably immature and unworthy of either the hero or the reader’s interest.  

The main character must have a worthy goal that the reader can root for.

Beware the Scene Stealer

Here’s a plot summary of a first chapter I read recently.

The heroine enters an expensive restaurant and sits down at her father’s table.

He complains she is late, which she is not, and proceeds to berate her for various failings, none of which she thinks she has.  They share a prickly conversation full of personal history subtext and anger.

He tells her that his corporation is having financial troubles, and he’s arranged to have a corporate investor meet him on his private estate for the weekend.  He wants his beautiful daughter there to entertain the corporate savior and show a positive side to his personality.

The heroine has her own financial success thanks to her own hard work and acumen, and she has less than charitable feelings for her father who threw her and her mother out so he could marry a trophy wife and have the son he wanted to inherit the business.  She agrees, however, because she’ll get a chance to see her much younger half-brother whom she adores.  

In the next, much shorter scene, the handsome corporate investor, aka the hero, arrives at the estate in his private plane.  Rather than the limo and the designer clothes her father wanted, she shows up in the caretaker’s Land Rover and she is wearing riding clothes.  Despite this, sexual sparks fly, and they share a bit of banter.  They head to a meeting with Daddy Dearest.

After I read this chapter, something was bothering me, and I stopped to analyze my feelings.  Sure, this first chapter was pretty standard and cliche-ridden with a I’ve-read-this-more-than-once feeling, but something else was wrong here.  

The first scene was much too long, and this is a romance where the hero and heroine should meet as soon as possible, but, beyond the length, I recognized a greater problem.  In the first scene Daddy Dearest and the heroine’s conversation is filled with emotional subtext, anger, and past history.  Daddy leapt off the page.

In the next scene, the hero was the standard and well-written sexy hero, but he was a flat character in comparison to Daddy Dearest, and the heroine was more about annoying Daddy than she was about the sexy hero.  

Daddy Dearest is a classic example of the Scene Stealer Secondary Character--the character with the interesting past history or the personal swagger and background to make him far more interesting than the main character or characters.

Scene Stealer Secondaries aren’t necessarily a bad thing, they can liven up a story at times, but they should never be one of the first characters introduced, particularly if the hero hasn’t been introduced.

Here are a few other examples.

In the original STAR WARS movie, what if Han Solo with his sexy swagger, sneer, and interesting history had been introduced before callow farm boy Luke?  

What if in the first PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, Captain Jack Sparrow had been introduced before Orlando Bloom’s character Will?

In both cases, we’d have had less connection and emotional attachment to the main character, less of a sense of who is the hero of the story, and less desire for the main character to reach his goal, not the secondary character’s goal.   We’d be undermining our main characters and pulling the reader away from the story we wanted to tell.

So, beware the Secondary Scene Stealer because he can also steal your story’s successful telling.

In my original example, Daddy Dearest isn’t the only problem with this first chapter.  In next week’s blog, I’ll discuss the other failure in this first chapter.

A Rewrite Checklist

It’s always good to have a checklist at hand when you are ready to rewrite your story.  Below are a number of questions you can ask yourself as you work.  

As you learn your weaknesses as a writer, this list can be changed to include questions that focus on your problem areas.

This list is also a good start for critique partners.

THE FIRST CHAPTER

Do I have a hook in the first few, or better yet, the first page?

Have I shown the main character’s goal, short-term, or better yet, for the whole novel?

EACH CHAPTER

Does this chapter advance the story?  

Tell more about the characters?

Give plot information?  

Does it work with the chapter before it?

PLOT  

Do the characters and plot work well together, or is the plot 

just pasted on?

Does it make sense?

Does one thing lead to another?

Has the story started at the right place?

Does the action escalate?

Are more plot questions asked before a plot question is resolved?

Does the plot fit genre boundaries?

CHARACTERS

Does each character sound different?  Do they have a voice of their own?

Are the characters doing what they as characters and personalities should be doing, or are they being moved around for my convenience?  

Will the reader understand why they are doing certain things?

Does each major character have a strength and a weakness which will be affected by the plot?

In the romantic relationship, is their emotional conflict strong enough 

for the length of the work?  Will it take more than one long talk to resolve their conflict?  Does their romantic relationship work with the action plot?

In the action plot, is the conflict between the hero and his opponent strong enough?  Is the opponent strong enough to really push the hero to his limits? 

POINT OF VIEW

Is the proper point of view maintained in each scene?

Would a scene work better from another character's viewpoint?

Is there only one viewpoint character in each scene?

INTERIOR MONOLOGUES

Does this interior monologue slow the scene too much?

