ARGUING WITH YOURSELF: TRUSTING YOUR CHARACTERS BY SHAYNA MATTHEWS

                   Arguing with Yourself - Trusting Your Characters by Shayna Matthews

The Journey: what's around the next bend? Photograph by Shayna Matthews.

When the plot crumbles...aftermath of your character war.

   
      A writer is a unique specimen of being. We create characters, journeys and universes of our own accord. Occasionally, we get lucky. A person will unfold before our eyes, plucked seemingly out of the blue. The character breathes life into the story. He or she forms his/her own thoughts and opinions, and expresses them freely, running roughshod over your meticulous plotting. "This is not how it's gonna be," he might tell you.

     No matter what you try, the scene collapses much like an implosion of brick and mortar. A writer might fight the nagging little voice, after all, it is the author's tale to tell, is it not? Characters must do as they are bidden. (And if you believe that, I have a nice piece of ocean front property in Arizona for sale...interested?)
     Advice on fictional writing is easy to find in this modern world. A quick search will unearth an avalanche of rules. How to write a novel. How not to write a novel. Planning. Plotting. Flying by the seat of your 'pantsters'. Show, don't tell. Well, tell a little, that one's all about balance, right? Character heroes vs. villains. But I believe it all boils down to two things: knowledge and trust. We must know our characters as we know ourselves. Perhaps more so. Trust in them, in their voices, should they decide to speak to you. They know the story better than the writer, for they are living it.

   I've heard it said about historical fiction, that an in-tune author inadvertently summons past truths. The characters we flesh out on paper lean over our shoulders and whisper the story within the life they lived once upon a time. It is the author's job to listen. Once in a great while, a spirited character will do a little more than whisper. They "nudge" with the force of a twelve-pound hammer.

      I know an author--let's call her Lynn--who has a regular habit of picking up on those not so subtle signs from her "fictional" characters, so to speak. She was in the realm of a chapter fight with a secondary character, an unruly cowboy, who refused to stay in the background. Character and writer could not see eye to eye, and the plot began to unravel at the seams.
AGAIN.
      Lynn went to one of her favorite stomping grounds, a western boutique filled with the leather-scented dreams most cowgirls lust over. In the shop, she gravitated toward a handmade pendant. It was a large brass portrait medallion. The image was clearly one printed from who-knows-where, a cheap repro of the original portrait of a smug cowpoke. The original was, no doubt, just that--the real thing. The unnamed puncher donned in threadbare britches, a whitish shirt and a broad-brimmed hat might not have had many worldly goods in his life at the time the photograph was taken, but he had pride--scads of it.                                                  
                                                                                              
                                            
     Lynn walked through the store for nearly two hours, but kept returning to that pendant. She could not shake the image, for the man was everything she imagined her own stubborn character to be...crude, boyish, charming and completely unforgettable. She bought it and brought it home. The very next day, she scanned Pinterest boards, looking for nothing in particular. The moment she brought up those pictorial boards, an image seared through her heart: it was a photograph of the old west cowboy, the very same image she had bought the day before, marked simply: C. 1890 Cowboy.                                                     
     Upon letting the pounding of her heart settle back in its place, a frantic yet thorough search for the cowboy revealed...nothing. His image is there, he crops up from time to time to haunt her, and yet, his story remains a mystery. At least, for now. For you see, now that Lynn has learned to listen, that prideful cowboy is whispering the true tales of his stories in her ear. She writes them down as fast as she can. When she strays too far from the truth of her characters, she flounders. Then she must pause, reflecting on the past, and search for what went wrong. Often she has to bite down, swallowing her pride for the good of the story, and trust a little deeper in the whispers of the characters she is writing with. You see, for Lynn, they are more than characters. They are the people who lived the tale, the co-authors of their own tales, and the teachers who guide her down the adventurous journey of history, of authorship, and of self-discovery.

Written by Shayna Lynn Matthews

WHAT MAKES A GREAT PLOT? OR ....... WHAT MAKES A PLOT???? By Gail L. Jenner

 
Is there an EXACT number of PLOT "TEMPLATES"? DO PLOTS EVEN HAVE TO FOLLOW A TEMPLATE OR PATTERN???   Yes??  No?? Maybe??

If not, how do writers "arrive" at a plot?

