Last post, Libby said:
I’ve been having trouble with that point in a story from the lead-up to the climax to the aftermath… once I hit the part where all the stuff I’ve been alluding to has to APPEAR, things tend to go over too smoothly and much too quickly, and I think it’s ultimately unsatisfying. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing wrong, but it feels like the story needs an extra PUSH that I don’t know how to give.
I’ve read all the stuff about there needing to be a part where it all goes wrong, so that you can straighten it out at the climax, but when I do that, usually my characters have this barrage of crazy emotions, listen to someone explain the whole thing (or run around and save the day), and then it’s tidied up and it just feels OFF. It’s weird.
The plot skeleton, which is what I think you’re referring to when you say there “needs to be a part where it all goes wrong,” is DEscriptive, not PREscriptive, and it just means that a story wherein things run along too smoothly is seldom interesting to read. The heroes have to face and overcome obstacles, but the obstacles don’t necessarily have to be of their own making. It depends on the story.
There are three kinds of obstacles your heroes can face on their way to solving the Big Problem. The first kind are internal – the prejudices, blind spots, temperament, lack of skill or knowledge, etc. that could/would keep them from successfully doing what has to be done. The second kind are external – the moves the villain makes to counter them, the equipment they’re missing (whether it’s a magic sword or the ore to smelt to make cannons), the tornado or avalanche or attack by rabid beavers, the broken wagon axle or flat tire. And the third kind are those that result from the logical consequences of whatever the heroes have just done – for instance, they sold their cattle in order to pay for cannons to shoot the dragon with, but without cattle to eat, the dragon starts munching on people instead, making the situation worse. Or the new weather satellite makes it rain on the drought-stricken area, but causes a hurricane to hit the big city just to the south.
What kind of obstacles are the most useful for your story depend on the sort of story it is. If the main story is a Man Learns Lesson type of story, where the protagonist is his own worst enemy, then yes, a lot of the things that go wrong really should be coming from the mistakes the protagonist makes. That’s how he/she is going to end up learning that lesson. In a Brave Little Tailor sort of story, the obstacles the protagonist faces often come from the outside. The villain, if there is one, isn’t going to just sit around waiting for Our Heroes to come and lay siege to his castle; he’s going to do something to try to stop them. If the opponent the heroes face is Nature, the broken leg will turn to gangrene, or a bear will attack, or there’ll be a tornado or a blizzard or a hurricane.
The other thing is that ideally the obstacles need to build up toward the climax. In other words, as the heroes get closer to facing the Big Problem, the tension has to rise. It doesn’t matter whether it rises because all three of the main characters have been arguing with each other for the entire book, and the fights get worse as the Grand Finale approaches, so that as they head for the final confrontation they’re not speaking to each other and unlikely to be able to cooperate in solving the problem, or whether it rises because of a slow revelation that things are Even Worse Than They Thought – those lost sheep weren’t lost, they were eaten; they weren’t eaten by a bear, they were eaten by a dragon; they weren’t eaten by just any dragon, but by an Ancient Wyrm; not only is this dragon an Ancient Wyrm, it has a personal grudge against Our Heroes/their village/their king; etc.
Also, you probably don’t want to pile up a lot of things, expecting to straighten all of them out during the climax. It’s usually more like a series of steep steps, where each minor solution leads closer to the Big Main Problem. Sometimes, what you need is a series of problems that are related, but still independent: Big Problem – we have to kill a dragon. Solution – we’ll buy some cannons. First minor problem – no money. Solution – we raise some money by selling the sheep the dragon was eating anyway. Consequence/next problem – hungry dragon starts eating people. Solution – we all stay indoors while messenger runs off to buy cannons. Next problem – messenger is stuck at bottom of mountain with cannons; trail is too narrow to get them up, and dragon will eat anyone who goes out to widen trail. Solution – use old mining machinery to haul cannons up side of mountain from safety of stone building.
The dragon doesn’t get any more dangerous, really, as the sequence progresses – but the urgency goes up when it starts to eat people, and then rises again when it looks as if there’s no way to get the cannons up where they can actually be used to defend the village. If I were doing it, I’d have them get the cannons up and use them, but have one explode (since it was made by the lowest bidder), throwing the aim of the others off and resulting in an only-slightly-wounded dragon who is now really angry.
