“I might only have one match
But I can make an explosion.”– Rachel Platten
Writers who are trying to get a reluctant protagonist moving in mid-book often look for the “worst possible thing that can happen to their character.” Quite a few of them do this to get revenge on their characters (“You want to loaf around in the bathtub instead of getting on with my plot? I’ll show you – have some torture and a possibly crippling injury and…”)
This kind of thing can be cathartic for the writer in the short term, but taken literally the “worst possible thing” usually doesn’t fit the story one is actually writing. Having the heroine’s family tortured to death in front of her seldom advances a plot that revolves around finding the cure for the Black Plague, saving the small-town grocery from bankruptcy, surviving an airplane crash on a desert island, or enjoying a spicy romance.
Even when the big, dramatic worst-possible-thing does fit the story, it usually doesn’t fit into it at the exact point the writer is at. If it really is the worst possible thing that can happen to the protagonist, it almost always belongs in one of two places: right at the beginning, so that the story is about dealing with and recovering from it; or near the end, as the final challenge the protagonist faces and overcomes (or, in a tragedy, is overcome by).
In the middle of a story, you don’t need the hero’s biggest challenge, the heroine’s greatest fear, or the protagonist’s hardest choice. You need the smallest thing that will do the job you want done. You need the match that lights the fuse to set off an explosion. Or a string of explosions that will get you to the Grand Finale.
The advantage of this bottom-up approach is that matches tend to be small but plentiful. By mid-book, there are little things already scattered around the story – Great-Aunt Jane’s invitation to tea; the broken music box; that great Indian restaurant where the big breakup happened; the peculiar child in the baseball cap the protagonist met outside Orchestra Hall; that time the protagonist mentioned learning to ski someday.
Often the writer knows what general direction they want the protagonist to move in – they know they want to get to an emotional epiphany, rather than to a car chase, for instance. In this case, one or more of the existing matches may jump out as the perfect solution. The character’s yen for chicken tikka masala gets him/her to the Indian restaurant, where memories of the breakup combine with an offhand comment by the waitress to trigger just the realization the author wanted. Boom!
If none of the existing bits quite fits the direction the author wanted to go … well, another advantage of matches is that they’re small and ordinary, which generally means they’re easy to insert because they don’t need a lot of justification. A big dramatic Worst Possible Thing usually needs a lot of setup and/or explanation, or it looks far too convenient. Everyday events, like having a cup of tea or feeding the dog, don’t need a lot of explanation as to why they’re in the story, because they happen all the time. It’s just that this time, they lead somewhere useful.
Sometimes, the writer doesn’t know what direction they want the story to go; they just know they need some kind of explosion pretty darned soon. Most of the time, this writer still doesn’t need or want the Worst Possible Thing. (Unless the writer has been planning all along to murder the supposed protagonist in mid-book, doing so will mean a) re-planning the rest of the story with a whole different protagonist, and/or b) upsetting and alienating the readers who by this time are really invested in the success of that first protagonist.) On the other hand, some writers respond best to big-picture questions, so it is worth checking once in a while to see of you are one of them.
Mostly, though, what this writer needs is a selection of explosions that can happen, so they can figure out which match-and-fuse combination will get them somewhere they want to go. Looking at the little things can do this. That annoying relative’s catch-phrase, the broken TV remote that keeps turning up, the scandal that everyone in town knows but won’t talk about, the protagonist’s love of Mozart, the red velvet wallpaper in the closet – every story is full of small details that the author usually put there for atmosphere, for background, for realism … and every one of them can be the match that sets off an explosion.
What I find useful here is asking what things “really mean.” Is the annoying relative trying (ineptly) to tell the protagonist something (or doing a really bad job of keeping it secret)? Is there anything interesting about who broke the remote, when and how it was broken, or why nobody’s replaced it yet? Why is everybody so weird about the ancient scandal? Why Mozart? Who decided to make the closet look like a bordello out of an old Western movie, and why?
There’s also the old standby, “What would happen if…” …the protagonist snapped at the annoying relative? Somebody replaced the TV remote? The protagonist asked straight out about the scandal? Somebody erased the Mozart playlist? The cat used the red velvet wallpaper as a scratching post and started tearing it down, to reveal…
At the very least, asking these questions usually gives me more insight into my characters.
Oh, wow, yes!