As a writing teacher I have had many students ask about PLOT and how to develop it. They wanted to create a plot and then plug in whatever characters might move through the episodes of their stories.

In the beginning, I didn’t know how to turn that notion around, although I sensed that starting with PLOT was not the answer.  As I analyzed the stories that touched me most profoundly -- the novels and stories that were keepers, I discovered that plot was not the primary tool used.......Unfortunately, I now believe some writers think that if they can just get hold of the right kind of plot – or set up a series of actions/events that will make their story exciting -- that the work involved in developing a good story might also come easily.

I sincerely believe this is a mistake.  I also believe that even if there was such a thing as the most PERFECT plot -- it would NOT make the act of writing any easier at all!

In the quest to understand plot, I have picked up a number of books over the years. In 20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them), Ronald Tobias asks that very question: “How may plots are there?” He then lists a number of possible answers, including: Thousands or maybe millions? Sixty-nine? Thirty-six? OR Two, period?

I had to laugh the first time I read that….I knew that Aristotle had ascribed to the two basic plot theory, but the other responses were new to me. I learned that Rudyard Kipling ascribed to the idea of sixty-nine plots (WHY 69??), and Carlo Gozzi (who?) felt there were thirty six (Okay….).

Honestly, I don’t know if there IS an absolute answer to the question of plots, but I do recognize that in life, there are universal questions that seem to come up every day, no matter where we live or who we are. These are the deep, deep questions that each of us has to answer for ourselves about our life. I now see those deeper questions as being the force or energy behind any great story.

Plot, then, seems to grow out of those questions, and those are the same questions that our characters must confront and resolve. So for me, the POWER in story comes out of character (NOT plot); that is, Plot IS Character.  OR – another way to say it is that “character + conflict = plot”.

So does that mean there are two or thirty-six or sixty-nine or thousands of plots out there? I’m still not sure. There is an unlimited number of possible complications and conflicts, but how many ways can a character resolve his/her conflict? Interesting question, right?

There is, of course, tragedy. There is also comedy and adventure, etc., but those are actually genres – which do, in fact, carry certain plot elements that become part of a reader’s expectation. They are the patterns that most writers instinctively or deliberately follow.  

Writers recognize that readers expect a number of predictable elements to be present when they pick up their preferred genre. Break those unwritten “rules” and you may have some very frustrated readers. For instance, in a romance, a reader generally expects a “happy ever after” ending; if not entirely “happy,” the ending must at least be satisfying – or else that story/novel may end up thrown against the wall.

Of course, readers of “literary” fiction are often looking for those less predictable elements – even the less than satisfactory ending. I always found it amusing when my students would tell me that literary fiction was just boring fiction and that’s what made it literary! 

What matters most to a writer should be that he/she understand the elements of a particular genre (if a commercial genre is the goal), and along with that the patterns that lend themselves to the selected genre. However, that does not mean a writer can lean on those prescribed elements and forsake deep character and the questions that arise from a character’s internal struggle. No matter how simple a plotline a writer may employ, it is character that makes a story unforgettable.

So how do we arrive at those deep character questions?

We all face similar issues in life and great stories reflect those issues, eg: What complex choices can we then set up as obstacles that our hero or heroine must face and overcome? What dilemmas can we forge, which force our readers to recognize that there are no easy solutions in life, that sometimes doing the right thing actually means doing the “wrong” thing? Or what sacrifices will our protagonists have to make in order to get or have or achieve their goals? What losses are required in order to “win?”

This kind of thinking, this kind of character development is, in my opinion, what takes an average story into the better and best category of story. So, the challenge should be to take our characters on a journey that causes our readers to cheer or cry or scream!

As in the words of Willa Cather, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

These are the kinds of dilemmas I played with when creating the characters that people my newly re-released WILLA Award-winning novel, ACROSS THE SWEET GRASS HILLS from Prairie Rose Publications. It’s more than just a romance. It’s the story of a man, a woman, and a people – all pitted against the terrifying and historical drama of the little-known Baker’s Massacre of the Blackfeet in 1870. Questions of loyalty, sacrifice, love, and forgiveness are the questions each of the characters must answer for themselves.

In appreciation and gratitude, I’d like to offer TWO free downloads of ACROSS THE SWEET GRASS HILLS! Leave a comment and I’ll enter your name into a drawing. 

TWO winners will be selected on WEDNESDAY of this week!