Category Archives: Storyline

Love has a murky middle? Of course! It’s the part that happens after the first euphoria of new love and before contentment or divorce. It’s the part people ask about, “What’s your secret to a long and happy marriage?” or “How did it end this way?”

It’s the no-man’s land of relationships and in a novel it’s the murky no-man’s land of plot and character development. The stages of love are just as complex, with 3, 5, 7, 9 or 10 stages depending on who you read. Then there is the life stages perspective (adolescence, young adult, family, etc.).

What’s a writer to do? I mean, you want to make the love relationships genuine and not everyone can be at the same point or have the same experience at any given stage. The answer is to be aware of the stages, put each character in a stage and then mix it up with life’s curve balls.

There are many sources and websites on all these topics, but here’s a quick run-down.

There are three stages (source here) in which our hormones affect how we react.
1. Lust – gets you out looking for a mate. Testosterone and estrogen levels are high.
2. Attraction – the ‘love struck’ phase. High levels of hormones influence how we act during this stage. Surging levels of dopamine has the same effect as taking cocaine by triggering an intense rush of pleasure. There is less need for sleep or food, increased energy and the rose colored glasses which make every detail a delight. Adrenaline rushes make you sweat, your heart race and your mouth go dry. Increased serotonin keeps the new lover popping into your head. This is the love sick stage. The rejection of love however, can have disastrous consequences too such as depression.
3. Attachment – Vasopressin and oxytocin are hormones released after sex and helps keep people together for long term commitments. Serotonin keeps those warm and fuzzy feelings necessary for long term relationships.

Other factors, some of which are triggered by other hormones, affect how we fall in love and choose a mate. There are physical features such as face shape, height, voice timbre, as well as emotional stability, smarts, status and friendliness. Add to that body language, smell (love those pheromones!), touch and even taste (kissing). These are present in all stages from falling in love to being in love.

From a psychological perspective, there are nine stages of love. For more information, read here.
1. infatuation
2. understanding
3. disturbances
4. the opinion maker
5. the moulding stage
6. the happy stage
7. doubts
8. when sex life plays a pivotal role
9. complete trust

As a story teller, it’s important to know what the stages of love are because that allows us to add details to make the situation authentic and allows the reader to relate to the character. Mix it up with background experiences that affect the failure or success, add her determination to fail or succeed and you’ve created scenarios for us to sympathize with, be repulsed by, or even laugh at.

Choose your character’s stage of love and an aspect of that stage and use it to show us who she is and how she perceives her current situation. Do you remember falling in love and noticing how good that person smelled, how it excited you? Then when you lived together and when that person went away on a trip, how you missed him and took comfort by smelling his clothes? In the attraction stage, it might be wonderful to smell the dirty shirt when you pick it off the floor. Oh the euphoria! But what happens in the attachment or happiness stage? Is the contentment still there when you carry the load of laundry to the washer? Is there passion, resignation or even disgust? That reaction tells us reams about your character, the stage of love she’s in and the dynamics of her relationship.

To understand what triggers your character, consider the science, hormones and the traits we subconsciously use to assess potential mates. Add in the life stage (adolescence, young adult, raising a family, middle age, old age) and a back story and that smooth scientific explanation suddenly gets clouded and twisted by life’s experiences. This is where back story is really important. Will your character go beyond the lust or infatuation stage? Why or why not? What is attractive or repulsive (such as physical features or attitudes) and why? Who does the person remind them of? What happened in their past to form their world view about love and what a relationship should be like? No matter the stage, is he happy, content, discontent, resigned or resentful to be there?

It’s the twists and turns in a character’s back story (and sometimes the current situation) which form a worldview and determines how a character handles each of love’s stages. The steps are the same for all of us but what makes us unique is our previous experiences, our childhood (experiences and role models), and successful and failed adult relationships. It’s also about those walls we all build and the subtle ways we keep our deepest yearnings from being met. That’s who we are and who our characters need to be – a complex of hormones and life experiences, of wishes and dreams fulfilled, sabotaged and failed. Love is what we strive for, biologically and emotionally, and what we aspire to – and if we don’t, that’s another story, isn’t it?

Science can provide the foundation for love’s murky middle, but we, as story tellers, need to mix those hormones with back story, expectations and life stages to make the murky middle a most interesting muddle.

Petting the Dog

January 23, 2015

Jace Killan

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A few months ago I took one of David Farland’s workshops where he introduced me to a concept known as “Petting the Dog.” He explained that in Hollywood, writers would introduce a scene to sell a character’s likability to the audience by petting a dog or kissing a baby or something of that sort. Since the class I have taken note of those scenes in film and in writing.

In past Disney films, many of the characters were all good or all bad and of course their actions reflected this. From Cinderella and the mice, Aurora and the fairies, Snow White and the Dwarves, Mary Poppins and the blue jay and Ariel and the crustacean band, these characters gained likability by showing that they treated other critters and creatures well and by doing charitable and kind acts.

In later years, characters have not been so “traditional” and one-dimensional. Aladdin for example was a thief but he shared his bread with the street orphans, in essence “petting the dog.” That’s how Disney sold Aladdin’s likability in spite of him being in an unlikable profession.

Shrek was another that didn’t follow tradition. They even took the “petting the dog scene” of Mary Poppins and Snow White, singing with a Blue Jay. I never laughed so hard at a movie when the bird exploded; it was completely unexpected and yet endearing.

Maleficent had to go through some rebranding in the recent Disney film. How did they take a terrible witch sorceress that threatened to kill Prince Charming and make her likable? They showed her as a child and a guardian of the woods, kind to its critters and creatures and as an adult, kind and caring to Aurora.

