I wrote a guest blog post for the Utah Horror Writers. It's delves into fear of the unknown and why characters are tempted to investigate the strange noise in the basement. Go check it out! http://utahhorror.blogspot.com/2014/10/curiosity-kills-and-fear-of-unknown.html
0 Comments
Here is the short story I promised for reaching 100 likes on my Facebook page. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
“Mr. Abernathy’s Music Box” I looked at the passenger manifest, twice. Being a sea-faring man, I had my share of superstition. While this didn’t meet any known superstitions I could think of, the fact that Mr. Abernathy was listed as a passenger left a sick feeling in my stomach. That was enough to salt my drinking water. To call Mr. Alistair Abernathy strange, would be like calling President Lincoln tall—it was just fact. Everyone knew it, and everyone accepted his strangeness with a subconscious apathy. We ignored his odd mumbling, the way he shambled about town hunched over and constantly searching about, we even ignored his yearly tour around the town when he’d knock at each and every door asking the whereabouts of his wife. She died over ten years ago when his boat sunk near Sorrow Reef. A fisherman found him on the beach the next morning, and said Mr. Abernathy just stood there and stared out to sea, pieces of his boat washed up all about him. Story goes, Mr. Abernathy had nothing on his person but that music box he carries around tucked in his coat pocket. The authorities searched for his wife, but couldn’t find her. Bad business all around. You can imagine my curiosity when I found Mr. Abernathy listed on the manifest. To my knowledge, the man hadn’t left the Bay since he and his wife arrived from the Utah territories. Wasn’t due to monetary concerns; supposedly he owned a mining outfit in Utah by the name of Angus. We assumed he stuck around after the accident because he waited for his wife. Yet, lest my eyes deceived me, his name sat atop of my manifest—Longboat Bay to London, England. “Captain Bonnie, have you gotten a look at the manifest?” I asked. The Captain was a giant of a man. He always ducked when going through doors, and nobody ever looked down at him. With a large belly threatening every button on his shirt, and an ashen grey beard, Captain Bonnie was a formidable presence. “That I have Mr. Grimes that I have. Is there something wrong?” he said. “Everything’s in order sir, with the exception of one passenger. Mr. Alistair Abernathy is booked to London, sir.” The Captain raised an eyebrow and stroked his beard. Crumbs of bread fell to the wooden deck of the ship. “And the problem is what, Mr. Grimes?” I found myself having trouble trying to formulate a proper response to his question. What was the problem? “Do you think it wise to let someone in his state on board, sir?” “And what state would that be?” “His mental state, sir.” The Captain let out a sigh that could have filled the mainsail. He took the passenger manifest from me, folded it up and stuffed it in my coat pocket. “Mr. Grimes, the poor Mr. Abernathy paid in full for this voyage. He paid extra, in fact. Enough to convince me to alter our course slightly.” I opened my mouth to protest but the Captain held a finger up and stopped me before I could utter a word. “The alteration won’t delay us any, Mr. Grimes. Now I suggest you let him be, and get back to ensuring we are ready to go. Do I make myself clear?” The steely glint in the Captain’s eye was enough to tell me to drop the matter. He wouldn’t budge and it wouldn’t do to argue further in front of the crew. It was bad enough that we’d have to make the voyage with Mr. Abernathy. “Clear as mermaid’s tears, sir.” “Good. Now make ready. The winds are in our favor.” As we made preparations to depart, the passengers boarded. We didn’t have many this time, and I could understand the Captain’s willingness to allow anyone aboard if they had the money to pay. Yet, as Mr. Abernathy stepped onto the deck, Death used my spine as concertina. Mr. Abernathy slunk on board, looking all about as a criminal would. He’d bring nothing but bad luck on the voyage. I would have to keep a watchful eye on him. Mr. Abernathy slipped beneath deck to his quarters and remained unseen for the rest of the day. We pushed off from the bay and made our way to open water. It was good to be out at sea again. The rise and fall with the waves, the salty spray in the air, it was heaven. “Have you seen her, my wife?” I spun around to find Mr. Abernathy behind me. He clutched the wooden music box in his hands, his knuckles white with exertion. “Mr. Abernathy, your wife is dead. You know this. Please stay out of the crew’s way. The deck is very dangerous.” I tried my best to keep my wits about me, but being so close to the man put me on edge. My hands shook and I couldn’t help but stare into Mr. Abernathy’s dead