Could this information or emotion be expressed in dialogue or action?

Am I telling too much? 

SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Do the sentences vary in length?  

Does the language fit the actions? Long sentences for leisurely, more introspective moments?  

Short, terse sentences and words for action scenes?

LANGUAGE

Am I intruding, or am I invisible so the story can tell itself?  

Does cause and effect happen correctly?  

Am I showing rather than telling?  

WORLD BUILDING

Is the world building well thought out?

Is it logical?

Did I break my own rules?

If a myth or fantasy element is changed from common knowledge, is it a logical or understandable change?  Is it explained? (a vampire who can survive daylight, for example)

Cross-genre Which genre is Dominant.

If a novel is cross-genre, one of the genres must be the strongest and its genre tropes and plot must drive the novel throughout.

A werewolf novel that is driven forward by the world building and various werewolf political/pack struggles is urban fantasy or horror.  A werewolf novel where boy wolf meets girl vampire, and they fall in love during various werewolf and vampire struggles is a paranormal romance.

 

You must understand what the central genre of your novel is so your novel doesn't fail by genre and reader expectations, and you will know where to market it.

What is My Book About?

If you are having trouble figuring out what your book is about and what your main characters' goals are, I have several suggestions to help you clarify your thoughts.

One is to write a description of your novel as I do when I write a novel blurb description for a query letter or the back cover copy of the novel.

In a short romance, I usually use two paragraphs to describe the book, longer or more complex books three to four paragraphs. If some important point fits one paragraph better than another, don't feel as if you must follow my structure. Put it where it fits.  Interior and exterior conflict, especially, can be switched.  

First and second paragraph: Introduce hero and heroine and give simple plot set up.  What is the interior conflict of the novel? (What tears the hero and heroine apart emotionally?)  Examples are from my unpublished novel, THE LORD OF THUNDER.  Examples are bracketed.

KATE GRAEME, a professional landscape painter, has been hurt by a man who used her love to manipulate her, but she still retains her romantic ideals about love and marriage.  MORGAN DESART, however, has turned his own emotional hurts into a coldly cynical attitude.

Enthralled with each other, Kate Graeme and Morgan Desart want a permanent relationship but can't agree on the ground rules.  Kate seeks a loving romantic marriage, but Morgan demands a marriage of convenience with a prenuptial agreement.  Neither will bend emotionally.

Third and Fourth paragraphs: What is the exterior conflict of the novel?  What must both must achieve or defeat and what do they have to lose? This can include plot set up, place set up, the important secondary characters, and the villain. 

When they become trapped alone together on Morgan's island estate for a week, open conflict erupts as they seek to convert each other to their own viewpoint.  Morgan tries to entice her into a loveless marriage with his sexual mastery, but Kate resists this ploy and tempts him with romance and samples of a life together rich with love. 

In this war of sexual desire versus emotional need, both know one of them will have to give in before the week is out because the magic between them is impossible to withstand.

If you'd like more examples or your book isn't a romance, read my article on writing back cover blurbs.

If your book is still pretty vague in your thoughts, I suggest you try the Bova method for firming up your characters and plot.  Ben Bova's method is described in his THE CRAFT OF WRITING SCIENCE FICTION THAT SELLS. Yes, it's about science fiction, but it works with most popular genre fiction.  (More on Ben Bova’s method.)

The Bova book explains the dynamics and interrelated nature of plot, character, conflict, and background.    

The most important thing Bova explains is how character and plot interact with each other, and how character creates plot.  (Plot as a characterization device.)  He believes that the writer must examine her character and find his one glaring weakness and attack it through plot.  

The protagonist should have a complex set of emotional problems where two opposing feelings are struggling with each other--Emotion A vs. Emotion B.  (guilt vs. duty, pride vs. obedience, fear vs. responsibility, etc.)  

This conflict should exist on many levels.  In other words, the character’s emotional struggle should be mirrored in the action of the novel.  

In classic STAR WARS, for example, Han Solo’s cynical selfishness wars with his unselfish love for idealistic Luke.  Han’s ready to leave with his loot when the Alliance attacks the Death Star, but he risks everything to save Luke.  That emotional conflict is mirrored in the struggle between the two political factions as well as in the thematic two sides of the movie--the good and dark sides of the Force.

Bova's ideas have proven useful to me, not only in creating my novels, but also as an aid when I'm stuck during a novel.  When I can't decide where I'm going or have terminal writer's block, I reexamine my main characters’ Emotion A vs. B and realize where I've made a plot error so I'm able to start again in the right direction.  

I hope these ideas can help you focus your book.