Villain protagonists or hero antagonists are becoming more popular in film and literature. Entire television series are based on the dichotomy present in such characters doing bad things for righteous reasons, like The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, House of Cards, The Sopranos, Almost Human, Deadwood, Justified, Revenge and so many more. Each of these relies heavily on “petting the dog” scenes.

In Sons of Anarchy, Tig a member of the MC and up until a certain point was one of my most favorite characters, mistakenly killed another member’s wife. I hated him for it. I hated the writers for it. I resented going to that place that they took me, but I went all the same. I expected that the writers didn’t care about the character as much as I did and were going to kill him off. But in following episodes there were many scenes that showed a tender side to Tig. In one, he walked into a dogfight and rescues a pit bull about to be put down because it lost. This reminded me that Tig was human and not a monster. The writers brought him back by “petting the dog.”

House of Cards opened with a “petting the dog” scene. The villain protagonist, Frank Underwood tends to a dog is hit by a car. He pets the dog then kills it, supposedly for a righteous reason, but the scene gives us tremendous insight into this Underwood’s character.

Of course, these scenes do not always involve a dog. As David Heyman pointed out in an earlier post, NASA was able to endear the public to a couple of machines through their twitter feeds.

In the Shield, the series opens with a dirty cop, Vic Mackey, killing a righteous officer. The writers needed to sell the viewer that Vic was worth investing into with enduring emotion, even though he did something so heinous. I’m not sure they ever really pulled it off, but the “petting the dog” scenes involved a prostitute with a small child. Vic went out of his way multiple times to help this woman and her son.

Good storytellers endear us to characters, not by showing them doing what everyone else would do, but by showing us the exception. By allowing our characters to “pet the dog” we can offer great insights to their moral codes and personal thoughts, even if they are a psycho killer.

What other examples of “petting the dog” have you seen?

Conflicts of Character Design

January 13, 2015

Matt Jones

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There are many parts of creating a new novel, and creating realistic characters is probably one of the most challenging ones. Characters need to be believable. They need to have their own personality, habits, and traits that set them apart from others. If done correctly, the reader will be able to relate. They’ll understand and feel concerned. It’ll pull them deeper into the novel and they’ll keep reading to figure out what will happen. If done poorly, it will throw them out of the novel. They won’t be able to believe and before long, they’ll look elsewhere and leave your novel behind.

When I create new characters, I focus on the conflicts. Everyone has conflicts they face and have to deal with. It’s the sum of all these conflicts that can lead them on the road of hero or villain. These conflicts will generally take on the shape of external and internal, two sides of a fight that is always raging in everyone.

Internal conflicts are anything that tears your character apart from inside. This can be dealing with a phobia, memory, or other psychological barrier. It can be need to be the best, or look the prettiest. It can be the fear of the dark that makes your character abandon others he could easily save. Or the pride that keeps him from admitting he was wrong. The internal conflicts are generally the deeply ingrained problems that the character spends the entire novel attempting to overcome.

External conflicts are everything else that keeps your character on track. The broken home he has to deal with, the abusive parents. They can include the weather, environment, wild animals, or other characters. Anything that goes against what the character would do and forces them to make decisions.

When you create a new character, consider all the conflicts that they have to deal with. Write them down and keep them in your mind as you write them. They’ll keep your character constant and provide motivation to act, even if it’s running away. Once these conflicts are established, your character can show true heroism by not only saving the day, but by having to overcome their natural reaction to do so.

Write a Short Story? I’d Rather Floss a Chicken’s Teeth!

January 6, 2015

Ace Jordyn

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Write a short story? I’d rather floss a chicken’s teeth! That’d be much easier.

I found myself facing that problem after writing six novels. I couldn’t wrap my head around a shorter piece of work. Everything I tried I sounded like an outline for a novel.

Books on outlining didn’t help. Workshops provided little insight. Critique groups, well, I could help someone to better tell their story, heck, I’d even edited an acclaimed anthology, but I couldn’t tell one myself.

How could I overcome this block?

The problem was, I needed a break from novel writing and I really wanted to know what eluded me about this form. I followed this four step process and I learned how to write a short story:

1) Read short stories, not novels. By reading short stories I learned what forms and genres I really liked and disliked. There’s no point in trying to write in a genre or with a style that doesn’t speak to you.

2) Choose a genre which speaks to you. For example, I love some literary style authors and I love science fiction stories. Literary style I can read but I can’t figure out the voice. With science fiction I understand the voice and the genre, but I’m not as adept as I’d like to be with the science. Hence, I don’t have the confidence to write it. How did I learn this about myself? Check out point number three …

3) Retell the stories that interest you. Be aware of style, plot, character and tropes common to the genre. That’s how I figured out if I had the desire, the passion to write certain stories. When I retold a story, I paid close attention to the plot and how it unfolded. I had to be aware of the tropes. Most importantly, I had to feel the voice and I had to feel the passion for the genre. Once you’ve discovered what stories energize and excite you, the final step is easy.

4) Now, write an original story in the genre and voice that excites you.

That’s it. It’s that easy.

Should you publish or submit a retold story? That’s another matter. Issues of public domain arise and rightly so. Some stories I deleted because my intent was only to learn from them. Others, even if there are no public domain issues, may be published in the future but with full disclosure as to the source of inspiration.

Where did I finally find my voice? With fables and fairy tales and people’s stories of old. I love it. The most curious thing I learned was that it wasn’t about setting for me for I’ve set my stories in worlds of fantasy, science fiction, and yes, there’s even a literary one or two! My real journey was to find my story telling voice.

The cheat of the matter was this: later on, I recognized that my writing voice had always been with me. I had heard it, felt it even and I had tried to squeeze it into forms and stories that didn’t suit it. That was the heart of the problem. That is the heart of this journey – to hear the voice within you and to find the form that fits it.