eyes. I would be happy when we pulled into London and offloaded him. We’d all be better off. “Not dead, sir. Just waiting.” He fiddled with the music box and twisted the crank. The old gears whizzed and sputtered, but no music came out. Yet that fact didn’t stop Mr. Abernathy from swaying to and fro to a tune which apparently only he could hear. “Waiting for what?” I asked. He stopped swaying to the imagined tune and stared me direct in the eyes. “Waiting for me.” With that, he scurried off below deck with the music box to his ear. The winds picked up and licked at the sails. The sun dipped low beyond the horizon and cast the sky in a sanguineous glow. Following the luck with Mr. Abernathy, the red sky didn’t bode well. We were in for a bumpy ride. My prediction blossomed to life at twilight. Dark clouds rolled over us and brought with them all the moaning and groaning Poseidon could muster. The waves tried to drag us under, but the Scarlet Whale was a stubborn bitch. It’d take more than a squall to send us to the deep. The heavy footfalls of the captain vibrated behind me. The big man looked to the storm, then to me. “Mr. Grimes, make sure all the passengers are safely secured down below. We wouldn’t want anyone taking a midnight swim.” “Sir!” I accounted for everyone, with the exception of one passenger—Mr. Abernathy. Thunder boomed above deck and the sea decided it was a good moment to throw the ship. I had good sea legs, but still fell. My head hit the wall and for a moment, I couldn’t see straight. The rush of waves and the creak of the ship sang to me, but something else floated to my ears, a melody of some sorts. The sound came as fast as it went, but I couldn’t shake the song from my head. Lightning cut across the dark skies and left a squall of light floating in my vision. The same music crawled into my ears again, and just as I thought I recognized the tune, thunder bellowed and drowned the notes away. I grabbed the railing and heaved up to my feet. The Scarlet Whale rode the waves as if they were made of broken glass—beautiful and sharp, yet deadly if handled wrong. Captain Bonnie had more experience on the sea than most people I had ever met; therefore, I wasn’t worried about the ship. I was, however, worried about the safety and wellbeing of the people on board the ship, even Mr. Abernathy. Whether I cared for the man or not didn’t matter, I was in charge of his safety, and I intended to keep him safe. I found Mr. Abernathy at the bow. He stood at the very edge of the deck, and if it weren’t for the railing, I had the feeling he would have walked right into the dark waters below. A tall fellow by the name of Jacobo stared at Mr. Abernathy. Jacobo had a thick island accent which many couldn’t understand, but he did his work and could lift more than anyone else I had ever seen. He simply stood and wrung a red cap in his large hands, over and over again. I walked behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Jacobo started at my touch and whirled around to face me. His eyes were wide and the whites were clearly visible which created a strange contrast the man’s mahogany skin. “Go check on the cargo, if you would. It would be our end should it come unsecured during this swell,” I said. Jacobo didn’t say anything, just nodded. He made his way below deck, but not before casting another glace toward Mr. Abernathy. I motioned him below deck. He nodded and disappeared. The sea shook us and caused the ship to list to the side. I grabbed onto the rail again to keep from falling overboard. Somehow, Mr. Abernathy stayed onboard during all this. The man clutched the music box tight to his body and stood motionless. He was on the lookout for something. “Mr. Abernathy! We must get below deck!” If he heard me, he didn’t show it. I inched closer to the man. The waves came at us harder and faster, which made any movement difficult. The ship swam with the sea, but walking was almost impossible; up and down, side to side. Even Captain Bonnie would have a hard time moving through this. “Mr. Abernathy! Please, I implore you we mu-” Music cut me off. It came clear, as if I sat center theater next to an orchestra. A soft melody that rode the wind as we rode the waves. The music seemed to overpower the thunder and the storm’s bluster. Soon, the only noise in my head was the sound of my own breathing, and the music. Mr. Abernathy lifted the music box over his head. He closed his eyes and smiled. The Scarlet Whale listed with a violence that took me off my feet. I slammed on the deck and for a moment, only a high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Then the damnable music washed up in my consciousness again. Salt water came aboard once more and slammed me against the smooth wood. This time, instead of knocking the sense from me, it gave me focus and pulled me back to reality. Mr. Abernathy’s cackle of