Okay guys. I’m so glad that this post actually made it up in time. With several jobs, school, and homework I’m always worried that I won’t be able to put the posts up on time. But I did it! Yay!
Secrets of Plot: Conflict: The Problem
The Ups and Downs
So last week I briefly mentioned the ups and downs of conflict. I alluded to it when I talked about all the different conflicts that could be involved in the Rising Action. So, I decided to go a little in depth with this explanation to help it make more sense.
The first time I really heard this example put into words was in the book Scene and Structure.
In this book Jack M. Bickham (who also wrote the 38 most common fiction writing mistakes I referenced in an earlier post) said in the first chapter of his book that your story should reflect the pattern of life. Life is a roller coaster. A lot of time in life we are always thinking, “Why me? Why did this horrible thing happen to me? Why can’t something happy happen to me?”. Here’s your hint. You can’t go up if you aren’t somewhere low to start with. And you can’t come down if you’re not somewhere high. The same thing is true about your characters.
I’m going to add my own addition to that. I once heard someone say that they aren’t going to let bad things in life bother them anymore. They told me that instead they’re going to yell, “Plot Twist!” and move on with their life. At the time I just thought this was a clever turn of phrase but the more you think about it the more it rings true. But it’s not because life is like a novel. It’s because novels are like life. If you want to write better novels, experience the world. That doesn’t mean you haven’t to do something completely crazy like jump out of an airplane. Go to the next city over that you’ve never been too. Go to a different country (if you live somewhere where you can get to another country easy) or go to another state (if you live in the United States). Maybe you don’t think you can do something as crazy as that or you’re too young to do things like that on your own. Then that’s fine too. Try something small first that you’ve never done before. Go to a different grocery store. Take a different route home from school. You can try all sorts of things.
I’m going to elaborate a bit on what the different parts of the roller coaster are because that’s important to understand the ups and downs. Here, I drew an example.
This is the graph of conflict. Look at my paint skills. *maniacal laughter*
Anyway, at the middle line of the graph (the black one) we see the mediocre life of an average character. This is the character that no one wants to read about. To use the previous example from the exposition section of Keneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul. Keneki, if he had never run into a ghoul and been dragged into the whole ghoul/human conflict then he would’ve been that average line. He would’ve been an average college student, avid reader, and love seeker. He would have never had a conflict large enough for an interesting novel. But because he ran into a ghoul his story had higher ups, or action scenes, and higher downs, or emotional review scenes.
The high point of the graph is the action, sometimes this action isn’t always physical like you would think. The high action scenes aren’t always scenes where there are battles. Sometimes high action scenes are sneaking around during a prison break. Sometimes it’s the argument with a loves one that leads to their capture. Sometimes it’s the falling out with the love interest and they break up. The up/action point is anything that causes more conflict or tension for the character. But as the action declines, and that small problem of that scene is resolved the character reflect, often emotionally, about the event that previously occurred. This is how a character develops. These are the scenes where a reader watches their new friend develop new skills and reflect on how they have changed.
This is what the up and down of conflict is. Now you have to integrate this into your story. When your character is reflecting something needs to happen to drag them back into the conflict. Here’s an example.
In the book Witch and Wizard by James Patterson (the king of roller coaster scenes ((I recommend the Maximum Ride series))) The story starts, and the characters are sleeping. Suddenly they are awakened rudely from their sleep and are arrested. This is the high tension. This is the up. Afterwards they are thrown in cells and interrogated. Nothing really happens during these scenes. They reflect on why they are in jail, what their parents told them before they were arrested. This is emotional reflection, this is a down. They escape prison. This is an up. They join a rebellion and learn about the prophecy. This is a down. And so on and so forth until the story reaches its final downward arc where, instead of going below the average line it lands somewhere on it. The character is back to life, but the character is not the same.
This is the up and down of conflict.
So that’s all I have for this week. Next week will be a little bit more on conflict. I haven’t exactly decided what it will be yet but it will be pretty good. So as usual,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!