The alternative is a bait-and-switch. That is, when your heroes have figured out that they have to take down a dragon, and taking down the dragon turns out to be too smooth and easy, you give them an entirely new problem that results from their dragon-killing: a powerful cursed sword that one of them unknowingly picks up from the dragon’s horde, for instance, or the Dragon-Master who’s really mad that they’ve just killed his pet, or the army from the next kingdom over that can invade through the pass now that the dragon is dead and can’t eat them. Of course, this means that what you thought was the end of the story isn’t actually the end, and you still have a lot more to write…but it’ll probably make a better story. And nobody ever said writing was easy.
I’ve seen the ‘pile it on and resolve in one big, superhuman effort’ reccomended (cough, Bickham, cough), but while it might work for short, fast-paced action novels, I haven’t seen it work at full (or trilogy) length: if your protagonist fails every time and gets knocked down time and time again, I don’t believe that he’ll manage to overcome the Big Bad without either a) luck or b) a deus ex machina. Neither are satisfactory, so I like my obstacles stacked – character solves one problem, finds a bigger one, or a consequence of the last one, or they become the go-to person for that type of problem. “You’ve tamed one dragon… there’s another one over the hill. Only this one’s a lot fiercer, and I don’t think he likes potato chips.”
When you mentioned the `bait and switch’ it made me think of The Hobbit. The first time I read the part where Smauge gets killed by a minor character, I basically said “that’s it? You’ve got to be kidding.” But the real climax -Bilbo standing up to his friends in defense of Barrelhaven- was more satisfying than a dragon slaying, and took me completely off guard. It made the book awesome instead of predictable.
There’s so much to think about here. I have a really hard time creating realistic conflicts and having my characters act in character. Often, I know how I want my story to play out, so I stack my characters neatly into rows and have them act accordingly, rather than letting them figure out how they would end the conflict.
When I try to counteract that, I end up getting my characters into corners that seem impossible to get out of – and I usually resort to a dues ex machina. Although, writing it out like this in this comment makes me think that maybe I just don’t know my characters well enough …
oh yeah — I, like Tiana, find it very hard to work back from the ending to the obstacles. (Not that that is any hindrance to my silly muse.)
Oh my gosh! Thank you SO MUCH for this, this is fantastic! *dances around the room* This exactly what I was having trouble with; I think it was really the “added” problems, or the stair-steps, that I kept missing… I’m going to try this! Thank you so much again, a million times! 🙂
Wow, I never realized that my story was actually a Man Learns Lesson story (well, princess learns lesson). The inciting incident is the protag making a decision that only causes more problems for her, and her attempts to solve those problems only make things worse.
I think working out the stair-steps for this might be really helpful.
Thanks!
(Another trick that one can use is… don’t let the characters plot long enough — or at least, not until you want everything to go off with few hitches. So don’t let the characters sit down and go, “Okay, we’ll sell the sheep — oh, wait, what will the dragon eat? We’d better keep everyone inside… and widen the road so the cannon can come up.” Don’t give them the time, or don’t give them the foreknowledge (at least, of the road being bad).
In roleplaying game example… Okay, I cheated. I didn’t want the players asking me all these tactical questions about the layout of a place, when I only had a vague idea of said layout. “Two stories! Stairs! Um!” So I let them hear that the Nasty Villain had just ordered an Innocent Child sent to his room, and they abandoned all plotting and rushed to Get There In Time, with their tactics happily reduced to: “Get there fast! Get to kid! Save kid! Beat up Nasty Villian with superior firepower!” Which I could fudge easily. “Look! Guards! Look, hallway! Look, doors! Sure, there’s a back door here. Make a Lockpicking roll or Strength to bash it down!”
Likewise, while I don’t advise actually rolling dice instead of using plot, when writing a story, because the dice rarely have a good sense of tension…. But if things seem to be going along too easily for the protagonists… what happens if they “fail a skill roll”? Or an “IQ roll” and do something… not so smart? A perfectly executed ambush that runs into a problem when Protagonist’s Minion A can’t bring him/herself to properly kill/secure Antagonist B, who winds up being a bit more dangerous than anyone thought, despite B’s minions being taken down. Or some mook gets a lucky blow to a saddlegirth and someone’s fallen off on his/her butt.
A “failed roll” kind of thing isn’t something to rely on for tension — unless there’s something underpinning things, like ticking off a god of luck or otherwise getting a supernatural cuse — but it’s another tool in the arsenal.)
I tend to have the same sort of problem – the climax works itself too easily. In my case it comes from characters who are too self-aware and who are too ready to admit problems and make changes.
A good rule is that if the characters’ plan works don’t show them planning at all — that would be just redundancy. (If it fails, show the plan in all its glory so the readers can see what went awry.)
Mary – don’t forget that a plan consists of planning, execution, and aftermath. Depending on how important it is and how it goes, you can play with them.