joy cracked into the night air. I struggled to get my feet under me while the ship fought the sea. Finally, I stood. Mr. Abernathy dropped the music box at his feet. The man stared out into the inky darkness. “We need to get below deck!” I said. He didn’t say anything, but continued to search. Perhaps if I could get the music box the man would listen. It would be a last attempt before I left him to Poseidon’s will. I used the rail to get close. Even with its support, movement was very difficult. The ship tried several times to throw me into the drink. A sense of duty kept me moving even though I wanted to turn around and head to the safety of the hold. Let the Sea take Mr. Abernathy and his lunacy. I almost turned around right then, but I was so close. The wooden box was nearly within arm’s reach. With one hand clamped onto the rail, I extended my other arm out. The tips of my fingers brushed across the intricate carvings of the music box, then the ship lurched and the box rolled away. I cursed and crawled toward the box. I knew if I tried to walk, I’d only risk more injury. The box sat on its side, with the lid open. The music still played in my head, but not from the contraption only an arm’s length away. It came from the sky. It played from the sea. The waves and wind worked in concert to produce a haunting melody which saturated the very core of my being. I knew if I survived this storm, I would never hear another song so lovely and haunting. The box was just within reach. I stretched out to grab it, confident it would help lure Mr. Abernathy below deck. Mr. Abernathy grabbed my arm, his hand clamped down on my wrist like a crab-claw. A smile was perched upon his face, but his eyes were distant. “My wife, Mr. Grimes. I know you’ll like her. She’s such a lovely lady and always enjoyed company.” I tried to wrest my arm away, but something caught my eye. It was just a glimpse of shadow in the darkness, silhouetted in a flash of lightning. A crag of sharp rock loomed in front of the ship and stretched high into the air told me where we were—Sorrow Reef. Mr. Abernathy sunk to his knees and whispered into my ear. “We’re home.” I closed my eyes as the ship careened into the reef. *** The sun beat overhead. A gull cried out nearby. Water caressed my feet. These were some of the first sensations that came to me as I lay on the sandy shore. A dream perhaps? Yet I knew better. The aches and pains in my body from crevices and corners that I never thought of told me differently. I rolled to my side and opened my eyes. The bright light stole my vision and made it impossible to see any details. I rolled to my back and just focused on breathing. The simple act of survival came with some difficulty, and that’s when the real pain started. My side burned, a fire that grew with each ragged breath. I reached down and my hand ran across a jagged shard of wood lodged between two ribs. My vision adjusted to the light. A piece of the Scarlet Whale’s railing jutted from my abdomen. Blood trickled from the wound and soaked into the brine covered sand. The waves licked the wound causing further discomfort and pulled red ribbons of blood back into the sea. I rested my head on the ground and watched the sky for awhile. The thought of moving further inland sat patiently in the back of my mind. Finally, I took a deep breath which elicited a grunt of pain, and sat up. Debris from the shipwreck littered the beach all about me. Bodies of my shipmates were scattered about like ragdolls. I tried to call out to them, but it came out a whisper dragged across a rasp. Something washed up with the next wave and brushed against my hand—the music box. It looked none the worse for wear. I picked it up and moved to open it, but hesitated. If the music played, I wasn’t too sure if I my mind could handle it. Yet curiosity got the better of me and flipped the lid open. Nothing but silence greeted. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and threw the box away. With great effort I got to my feet and shambled down the beach. Storm clouds gathered in the distance, a promise of more foul weather to come. A soft melody drifted into the air and stopped me dead in my tracks. It became louder and louder until I had to cover my ears. I dropped to my knees and curled into a ball, aware of the pain in my side but uncaring. Laughter boiled up from my guts and spilled out into the salt-brushed air. “We’re home.” I currently have 81 likes on my author Facebook page. Last time I went fishing for likes, I offered a piece of flash fiction if we hit the goal. This time, if we can make it to 100 likes, I'll post a short story for your enjoyment. The picture above tells a little bit about the story's subject matter. So please, go to my Facebook page and hit like, send your friends as well! It's the best way of keeping up with what's going on in my dark mind.