I’m about 2/3 of the way through the most challenging revision I’ve ever tackled. The main problem with the book was its saggy middle. It hadn’t seemed saggy to me when I was writing it. But it did seem so to my first reader, and I could see what she meant when she described her reading experience to me.
And the solution was lying right there in plain sight. I’d been wanting to focus on the mystery at the heart of the story, and so I had conveniently made sure that one set of antagonists didn’t get in the way of my protagonists.
In revision, I’ve gotten rid of that convenient sweeping away. Those antagonists are now back in the mix, making things difficult, along with another set that would logically be a factor as well. I *hope* I’ve fixed the problem, but we’ll see what my reader says when she gets it. (After all, I didn’t see the problem myself in the first place. I had to have it made visible by her. What might I be missing now?)
Not only has this been my most difficult revision, but getting the feedback that prompted it was also very painful.
I’ve written 6 novels, 6 novellas, 2 novelettes, and 6 short stories, and received feedback on all of them. Sometimes I felt *daunted* by it, wondering if I had the chops to pull it off. But I never felt devastated.
With this 7th novel, when I learned my reader’s reaction, I did feel devastated. I even wondered if I were an idiot for thinking I could write stories. I wondered if I should quit. I did not want to, mind you, but I thought about it.
I have come back from that all-time low as a writer, but my confidence is still shaky. I feel nervous about my next book, which is a sequel to the one I’m revising.
I’d love to hear some words of wisdom on regaining one’s confidence after a major flattening.
Coming a bit late to this party, but I thank you so much for this. Not so much from a writer perspective, but because as a reader I HATE that way of proceeding. So much so that it has regularly caused me to put books down and never pick them back up again. Real life is hard enough; I get tired of dealing with authors doing horrible things to their characters just because they can. No thanks!
Oops, meant to be a response to the original post, not your comment.
I’ve never had a problem with Bujold’s “worst possible thing for a character” probably because I came to it so late. I’d already learned to think of each character in terms of the story, so anything I did to them, worst or least, was in terms of the story. So, no torturing to death unless torture fit with the plot or theme.
Doesn’t mean I don’t make miscues that require extensive revision, though. Just not that one!
Sometimes the Worst Possible Thing is exactly what will fix the impasse and propel the story forward. Of course, it has to be the right Thing in the right place and time.
Protag: I don’t like where this story is going, so I’m going to just sit here and not budge.
Me: Well, where do you want the story to go?
Protag: I’m not telling.
Me: !!!… The authorities need to punish you for what they think is your crime. What if I sell you into slavery?
Protag: Thank you. That’s much better.
That is almost literally how it played out in my head, though it took a fairly long time to get there.
I have often thought that folks who push the “worst possible thing” must be lacking in imagination. Sure, I could have my main character fail utterly at her goal, and have to watch as everyone she loves is either killed horribly or brainwashed into mindless obedience to the bad guy, knowing it’s all her fault. But it wouldn’t make for much of a book, especially if it happened at the first point where I got stuck.
Whereas using the “small details that the author usually put there for atmosphere” not only nudges the story along in a direction that fits with what’s already gone on, it also makes me feel clever. I can pretend I totally had that in mind all along — just like the cat who falls off the back of the couch insists that she meant to do that. 😉
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. . .
Except that you have to decide what said “man with a gun in his hand” is. Once wrote a story where it was “set something on fire.”
Stumbling across a body is always fun. So is spraining the protagonist’s ankle so he gets on detached duty with the company clerk and Uncovers The Secret Paperwork that didn’t get filed because the clerk has a bad cold.
“The worst possible thing that could happen to the character” has always struck me as a bad piece of advice. Even as a candidate for one of “The three worst pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received.”
The two questions I find useful (even if they’re often very difficult to answer) are “How can the character credibly turn things around and succeed after he’s spent most of the story not-succeeding?” and “How can the character be inveigled into tackling the story-problem when it’s not obviously his business?” (Or alternatively, “How can I formulate or modify the story-problem so that it is obviously the character’s business?”)
I think the “worst thing” technique may work best in a series — when you’ve already established what matters most to the protagonist, and can look to the situation at the end of the last book to specify what the worst is that can happen *now*.
Turning “small details that the author usually put there for atmosphere, for background, for realism” into “the match that sets off an explosion” is one of the great joys of writing. You feel so clever using the detail you’ve already put in and watching it blossom into a major plot device.