I decided to take a different approach for one of my short stories. I came across a website, FictionArcade, which is basically an author uploaded site for short fiction. They allow authors to upload their own work for people to enjoy. It takes tokens to read stories, and each token costs .25 cents. Authors can charge up to three tokens per story, and they'll get .20 cents of that token paid directly to them. They run contests each month, and the winner of each contest (i.e. owner of most paid tokens) gets 250.00. I decided to give it a whirl and see what happens. So I uploaded my short story, "Mr. Abernathy's Music Box" which is a supernatural horror about a man with a broken music box searching for his drowned wife. If you would like to read it, please go here, and you can find it for a measly .20 cents. Worst case, I don't get anything, then I take the story down and call it a learning experience. Best case, people love the story and word of mouth drives some sales and recognition. Only time will tell.First off, thanks for hanging in there and being patient while life took over. I know it’s been a long time since I last posted, and I apologize. I saved this topic for last, because I think it’s one of the most important aspects to surviving a bad situation. Without the will to survive/live, the rest of your plan or training won’t amount to jack or shit. In this post, I’ll talk about what the will to survive is, how to foster a healthy mental attitude to grow your own will to survive, and share some stories that are good examples of this phenomenon. According to Dr. Lawrence Wilson, “The will to survive is the will to stay in one’s body and keep the body healthy and alive.” In other words, it’s the mental strength to endure despite tough odds and crap situations. It’s this will to keep on living that will help get you through the survival situation. You have to have a reason to keep on keepin’ on, or else you’ll give up, and then it’s game over. There was an entire module of training in my Air Force survival on this very topic. Plus in the survival manual they hand out to flyers deploying to a hostile environment, there is a section dedicated to it as well. It’s a real thing, and there are steps you can take to help strengthen your own will to survive. First and foremost, know that the will to survive is a mental muscle that ties in with physical conditions (it can also tie into spiritual factors if you are religious/spiritual). There are certain things you can do to help prepare and exercise this mental muscle, like prepare. Remember the Boy Scout motto of be prepared? You have to know your own limitations before you find yourself in a survival situation, and the best way to find those limitations, are to practice, exercise, and implement. You need to practice survival techniques. I’ve mentioned this before in other posts, but if you only rely on theory, you’re going to be hurting when it comes to time to try it for real. Practice building primitive shelters. Practice building fires with different materials in different weather patterns. Gathering and purifying water, or foraging for food. These are skills that you will need to survive, and if you know deep down that you can rely on your own skills to procure and produce these things, it will take some of the stress off and give you the confidence you need to make it out there mentally. The next part is exercise. You do not want to be in poor health when you find yourself in a survival situation. It’s only going to get worse as the days go on, and if you aren’t in the good health beforehand, it’s going to make things tougher. That stress and hurt is going to wear on you physically. Once the physical stress sets in, it starts eating away at your mental strength and keeping that will to survive gets harder to maintain. So eat right and exercise, and it will pay dividends if you find yourself in the suck. The final part of this equation is implementation. Having a strong will to survive is an active process. While the first two steps are physical factors that feed into the will to survive, this step is all mental. If you find yourself in a bad situation and you have to survive, there are things you have to actively do to keep your mental strength where it needs to be. You need to focus on the reasons you have to stay alive. While all of these may not apply, hopefully you can find one or two that work. Focus on your family, friends, loved ones, your faith in a higher power (if you are spiritual/religious), or even get stubborn and get to the point that you won’t let Mother Nature kill you. Heck, maybe your will to survive is fed by fears that your family and friends will find your stash of porn on your computer. Maybe you have dogs at home that need you to survive and you’re their only hope. Perhaps you just need to see the results of the next World Cup before you pass on. Whatever it is that keeps you wanting to live, grab a hold of it and don’t let go. Keep that idea in the forefront of your mind and don’t let it waver. If you with others, you all need to work together to keep one another up and willing to fight on. It’s going to suck. Survival isn’t fun. If you’re having fun surviving, then you’re camping. So you need to do everything humanly possible to endure that suck. Because once the will to survive goes, it doesn’t matter if you have a freshwater natural spring and a pizza joint right next to your survival location, you won’t make it. I’ve started watching television program called Naked and Afraid. It puts two survival experts together in a harsh environment without any clothes and only one survival tool apiece to help them. The pair then has to survive for 21 days. It becomes obvious when the participants lose their will to survive. They become depressed, they panic, and they usually end up tapping out and going home. An amazing story of survival goes to hiker, Aron Ralston who fell down a slot canyon in eastern Utah and got his arm trapped by a heavy boulder. Ralston spent five days pinned by the boulder until he decided that he needed to initiate his own rescue. Through an incredible will to survive, Ralston used a pocketknife to cut his own trapped arm off at the elbow and hike out to safety. Another amazing story of survival is the story of Steven Callahan. In 1982 Callahan set sail alone in a sailboat from the Canary Islands. During a bad storm, his boat sank and he found himself having to survive in a small inflatable life raft. Most of his supplies were gone, and he spent 76 days adrift in the Caribbean. He survived by keeping his mind occupied. Callahan divided his mind into two people, a captain and a crewmember, and accounts from his logbook show the two personalities. It kept him mentally alive and willing to survive. So how does this apply to writing? Simple, it’s this aspect of survival that you can really get deep into a character’s POV and let it shine. This will turn your reactive character into an active character that people can connect with. Focus on their will to survive and show the reader why they want to live. What’s driving their will to keep on fighting? Is it family? Vengeance perhaps? Who knows, but take the opportunity to show off some mad characterizations skills.
Don’t forget to vote on what you want me to cover in the bonus blog post. You can vote here! I’ll pick the top three topics and share some wisdom. If you don’t see a topic listed in the poll, go ahead and vote other and shoot me a message on what you’d like to know about. I'm still working on the next installment of the survival mini-series. Don't fret though, to tide you over, a talented writer and a good friend of mine graced us with some knowledge. Let me introduce Mary DeSantis and her take on the fantasy genre.
So, what is fantasy? I hear this question asked a lot. Most often, the answer comes among rambling paragraphs about casting spells and riding dragons and defeating evil wizards. Is this wrong? No. Fantasy can be all those things, but I’m not convinced it must be only those things. When I started my mfa at Seton Hill, I wanted to write a fantasy novel that didn’t have a lot of magic. As an unexperienced writer, I thought this was because I wanted to “break out of the mold” or whatever other saying I had at the time. Now, two and a half years later, I’ve realized that it wasn’t the mold at all. I wanted to write a story with little magic, not because I necessarily didn’t want magic. No, I didn’t want the magic to get in the way of the story or, more importantly, the characters. While fighting the endless battle of getting a novel to work, I’ve learned so much about the people I’ve chosen to inhabit my world. The villain has fantastic power, and he is really the only one. There are magical swords. My heroine makes use of the power the swords give without realizing it, but at the end of the day, the only thing that she (and, ultimately, the reader) thinks she has in her favor is determination and skill. There’s no blanket of safety in spells. She can’t wave a wand and curse her enemy or call a fire-breathing dragon or give herself super strength. What she can do is fight hard and care even harder. And yet, the story is still fantasy because it contains some fantastic elements. It contains larger-than-life threats that force impossible odds on my heroine, but she persists. It’s not about what magic can do. It’s not about how she can use magic. It’s about how she fights, using only who she is and what she believes, as weapons. It’s a novel about one person’s struggle, and really, isn’t that what stories are? “So, what is fantasy?” For me? Fantasy is a story about people who happen to be surrounded by/have fantastic abilities. When the magic eclipses the struggle, the fantasy has lost its ability to relate to the real world. I read about dragons and wand-waving and magical battles as much as the next fantasy buff, and I love me a good supernatural smackdown any day. But I want characters to grow and change and use who they are, not what they can do, to ultimately emerge victorious. So what is fantasy? It’s a story about people who are just people facing things that are much larger than them. Bio Mary DeSantis, also known as desantism, is an –ism—almost enough said. After spending the first twenty-something years of her life in a small city fifteen miles north of Boston, she up and moved to North Carolina, where she’s resided for about two years. Mary has been an avid Disney lover from age too-young-to-remember and, as a result, writes fantasy, often about royalty and soldiers. When she’s not slaving away in front of her computer, Mary can be found belting Disney songs at the top of her lungs, hanging with her local buddies from Write Club (which she’d discuss, but the first rule of Write Club…), getting lost in a book, or learning to fight fire breathing dragons. Blog: http://outofthelockbox.blogspot.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/desantismt Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/desantismauthor Go check out a post I did about Westerns & Horror. It's featured on Fictionvale's website through this link: http://fictionvale.com/gs-westerns-and-horror-by-c-r-langille/. Fictionvale is a fairly new publisher, but don't let that scare you. They publish some amazing stories. The editors and staff are very professional and passionate about what they do, and it shows in their finished product. I can't recommend this place enough.
http://fictionvale.com/ I want to conclude my conflict mini-series on micro-tension. What is micro-tension? It's the trail of bead crumbs that your readers follow. It's the fish hook that you created that pulls them along the story. If you've done it well, the reader won't even know it. Micro-tension is a combination of a few different things. It could be the change in tone and pace that signals the reader that something is about to happen. They'll want to know what. It's the unanswered questions that litter the end of your paragraphs, scenes and chapters. Your readers will want to know the answers. Micro-tension, in other words, is curiosity and desire. You want to leave your readers in a state of needing to know more. If done well, micro-tension will make your story a page-turner. Here's a small example taken from one of my stories: I looked at the passenger manifest, twice. Being a sea-faring man, I had my share of superstition. While this didn’t meet any known superstitions I could think of, the fact that Mr. Abernathy was listed on my passenger manifest left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. And that was enough to salt my drinking water. If I break this down, there are a couple instances found within the paragraph that I would consider examples of micro-tension. Here it is again with some sections colored differently to indicate what I think fit the category. I looked at the passenger manifest, twice. Being a sea-faring man, I had my share of superstition. While this didn’t meet any known superstitions I could think of, the fact that Mr. Abernathy was listed on my passenger manifest left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. And that was enough to salt my drinking water. Hopefully, you want to know why Mr. Abernathy vexes the narrator. Why would his inclusion in the voyage be a problem? I want to take this a step further and show you a short clip. It's from an adaptation of Stephen King's short story, "N." Watch below and then I'll point out some spots that I thought were great uses of micro-tension. First off, there is a great slow build of tension overall. By the end of the clip, we want to know more. Some specific spots that jumped out to me were, when the narrator talked about spots where reality is thin. As a viewer, I wanted to see an example of this. So, with hopes high, we keep moving forward to hopefully share that example. Another spot, was when he talked about seeing the faces of beasts and monsters in the pillars. This alone is a good use of tension because we want to know more, then they take it a step further and add doubt to the equation by saying it could just be a trick of the light. Now, as a viewer, I want to know which side of the story is real. Are there faces in the pillars? Or is he just going crazy. Micro-tension continues as he introduces the dynamic of numbers and touching and doesn't explain it. Instantly, we need to find out what he's talking about, so we continue. Then, ending it on the possibility that he is diseased and it may be communicable is a great. It's hard to stop on a cliffhanger, so we naturally want to press forward.
That's how your writing needs to be. Don't end chapters with breaks where your characters are going to sleep, or the reader feels like they too can step away from the action. Leave a question unanswered. It doesn't have to be a world-shattering question, just something that the reader will want answered; something that will make them turn to the next page. Conflict alone won’t raise your book to the best-seller list, the conflict has to be emotionally engaging to the reader. If the story is emotionally engaging, it will generate reader interest. Your goal as an author is to create emotional familiarity within your work.
You might ask me, "Well, my book is a far-future, space opera, based on the life of a highly advanced form of life. How do I write something familiar with that?" While it may be difficult to imagine, writing something emotionally familiar isn't hard to do. You may already be doing it. You can write your space opera, epic fantasy, or historical fiction, but the emotional content needs to be relateable to the reader. Anger, happiness, sadness, euphoria, depression... these are all familiar emotions. They are universal and cross culture boundaries. That being said, they can cross genre boundaries just as easily. Karl Iglesias said, “Bottom line, it doesn’t matter who or what you write about as long as your characters experience emotions we understand and relate to.” What does this mean? Coming up next: Conflict Part 3--Micro-tension. It's been awhile since I've had anything useful on the blog. I have no excuses for that. To make up for it, I'm going to do a mini-series on conflict and tension in writing. Buckle up, because it's going to be a crazy ride (Otherwise, it would be boring. See, we started already!)! The information found within comes from a variety of sources, as well as my own experience. I'd like to acknowledge Tim Esaias and Sharon Mignerey for imparting their knowledge of Conflict and Scene Craft. As well as Scott Johnson and Tim Waggoner for helping refine my craft.
If a story itself is a sandwich, then conflict is the peanut butter and jelly to that sandwich. In other words, without conflict, your story is going to be bland and no one is going to want to devour it. As an author, you want your reader to say, "I couldn't put it down." How do you do that? With conflict and tension. James Scott Bell said, "Conflict has long been recognized as the engine of story. Without conflict there is no drama. Without drama there is no interest. Without interest there is no reader. And no writing career." So what does it mean to insert drama into your story? Well, first you have to determine what your story is going to be about. To put this in a nutshell, conflict is when your character wants something and can't have it. The details come into the why and how of that character being unable to get what they want. Once you have that basic idea, ask yourself the following questions: Is your story a man vs. man tale? A man vs. nature? Is the conflict external or internal? Just keep in mind, that one side of the conflict has to involve someone or something that is sentient and conscious of their decisions. In other words, the character has to be able to make choices. A story about two tornadoes meeting in a field might be visually interesting; however, there's not much tension because nothing is at stake. However, throw a man trying to save his family from one of those tornadoes, and now we're talking. These concepts may seem fairly basic, but you'd be surprised the amount how integral they are to your story. Without a clear grasp of the concepts, the rest of the story won't come together. The next step, is to make this conflict familiar to the reader. As an author, you can make this happen by making protagonists that are likable/connectable, and to write conflict that has emotional familiarity. What do I mean by making a protagonist who is likable or connectable? It means the reader has to understand where they are coming from. Generally, most authors will write a main character who the readers will like. If not, the readers at least have to be able to connect or understand (empathize with) where the protagonist is coming from. For example, let's say our main character is a person who kills others. For most readers, we aren't going to connect with that or like it. However, if we find out he's killing others to save his family, or his tribe, or his country, then it shines a different light on the matter. We can now get behind his actions and root for him. (This is a simple example and not fleshed out, but a common trope in books and movies.) After you establish that aspect of your protagonist, your next goal is to work in some emotional familiarity into the conflict. Coming up next: Conflict Part 2--Emotional Familiarity. |
AuthorC.R. Langille writes horror, fantasy, urban-fantasy, dark fantasy, and is considering stepping into the sci-fi realm. He has a grasp of survival techniques, and has been a table-top gamer for over 16 years. Archives
August 2023
Categories
All
|